Monday, March 18, 2024

I shaved my head and beard, why?

 

 

I woke up the other day with a wild hair up my ass that went clear to my brain and now the wild one is about the only hair I have left.


I shaved my head and now I’m bald as a baby, albeit a baby with chest hair and pubes.


It’s not uncommon for empathic souls to shave their heads in solidarity with someone they admire, someone battling disease.


But it’s been a long time since I’ve hung out with anyone we could consider admirable and declaring I was shaving my head to support Burt who’s struggling to overcome a wicked hangover lacks nobility.


So why’d I do it?


I shed my hair to save your soul.


Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re not worthy. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, buy me a drink. We’ll call it even.


See, I’m honing a new presentation built around the mantra: “Do something each and every day to ensure parking at your funeral will be a real bitch.”


It’s a dandy line. Easy to remember, direct, surprisingly unique — and it’s funny. That’s key. Plus, it has that mild profanity that gives me the appearance of being edgy.


Me and Kanye!


I wouldn’t dare add to the grim mix by putting out something serious. Something serious like me talking.


That was the obvious flaw in the video I recorded over the weekend. I’m uncomfortable alone in front of a camera. It’s just awkward. So when I was game planning the production I realized I needed something to distract from what in essence would be 109 seconds of just me talking.


Don’t let that mislead you into thinking I doubt the importance of my message. In fact, it could be the difference between whether any of us go to heaven or hell.


I contend the number of sincere mourners at your funeral will be a factor in determining if your soul will descend into hell or zoom straight to heaven, a passage which is, ironically, becoming less strenuous thanks to the rapid depletion of that pesky ozone layer.


See, there’s a bright side to everything.


Sure, you and I may die of global warming related disaster, but the destruction of the protective ozone layer means our souls will have less difficulty ascending to heaven.


Hallelujah.

As I was considering ways to enliven the video my train of thought veered off track and all of a sudden I was thinking about my beard which was due for removal.


Remember, my custom is to grow the beard whenever I see the five-day forecast predicting three consecutive days when the temperature is below 30-degrees and to shave it when I see three days of 50 or more.


For 20 years this worked like a charm. People knew just by looking at me if the weather was moderating.


My face was your forecast.


But the aforementioned climate change has injected chaos into what was once stable.


So I arbitrarily said I’d have to keep the beard until St. Patrick’s Day.


I was thinking about this as I was setting up the tripod in Flappers. The building was empty. I thought, “You know, I could shave parts of the beard off in between cuts so at the conclusion my beard will have disappeared.”


But I soon realized I was going to run out of beard.


That left only one option.


Farewell hair! I sheared off wide swaths and just like that turned 109 seconds of levity into for what I expect will be about 3 months of public ridicule.


I’ve already had two people ask if I’d lost a bet.


And now for the first time in my life, I have more hair on my balls than I do on my brain.


It’s startling.


Because now every time I look in the mirror I get confused over which realm, the balls or the brains, is responsible for making all the big decisions around here.






• Here's  the video ...

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Tweets of the New Year!

 

I’d like to grant doctors the power to evaluate patients so that we’d hear more diagnoses like: “Well, the good news is the  operation was a success. You’re going to be fine. The bad news is unless you cut back on the volume and partisan stridency of all your non-stop political talk, everyone’s gonna think you’re still an asshole.”


• Teen daughter expressed irritation that I’d repeated myself by asking yet again if she had any homework. I told her not to be too harsh. Every parent asks pointless questions hoping they'll lead to a gusher of other revelations about her dreams, her loves and heartaches. I’m hoping that innocuous question will lead to her knowing she has a father who truly loves her and if he’s being honest really just doesn’t give a shit whether she has homework or not.


• I understand it's not the sort of behavior anyone should be encouraging, but there is something so compelling about the drunken, shirtless NFL fan in freezing weather I find incredibly riveting. There has to be a way to factor their idiocy into game outcome. But should team should be penalized or rewarded for inspiring such cheerful self-destruction?


• I've always enjoyed the Hall & Oates version of "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'," but lately and in light of their creative and financial estrangement, hearing it makes me uncomfortable. I just imagine them singing, not to the pop audience, but soulfully to one another. I just hope those kids can work it all out.


• What kind of multiple spiritual crises must a seeker endure to become a Born-Again Atheist?


• It's never led me to riches or anything remotely like traditional success, but I like the way my brain works. I especially like it when it takes the time to inform the rest of me that it's worked hard enough and it's time to get its ass atop the nearest barstool. Like right about ... Now!


• As I don't foresee us bridging our political divides, I ask that you join me in finding consensus that if the aliens show up and demand, "Take me to your leader," we just trash protocol and take them straight to this guy … (Mick Jagger)


• We live in a age where many of the people who declare themselves perfectionists often misspell the word.


• It's something the historians never discuss, but can you imagine the social upheaval when the first caveman installed the first cave door. Boy, the neighbors must've been abuzz. "Did you get a load of what the Groks did? The fancies put a door on their cave. Now if you want to see them you have to knock or ring the door bell that came with it." But the very next day, everyone had to have a  door. From Dire Straits (Telegraph Road): "Then came the churches, then came the schools. Then came the lawyers. Then came the rules." Imagine a world without doors.


• Is it "kit and caboodle" or "kitten caboodle?" Kit and caboodle makes more sense because it means the whole thing. But what the hell is a caboodle? It's not an Etsy category. I wonder if caboodle is what falls off and rolls away when a male kitten hits cat puberty.


• Check out my new feet! Surgery went fine. Pain-inducing hardware from a botched ’21 operation was removed. And the cosmetic enhancement I sought was addressed and I now have the dainty tootsies of a teenage foot model. An African-American teenage foot model. Yes, it’ll be jarring if you ever see me at the beach, but I saw the African-American option on the menu and just couldn’t resist impulsively checking the box.


• It’d be interesting to time travel back to the Stone ages and interview the first gay cave man. When did it occur to him he was interested in other cave men? How did he let the other cave men know? And were there prejudicial discriminations? Then it’d be fun to talk to the second gay cave man and learn how the whole thing was explained to him, what kind of questions did he ask, and if he ever explained the whole thing to his cave wife.

Friday, January 12, 2024

Tin Lizzy now has a free pool table!

 


(1237 words)


Nobody asked me and I’m not sure what I would’ve said, but they went and put a snazzy pool table in the 3rd floor rec room in the Tin Lizzy. It’s just 15 steps from the desk where I spend so much time trying to concentrate so I can maybe earn a living.


Its pull on my attention is strong and I confess I spend at least an hour a day trying to sharpen my game.


I’m consumed by a drive to get good.


How good? 


As good as I was in 1990 when I was a participant in one of the most dramatic pool games in Westmoreland County history.


The fact that I can’t name a single other game of any importance does not diminish the boast.


Paul and I were beat reporters in the Latrobe bureau office for the Tribune-Review, a scrappy paper that continues to thrive in a  market that’s devastating the entire industry.


The endurance hints at wise decision makers among Trib leadership.


There was zero evidence of any such wisdom 33 years ago when someone had the bright idea of moving me in to work with Paul. Two more like-minded journalists were never paired. We were like Woodward and Bernstein except instead of grave constitutional matters we were laser focused on pretty bar maids,  agreeable company and Latrobe bars casual about LCB regs involving Happy Hour drink specials.


Conveniently, our shabby little office was practically right next door to a lively neighborhood tavern.


How close?


If the doors to both the office and the bar — B.C. Kenlys —were open we could hear the office phone ring from our barstools.


So the two of us spent entire days in that bar drinking, joking … and shooting pool.


We both became very competent. In fact, it could be argued we were much better at billiards than we were at covering things like school boards, warehouse fires, etc.


So we didn’t see it coming when one of the bosses left the following message on the old answering machine.


“Mrs. Kent, an English teacher at Ligonier Valley High School ,has asked us to send a reporter up to talk to seniors about a career in journalism. So you guys decide who it’s gonna be and get back to Mrs Kent.”


Neither of us wanted anything to do with it so we needed to find a way to determine the loser.


A coin flip just wouldn’t do and pistols at 20 paces, while debonaire, would have put the bar out of business and neither of of us wanted that on our conscience.


The obvious solution was in the back of the bar under tight green felt.


But this was too big a deal to conduct at our local hangout. We needed a regulation table, professional lighting and a real swinging jukebox. We needed an old style watering hole.


We needed Bull’s Tavern. It was a great Ligonier bar run by a legendary family. I’m delighted to share honest flattery because the bar was owned by the father of our friend, Tom Turnbull, who reads blogs like this without prompting. 


Thank you, Tom, for reading — and for being an historic link to one of my favorite bars.


It was such a perfect setting for a high stakes, best-of-seven, match, I remember being surprised ESPN hadn’t assigned a crew.


Upon entry, I detected mass indifference in our competition. There were maybe a dozen people in the bar. 


I won game one with a nifty bank shot on the 8 ball. I didn’t gloat or preen. A few if the regulars noted my even-tempered reaction. Paul’s reaction to the loss meant he was all business.


Screw those future journalists!


Splitting the next two games put me up 2-1.


By now there were about 20 customers in the bar and whenever anyone came in laughing, the old timers laid down the law by shhhing them. We’d each earned our own little bands of partisans.


Paul had a chance to even the tally with an end-to-end roll that would have been nervy even in pressure-free situations.


“That’s a lot of green, Mr. Gardner,” I said. By now, we realized we’d become more than two guys shooting pool. We were performers. The crowd, now well over two dozen, was fully engaged. Without acknowledging it to each other, we realized we were putting on a show.


It was impressive because by then we’d both consumed about four or five tequila shooters.


Bull’s customers kept fueling us with shots, sometimes in true appreciation, sometimes in the hopes it would make us unstable and prone to miss. By then there were many wagers, including a flurry of fins that Paul would miss the 9-footer.


He made it. We were tied 2-2.


And he won game 5. For me, it was do-or-die.


In May of 2000, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers played a hockey game that was not decided until the 5th overtime, one of the longest games in history. It made headlines around the continent with writers asking readers to imagine the pressure, the exhaustion. Can anyone empathize with  what these players were going through?


Paul and I could. We’d played game 6 at Bull’s back in ’90.


I have since been in the delivery room for the birth of my two daughters. Those procedures were fraught with consequence, emotions and life-and-death outcomes.


Game 6 had prepared me for the drama like nothing else ever could.


I swear, each of us had credible chances to win. But the game was destined to go on. 


And on 


I finally won on a crazy bank shot that drew cheers so loud I thought the chimney on the old stone fireplace was going to topple.


Game 7 was oddly flat. I think we’d put so much into Game 6 we had nothing left. Paul won. I'd be speaking to the kids.


It was the greatest competition in which I’d ever been involved and Paul a most worthy winner.


We stuck around another hour or so to shake hands and get road sober enough for the drive back to Latrobe.


I’ll never forget emerging from Bull’s and looking across the parking lot to where a banged up tractor trailer lay on its side. Paul and I surveilled it and said something like, “There’s something you don’t see every day,” and moved on.


As was our custom, we went first to the office to check the answering machine. On a day when there should have been 3 or 4 calls, there were 12.


The first was from our editor and it was frantic.


“Paul! Chris! There’s a report of a runaway tractor-trailer overturned by Bull’s Tavern. We need you guys there right away!”


The urgency was evident the next two messages, but with each new message it began to dwindle. I remember one of the last ones was the plaintive editor crying out, “Helloooo! Helllooooo! Is there anybody there?”


The last message was full surrender.


“Uh, Paul, Chris, just forget about that thing in Ligonier. We sent the intern.”


To summarize, Paul and I spent a day in the bar battling to see who would not have to go to a local school to extol the virtues of newspaper writing, and while we were doing this we nearly got creamed by actual breaking news that neither of us recognized as having even the least news value.


So stop by the Tin Lizzy. The pool is free.


And if you’re at all interested, I’ll be happy to tell you what I told those aspiring journalists. And that's that sometimes the best stories happen away from the most commotion.