The Cain Mutiny

I’m wondering who the next person to come forward to claim Herman Cain groped them and am fearful it might be me. Our paths have crossed.

Sharon Bialek says she was in Washington staying at the Capitol Hilton in 1997 when Cain made a lust-fueled lunge at her loins after drinks in the hotel bar.

The news stirred The Washington Post to write the scandal puts the Hilton in the “elite pantheon of hotels of infamy.”

To me, it’ll always be in the elite pantheon of hotels that host kids that can spell words like cymotrichous and stromuhr.

The hotel was the long-time host of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, an event I twice chaperoned to the fiscal detriment of the Nashville Banner’s profit margin. The hotel was the landmark site of my first opportunity to blow out an expense account.

Part of my “expenses” involved lobster dinners and a $90 ticket to see Charlton Heston star in “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” at the Kennedy Center. Ronald and Nancy Reagan attended the same performance. I wrote about the whole thing here.

Remember the great 1954 movie? It starred Humphrey Bogart as Capt. Philip Queeg of the Navy minesweeper Caine. The Caine captain loses touch with reality and is eventually disgraced.

We’re today witnessing the beginnings of another Cain mutiny.

He’s finished. His campaign surge struck me as odd and an indication of how desperation is leading the GOP off the presidential cliff during what should be a gimme election.

Bialek made the charges beside her attorney, feminist crusader Gloria Allred, who should consider for reasons of accuracy changing her name to Gloria Allmakeup.

The charges seem credible. Of course, I’m a liberal Democrat, so charges against a Republican carry more weight with me than when the same charges are leveled against someone like Bill Clinton.

It’s the exact opposite with Republicans who unleash special prosecutors and moral indignation whenever a Democrat is accused of the same murky shenanigans.

Really, a more non-partisan question always pops into my head whenever I hear a woman say, as Bialek says, her date shoved one hand up her skirt while using the other to push her head into his lap.

The question is: Does that ever work?

I imagine there are women out there who’ll succumb to that sort of blunt maneuver, but I think most of them are either hookers or pancake waitresses interested in dating Tiger Woods.

I’d never dream of trying that sort of thing. I’d be terrified the woman might sever the relationship -- and I’m not just talking about the relationship between me and her.

I’m talking about the relationship between me and my tender little troublemaker.

As romantic come-ons go, it certainly lacks the subtlety and sophistication I champion.

I was advising a heartsick friend the other day that he’d never need to worry about meeting strange women -- and women who talk to friends of mine are uniformly strange -- because I authored the George Clooney of pick-up lines.

I share it because it saddens me to think of how much loneliness there is in the world and because my married butt has no use for it.

I told him to approach the most stunning woman in the room and say with utmost sincerity: “Was it as difficult for you growing up beautiful . . . as it was for me?”

It’s irresistible. It’s complimentary and manages to be simultaneously self-deprecating and egotistical.

It’s a pity I thought up that line about five years after I became a married father -- and that happily married men still spend idle hours thinking up winning pick-up lines is the reason attorneys like Allred will never be broke.

I have to admire Cain’s moxie. He’s insisting on not talking about the only thing everyone is talking about. He’s threatening to sue news organizations that report on the existence of factual documents he signed. And he’s acting like old Capt. Queeg did before the Navy instigated court martial proceedings.

I’m not saying he’s crazy, but he’s certainly engaging in calaginous behavior.

Calaginous is a Latin adjective meaning dim, murky, dark or obscure.

Care to hear it used in another sentence?

Oops. Sorry.

Oh, how the sweet sting of spelling bees past forever lingers!

Who knew lobsters and bees would be such a memorable combination?

Home alone: A Christmas wrap-up

Kids are sad because it's 363 days till next Christmas. I’m sad because I know it'll only be about 153 days until I hear the first Christmas song of 2011.

We’re nearing the Sprawl-a-Days finish line. Only six more days until the most cluttered and chaotic time of the year is behind us.

For me, January 2 is becoming the best de facto holiday of the year. It’s the day after what has become a nearly 10-week stretch where nothing is demanded of me.

I won’t have to be anywhere on time. I won’t have to arrive there cheerful. I won’t have to be there wearing pants.

Really, right up until near the end I’ve made it this far without being too grouchy, a fair achievement considering I’ve been sober for much of it.

But it got to me on Christmas Day when our guests were inlaws and people inlaws date. It was just too much.

I can’t discuss inlaw phenomena without mentioning the great line I heard from my twice-married brother: “The only difference between inlaws and outlaws are that outlaws are at least wanted by someone.”

Amen, brother.

The next four days should be among the most peaceful of the entire year. Maybe for people who work and take time off from gainful employment.

Not for the chronically unemployed or those of us who try and earn our livings stringing words together and selling them -- the only difference being the latter are expected to smell nice in public.

This week’s calendar’s already crowded with social obligations. Tomorrow, my friend John from New York is coming to visit. 

As always, it promises to be splendid drunken fun. Plus, it’s coinciding with plans for me and a group of local drunkards to saddle up and see “True Grit.”

Ever since the 2003 release of “Seabiscuit,” we always try to get together over the holidays and watch a movie involving men riding horses.

It’s a very manly thing to do. In fact, it’s so manly we feel compelled to scatter so many seats between each other it’s like we’re all seeing the movie all by ourselves.

If it goes off without a hitch tomorrow will be only the second time it’s happened since the 2003 release of “Seabiscuit.”

There’s not a one of us adept at organizing such an outing and we usually end up drinking through the matinee and arguing over the simple math involved in splitting a three-hour lunch bill five ways.

Then the aforementioned brother and his boys come for a visit. I can’t wait.

But they’re bringing their dog. Decorum dictates I invite the dog to stay with us during the visit while they stay at Mom’s no-pets apartment.

I already have one dog I don’t like, that would be the six-month old sleep bandit the girls call Snickers, a dog that’s never snickered. If they’d have been finicky about accuracy they’ d have named him Yippers or something involving crude bodily functions he’s still sprinkling about the carpets.

So now I’ll have two dogs to clean up after, at least one of which reflexively howls at things like the sound of landing snowflakes as I’m about to reach REM sleep.

I guess the best part of the holiday was wrapping presents with Val in the basement in front of a warm fire as we watched “We’re No Angels.” It’s a 1955 Humphrey Bogart/Peter Ustinov/Aldo Ray comedy about three escaped convicts who save a family from an evil inlaw.

And is there any other kind?

It was all so peaceful and pleasant, as was the result. Christmas morning was magnificent. It’s likely next year the 10-year-old will have succumbed to the glum skeptics who doubt Santa’s existence and that will be a pity.

Kids have a right to expect Christmas to be one of the best days of the year and this was just so.

Today, may be one of the best days of the year for me. It’s one of just four where my wife takes the kids to visit my Mom and I have the home to myself.

That’s just one of four days out of 365.

Had it dawned on me that marriage and family would involve spending more time with inlaws than time home alone I’d have consulted a cheap attorney for pre-nuptial protection.

So tonight’s a time for quiet reflection about all I have, the friendships, the revelry and all that rowdy love that comes with being the only male in a house with three females and a male dog that looks perfectly asexual when he’s trying to act tough.

I’m going to spend the night being thankful for all I have.

And thankful that all I have is for one night about 55 miles away.