Crazy-Pops

This is just plain wrong:

Man severs penis to prove faithfulness

Firstly, OUCH! Secondly, how stupid can somebody be? If you sever your penis, you can't really do the tube steak boogie with your wife anymore and, even if she was faithful to you before, she's gonna get tired of your uniquely eunechian existance and go find somebody a little more, well, built. And thirdly, who the hell decided that it was more important to be more faithful to your wife than your penis? Seriously! Let's examine the ways in which your penis is better than your wife:

Your penis has been around since you were just a kid. In many ways, your penis is your best friend.

Your penis LIKES to get in your pants.

Your penis knows when you are horny.

You don't have to buy your penis dinner and drinks and watch a chick flick with it to get it all warmed up.

You don't have to make small talk with your penis. My penis, in fact, only likes long talk. Bah-duh-dum!

Okay, that's enough of that. But you get the picture. The next time any of you, ahem, "men" out there get the urge to lop off your John Thomas as some sort of sign of "solidarity" or "faithfulness" to your wife, stop and think. Think about who you really owe your allegiance to. I think you'll find him in your pants. In fact, I think you should pledge allegiance to your penis right now. For which it stands....

The other day I was feeding the Mixmaster and the G-Man some Mac and Cheese for dinner and, being the fully conscientious parent that I am, I had mixed some peas in it for greenery. And because, frankly, feeding straight Mac and Cheese to my boys makes me feel guilty, as much as caving in to their demands for Happy Meals makes me feel guilty (I'm afraid that one of them might end up like of Don Gorse, that guy in "Supersize Me" who's eaten a Big Mac every day since 1972), I have to mix in something pseudo "nutritious" with Mac and Cheese to make it palatable to, yes, my conscience.

Anyhow, the problem with the above scenario is that if the boys catch on to it, it backfires. "Dad, what the hell are these? I thought we were having Mac and Cheese! Mac and Cheese doesn't have little balls in it that taste like - yuck - vegetables! I'M NOT EATING THIS CRAP!" So, being the fully conscientious parent that I am, I offer an explanation to this reasoning: "Son, those are magic peas."

Which, as you can imagine, always works. What kid doesn't want to eat magic peas, right? And last week it didn't work, as usual. But then the Mixmaster said something that belies his five long years on this earth and made me stop and ponder for quite a while. His response to my magic peas? "Dad, there's nothing magic in this whole world."

Now literally, we all know that's true. But figuratively, it's not true at all. And I'd like to be able to tell him that, without it being a total "Daddy Lecture" which, more often than not, gets tuned out faster than a Captain and Tennille song in my Jeep. So here's what I'd like to do. Let's start a list. On this blog. Please comment with things that are 'magic' to you. After a month or two of commenting, I'll print the comments out and put it in his 'box' where we keep all the souvenirs of his early life. That way, when he's older and really feels that there's nothing magic in this whole world, he can pull the list out and get some good examples of what is truly magic. And, maybe, some perspective as well.

I'll start. And I'll add more later:

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Springtime is magic, especially the part where you can spend a day putting fresh plants into the ground in hopes that this year your green thumb shows itself instead of your black thumb.

River pools are magic.

An appreciative look from somebody you care about is magic.

A smile from somebody you've never seen before is magic.

Watching real live trains with your children is magic.

Learning how to play a musical instrument is magic.

Comedy improvisation, when it's good, is magic. When it's bad, it's torture.

Live theater, when it's good, is magic. When it's bad, it's torture.

Neil Finn songs are magic.

Monday morning. 5:00 am. Your oldest son comes in to your room; "Daddy, it's time to get up." At 5:00 in the morning? He persists, you lose the battle, and the week begins. From there, it's all downhill. You forget to put the coffee pot back on the coffee maker and the freshly brewed coffee spills all over the freshly cleaned floor. The idiot ahead of you in the left turn lane decides he'd rather sight-see in the middle of the intersection than actually turn left. The chicken you make for lunch smells like foot fungus so you throw it away and opt instead for a bowl of cereal. The Monday noon drop-in game at the ice hockey rink, which is usually hurting for players, is full by the time you get there at 12:05 so you aren't allowed to play. You drive to your favorite CD shop on the way home from meetings for a little serenity and it starts to rain while you're in there. And you've left the top down on the Jeep so everything in is soaked when you bring your new purchases out.

To top it all off, your head is congested, you're sneezing all day, and your oldest son informs you, after you get home, that yet another squirrel has taken up residence in your Jeep. What the hell is going on?

You look up at a calendar. Oh, yeah, it's Vegas Week. That's what it is. The week before a Vegas trip. It never fails. You'll pay and pay and pay and pay all week long; it'll be a surprise if you don't end up in a Turkish prison or in a bathtub full of ice with your kidney missing this week. And, at the end of it, you'll get on a plane and you'll go to Las Vegas and you'll eat and drink and gamble and read and write and hang by the pool and it'll all be worth it. Because, really, the pre-trip torture (not to mention the post-trip torture!) just serves to remind you that you're alive and that you should not take these trips for granted.

Sometimes you gotta work for things. Apparently.

Today I've been married to the same woman for 11 years. 11 freaking years! I've been trying to think of some way to appropriately blog today and mark the event, but, really, simple words are not going to be enough for such an occasion. I'm not sure my brain is even able to wrap itself around the concept: 11 years with the same person. Wow. I am a lucky, lucky man.

And, really, if we stop to consider the humble beginnings of this relationship that has become the foundation from which the rest of my life springs, it's even more amazing. We've been together since 1992, we have two fine young sons, a mortgage, two careers, good friends.....and it all started like this:

I was 28 and Dukey was my roommate - we shared a two bedroom apartment
in the UTC area of San Diego. He was dating his future wife; in fact, he had just started dating her. We had formed our band, The Snipehunters, and had played two gigs. I had hair down to my shoulders because I was in a band. I was a commited single man; commited because I had been through some "interesting" relationships with women and was trying to step back and not date those kind of "interesting" women anymore. I worked for a large architectural firm in San Diego. A large architectural firm that had been slowly going out of business for some time. Most of my friends had gotten laid off, but I was still there, for some reason. Probably because I have this strange penchant for being underpaid and overworked.

Then, one day, the news came down that I was getting laid off. Fine, I thought. I'll take a vacation and find another job. Well, on my very last day at that place (the place shall go nameless to protect the guilty), I noticed the woman answering the phones for the first time, even though she had been there a week. Obviously, I was distracted by my impending vacation. Anyhow, I thought she was gorgeous and, feeling like I had nothing to lose, I decided to see if I could get her number. So I came up with a plan, and I went up to her at the front desk with a notebook in my hand and said something like, "Hi, I'm in a band and we're collecting phone numbers from people to let them know about our next show (this was before e-mail made that type of thing so much easier) and I'd like to get yours." And she had apparently been taking lessons from her sister on "how to be available" so she gave me her number! I was shocked. We started chatting a bit, and I quickly found out that not only was she gorgeous, she was well read and well travelled and well mannered and delightful to talk to...all the things the women I had been dating were not. Which, as you can imagine, blew me away. I was not even in her league. This long-haired guitar player with no job could never stand a chance with such a fine woman. Still, something spurred me on (I like challenges) and, by the end of the day, after chatting with her several more times, I asked her to lunch "after I get back from vacation." She said, "I'd like that."

So I went back to my apartment and Dukey was there and I couldn't stop gushing about this woman that I had met. It was one of those days where you stop and think, "Wow, I really outdid myself this time." And, really, I couldn't stop thinking about her. Something about her face and her smile and her soul filled me with joy. So I cancelled my "vacation" the next week and I took her to lunch and then I took her on a hike on our second date and by our third date she asked me to kiss her (I was going slow so as to not screw it up; too slow, apparently) and I had no choice but to oblige. After all, if you're a career minor leaguer and you get called up to the majors, you don't say "no, thanks."

And here we are, 13 years later, with two fine sons and a foundation from which to live our lives. We're growing old gracefully, for the most part. We put up with each other and our foibles and quirks, we know that our kids are the most important thing in our lives, and we find time to get out once in a while and be a couple. And she's still out of my league. I am a lucky, lucky man.

Back when Dukey and I were roommates, this could have been a true story.  About me. 

Roommate Deemed Too Imcompetent To Clean Bathroom.

As it stands, change "Roommate" to "Husband" and it could still be about me.  Sigh. 

You know what freaks me out?  This:  The other day, I was with the G-Man and the Mixmaster at the ice rink at their skating lesson - more on that later.  And I was out on the ice with them and their cute instructor.  Okay, look, I'm a 41 year old graying flabby guy, and it's really okay if I find a hot 20 year old female college student on ice skates cute, alright?  I think that's one of Flod's "rules."  Anyhow, we were out there on the ice, and the boys were playing with hockey pucks, because the cute instructor wanted them to, and we were by the door where you enter the rink, and this guy looks in and says, "Hey, Jeff, it looks like you've got a couple of hockey players on your hands."  I look over and I swear I had (and still have) no idea who he was.  Yet he said my name.  Now I'm no celebrity - although I was once congratulated in an airport in Atlanta on an improv show I did the night before at a 3-day Atlanta tournament, which was very cool - so I check my clothes to see if I'm wearing a name tag.  Which I don't normally do.  Unless I'm at some engineering function or something.  So I look all over and, nope, all my clothes say is "Guiness," like the beer.  But he didn't call me "Guiness," he distinctly called me "Jeff;" I'm sure of that, because the two words aren't even close.  They don't even have the same number of syllables, so it'd be impossible to confuse them.  So, realizing that the guy must know me from somewhere, I make small talk with him.  "Oh, yeah, ha ha, I'm hoping I can retire on their NHL contracts, ha ha.  Daddy needs a new house."  Whatever.  Then he goes away and we keep skating and, after our 40 minute lesson is over and we're taking off our skates and helmets and gloves and kneepads, dude comes by and says, "See you later, Jeff."  "Uh, sure, guy.  See you at the next, um, function.  Yeah, that's it."  I felt like such an ass.  Because we all know that I'm going to run into this guy somewhere and he's going to be like the most important guy in my life at that particular time; like maybe he's a client that I forgot about or maybe he owns a theater or something.  And I'm going to want something from him, like a project or a place to perform, and I'm going to be highly embarrassed because he's going to say, "How are those hockey players doing, Jeff?"  And I'm not going to know that the hell he's talking about.

Not that it ever looked good long. But come on. So I've had this, let's just say, thinning area in the yarmulka region, where you can kinda see scalp through hair. And it hasn't gotten any thinner in at least a decade. But there it is. And when I grow my hair out a bit, I look like freakin' Rob "Meathead" Reiner in All in the Family. So now I have to keep my hair shortER to keep from looking completely stupid (as opposed to mostly stupid, which is how I look anyway).

I have buddies who, due to serious deforestation upstairs, have gotten out the #1, or worse, the razor, and just cleaned house based on the same principles. But if I do that, I'm gonna look like Zippy the Pinhead.

Big frickin' deal, right? Especially to somebody who's seriously follically challenged. They'd just get pissed off at me for whining about a little "thinning." Wouldn't they, Dukey. But it's all the same. Whether "thinning" or losing it all due to hormonal Agent Orange, you're sunk. You're losing physical options that you're going to have to make up for with character enhancements, unless you happen to have some quirky NEW physical trait that turns out to be strangely sexy, like bushy eyebrows.

But however it works out, one thing is certain: It ain't happenin' at the Hard Rock pool like it would have a few years earlier. Good thing it's mostly dark at the Voodoo Lounge.