Don’t Dip Your Pen in Company Ink

I despise cliché’s and we’ve got an infinite supply in corporateland. This morning on Boston.com, I scanned a hilarious collection of them and hundreds of reader comments that’ll give you a laugh or two.

Enjoy, but don’t spend any work, um, cycles reading them…

“Breakdown in humaneness…”

“I can,” was the curt reply to my request that she actually see Kyle walk. After an hour’s drive and a ten minute obstacle course pursuit for a wheelchair, Megan and I sat in the small examination room with Kyle and his Neurologist, a renowned practitioner in a major Boston children’s hospital.

Her examination resembled a scientific inspection of a petri dish full of interconnected nerves instead of a human moment. Tap this. Pull that. Push here. At the end of it she said my son was “at the same baseline” as he was two appointments ago. “He’s in a fucking wheelchair,” I replied sans the adjective. Her direction was for another full body MRI to detect any change in the spine long cyst running down his back, an exam with a Pediatric Orthopedist and a follow-up with her. Given the backup in the system, the former two dates won’t occur until some time in February. I hope my boy is still walking by then. When I asked her opinion on his recent degeneration, she cited stiffness in his joints related to what she believes is symptomatic of Cerebral Palsy. To that I had to ask her to re-prescribe Physical Therapy. I’m hopeful that bending the boy like a pretzel and getting him riding the stationary bike again will increase his flexibility and strength so walking will be easier. We’ll see.

In Michael Moore’s healthcare documentary, “Sicko,” there’s a reference to a “breakdown in humaneness,” describing our system in the US. I don’t know this doctor personally, and I cannot imagine the psychological impact of treating a parade of patients, many more affected than my Kyle, but doesn’t human connectedness matter in medical treatment? I do think that medical specialization is contributing to the disconnect. In this case, “missing the forest for the trees” is ignoring a young man’s silent fears of losing the ability to walk.

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Up to now, she’s only been a concept. Well, the basketball Megan’s been hiding under her shirt the past couple months is, I suppose, more reality than concept, but in my heart and mind, I don’t think the certainty will arrive until the cries of her new life do. That moment is now a little over a month away, but I think Megan is ready to evict her tiny tenant now. Yeah, there are issues with back rent, rambunctiousness and most of all, the little squatter is occupying space Megan’s used to putting food…

Since the shock of discovering my baby was having a baby, I’ve watched her evolve from a petulant child to a maturing woman. Megan’s got enormous potential and I see the same in dad-to-be Andrew. They enjoy genuine love for each other and the child they’ll name Madison Olivia. I’m optimistic for their future.

We’re having a welcome to the neighborhood party for Madison and Megan Elizabeth tomorrow. Megan’s not supposed to know, but she does. There’s not much that gets by my girl and she’ll probably read this before tomorrow anyway…

Enjoy the day, Megan. And enjoy each one after fully, because they are fleeting and pages blow off the calendar quickly. Years pass like a loving brush against your cheek and soon you’ll be sitting here like me, looking back on Madison’s life and failing to find the words.

I Live For This

Today "Anonymous" appeared at the salad bar in the form of Barb, author of a recent comment chastising my "over-actor" comments about her boy Derek and my sycophantic admiration of Barry Bonds. I tried to tell Barb how I really do respect number two, but she wasn't buying it. Hell, his middle name is "Sanderson!" Get it? Derek Sanderson? He was named after the Turk! Anyway... Here now is my public declaration of love for all things Derek:

Here's my favorite Derek Jeter commercial, "I live for this:"



Here's the "Top Ten Little Known Facts About Derek Jeter" – I especially like #5…



Finally, here's Derek Jeter's top 10 clutch moments, including my favorites, #4 and #1.

Oh, and I guess Barry Bonds does suck.

Benny Moore Sunday

I have only eight minutes to my self-imposed 9:00 deadline to commence more exciting home improvement projects. Painting Megan’s room “Barrister White” is today’s project. The work will whitewash 4 ½ years effort of the graffiti artist that has been occupying my daughter’s room, but that’s not important right now…

Yesterday’s crowd at Fenway Park was scared. There was just tentativeness in the air, and even when it was 10-1 and the pie holes of the obnoxious Yankee fans behind us were shut for the day, the question lingered in the minds of the nation: “Are nine runs enough?” They were.

OK… One minute… Um, nothing. Bye. Oh… one more thing. In response to “Anonymous’s” comment yesterday, here’s more of that damning Bill Belichick evidence:

Over-actors, Cheaters, Gougers, and Morons

I’ve been up since 4:30am and in my earliest two hours of consciousness I’ve taken the first digital steps to act on some jaded ideas and change my life…

• The last time I was semi-conscious, the Red Sox had a 5-1 lead on the Yankees. As thoughts of burying the dreaded pinstripes danced in my head, the sons of Joe Torre stunned the locals, plating 6 in the 8th for an electric (Well, for them… I’m sure it was a freakin shock for the Sox…) 8-7 comeback win. Sure, it would have been nice to flatline hope in the Bronx with a sweep this weekend, but they’re not “the New York Yankees” for nothing, and unfortunately with that over-actor Derek Jeter in their lineup, they are still capable of greatness. From a selfish Red Sox fan perspective, the playoffs without the specter of the Evil Empire lurking would have made the trip to the World Series less tenuous, but as a baseball fan, a Sox-Yanks ALCS is the best thing about the baseball playoffs…ever. The Yankees guard the gates, and if the Red Sox are to win the World Series, it will require hand to hand combat in the Bronx to do it. I’m happy to report I will attend an ALCS preview tonight with Josh Beckett (18-6, 3.27) facing Chien-Ming Wang (18-6, 3.69). I could be Wong, but if one of these guys leads his 9 to victory tonight, he might just pocket the Cy Young award.
  
  
• Bill, Bill, Bill… It doesn’t matter that we may never know for how long or to what benefit their actions resulted. Bill Belichick’s Patriots cheated. His arrogant flaunting of very clear rules is inexcusable and positions a dark cloud forever over the Patriots 3 SuperBowl wins. Being a glass half-full guy, I think this will light a fire under this loaded team and give them a gigantic “they don’t think we can win without cheating” chip on their shoulder pads.
  
  
• Being a sports fan in the greatest sports city in America does have its downside. Sunday night for example… Sox-Yanks on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball or Pats-Chargers on NBC Sunday Night Football?
  
  
• Unless it’s a life or death situation, I will never use a Bank of America ATM again. I can’t define the line between fair profit and greed, but as former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart replied when asked to define another kind of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”
  
  
• Like an early 20th century Nostradamus, H.L. Mencken wrote in the Baltimore Sun in 1920, “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Sadly, I did not make this list of the Fifty Most Influential Bloggers, but now I have a goal.

Tragedy Comes

It’s all relative. Tragedy that is. It comes in all forms and degrees, but the constant of tragedy is that it comes. In the past week I heard of the sudden death of a co-worker and the passing of a former co-worker’s child after only four months of a life his parents knew would be brief. Add to that smashed automobiles, the never-ending nightmare of heroin addiction and an increasing struggle to simply fucking walk are the various tragedies I’m witnessing on a daily basis.

The last time I was at my brother Kevin’s house we took a midnight stroll with our cigars and cosmo’s up the left rough of the fairway to Karl and Sharon’s. They welcomed us with cocktail refreshments and Karl on the gorgeous Estonia piano in their conservatory. As the sounds ran smoothly from the sheet music through the optic nerve to the fingers to the cochlea, they heightened the senses as Sharon gave me the tour. I recall the family pictures and the custom mural in their dining room. They commissioned a local artist to depict the generational progress of a family. As we circled the room, the art showed the family grow and the memories build.

This morning their family memories are confined to the minds of Karl and Sharon. Their home and all their possessions lay in ashes within a blackened shell. The documentation; the story of their lives… gone.

I know it will take a while, but in the not too distant future, Sharon will have a home distinctly hers and Karl will fill it with music. Tragedy comes. We overcome.

I got a fatty!

No, not that fatty, but a new iPod nano. The one I inherited from Megan “bricked” as they say in the biz, so I threw down $199 on a new 8G. Now before you go all iPod “Classic” on me, please understand I pretty much use this thing exclusively for working out. I just put it in the pocket of my gym shorts and select “workout mix.” I did check out the new 80G and 160G Pods, but I’d rather avoid hearing, “Is that a hard drive in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” Oh, I also throw an audiobook on there occasionally for the commute, but for the most part, the little fatty will be to drive the big fatty through workouts.

Now that I’ve quadrupled the size of my, um, memory, I’m taking some time to import more of my CD’s into iTunes for little fatty. A few of the new digitized discs include:

• “Rock N Roll Animal” – Lou Reed
• “The Mozart Effect – Relax, Daydream and Draw”
  
• “The Ex-Husbands” – The Ex-Husbands
• “What’s So Funny?” – Angry Johnny and the Killbillies
• “Hankenstein” – Angry Johnny and the Killbillies
• “A.M.” – Wilco
• “Girlfriend” – Matthew Sweet

Lou is cranking right now… Recorded live in 1973, “Rock N Roll Animal” is timeless. Anyway, I have nothing else to write, so I’ll leave you with “Evangeline” from Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend.”

Fade to Black

After a workout with a personal trainer he walked to his car under the warming sunshine of a September morning. It was the day after Labor Day and he was headed back to the office after the long weekend. As he sat in the driver’s seat, the scene went black like the end of the Sopranos and Charlotte’s dad died.

It’s difficult to write about death without cliché. We’re always taken aback as we consider the finality of a life, and the degree of our shock is magnified for a life perceived as unfairly cut short. The “life’s not fair” cliché fits here.

“Owen S. Jacobs Of Sudbury Sept 4, 2007, age 38.
Beloved husband of Cathy (Pinto) Jacobs.
Father of Charlotte Calderwood Jacobs of Sudbury.”

Reporting from Baghdad...

Some twenty years ago I tossed a baseball in the street aside parked cars with a young Damien Cave. The fabulous Gigi is longtime friends with his Stepmom and Dad. Today I caught him interviewed from the war zone by Bill Maher!



I knew Damien had worked a few years writing for Salon, but then I lost track of him. Today he writes all that's fit to print for the New York Times.

Wow.

Cleaning and rearranging the silverware drawer…

To my knowledge, there’s no silver in my “silverware” drawer, but after yesterday’s purge, it is now neat and clean. My “Hollywood Bungalow” isn’t vast and the lack of storage space tends to contribute to the buildup of clutter… Books, CD’s, a growing compilation of collective works in the “baby stuff” category… a light-up model of Hogwarts Castle… The new mantra in the house is, “when in doubt, throw it out…” It’s in that same spirit I labor on this day to scour the “Blog Ideas” file:

• I’ve been meaning to buy some reusable shopping bags, but other priorities have preempted the purchase. Those little plastic bags, like the one made famous in “American Beauty,” are made from petroleum and they take over 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill, which is where most of them end up…

• A few Friday’s ago I was horizontal in my evil lair watching a day of two Red Sox games wind down. It was the day of the Red Sox “Jimmy Fund” TV/Radio telethon. This annual Boston event is so widely embraced that no other than Mr. George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees donates every year. As I lay there, my body slowly affixing to the bed as the minutes passed, I thought about donating, but I was far too comfortable and accelerating toward unconsciousness to be bothered. Then I saw this replay of a boy who’s been battling cancer for most of his brief life. In a past year he sang the national anthem at Fenway… in a full body cast. I went downstairs to this spot and shot $100 across the ether.

• Speaking of doubleheaders, Chicago Cub Hall of Famer Ernie Banks is credited with the phrase, “Let's play two!” It captured his pure love of the game by expressing the desire to play two games every day. Sadly, the single-admission version no longer exists as a scheduled event in Major League Baseball. In fact, the current Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and the players union states, “doubleheaders shall not be scheduled in the original schedule.” The reason is obvious.

• I don’t know if many of these are Pollock’s or if they Matter, but I’ll probably take in the show…

• Finally, “M” did come up with the quiz answer of Jimi Hendrix’ “Wind Cries Mary” from his 1967 debut, “Are You Experienced.”

I’m pretty sure “M” googled or, um, “asked” the lyrics…

Sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterdays life

No, this isn’t some “Leo’s on the ledge” post. The title of this digital scrap is a lyric from a song released on a groundbreaking record 40 years ago that I just picked up at the famous online retailer named after a river not the Nile. Any guesses? I’ll give you a hint…If you guess it I'll burn you a copy...

I don’t know if I’ve plugged Hugh Macleod’s blog before, but his gig is “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards.” He’s a bit sardonic like yours truly, and on occasion he flips a card that really gets me.

Since in some ways I have floundered for the “last fucking decade,” I’d rather not in the next and during my vacation there was much time for contemplation. Weed pulling and shoveling rocks don’t spend much time occupying the matter grey, so something had to. While my ten year floundering has been more personal than professional, I did give some thought to a question recently posed to me: "If you could change careers and do anything you wanted, regardless of pay, what would you do?" My snappy answer was, “You mean besides catching and hitting cleanup for the Sox?” After the fantasy answer, I went serious and then drifted toward the dream-fantasy again: “I’d probably want to evangelize the benefits of alternative energy like solar, wind, hydrogen fuel-cell, etc… I want to bring Exxon-Mobil to its knees.” For now that effort is limited to not buying their products. I’d rather fund Hugo Chavez.

Well, it turned out to be a very productive week back at work, but vacation did change me and my priorities. For one, I’ll be spending less time in front of this keyboard and more time in front of human faces, primarily my family. Kyle and I have a family cookout to attend today, but until then I’ll be out in the yard in the dust, sweat and thought.

"First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe.... Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it! It only serves to turn a few mills, blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides. What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic servant!"

— Henry David Thoreau,
"Paradise (To Be) Regained" [1843]