Father's Day Re-Run: Forever in Blue Jeans

This ran in October 2009 and had more to do with blue jeans than dads. But I've come to think of it as a Father's Day story. It, to me, seems to say a lot about fathers, sons and how we live our lives. Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is all about blue jeans. Either way, Happy Father's Day!

I knew I’d taken another leap toward insanity when I stared into the dresser drawer, the one dedicated to denim, saw six pairs of nearly identical blue jeans and thought: “Hmmm, maybe it's time to spring for another pair of blue jeans.”

And it’s true. I do need another pair.

I have my church blue jeans, my casual dress up blue jeans, my outdoor work blue jeans, and my trusty bar blue jeans (three pair).

It’s another reminder of the ways I don’t measure up to the old man.

Daddy never wore blue jeans.

He was an optician, a profession that doesn’t exactly stack up with lumberjacks and oil derrick leathernecks on the hombre scale.

But the man had style. He was always careful about his appearance and paid attention to how he looked. No matter the task, he always managed to wear spiffy clothing -- or at least half of him did. I’ll never forget the times I’d see him, shirtless, hunkering down in the garden out back, a posture that inevitably led to him unintentionally mooning the neighbors as he labored over the sprawl of zucchini.

I never got to ask him, he died in 2004, why he didn’t own jeans. But I suspect I know the answer: He thought they made him look poor.

I believe men from his august generation, the ones like my Dad who grew up poor, spent their lives trying to ensure they never looked it.

Sadly, my generation does the opposite.

I know many fine and dandy attorneys and bankers who dress as if they were as financially inconsequential as, well, underemployed freelance writers.

They never touch a lawn mower or a chain saw, yet they forever dress during their social time as if they were about to go dig a ditch.

Me, I enjoy outdoor work, but it’s ridiculous to own six pairs of blue jeans when all most of them do is protect my butt from an angry spring on poorly upholstered stool 7 down at the neighborhood tavern.

It’s an undeniable pity that as us men have gotten softer, our clothes have gotten tougher.

The toughest Americans ever, the continent conquerors who labored under Lewis & Clark, robed themselves, not in rugged blue jeans and steel-toed boots, but in animal skin and mocassins. They didn’t practice yoga, engage in team building exercises or require therapeutic counseling when a supply raft dashed against the rocks and sank all their jerky.

But just listen to the bitching in any airport from men in designer jeans who become incensed that United Airlines is charging them an extra $50 to tote their golf sticks cross country to Palm Springs for five days of desert recreation.

And, here’s a secret: Blue jeans, even the posh ones, aren’t all the comfortable. They’re stiff. There’s no give. They bind in places no real man likes to be bound.

It’s a true triumph of marketing that Americans spend about $14 billion on blue jeans each year. If the pants are so durable, how come every year we keep needing to purchase more and more of them?

I suppose we have James Dean to blame for all this. It was him in the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause” that started the transformation that led jeans from jeans being a perfectly utilitarian article of clothing to items of gaudy fashion that retail for hundreds of dollars.

There should be some sort of study about how the rise of the blue jean has coincided with the decline of the men who wear them.

I’d do it myself, but I need to rush out to the department store and buy a fourth pair of bar jeans before lunch.

The baseball playoffs start today and that means plenty of bar time. I don’t want risk having to set my soft ass down on stool 7 without the manly protection of a really tough garment that’s up to the task.

America's last undecided voter . . . Me!

(790 words)

If I have the guts to pull it off I’m pretty sure you’ll hear about it, which means I’m pretty sure you won’t.

It’s too bad, too, because I imagine it would be a dandy practical joke.

Like all great practical jokes there’s nothing practical about it. I’d do it because I think it would be funny.

It would involve hours of standing, pained expressions, flop sweat and torrents of relentless public ridicule.

As I’m already a married father, I’ve got most of that down pat.

See, this has been the year of the undecided voter. 

Those of us with the ability to make up our minds -- and apparently that’s 99 percent of us -- have endured two years and $2 billion dollars of obnoxious ads trying to persuade about 1 percent of the electorate to vote for this guy or that one.

They say after all that, after the debates, the ballyhooed jobless reports and robo callers, they -- gee whiz -- just can’t up their minds.

I want to be that guy.

Few people understand the news media better than I. That’s not as boastful as it sounds.

Having worked for many of the most high-profile media organizations in the world (and been rejected by the rest), I have a unique grasp on what the media are seeking today.

And did you notice I used the grammatically correct media “are” instead of the commonly incorrect media “is?”

Told yinz guys I knew my shit.

I know that the biggest story of today, bigger than even who wins, is the identity of the undecided voter. Why’d they vote for who they did?

Every news outlet will be camped outside of the polling places all day trying to find these electoral kingmakers.

And I have a plan to ensure national exposure, which I’d then use to obnoxiously promote my book.

Interested in that kind of publicity? Here’s what you do:

Walk into the voting booth  . . .

And never leave.

Camp there. Stay all day. Make them call the police to throw you out.

The reason I probably won’t do it is because I know all the people at my polling place, am shy about causing a scene, and fear my shenanigans would harm my obnoxious attempts to get them to buy my book.

It’s a pity because for the past eight years our polling place down at the local elementary school has been perfect.

We used to have those proper booths with the levers that pulled the drape shut behind you. The privacy made me feel secure.

Now our voting booths are those little electronic stations that leave voters fully exposed. I spend my whole time glancing over my shoulder fearful that some angry Republican is going to see I’m voting the straight Democratic ticket and pound me over the head with his big bag of gold bars Sean Hannity advised him to buy.

But the exposure in this case lends itself perfectly to my scheme.

I’d walk in, nod hello, sign my name and be ushered to the voting station. It would be perfectly nondescript.

Then time would tick by. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour. Dozens of other voters will come and go and I’ll still be standing there.

But I wouldn’t be standing there still.

No, it would be performance art of the highest order. I’d pace in a little circle. I’d look pensive. I’d look thoughtful. I’d look more anguished than James Dean in the scene from “Rebel without a Cause” where he falls to pieces screaming, “You’re tearing me apart!”

All of this would alarm the polling workers who would clearly see they’re dealing with an undecided voter. They wouldn’t know what to do so they’d call their supervisors. The media would show up to broadcast live reports of the man inside who can’t make up his mind.

“One official said this middle-aged man has spent six hours at his voting station,” the reporter will say. “Sources say he spent 30 minutes doing Eenie-Meanie-Minie-Mo before bursting into tears. He’s remains truly undecided.”

I’d be seen praying for guidance and asking aloud questions to both Mitt and Barack like they were floating there above my head. I’d ask the polling workers if it was against procedure to have someone deliver a pizza to my voting station.

Interest would be at fever pitch as the seconds ticked down. Every major network would be waiting outside to hear how I’d voted.

Then with just moments to spare, I’d do what I’m guessing by now every still-undecided voter in America is bound to do to settle this momentous matter.

I’d flip a coin.

It’s Election Day and it’s tearing me apart.

Related . . . 

• I’m an America-hating liberal (2008)

• Vote for Barack Obama (2008)

Why'd bin Laden dye his beard?

It’s been a week and I’m still riveted by all the bin Laden news. I want to know everything about how he lived and how he died.

I wish I could say my focus is on the historic implications of it all, but my shallow nature is getting the better of me; I’m consumed with an aspect of his existence that will soon be lost to history.

The man dyed his beard.

The vanities of powerful men and their infatuation with their own hair endlessly fascinate me.

Take Donald Trump. His hair’s such an obvious punchline I’ve never really given it much thought.

But it is now so in our faces it must be addressed.

First, the color. Or colors. Parts of it have a reddish cast. Then there are blond streaks. Some sweeping waves are pumpkin-shaded. When the TV lights hit it, it seems to shimmer like a trout just lifted from the creek.

Trying to describe it is like explaining algebra to fourth graders. It makes my head hurt. 

It’s like a combover done by an octopus. It goes in every direction all at once. I imagine if viewed from a traffic helicopter it must look like one of those sprawling Southern California interchanges where five major interstates noodle together and head to 10 different parts of Los Angeles I have no interest in visiting.

I guess it works for him. He’s rich and famous, has a beautiful wife and throngs of pitiful idiots who think, gee, now there’s a man who’d make a great president.

But every generation of Americans needs its Trump, or at least guys like Leno and Letterman certainly do. They fill an essential role of appearing to have all the answers in a complicated world where people yearn for bombastic simplicity. In the end they all burn-out, embarrass themselves or their followers momentarily come to their senses and move on to the next loud-mouthed charlatan.

It’s just fortunate for all the people who’d like to see President Obama re-elected there is a surfeit of these men and women and they are right now leading the GOP straight over an electoral cliff.

But the vanity of bin Laden surprises.

He was a man who self-righteously believed his violent brand of Islamic fundamentalism would sweep the globe (wrong), that the Middle East would crumble under his repressive vision (wrong), and that Americans were too weak and distracted to finish a war he started (wrong).

I can understand Trump’s eagerness to appear Beiber-like in an American culture obsessed with youth, but what motivated bin Laden?

Was it an eagerness to appear virile to his four young wives?

Couldn’t be. My sense is these women weren’t like many American wives. They seem to lack sass or the spousal fortitude to taunt an aging hubby about graying hair, a beer belly or his inability to please them in the conjugal way.

But there was nothing to suggest any “Desperate Housewives” thing going on in the secretive Abbottabad compound. It’s doubtful any of these girls would leave bin Laden to fool around with Ahmet the beguiling pool boy.

Maybe, even with all his hatred for modernity, he’d absorbed certain aspects of American culture that insinuate youth reigns supreme.

Maybe he thought he needed to appear as one of them to inspire the suicidal youth he’d send in waves to their doom. I’ve yet to see a martyrdom video featuring a Santa Claus beard.

The clips we’ve seen show him watching old Al Jazeera tapes of himself, but maybe they’ll release one showing him watching The Disney Channel and shows like “iCarly” where everyone over 25 are imbeciles.

Or maybe we’ll see a clip of him becoming silently animated when the Keith Hernandez/Walt Frazier “Just For Men” hair coloring commercials circulate.

Either way, his vanity confounds. Maybe this sheik had a rebel James Dean streak in him.

If that’s the case, it’s not wild to speculate bin Laden’s last mortal thoughts dealt with, not what had been done, but with what was to be.

“Although this is the end I die at peace, assured my funeral will be tumultuous with comely maidens swooning over my fair features and young holy warriors attesting how I fought aging and crusading dogs with equal vigor.

“And, no doubt, legions will stand in line for days to admire my still-youthful face.”

Wrong again.