To articulate...

OK, it's Jr. Miss South Carolina, but still...

Staring at a blank canvas…

One of the great things about having this blog is it allows me to re-live moments in my life. With today’s installment, lets use the Pensieve and have a nostalgic seat back at the first day of school for the summer vacation cobwebs clearing essay, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

One of the things I wanted to accomplish on this “vacation” was to save thousands of dollars in landscaping by doing the work myself. Looking back, I’m happy to report much was accomplished during two weeks of mostly gorgeous weather. Before we dig into shovels, rakes, rocks and mulch, lets head to the Templewood Golf Club for 9 with Dad…

The first hole of the day can often be a microcosm of a round, but fortunately it wasn’t on this day. Dad literally groaned when he saw the “545” indicating the yardage on the Par 5 Number 1. About 5 strokes later, I lofted a pitching wedge that amazingly landed on the mound protected green, some 100 (really more like 70 if we’re being honest, but who’s gonna know?) yards away. That shot put a little steam in my step, but the steam quickly began to build between my ears when we discovered we’d landed on the wrong green. When the wreckage was finally cleared, I had an opening hole “10” to show for it. That was followed by a “snowman” and a six. 24 strokes on the first 3 holes… On 2 and 3 Dad steadied his ship and had me by a few. I recovered and took a mere 32 shots over the final 6 holes... A dog and a beer capped of a very nice day on the links.

I guess it’s been a good vacation because that round seems like it was a month ago. Aside from a few quick scans of leotreoemail, I left the office at the office. No TPS reports… Nothing. Most of the remaining days after Dad flew back to “the Villages” were spent working much harder than I ever do at my day job. eMails and meetings were replaced by rototillers and weed fabric. Sweat substituted for stress and Advil addressed body aches instead of headaches. I pushed myself each day, but always quit so I had time to spend with Kyle, Harry Potter and “the Half-Blood Prince.” Now I need help. Here’s a picture of just some of the blank canvas needing splashes of color and texture…

I’m too tired to drone on much further, and “Young Frankenstein” is cued up in the DVD…

It’s been quite a couple weeks in and around Hogwarts Castle. Kyle and I read a chapter or two each day of “Prince” and are about ten from conclusion of the sixth installment in the epic savior of youth literature.. Then it’s on to the final book and other things to expand my boy’s imagination. To say Kyle is into “Potter,” well, more so the uber-evil “Voldemort,” is like saying Bostonians tolerate the Red Sox. As I read to him, he sits in a “Gryffindor” robe and occasionally points his “Voldemort” wand in my general direction. At least he doesn’t wear the lens-less round rimmed glasses anymore. He also hasn’t drawn a lightning bolt scar on his forehead lately…

Tomorrow I depart for the real world and on Wednesday, Kyle starts high school. Given the joy it brings him, how I wish he could board the Hogwarts Express...

Greetings From Idiot America

Warning: The title of this post was stolen from an Esquire magazine article, but since they basically stole it from Green Day, it’s not really stealing. I’m just guessing, but I believe there’s a strong demographic overlap between people who voted for “Dubya” and consumers of the Corvette coin.

Earlier this week my dad and I were watching a Red Sox game and chatting. Since his wife Caroline passed away last month, he’s been focused on his own “ticking crocodile.” “When I go, I want to be cremated.” He went on to tell me something about death benefits he’ll have as a Navy veteran. Almost on cue, the plasma pixels began to radiate a surreal commercial for a Boston Red Sox Urn. “Hey Dad, do you want to be in one of those up on the mantle?” “No.”

Who buys these things?

Root Canal

Week 1 of this “vacation” means “not working the day job,” not, “not working.” After receiving solicited landscaping bids ranging from $15,845.00 to over $47,000.00, I decided to keep the cash on hand and build some “sweat equity” by doing some landscaping on my own. I do have “landscaping” experience. Well, I mowed lawns for a few summers during high school. It was a decent summer job. Chico and I would get picked up at his house by “Bo,” the proprietor of “the Village Gardner” landscaping company. We’d get coffee and later laugh about how Bo would get coffee and donuts all stuck in his walrus moustache. We’d mow lawns all day and between jobs Chico and I would entertain Bo by making up passages from cheesy romance novels… “She throbbed with anticipation as he entered the dim room, his manhood glowing like a lantern in a lighthouse on a storm stroked night.” Yeah, we made up some doozies and kept us all giggling through those endless summer days.

My landscaping skills advanced during college for AAA Landscape in Tucson, now a multi-million dollar operation with a mission statement. Landscape construction was the AAA gig, but it was desertscaping and again I was a grunt. That’s the rub, or chafe, depending on whether you’re doing manual labor in the summer heat… I can still do the grunt work; even if it leaves me staggering by days end and humorously disabled for hours afterward. It’s the artistic part I’m worried about. I’d like my home to be a cheese-free zone. I’d like to avoid a landscaping version of “Dogs Playing Poker.”

Anyway, the decisions on plants and trees and flowers will come later. In the past two days, I’ve come to know the love that dare not speak its name: chainsaw. Yesterday I prepped planting beds, including a most exquisite root canal of a nasty giant weed that had devolved into a hideous beast badly in need of extraction. Today I had six yards of Hemlock mulch and 3,000 pounds of ¾” golden brown stones delivered. Shoveling a ton and a half of rock in five hours today has my back feeling like it has endured a spinal tap. Not to worry… 3 Advil have me half alive and ready to dine out with the Kylester.

"Retard"

High school student Soeren Palumbo delivers essay to classmates honoring his developmentally disabled sister, Olivia.

Barry Bonds, the artist?

Yesterday as I wait waited for Megan to meet me at Home Depot, I caught a segment of NPR’s “Wait, wait. Don’t tell me!” The panel was reviewing the news of the week and host Peter Sagal introduced the Barry Bonds story by indicating his home run record was tainted and that, “As a human being, Barry Bonds may be the biggest tool since steel driving John Henry’s hammer.”

Humorist Tom Bodett then jumped in and asked, “Can we be fair to this guy? Look at other arts…” Arts? Is baseball art? Yes, it is on many levels. Watching Pedro Martinez in his prime was no less art than Cirque du Soleil. There’s even the saying, “painting the corners” to describe pitchers with the skill to keep the ball on the edges of home plate. The unique trajectory of a long, "majestic" home run is art. The arc of the ball against a brilliant blue sky is beautiful, unless of course the artist dresses in pinstripes, then it’s a velvet Elvis. Oh, come on. I kid the Yanks… While no longer performing in the Bronx, Gary Sheffield’s swing rages to burst from the canvas like a Pollock. Derek Jeter plays the game with the artistic genius of Pacino, even if he does over do the drama.

Mr. Bodett went on to defend Mr. Bonds by asking if the Impressionists are any less legitimate for their use of Absinthe as a performance enhancing drug… Um, the drink; not the Degas. He questioned whether we should impugn the work of Sigmund Freud who “packed his nose on a daily basis” or if William Faulkner is “any less of a Nobel laureate because he never wrote a sober word in his life?”

Megan finally arrived and I soberly placed the 64 gallon trash receptacle into her RAV4. I’ve got to get me some of that Absinthe.

Get on with the fascination…

At least I got that part of the lyric right. I didn’t find these in the Archive of Misheard Lyrics, and I have no idea why, but these incorrect lyrics to Rush’s “Limelight” are burned like pyrography into my iBrain.

Those who wish to be
Must put aside the adulation alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The undenying dream underlying theme

Your lowly American life is expendable

Whether you’re a soldier in Iraq, a resident of New Orleans or a driver passing over our decaying bridges, you are expendable. The loss of your life and the lives of may others are acceptable if it protects someone’s profits. Yesterday President Bush rejected calls for raising the gasoline tax to pay for infrastructure repair. Yeah, why use money we pay for petrol on repairing bridges when Exxon-Mobil needs it to further enrich Dubya’s oil buddies? During the same press conference, the clown from Crawford called Iran, “a destabilizing influence in the Middle East.” I see. And what the fuck are we? Iran is actually part of the Middle East community, whereas we have “interests.”

Man, I need a vacation and I’m starting one um, now. I plan to start by doing this tomorrow morning in the checkout line wherever I buy my new grass trimmer.

756* 757*

Ted Williams claimed that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing you can do in sports. It is against that backstop that I respect Barry Bonds’ 756th home run. Strength is just one part of the multidimensional puzzle of hitting a baseball. Teddy Ballgame also said, “Hitting is fifty percent above the shoulders.” Mr. Bonds intelligence as a hitter is the primary factor in how he’s achieved greatness. To hit a 90 mph fastball, you have around 2/10 of a second to decide to pull the trigger. Most humans simply cannot do that. Add in the “movement” of a fastball, change-up, curveball or splitter, and the competent are reduced to a sliver of the population.

Mr. Bonds is taking the heat for many “cheaters” in baseball because most baseball writers think he’s a jerk. There may also be a bit of jealously in there. After all, would they be baseball writers if they didn’t have a lifelong wish to be able to crush a baseball the way Barry Bonds can? Oh, and there’s also the courage to stand in the batters box while a pitcher fires the ball at you from sixty feet six inches, possibly whistling its furious music past your chin. Most of the writers who disparage Bonds feat probably don’t have the stomach for that.

The “evidence” seems to suggest Barry Bonds cheated by building strength using steroids or HGH or beef jerky. If true, there’s no telling how many of his shots (no pun intended) would have been corralled at the warning track. There’s also no way of telling how many pitchers he faced blew third strikes past him while juiced themselves on ‘roids or the also banned amphetamines. Maybe that’s what the oh-so less than contrite Barry Bonds meant when he said coldly, “This record is not tainted at all. At all. Period.”

Creationism

A smooth long swath was followed by subtle dabs. Not drips of the Pollock technique; the media wasn’t of a drip consistency. The creation of art involves many decisions. What choice of canvas? Theme? Subject? Format? Size? Colors? Creation has to flow. Overthinking can destroy the emotion of the moment. There were more and furious strokes. It was coming together. Slashing. More dabs. Smears. This was inspiration! Yes, it was dark, but some of the world’s great art was born of inky darkness. Finally, it was complete. There was not a detail to be changed. It captured the moment perfectly. It was ready. Ready for the world to see. At the time, “the world” consisted of my 19 year old mother and 25 year old dad. Mom heard my voice, and the excitement in it. As she entered I could tell by the look on her young face that she was completely blown away. Young Mary Carol was awestruck. It was a moment I’ll never forget and nor will she. She called to my father; not unlike a cry from one lover to another when finally seeing the “Mona Lisa” at the Louvre. My father’s face contorted. The complexity of the work may have overwhelmed him at first. My mom leaned in toward me laughing and crying. It was an emotional moment of unusual power. She gently picked me up. My dad retrieved my first palette; a now empty cotton diaper.

I Now Pronounce You Suck & Badly

The Drive-In is usually great fun regardless of the image quality projected through the night air. Last night was no exception. My brother Corey joined Mr. Kyle Daley and his dad for a twin-bill featuring "The Simpsons Movie" and the film titled above. Now I wasn't expecting the magic of the "Ratatouille" / "Harry Potter" twin killing of two weeks prior, but man... The new Adam Sandler / Kevin James non-funny joke of a movie was so bad we split before Jessica Biel got semi-naked, and we knew she was going to!

The "Simpsons" flick was funny like a 90 minute Simpsons episode including a hilarious "Austin Powers" takeoff of Bart skateboarding in the buff. It just wasn't nearly as good as "Upchuck" was baaaaad.

I think Kyle Smith of the New York Post nailed it: “The movie isn't insulting to homosexuals but to comedy.”

On the thin ice of modern life

It was sometime in 1982 that we went to see “The Wall.” Enhanced perception brought the film to life. Without getting into too many details, one of the people I attended with became the protagonist that day and has remained trapped; scared and cringing in a dark corner, shadowed by the wall. While my night ended having a couple beers with friends, his concluded atop a table in a police station, raging like the Bob Geldof character destroying a hotel room, as four of a kind armed public servants struggled to quell the madness. It ended with a stage dive attempt at the difficult 3-6-7-10 spare combination.

At the time I didn’t see the strong relation between the human and the fiction, but I do now. [He just called at 6:30AM and out of nowhere mentioned “The Wall” he brought up in “group” last night and the feeling of being cradled by it all these years…] If only the violent swings of up and down had been examined then… 25 years of pain, darkness and destruction might have been avoided, or at least lessened. Now there’s finally acknowledgment and acceptance. Add words and modern chemistry to that and we have hope.

WTF?

A research study conducted in 2000 by several British media organizations including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) examined the use of swear words. It included, in order of severity, the top offenders. There’s a shit-load (“shit” ranked a mild #17) of information on swearing on the web. As a public service, I’ll list a few research sites and then review the top 10 and let you know whether the bastards will be banned from fifteenkey. You can just relax, sit back, and have a cupcake.

Online magazine Slate has a brief article on how a dirty word gets um, dirty. The British are way ahead of us wankers in the States. They have schools that allow swearwords, but within strict limits. Oh yeah, the use of the f-word (or derivatives like “fucker”) five times. “Over this number the class will be spoken to by the teacher at the end of the lesson.” I wonder how that’s working out. If you’re already out of school, or not, but believe you have a problem, you probably fucking do, arsehole! (#9) If so, you can learn how to stop swearing, but you must start by “Recognizing that you have a problem.”

On Bravo’s “Inside the Actors Studio,” host James Lipton asks every guest, “What’s your favorite curse word?” Here’s a funny (if you like swears) video of some folks blurting out their favorites. The prevailing response to Mr. Lipton is “fuck,” bleeped out, but always lip-readable and said with a smirk or twinkle…

Alas, “fuck” could only manage a third place show on the BBC list. Without further ado, here’s the top ten:

10. Paki – Huh? Since when is a place you can buy beers a bad thing?
9. Arsehole – Now we’re talking. Just don’t be one.
8. Bollocks – Balls. Pills. Whatever. Plus, it’s in the title of a five star record!
7. Prick – Wow. There’s such nuance to some of these. A prick is not just a penis, but an unpleasant and rude one. Then there’s the whiney prick…
6. Bastard – Illegitimate child. Hence, the typical usage, “little bastard.” Although, an overly large man can be described, not negatively as, “a big bastard.”
5. Nigger – Even the attempted rehabilitation as “Nigga” in the hip-hop community won’t fly here.
4. Wanker – Um, I never really knew this one, but an Australian woman I work with uses this one a lot. Sheeeeeee’s baaaaaaad.
3. Fuck – Short, but not too sweet. The one syllable wonder.
2. Motherfucker – Nasty, but it flowed like Van Gogh’s paint from the mouth of the late, great Richard Pryor.
1. Cunt – I’m not familiar with this one. It must be new.

In summary, 5 is out, and 1 is questionable until I get more data…

Finally, “God” made the list. Given the number of innocent people throughout history who have lost their lives or been discriminated against in the name of “God,” I can understand how it did.