humor

April 7, 2014

The “Vomit Cleanup Fee”

Xian_Morning_Walk_Taxi_License_Plates

If you throw up in a Chicago taxi, they will charge you $50 for the mess you make. Indeed, the driver might ask you to empty your entire wallet, given his loss of revenue during the time spent scooping your gastric juices, in addition to the need to have the upholstery steam cleaned.

The reason I know all this is that I’ve been in lots of cabs due to the awful winter we’ve had in Chicago (and much of the USA). With idle time sitting during one of those rides, I spied the list of charges that included the “vomit cleanup fee.”

Of course, taxi rides can be interesting for many other reasons. The drivers can be from almost anywhere. One such was a recent emigrant from Eritrea, a country in the Horn of Africa. A little research indicates that most of the six million or so inhabitants of that country speak Tigrinya, a language I never knew existed. Nice learning opportunity.

Not so nice is the fact that sometimes you are subjected to the aroma of recent passengers. I’m pretty sure that someone who preceded me lately left some pretty serious body odor behind. Fortunately, my journey didn’t last long or I would have gotten out quickly and taken another cab. No “deodorant failure fee” was on the aforementioned list, by the way.

Out of curiosity, I googled to find out how all this is handled in New York City. As some of you know, Chicago is sometimes called “The Second City” (after New York), and it does turn out that we are behind in the cost of messing-up-cabs, too. According to an Associated Press report of September 19, 2013:

Manhattan city commissioners have given cab drivers permission to charge a $75 fee to customers who vomit or otherwise soil their vehicles.

Clearly, they anticipated all the possible foul things that could happen in a taxi. They further indicate that St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve are the big winners (or losers) for the taxi business in this particular area of concern.

All of this got me to thinking about the things — inappropriate and offensive things — that people do in public or where someone else can observe them. If we are going to penalize people for vomiting in a cab, there are a few other penalties that might make the world a bit more civilized:

Here is a short list with a little commentary:

  • The failure to wash your hands after using the washroom/WC fee. Men are especially guilty of this. However small the amount of the penalty, I’m quite sure that a properly enforced charge would allow us to retire the National Debt in a matter of weeks.
  • The bumping into you without saying “sorry” fee. This problem is relatively new. It didn’t exist 15 years ago. I suspect the proliferation of people walking the street with backpacks the size of Cleveland — all the while preoccupied with smart phones — have made a contribution to this latest form of incivility. I’ve seen people almost decapitated by linebacker-sized civilians who show no awareness that they might actually have hurt someone.
  • The “way too much” perfume or cologne fee. This can be almost as bad as the body odor problem mentioned earlier.
  • The bad toupee fee. This does no one direct harm, but for the sight of such things. I always wonder why a partner, child, or family member doesn’t tell the fellow with the dime-store hairpiece that people on the street can see it from a block away.

As I said before, it has been a tough winter. Unfortunately, Mother Nature is unlikely to accept my invoice.

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The top image is an Xi’an taxi in the People’s Republic of China photographed by Xianxing. It is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

March 31, 2014

The Lament of the Middle-Aged Sports Fan

Dale Kasel

Spectator sports, like therapy sessions, have their ups and downs. For the middle-aged baseball fan, even some of the downs have value. And so, as a public service, I will offer you a few thoughts on why millions of people spend billions of dollars watching something they can’t do and probably never could do very well; something that causes much aggravation and that, by season’s end, leaves most of them disappointed, year after year.

First, the painful fiscal facts. There are thirty Major League Baseball teams. In every season, the fans of 29 of them will observe that they rooted for a team that did not win the World Series. In the 2012 season:

The Fan Cost Index, the total price to take a family of four to a game increased by 2.4 percent to $207.68, according to Team Marketing Report’s exclusive survey.

The Fan Cost Index is created by combining four non-premium tickets, two beers, four soft drinks, four hot dogs, parking, two programs and two adult-size hats.

I’m thinking the two adult-size hats were included because the alleged adults needed to cover the hole in the head that allowed them to spend over $200 for the privilege of a bad seat and a day shot on fighting the traffic just to watch the home-favorites lose. And remember, I’m a baseball fan!

So what explains this exercise in self-flagellation and taking the fast-track to a life of poverty?

  • Comradery. Most of us find it very easy to talk at least a little to our fellow-fan of the home team, for the simple reason that we know he thinks like us and feels our pain; he experiences the same joys and sorrows as we do. We are bonded just by sitting in adjacent seats. It is a pleasant feeling and people out for a day in the sun usually start that day in a pretty good mood.
  • An Opportunity to Complain. Complaining, unless you are a member of the Tea Party, is seen as being a bad sport here in the USA. We think of ourselves as a “can do” people, who need to be blindly optimistic no matter the circumstances. But sports gives us a socially approved opportunity to vent and we all need some venting. That’s why we purchase air-conditioners and keep the windows open when we drive.
  • The Illusion of Youth. Where else can a 350 pound middle-aged man get away with saying, “That was an easy ground ball. Heck, I could have fielded that.” This, from a man who cannot see his own shoe tops while standing. Really. We all want to think of ourselves in the heady and fit days of our youth, when agility had not yet been replaced by flaccidity and ill-timed flatulence. For $207.68 you get four tickets to a place where people don’t laugh at you when you imply that you are a better man than someone half your age.
  • Distraction. Baseball is a pastime. It takes you away from the fact that your car needs repairs that you can’t afford, your son needs braces on his teeth that you can’t afford, the boss needs work you can’t afford to botch, and your spouse wants you to repair 18 different parts of the house that you can’t afford and have no idea how to fix on your own. A baseball park offers a place of escape, a Never-Land of illusion, a temporary refuge from the steam-roller of life.
  • Identification. Most of us lead pretty ordinary lives. We are not great heroes and athletes. No one we pass on the street points to us and says, “There goes godlike Achilles! Wow, I wish I could be like him.” But at the ballpark we can identify with wonderful athletes who can do things that we can’t and never could. When they hit home runs, so, in some sense, do we. For our $207.68 we borrow the hero’s prowess and glory in his achievements, at least a little bit. And, should the team actually win a World Series Championship, we hold up the foam finger we bought for even more cash and shout “We’re Number One!” We?
  • Looking for Something Bigger than Ourselves. Nietzsche said “God is dead.” That wasn’t entirely good news. Most of us seem to need something bigger than ourselves to attach to and believe in. We need other fellow-worshippers, too. And so we go to the ballpark, where the faithful at the green cathedral continue to hold on to the belief that, finally, “This will be our year.” That all those who believe in other teams are actually worshipping false gods. That the ballpark is a substitute for a church, a temple, or a mosque. And that the cost of admission is like a donation or a tithe — a small price to pay for the privilege of worship; to see the ballplayers, AKA the priests, perform (we hope) their magic on the field of play and give us reason to “believe” in spite of the fact that the team is 30 games behind the leader in the standings with only 25 games left to play. It is, in other words, a place where a die-hard baseball fan prays for a miracle.
  • Bonding with Our Children. Whether you have a boy or a girl, there is something quite wonderful about watching the game together, teaching them the rules, letting them share your excitement, and recalling for them the time your dad took you to the ball park, and the time that his dad took him to the ballpark, in a never-ending line of shared experience and love.

I have a confession to make. Until I was in my early-60s and suffered a torn meniscus in my left knee, I actually thought I could still play ball passably well. Yes, I was one of those people I’ve just described. Self-deluded. Holding on to a youth that was long past. Rooting for a team (the Chicago Cubs) that still hasn’t won a World Championship since 1908.

We need our illusions, our attachments, our distractions.

Perhaps $207.68 is a better deal than I thought.

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The top image is a photo of Dale Kasel in 2007, then an outfielder for the Air Force Academy baseball team. It was taken by an unknown author and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

February 16, 2014

When Boys Swam Nude in Chicago Public Schools

swimmingnude

At a time when teens expose lots of flesh, it will probably surprise a few of you that high school boys used to swim in the nude when everyone else was much more “covered-up” than today. That practice happened in many places, but it was routine in the (CPS) Chicago Public High Schools in the middle of the last century. Research suggests it stopped at some time in the 1970s, but this post isn’t about how long it lasted. It is about the effect on those of us who lived the experience.

The privacy concerns of today were then unknown. Social Security numbers that would open the door to identity theft in 2014 were unprotected by most people 50 years ago. So, too, were the nude bodies of teen males from about age 13 to 18. It was part of what was called physical education (PE), but the lessons of this particular class were perverse.

We followed orders. We didn’t question it the way one might today. Our fathers, many of whom had been subjected to the same expectation, didn’t ask about it either. I don’t remember having any conversations with my folks or my friends, the latter until many years later. Then the injured skeletons finally popped out of the pool closet.

Organized nude male exercise dates as far back as Ancient Greece. Socrates talks about it in Plato’s Republic and even suggests at one point that male and female potential “guardians” of one’s ideal municipality should be required to work out together buff naked! At least nothing like that happened at Mather High School or elsewhere in the CPS system. Physical education wasn’t co-ed. The young ladies wore unattractive “tank suits” covering crucial parts. Males alone followed the drill sans a bathing suit and did so out of the sight of anyone but their classmates and the teacher.

Believe me, for some people I knew, just standing around nude in the confines of a cold swimming area was bad enough without an audience. Let’s start with the fact that you’d just come out of a shower warmer than the air and water in the “pool room.” The swimming area was tiled. Sitting at pool’s edge or on tile benches always felt like squatting on blocks of ice. Teeth chattered. That was just the start.

Once fully in the water, of course, brought relief from the ease with which others could inspect your “equipment.” There were always some kids who were “advanced” in this department. Others could rightfully have been called “developmentally delayed” in terms of secondary sexual characteristics like pubic hair. There were size differences, too. Comparisons were both inevitable and impossible to avoid, although most of the boys tried to be discreet about it.

Embarrassment came to those targeted by bullies, as their successors surely do today too, especially from the “big guys” who had no problem in any area of growth and enjoyed a little sadism. Mocking occurred, egos crumbled like cookies. These were the stories uttered for the first time (in my non-professional experience) by classmates I saw at the 40th Class Reunion. For a few, the memories remained painful. Young men are enormously insecure in the sexual development and attractiveness department. An entire class devoted to seeing nude bodies of your classmates could only turn out badly for some.

I wonder what the teachers were thinking, not to mention the school administrators who sanctioned this practice. I’ve heard it said that some claimed it was a matter of cleanliness. Or perhaps, somewhere way back, someone had read about Ancient Greek physical ed. and thought it sounded great. “It will make men out of them, maybe even the next Achilles” he must have been thinking.

The eventual decision to require swim trunks might have been the result of increasing concerns over discrimination bubbling up in the 50’s and ’60s about other things, notably race and eventually gender bias. Since only the boys had to swim nude, it was the male gender being disadvantaged. I really don’t know with certainty why the course changed. Surely it didn’t end all at once everywhere that it was happening in the USA.

Nor must anyone who required male nudity have considered the excruciating circumstance it must have created for gay teens at a time before the word “gay” meant anything but being jolly — when custom permitted more pejorative and degrading names for those kids with a predilection for same-sex relationships. And remember, teen-aged boys have enormous difficulty controlling the automatic arousal that can happen anytime, anywhere.

That reminds me of Mae West, a femme fatale of early talking movies. She commented to an attractive male, “Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” But I’ll tell you from personal experience that erections often happen to 16-year-old males at the most inopportune moments. I find it rather ironic, in light of the overwhelming number of commercials for middle-aged men with problems of sexual performance these days.

To end, here’s  a story I was told by someone who saw it happen in another CPS swim class. Doubtless it wasn’t the only one of its kind. The teacher wanted someone to demonstrate the back float. The first couple of kids were chosen at random, but couldn’t manage the task, frustrating the instructor. “Hey Murray, you’re the finest swimmer here, show these guys how it’s  done,” he finally barked. Murray tried his stalwart best and did, indeed, display the ideal back float form for the 30 or so fellow-students assembled around him.

There was only one problem for good-old Murray. In the middle of everything, the poor Murray-meister had an erection that popped up like the opening of a switchblade, automatic knife. No sooner did it appear, than one of the class wags yelled out, “Up periscope, Murray!”

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For an update on the reasons nude male swimming became mandatory, please read: When Boys Swam Nude in Chicago Public High Schools: Update.

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January 5, 2014

Expecting Your Mate to Read Your Mind

256px-Poster_of_Alexander_Crystal_Seer

“He/she should know what I want.”

Therapists make a fortune from those who believe that everyone in the world is intuitive; that each person is born with the gift of being able to peer into the mind of the other. And, most importantly, that a person who really loves you (or even a very good friend) will know what you want without it having to be put into words.

Such people come to couples therapists expecting that the counselor will be able to train the patient’s spouse to do this. The problem, as they see it, is in the other, not in themselves.

There are a few iffy assumptions here:

  1. Any reasonably intelligent person (I’m including men here, if you will permit me to put that word together with the word “intelligent”) has an innate capacity to know the wants and desires of a partner who has not directly stated them.
  2. Such a person is further able to know the order in which such requirements are to be fulfilled, despite the absence of any ranking of those priorities by their partner.
  3. The same individual is always listening for hints that might suggest what the lover wants and in what order the lover wants them. He/she is terrific at “getting” the subtlest of those hints because he/she is a master of understanding tone of voice, body language, and even silences.
  4. The fulfillment of an unstated desire is worth more than getting what is wanted by asking for it directly. Having to ask for the thing you want somehow diminishes its value.

Are these assumptions correct?

No, no, no, and no.

Partners, even those who are sensitive and devoted, have only an approximate idea of some of the things that would please the spouse. If they don’t know the items on your list, they certainly can’t get the expected order of importance right.

It would be nice if your friend were telepathic, but his/her lack of capacity to read your mind should not diminish the value of what he tries to do to please you, even if you have to give him directions along the way. Isn’t there something appealing in a person whose affection for you is so great that he is willing to make the effort to understand something — do something that is not intuitive and doesn’t come easily?

And, do remember, your loved one is not always paying attention, as in the following cartoon showing a long-time patient and his therapist:

"Oops! I've just deleted all your files. Can you repeat everything you've every told me?"

“Oops! I just deleted all your files. Can you repeat everything you’ve ever told me?”

A few practical suggestions (follow them at your own risk):

  1. Ask your spouse to tell you what he/she thinks will make you happy. Do this with the iPads and smartphones put away, the TV and radio off, no music in the background, the wine bottles corked, and the kids asleep or out of the house. Assuming that he doesn’t say, “Nothing will make you happy,” you are off to a good start: you are talking without distractions.
  2. If that question is too broad, be more specific. Ask your spouse what he imagines would make you happy in one or two of the following areas: housework, taking care of the kids, running errands, making a living, time spent together, romance/sex, attitude, and whatever else you can think of that is important.
  3. Don’t condemn, mock, or laugh. Don’t criticize. Don’t start any sentence with the words “How can you not know…” Just listen. Take notes if necessary.
  4. Don’t assume that you can read his/her mind any more than he can read yours. Don’t assume the worst possible motives for his failure to give you what you want. Recognize and praise what he has done right that you might otherwise tend to minimize or ignore.
  5. Choose only one or two of the areas on which you wish to concentrate. (I realize I’m repeating this, but you should try to start small). Tell your mate where he is right and where he needs a bit of help. Give him that help. Tell him precisely what you want. That is, if you want him to take out the garbage by 8PM without a reminder on Tuesday night, say so. If you also want him to replace the garbage bags, say so. Don’t assume anything. Make your desires as explicit and behaviorally descriptive as possible. Remember, you are dealing with someone you believe to have missed a few years in school.
  6. Ask the other to paraphrase what you’ve said. He will probably not do a great job at this. Keep at it until you feel that he actually knows what you are asking for because he has specified all the details in his own words, not because he says “OK, I’ll do that.”
  7. Don’t ask for the world. If you want a man to put the toilet seat down every time he uses the W/C, you should realize that (for certain men) asking for a round-the-world tour would be more easily achieved.
  8. Be sensitive to the possibility that he may stop listening to you if you go on too long, start hammering him, or if he has other things on his mind. It is better for your conversation to be relatively brief with full attention than longer, but with periods of inattention.
  9. If you are getting exasperated try to end the conversation and make plans to pick it up again. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
  10. End on a high note. Say thanks and mean it. He/she is trying to get this right.

One last word. This will require you to change, too. Indeed, it is just possible that the love of your life fails to do some of the things you want because he doesn’t think you are attentive to his own desires. In other words, that the two of you are involved in a kind of tit-for-tat game of withholding and passive-aggressive expressions of anger.

You will also have to recognize that you too have a limited power to read his mind; that it is only fair that you permit him to go through the same kind of 10-point exercise I just described, allowing him to determine whether you are fully aware of his wishes and giving him an opportunity to set you straight.

Being direct but not vicious is an art that must be perfected for relationships to survive in the best possible way. You won’t get back to “the days of wine and roses” by hitting your spouse over the head with a mallet, however tempting that might be. You want him to look at you with stars of love in his eyes, not seeing stars after the blow you just delivered to his noggin.

It is not a subtle point, I know. Still, I had to make it because otherwise you would have had to read my mind!

seeing stars

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The top image is a Poster of Alexander Seer, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

December 26, 2013

Laughter From an Unexpected Place: Adolf H. and His Search for a Concert Ticket

They say that “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Here is a brief youtube clip of about four minutes to brighten your upcoming New Year’s Day. Whether you love Justin Bieber or Beethoven, Katie Perry or Prokofiev, this should give you a giggle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4E9iP9zOpI

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There have been a number of Hitler parodies. This one comes from the excellent and very serious 2005 movie Downfall starring Bruno Ganz. The movie and the parody couldn’t be more different. Hitler parodies go as far back as Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny, Zero Mostel, and the young Gene Wilder.

If you believe that there is such a thing as the devil, then you might be heartened by fun made of one composed of flesh and blood, as is done here. I just saw a comment by Bob Harper on another site that quoted Sir Thomas More. Harper applied More’s statement about how to harm the devil to the many Hitler parodies that have been made out of the same clip: “The devil is a proud spirit, and cannot endure to be mocked.”

This one, using the identical clip, is about Hitler getting his AP (Advanced Placement) test results for college: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHQ-_t0WvaY

December 20, 2013

“You Look Marvelous!” Worry About Looking Good and Worry About Feeling Good

Knock on Any Door Poster[7]

We pass invisible markers on the walk along the shifting sands of life. The signposts signify three stages:

  • 1. The total unself-consciousness of a little baby, who only knows that he feels good or bad, but has virtually no concern about the impact that his appearance makes on others.
  • 2. The period where appearance and impression matter. Comparisons are all around. Are you as pretty as she is? Does your hair look right? Do you have enough muscles? When are your boobs going to show up? Are you tall enough, handsome enough, thin enough — just simply “becoming” enough to beat out the competition; for the people you’d like to think well of you, that is?
  • 3. The third stage. It isn’t that you don’t care at all about how you look as you get past mid-life, but how you feel becomes much more important. If the pants are comfortable, who cares if they aren’t fashionable? Why try a new hair style when the one you’ve been using since 1974 seems so much a part of you? When did it become hard to get a restful night’s sleep? When did the aches and pains begin? And then there are the dreaded medications that make one symptom feel better and give you three side-effects that require their own medical solutions. Your doctor visits become more frequent and your conversations change from “How about those Cubs?” to “What did your doctor say?” And the doctor isn’t talking about your appearance, he is talking about how you feel.

None of this is good news. You are paying for your diminished vanity with augmented, expanded, supersized preoccupations of a different kind. As the famous and elderly pianist Menachem Pressler once said from the stage of the Ravinia Festival:

I have a friend who says that if you wake up in the morning and your over 80 and you’re not in pain — you’re dead!

There’s got to be a bright side to this, right?

Well, for one thing, less vanity isn’t so bad. As long as you still take a regular shower and put on deodorant and wear clean clothes, there is no possibility that you will be arrested by the “Vanity Police” for offending the sensibilities of those who live to be seen. They spend their lives trying to look like models in Vogue or GQ or Elle. These same people waste their life savings on hair stylists and new suits and the best looking shoes. They are the kind of folks who buy new glasses with every passing season because fashions have changed even if their eye prescription hasn’t.

There is freedom in liking yourself for who you are on the inside rather than who you please by your outsides. A little more confidence and a little less insecurity go a long way to a happier life. If the crowd’s applause means less to you, you’ve figured out something pretty important about contentment.

Ah, but the downside. I will use myself as an example. I am reportedly in very good health for a man of 125. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that. I mean, for a man my age who falls into the category of the “young old” or just a little bit beyond. I’m doing just fine. Who thinks up these categories anyway? Are there job listings in the newspaper and on Monster or other Internet sites for people who make up names like “Generation Y” or “Baby Boomers” or “Millennials?” Then, of course, there are the “old-old,” the “preposterously-old,” the “disgustingly-old” and the “better off dead.” At least, I think so.

When he was 88, my dad said he wanted to live to be 100. Of course, many years before, he said that if he could get to 70 he would have had no cause for complaint on the time that had been allotted to him. I do not know when he started to push the goal posts back, but I do know that a week after he made his new target public he stroked-out and never regained consciousness. It was the kind of event that my good friend Dan Morrison likes to call a “clean get-away.” No muss, no fuss, no lingering and best of all, no great pain. The kind of death that most of us are hoping for.

Ursula Andress and John Derek

Ursula Andress and John Derek

Feeling good yet? I know that it is unseemly to talk about these things. They are the kind of subjects that seem morbid and don’t exactly lift the mood. And yet there is at least one advantage to feeling somewhat less good as we age: it makes the ending a little more attractive. No, I’m not talking suicide here. What I’m saying is that if you are in the prime of life at age 92, feeling just as fine and fit as you did 70 years before, the idea of your demise will be much more horrifying than if various body parts are starting to fall off and you’re wondering if maybe living forever is not exactly desirable. You begin to think that perhaps John Derek was right when he said “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse” in the 1949 movie Knock on Any Door. And remember, John Derek knew a bit about what it meant to be good-looking. This handsome actor/director married Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo Derek in succession. If there had been a Presidential Cabinet post for the evaluation of pulchritude, he would have gotten the job.

Bo Derek in the 1979 movie 10

Bo Derek in the 1979 movie 10

Here’s the bottom line: We want to live forever but we don’t want to get old. A contradiction, for sure. Best to accept the nature of things, concentrate on what you still can do rather than what you no longer can do, and make the “clean get-away” my friend Dan describes. In the meantime, do some good for young people, live “in the moment,” and enjoy the sunshine. I’ve heard it’s a lot darker in the Underworld — the afterlife described by the ancient  Greeks.

Have a nice day. Really.

November 16, 2013

Dealing with Online Criticism of that “Bald, Ugly, Old” Man: Me

cartoon_of_a_bold_man

You probably haven’t read anything quite like this before.

I received a comment to my blog post entitled Beautiful and Smart, But Unlucky in Love: The Reasons Why from someone named Brenda. Here is the comment in full:

You seem to really dwell on the part where women get older and lose their looks. I could even sense some anger or revenge in your words. I then realized that the bald ugly old picture of a man at the top of the article was a picture of you. Then it all made sense. I would never take any advise [advice] or criticism from an disgustingly ugly human being like yourself who claims to be a professional.

Anyway, spelling problems and missing commas aside, pretty strong words. As you might have noticed on the page that contains this post, I have had over 500,000 views of my blog, but never anything like this in response to it. Not even close. So you might wonder, how does one deal with criticism such as this?

First, although I have Brenda’s full name and email address, I have done her the favor of not posting her comment and making her a target of others. My guess is that she might possibly not be a happy soul. Anyway, most of us have enough crap in our lives without starting an email war.

I’m able to adopt this stance, in part, because I don’t take what she said too personally. Let’s look at her attack. She said that I am “bald ugly old” and that I am “a man.” It seems to me that she is right on at least three out of four! I am clearly bald and have even written a humorous blog post about that condition: Bald is Beautiful: Reflections on Hairlessness. I am also undeniably old and I am a man. On the question of ugly, I do not believe that I am Brad Pitt, but I’ll let you, dear reader, determine if I am ugly for a man of my antique age.

Not Gerald M. Stein

Not Gerald M. Stein

One of the things about beauty, in men or women, is that age tends not to improve outward physical things. Think about Robert Redford. He is now long past his heart-throb years — a man who once made women swoon. But I digress. So, yes, it is true I am not a stud-muffin. But, neither am I particularly vain, so Brenda’s remaining point — that I am ugly — isn’t a big concern either way.

Oh, but she added I am a “disgustingly ugly human being.” Has Brenda been talking with my neighbors? Seriously, her words here are so “over the line” that I think she discredits herself and reduces the strength of her entire diatribe against me.

In short, my response to this person is that it is difficult for me to take what she is saying to heart. Yes, it is intended to cause personal injury, but she doesn’t know me and she seems to have a “bee in her bonnet” for reasons I can’t possibly know, since I don’t know her either. Were someone to take issue with my posts in a more reasonable, less ad hominem fashion, then I would have to give their concerns more thought. And, if someone close to me whom I respected had criticisms, then I would definitely consider them seriously, at least to some degree.

Another helpful way to respond to Brenda is to take a rather “Zen” approach to her, using an insight from Buddhist teachings (although I’m not Buddhist). That is, to look at what I might learn from her or to find some way in which she has actually done me a service. For example, if you ever find yourself stuck in a slow-moving line of traffic, you might realize its slowness actually gives you a chance to practice being patient. Looking for “the good” tends to make you feel better than sitting and fuming.

Just so, it is pretty easy to frame what Brenda has written as something useful to me. No, I’m not at the cosmetic surgeon’s office as I write this, now that I am aware of Brenda’s delicately delivered assessment of my appearance. But, she has done me, and perhaps you, one favor.

She gave me the idea for this blog post.

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The top image as called a Cartoon of a Man with No Hair and No Real Face by Catboi. The image of Brad Pitt is by Chris_Natt. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 30, 2013

How To Mess Up a Dinner Date: A Beginner’s Guide to Dating Misery

File:Joker red 02.svg

You have a date with someone you find enormously appealing. You don’t actually recall the details of how you happened to make the contact. You were at a party, talked to the woman a bit, and discovered her phone number in your pocket when you got home. You’d had too much to drink, so nothing in your memory bank suggests what you discussed. But, when you called her a few days later, she did agree to have dinner with you.

Now what?

Rather than tell you precisely what to do, I will take the opposite stance: don’t do what you read below!

Instead, reflect on the fact that people, perhaps including yourself, have engaged in the acts I am about to describe. These faux pas apply to both sexes. In the game of dating, we are all at risk of being that guy (or girl). Also, note that I’ve exaggerated some of this poor advice for the sake of making it more obvious. But again, don’t do it!

On occasion I will say just a few words about how to approach the dinner date experience so that you actually increase your chances of having a good time. I will highlight these affirmative suggestions by placing them in capital letters and italics so that you can tell them from the disastrous behaviors that make up most of this essay.

YOUR PRE-DATE GAME PLAN:

1. As a first step in destroying your confidence, consider that this woman does not really know who you are. Now, I don’t mean this in the sense that she has very little knowledge of your inner workings and life history. Rather, I’m referring to the chance of mistaken identity. She likely envisions a tall, handsome, witty character with whom she shared martinis, moonlight, and flirtatious banter (or was that the guy named Steve?). Regardless, once you arrive at her door, she is likely to realize two very important things: she is sober and you are not Steve.

2. Continue to ponder the possibility that your muse imbibed too many Cosmopolitans during your initial encounter a few days ago. Now reflect on the fact that your friends have often told you, “Dude, you’re way funnier when you are drinking.” You can now reasonably conclude that your date either does not know who you are or she does, but you looked and sounded a lot better when you both were intoxicated.

3. Having ruminated about the first two items for several hours (to the point of a ruinous case of pre-date jitters), jot down a list of every bad date you’ve ever had. Think back to all the humiliations, all the rejections, and especially the time that you got nauseous at Chili’s. Now extend your attention to your miniscule place in the universe, thereby further reducing your confidence.

4. Remember that one of the potential problems in meeting anyone new is that you can run out of things to say. Knowing this, write down a list of potential conversation topics. Then open your window and scream “Adios blow-up doll! No more inflatable girls for me. I have a date with a real live woman!” Make sure that you are loud enough so your neighbors can hear you.

5. Recalling that your date said on the phone that she loves Thai food, choose a dinner destination based solely on your own palate. Your reasoning? Women don’t eat in front of guys on first dates, right?

6. Remember that appearance is key to a successful first date. At the same time, however, consider that paying too much attention to grooming could be seen as a weakness. The solution to this dilemma? Rely on the words your incarcerated father once told you, that there is nothing to fear when you drench your body for 30 seconds with Axe Body Spray.

  • REAL ADVICE: DON’T DEFEAT YOURSELF BEFORE YOU GET STARTED. TRY TO REMEMBER WHY YOU WANT TO GO OUT WITH THIS PERSON AND REALIZE THAT SHE IS ALMOST CERTAINLY LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING TO KNOW YOU AND HAVING A GOOD TIME. YOU CAN DRIVE YOURSELF CRAZY WITH ANTICIPATION AND PREPARATION. DO TRY TO LOOK YOUR BEST, BUT, IN THE END, YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE. IF YOUR DATE IS COMPATIBLE WITH YOU, SHE IS NOT EXPECTING THAT SHE IS ABOUT TO GO OUT WITH THE FIRST FLAWLESS PERSON IN HISTORY.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Goofy_smirk.jpg/256px-Goofy_smirk.jpg

THE DATE ITSELF:

7. If you are prone to hugging “hello,” go ahead. But remember — you want to make an impression. Therefore you must squeeze your date’s bottom a minimum of three times in quick succession during the embrace. Why three? Because you don’t want her (or him) to think that the first two squeezes were an accident. This will definitely get noticed. If you are a man, it will tell your companion that you are a rude, overconfident caveman. If you are a woman, it will inform your new acquaintance that you are in heat.

  • REAL ADVICE: WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T DO ANY BOTTOM SQUEEZING OF THIS NEW PERSON, UNLESS YOU WANT HER TO CALL THE POLICE OR KICK YOU IN THE GROIN!

8. Upon arriving at the restaurant, realize that you left your list of conversation topics at home and that you have no recollection of what it included. If you are a drug abuser, this is the perfect time to go to the restaurant men’s room and snort a quick line of coke.

9. When you return from the W/C, begin to focus on your facial expression and body language. Your internal monologue should sound something like:

a. “Am I moving my hands too much?”
b. “Did I just scowl?”
c. “Is my eyelid twitching?”
d. “Did I leave some coke on my face?”

  • REAL ADVICE: IF YOU CONCENTRATE ENOUGH ON WHAT YOU ARE SAYING AND DOING, HOW YOU LOOK, AND EVERY CONCEIVABLE INADVERTENT LAPSE FROM SOME IMAGINARY STANDARD OF BEHAVIORAL PERFECTION, YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING: ENJOYING THE COMPANY OF A POTENTIALLY INTERESTING AND LOVELY PERSON WHO WANTS TO GET TO KNOW YOU.

10. Back to what you shouldn’t do: be very conscious of the possibility that you may become uncontrollably aroused by the feminine charms of your companion, to the point of levitating the rather low table at which you are seated, thus drawing the attention of everyone in the restaurant. Should this happen, do one of the following:

a. Make no eye contact at all with your companion.
b. Keep your eyes laser-focused on the woman until she asks you if you have a staring problem.
c. Look at and speak to her cleavage, not her.

11. Sprinkle the conversation with the “F” word. You know, “F this” and “F that;” “F him” and “F her.” Use the words “whore” and “bitch” enough to give your companion a good sense of your opinion of women. Belch whenever possible. Sneeze on to the femme fatale’s food. Take things off her plate without asking.

12. Your dating disaster will only be complete if you offer Ms. Right some illegal drugs. Carry a full array of products in your brief case. She will consider the offer enormously thoughtful of you.

13. From the beginning to the end of the night tell your heart-throb that she is beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, etc. Ignore her when she implores you to stop. Keep doing it until she begins to scream the “F” word you taught her in step #11.

  • REAL ADVICE: DO GIVE A SMALL NUMBER OF COMPLIMENTS, BUT BE SENSITIVE TO WHETHER YOUR DATE IS COMFORTABLE WITH THIS. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T GO OVERBOARD. WITH EVERY ADDITIONAL COMPLIMENT, YOU RISK MAKING YOURSELF SEEM EITHER INSINCERE OR TOO ENAMORED OF YOUR COMPANION TOO SOON IN THE RELATIONSHIP. ALLOW THERE TO BE SOME MYSTERY AS TO YOUR FEELINGS, NOT SLAVE-LIKE DEVOTION FROM THE START OF THINGS.

14. Talk politics or religion from an early point in your dinner. Take impossibly extreme positions, always being careful to communicate that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an idiot. Pick a fight if you can.

15. Do not let your new friend speak. Interrupt her whenever possible. Dominate the discussion. Talk only about yourself. Ask her no questions about herself and show no interest when she does manage to say something. Discuss past girlfriends and how lucky they were to have you in their lives. Praise yourself and your wisdom ad nauseam.

Alternatively, put yourself down at every opportunity. Look to this woman for reassurance. Lapse into a fetal position. Display as much self-doubt as you can. Tell her in great detail about your lifetime of therapy. Make it clear that unless she is falling in love with you, your life will be forever meaningless.

  • REAL ADVICE: NEW RELATIONSHIPS GENERALLY WORK BEST WITH A GRADUAL APPROACH TO SHARING INSECURITIES AND VERY PERSONAL INFORMATION. A FIRST DATE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS WRITING A MEMOIR OR ENTERING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH’S CONFESSIONAL BOOTH AND ASKING FORGIVENESS FOR ALL YOUR SINS. DO TAKE YOUR TIME IN GETTING TO KNOW THIS NEW PERSON.

16. See how many other hot women you can flirt with in the course of the evening. If your date fails to notice, be sure to point out the babes and mention the physical attributes that appeal to you.

17. Keep your cell phone on the dinner table and check it frequently. Text while you talk. Use the phrase “Did you say something?” as often as possible.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Rebelscourbet.jpg

18. When the bill comes, say that you forgot to put enough money in your wallet, but “I will totally make it up to you during the porn flick I picked for later in the evening at my apartment.”

19. At the end of the night, despite numerous signs that your female friend can’t wait to be away from you (including her mentioning that she is going to move to Paraguay tomorrow), make every effort to be a stud. Specifically, try for a good night kiss that would make a plumber proud; or, if you prefer, a surgeon who wants to get deep enough inside her mouth to perform a tonsillectomy.

POST DATE WRAP-UP:

Congratulations! You have not only guaranteed your own loneliness, but managed to give your date a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Once she recovers she will tell others about you. With any luck, most of the female population of your community will be on the alert, having seen your photo on Facebook. It is only a matter of time before small children will point at you in the street, laughing so uncontrollably that they begin to burp up their lunch.

  • REAL ADVICE: OK, THE DISASTER DESCRIBED IN THIS POST IS A GROSS EXAGGERATION. BUT, KNOWING WHAT NOT TO DO CAN HELP YOU AVOID CREATING A REGRETTABLE EVENING FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FUTURE LADY FRIEND.
  • MORE REAL ADVICE: ON THE OFF-CHANCE THAT YOUR CONFIDENCE HAS NOT BEEN FULLY DESTROYED BY DATING EXPERIENCES ANYTHING LIKE THIS, THERE ARE SEVERAL STEPS YOU CAN TAKE: SEARCH YOUR PERSONALITY AND BEHAVIOR FOR POSSIBLE SIGNS OF OVERCONFIDENCE, INSINCERITY, OR INSECURITY. VOW TO CHANGE. ASK FRIENDS (AND EVEN WOMEN YOU’VE DATED) WHAT TURNED THEM OFF. FIND A GOOD THERAPIST. ALL THIS TAKES INCREDIBLE COURAGE AND EFFORT, BUT CAN BE VERY INFORMATIVE. AS I HOPE YOU’VE LEARNED, RUINING A DATE CAN TAKE JUST AS MUCH ENERGY.
  • ONE LAST BIT OF REAL ADVICE: DON’T MAKE A DINNER DATE A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH. IF YOU DO, YOU WILL DIE A LOT!

—

This essay comes from Chapter 24 of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Ruining Your Life.

The top image is a Joker by David Bellot. It is followed by a Goofy Smirk by Bruce from San Francisco. The final painting is entitled The Desperate Man by Gustav Courbet, dating from 1843. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 12, 2013

Seven Signs of Getting Older (on the Wretched Road to Decrepitude)

A Toast

I thought of calling this essay “The secret signs of aging that THEY won’t tell you about.” I figured that might engage the conspiracy theorists out there. TRUST NO ONE, as The X-Files used to remind us.

Still, I hope that you will trust me enough to treat what follows as a public service designed to inform you of some little-discussed, but tell-tale signs that your body is heading in a direction from which there is no return.

Why am I doing this? I don’t want you to be taken by surprise when decrepitude finally arrives. It happened to my mom in just that way. One day, past middle-age, she looked at her face in the mirror and heard herself uttering, “When did this happen?”

Of course, some of the more obvious signs of aging are well-known. Things like losing your hair, going gray, loss of muscle tone, and increasingly “jiggly” body parts are already represented in popular culture as danger signals. So are wrinkles, age spots, a tendency toward a thickening of the mid-section, memory issues and so forth. So I’m going to deal only with those things that are a bit less obvious.

Here they are, in no particular order:

  1. Becoming invisible. As a kid I enjoyed watching reruns of the movies that were based on the H.G. Wells tale The Invisible Man. Eventually, however, I discovered that no secret formula was required in order to achieve this apparently non-material state. Germaine Greer described it in a 1993 book called The Change. She was referring mostly to women, but it applies, to a lesser extent, to men as well. Simply put, if you are someone who has historically drawn the gaze of others because of your fetching appearance, eventually that stops, usually earlier than you were expecting. Instead of turning the heads of others, they now walk past you with hardly a look. You have become invisible. Your age is showing.
  2. The descent. Your body parts are on the move, like an infantry in retreat. Breasts, butts, jowls, double-chins, and even your height are slowly succumbing to the superior force of the opposing army, otherwise known as gravity. The direction of their path is toward “The Underworld” as the ancient Greeks used to call it. We usually refer to it as “six-feet under.”
  3. The generation gap. I started teaching at Rutgers when I was 25 in 1972. I can recall a moment in my first year there, lecturing a group of 19 or 20 year-olds. For some reason I brought up the name Adlai Stevenson II. No one had any idea who I was talking about. Yet Stevenson had been the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, and famously confronted the Russians at the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, only 10 years before. Yes, he died in 1965, but most Americans my age would have known who he was. In that moment, I realized that there was a body of knowledge that I could no longer naively assume I shared with those younger than I. As you might have noticed yourself, it eventually grows to cover lots of ground, with you knowing about things that are older, and younger people knowing about things that are newer. Movies, music, and TV shows are among the areas of information that seem to overlap less and less. Familiarity with historical events and technology also inhabit this divide, separating you from the growing group of people who were born after you.
  4. Betrayals of the body.  There is way too much territory here to cover fully, but let me give you a sense of what is in store for some of you. Your body will begin to inform you that its performance of actions you have taken for granted, does, in fact, take some effort. You are likely to discover that you actually have knees and that their job isn’t easy. Some aches and pains here and there tend to creep in, particularly involving your back. By middle-age, arthritis isn’t unusual, although it can be quite mild. Your nose and ears can begin to look bigger. If you are a man, shaving your face eventually becomes more of a challenge because the contours of your face change, leaving tiny hills and valleys that resist your effort to scrape them smooth of stubble. Your skin is likely to get drier. Sense of balance can decline. Many of both sexes encounter the need to urinate more frequently and find themselves scouting out public washrooms just in case. Yikes!
  5. How People Treat You. I remember taking my daughter Carly to the Art Institute of Chicago when I was 50, asking for two tickets, and being given a “senior discount” automatically by the young cashier — well before I was actually a senior. Young people, when they notice you at all, will see you as ancient by the time you are 40. Not long after, they will begin to refer to you as “sir” or “ma’am.” In the grocery check-out line, even middle-aged cashiers will ask whether you need help carrying the groceries to your car. I realize that some of this kind attention is given simply as a matter of course even to those who are younger. But, regardless of how fit you are, it will remind you of the fact that you are no “spring chicken.” And, just in case you are a checker at the grocery market, I’d like to let you know that I do indeed need some help. The help I need is to stop being asked if I need help!
  6. Sleep disturbance. You are at an increased risk of having trouble sleeping. This is actually much reported, so you can find the details elsewhere.
  7. The evening out. No, I’m not talking about a night on the town. This item refers to the changes in physical appearance that cause people to begin to look more alike. It is pretty scary really. Some male faces begin to look more like the female kind, with or without the addition of “man boobs” a little lower down. Some women’s faces look less different from those of men, even to the point of facial hair growth and thinning hair on top of the head. Perhaps worst of all, people who were once movie-star beautiful eventually discover that their declining level of pulchritude makes them less distinguishable from those who were never good-looking. I guess Mother Nature figures that the unfair advantage of beauty is just on loan, not a permanent gift.

Now that I’ve described these lesser-known signs of aging, I’ve gotta ask you a question. Why did you want to know? If you are young, whatever that is, you almost certainly don’t really believe you will ever become aged. And, if you are old, well, you probably already know the secrets I’ve mentioned. But, what good, at either period — young or old — does it do to know this stuff?

Yes, if you are young, perhaps you will take better care of yourself because you give some thought to your body’s future. And, consideration of your physical destiny will remind you to develop sources of self-definition, pleasure, and meaning other than the glorious state of your face and physique. Still, decrepitude is a “bigger than life” opponent who tends to have his way. There is little you can do to fend off time’s offending hand.

I suppose you can put the information above in the category of “the examined life.” I’m usually in agreement with Socrates on the matter of the unexamined life not being worth living. But, I’ll tell you what, your unexamined physical future is probably best left hidden under a rock most of the time. Like the thread on the sweater that begs to be pulled, a preoccupation with such things is pretty destructive. Believe me, you don’t want to imagine a day when you will ask your lawn care service to add the trimming of your lengthening nose hair to their weekly task of cutting the grass.

—

The top image, called Everyone’s Invited, is the work of SuicideGirls and was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

August 21, 2013

Death Notice: The Great American Pastime

Typical_baseball_game

The Great American Pastime has passed away. I am here to announce it. You won’t find it on the obituary pages, but it is true all the same.

Yes, I know they still play baseball in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco. But, if the pastime lives anywhere, it is away from the great stadiums and the big cities. Indeed, perhaps only in more modest venues might an old-time baseball experience now exist.

But, you say, what am I talking about? The rules haven’t changed. It still takes three strikes for an out and three outs to end each team’s turn at bat. The bases are still 90 feet apart.

You are right, but I’m not talking about the game as it is played on the field. Rather, I mean the game as it is experienced by a fan in the stands.

In the baseball of my youth, the Great American “Pastime” was a leisurely way to “pass the time” on a summer afternoon. The lyrical pulse of the match drew your eyes to the field, except when the beer-man approached or your neighbor asked you a question. A day at the ball park was usually easeful.  Moments of tension fueled by the drama of the contest were framed by many others that allowed you to relax; kind of like the rhythm of the tide, rushing in and then receding, rising and falling.

For much of the game, when nothing remarkable was happening on the field, one heard the low-frequency hum of the fans talking. As the play became animated — only then did the cheers and boos crowd out conversation. Other than that, the auditor heard barking vendors, with an occasional public address announcement about who was at bat; and perhaps the sound of the stadium organ from time to time. It was all relatively peaceful except when something exciting happened on the baseball diamond.

No more.

The fan is no longer safe. He is targeted for an electronic bombardment from the moment he enters the stadium, just as surely as Dresden was targeted for real (and equally unnecessary) bombs during World War II. The acoustic experience is one of non-stop, high volume noise. If it is not the loudspeaker’s musical blast that has replaced a simple stadium organ, it is the repeated announcements:

Jim Jones Jeep Dealership’s sales team is here along with Jim in Section 5. Let’s give them a hand. Now turn your attention to the scoreboard for a quiz on Cubs history. But before you do, check under your seat to see if you have won a Cadillac from Cathy’s Cadillac of Crown Point, Indiana.

Even so, the announcements are clearly insufficient for the fan who requires hyper-stimulation. He needs to keep his eye out for the dance moves of the paid customers that are being broadcast on the scoreboard screen, just in case he wants to exhibit a few of his own. He needs to keep a sharp eye for T-shirts of his favorite team being shot into the seats by stadium employees on the field between innings.

Most importantly, when the “kiss-cam” moment occurs, he must be sure to kiss whomever he is with, so that thousands of others attending the game can vicariously experience the thrill of his five seconds of relative fame as they watch that image on the Jumbotron. Then, when it is over, the “sausage race” begins, and several alleged adults dressed as a hot dog, a bratwurst, a Polish sausage, a chorizo, and an Italian sausage run around from foul-pole to foul-pole to the cheers of the Pavlov-trained fans who root them on. Surely, this is a comment on the extent to which baseball believes you can be easily entertained, and how desperate the “sausages” must be to make a living.

Hall of Famer Jimmy Foxx. The photo was probably taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Hall of Famer Jimmy Foxx. The photo was taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Before the Great American Pastime died, it was a game without a clock. You took your time and so did the game. Now watching a major league contest is fueled by the impatience of the audience for stimulation at every moment, useless information at every other moment, and blasting sonics without end. If you do try to bond with your little girl — the cutie you’ve brought to her first game — you just might find yourself hoarse before the end of the day. The most used phrase at your average big-league contest today has changed from “Hey, beer-man” to “What did you say?”

The only good thing about any of this is that you can probably use attendance at a Major League baseball game as a diagnostic tool to find out whether you are ADHD. If you love the multi-pronged assault on your senses, you should immediately call your doctor and get a prescription for Ritalin.

What has happened? I’ll tell you what I think. First, watch all the people in the grandstand whose heads are turning from side to side, from a blinking light to a dancing bear — from one call for their attention to another. But then look at those who tire even of this. And what are many of them doing? They are checking their iPhones, texting, tweeting, reading email, or surfing the web. The baseball moguls have decided that the game is not enough. Clearly, they believe that they must use every opportunity to gain advertising income from people like Jim Jones Jeep and Cathy’s Cadillac of Crown Point while, at the same time, drawing your eyeballs away from your cell phone.

Sausage_race_start

If you were at a baseball game in my youth (aka the 1950s and ’60s) there was one thing you did in addition to watching the contest and talking to your neighbor: you kept a sharp eye on the pretty girls walking by. Nothing captures the grotesque deformation of the current experience of attending a ballgame better than the knowledge that healthy young men in their seats now spend more time looking at their hands (and the cell phone in them) than any anatomical feature of the highly attractive members of the opposite sex who are dressed to be seen.

If you are young enough, you probably think I’m foolish — old and foolish at that. And, if you are closer to my age, you might have hardly noticed the change in the game because it crept up on you and me gradually. But think back and you will not fail to agree with me. My buddies Ron and Jim and Rock and Tom and Jeff and Steve and Cliff will vouch for me.

Once upon a time there was nothing that I found more prospectively enjoyable than the idea of going to a ballgame, no matter how bad the home team was (which, as a Cubs fan, was normally quite bad, indeed).  Now, unfortunately, my emotions are much more mixed. I’ve seen Major League Baseball played in 15 different arenas over a period of almost 60 years. The change has spread everywhere.

Something has been lost here, my friends. And I don’t think we are getting it back.

A fan returning home after a recent baseball game, aka "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.

A fan returning home after a recent baseball game, aka “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.

—

The top image is of a Typical Baseball Game played in 2005 in San Francisco. It was taken by Imageman and sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The third photo was taken by Agne 27 and uploaded to Wikipedia Commons by User Kelly. It is the Beginning of a Sausage Race at Milwaukee’s Miller Park on April 30, 2007.