My headshot is freezing!

I’m right there with those who’ve complained that my profile picture needs thawing. Trees and flowers are in bloom, birds are singing and the blissful warmth of summer beckons.

Yet, there I am, three times a week, still looking like I’m dressed for an expedition to wrestle the fabled Yeti off the slopes of Mt. Everest.

But as is my custom, I can’t do anything about it until my vehicle needs its oil changed and the only way that’s going to happen is if I take the day off and drive to Cleveland and back.

I came up with the idea in 2008 to regulate my headshots according to my vehicular need to change the oil every 5,000 miles.

So far, it’s worked well. I usually drive about 15,000 miles a year so that’s three new headshots that allow me the opportunity to indulge my inner ham.

This one was taken January 8, smack in the teeth of winter. Its pesky duration’s taught me a lesson: never take a headshot picture with a short seasonal shelf life.

But to be fair, on January 8 I had every reason to believe this monster winter was never going to end. At the time, it seemed like we’d be toboganning clear through the Fourth of July.

Headshot trivia: The headshot may be worth preserving for historical reasons. That may have been the only time I smiled the entire winter. I mostly scowled from Halloween clear through Opening Day. How I wound up with a picture of me smiling and not looking like a homicidal-Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” defies the odds.

I think a day will come when most of us, vanity be damned, will update our headshots every single time we update our blogs or Facebook posts.

Our headshots will be like visual mood rings. The pictures will clue us in to whether the post will be worth reading or not.

“I see Tiffany has her diamond nose stud in tonight. I guess she’s got another date with that slam poet who shuns conventions like deodorant. Could she finally be sharing what she sees in that loser?”

Or, “Man, does Tommy look hungover. I gotta see if he lost his pants again!”

Or, “Looks like Mort spent the last six hours wallowing in on-line pornography. Eh, I’ll skip him today. His descriptions focus too much on action at the expense of essential plot.”

I just saw a really great headshot where the girl looks like she’s actually listening to God speak. It’s so lovely and reverential somebody should photoshop a halo above her head.

What I like about it, too, is the idea that in these narcissistic days of preening individuality there is still somebody who’d actually listen to God, rather than just bitch to Him about things like rain forecast for picnics.

For now, I’m stuck about what I should do after I return from getting the car’s oil changed.

I’m a traditionalist in that I’ve always favored the straightforward over props or other playful diversions.

I want my picture to say, “Hey, thanks so much for taking time to read my humble little blog. It means the world to me. If you keep reading and promise to tell friends, I’ll visit your house this weekend to mow your lawn and wash your car!”

I suppose if I really wanted it to say that, I’d smear lipstick on my kisser and pucker up.

One of my favorite pictures, one I’d like to someday emulate, is the one Van Morrison uses for the cover of his 1997 masterpiece, “The Healing Game,”
a collection so soulful I swear it can cure hangovers.

But the pose would look pretentious for me, I fear.

So I’m not sure what I’ll do for the still-momentous shot. I wish I could banish the vanity that stubbornly dominates these decisions.

I need to strike a balance between friendly and earnestness.

How I’ll do that, I cannot say.

I need time to think about it.

I’d take a long drive but, given the way I change headshots, that’d be counter-productive.

Who's the worst man in America?

I’ve tried in vain for the past week to calculate who’s the worst man in America. The competition is just too, well, stiff.

Is it Tiger Woods? Ben Roethlisberger? John Edwards? Jesse James?

It’s an engaging topic among worldly men like myself. We’re the kind of guys who understand every single motivation a man could have for cheating on his wife.

Marriages go stale. Passions cool. Temptations beckon.

So men come at the topic with a slightly more sympathetic angle than would, say, a jury composed of 12 angry married women.

But the other night five of us were discussing over beers just which of these four men is the biggest disgrace to those of us who lug around the Y chromosome.

The misbehavior of each is so operatic that we were unable to agree on a clear winner, and by winner I mean loser. For that, we’re going to need spreadsheets, categories, assigned points and about eight more pitchers of beer.

We all agreed that Roethlisberger is the biggest jerk because his misdeeds are just a few splashes of DNA-testable material short of criminal. You’d have to give a ton of points for non-consensual acts.

He’s clearly the most stupid of the four. He could have been living Tiger Woods’s illicit life and no one would have cared.

So while he loses points for being a single man on the prowl, he gets a bunch for raping drunk women he should be sending home in cabs. And, remember, points here determine who is the most despicable.

I wouldn’t want any men to read this and think me and my buddies are going to buy them a beer and salute them for doing things for which they should be slugged.

The other three are married men involved with consensual adultresses.

So give Woods, Edwards and James points for being married. The marriage vow should still mean something and with our calculations it does.

But who among that trio is the worst cheater?

Tiger wins on volume, but loses points because, clearly, he felt no emotional attachment to these women who were either hookers or have undergone extensive plastic surgery to ensure they’d look like hookers.

Jesse James is an interesting contestant -- or should it be detestant?

He didn’t cheat as much as Tiger, but he gets a lot of points for cheating on America’s sweetheart with a Nazi. A Nazi!

“My wife says she feels no sympathy for Sandra,” Dave said. “She says she should have known he was a scumbag because his last wife was a porn star.”

Excellent point, but still . . . a Nazi! Plus, the news broke the night of her Oscar celebration so he gets incidental creep points for that. And if we’re giving Tiger 5 points for each women he’s cheating with, we’d have to give James 50 points for choosing to cheat with . . . a Nazi!

That brings us to John Edwards. One category is “Man with the Most to Lose.”

Edwards runs away with this one. Think of it: this could all be happening while he was president. It’s not much of a stretch.

The right despises Obama. Just imagine what Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh would be saying if our president was flying Air Force One to Charlotte to visit his mistress and their love child.

He loses points on the adultery scale because it was only one woman and he did have a caring relationship with her. But he gets huge points because he got her pregnant, blamed it on a buddy, and because his wife was battling cancer during the affair.

This is visceral with women. They just hate Edwards for that.

With most women, the rankings are Edwards, Rothlisberger, Tiger, and James.

Guys are more nuanced. We see mitigating factors.

With Edwards, we see it as a man trapped in a marriage that had broken down. We think Elizabeth should have said, “John, we had a nice run, lovely kids, etc. But I now see you’re unhappy and want to spend your life with the comely and new-agey Rielle. Go! Be free! Just please don’t bring her to my funeral. That’d be tacky.”

We can’t help it. That’s just the way we think.

So after an evening of boozy consideration, I still can’t decide who’s the worst.

For now, our only logical conclusion is this:

Not only do we men have penises, alas, sometimes we just can’t help but act like them, too.

Take this jersey & shove it

You’d think I’d have known better by now. It was just six years ago that I laid down the law about shelling out big bucks to wear the jersey of any professional athlete.

First of all, I didn’t want to wear a jersey of someone who would beat or kill his wife. You don’t see many tasteful folks wearing Buffalo Bills jerseys with no. 32 and “Simpson” on the back.

The player would have to be either a native Pittsburgher or enjoy a strong bond with his adopted city. He’d have to be visible in the community and do charity work. That’s important to me.

The guy would have to be a Hall of Fame shoo-in. The jersey needs an heirloom quality to it for it to be a smart purchase.

So I chose well, I think, when I paid $85 for a Hines Ward jersey in 2005.

But for the past month now I’ve opened up my closet, saw the big black and gold jersey with the no. 7 and thought, “How could I be such an idiot?”


See, I didn’t consider a fourth essential rule: Wait until the player is dead or too old to disgrace himself, the team or me with shameful criminal activities.

But in a weak moment last year I broke all my rules and wound up with a Ben Roethlisberger jersey.

Blame the thrill of a bargain.

Every year a lively group of friends from New York City come to Pittsburgh and we all whoop it up for a weekend centered around a Steeler game.

One of the shiftier sorts brought a trunkful of pristine jerseys of questionable origin. They were dandies, too. Double stitched, hi-gloss numbers, NFL authentication, etc. The price tags for the Roethlisbergers said $125.

He told me, hey, sweetheart, because we’re chums, he’d let me have one for $100.

“Ha!” I said. “You must think I’m an idiot. Buying one of these, I’m sure, would make me an accessory to one of your criminal activities. And I have firm rules about whose jersey I’ll wear.”

Okay, he said, how about $80?

“Look, the guy’s already got a rape charge against him in Reno and everyone in town’s heard stories about him being huge jerk.”

Sixty?

“I know, I know, he just led us to a glorious Super Bowl victory and he’ll likely retire a Steeler, but . . .”

Fifty?

“C’mon! In this day of salary cap value . . .”

Forty?

“Uh . . . Sold!”

I wore it twice and will never wear it again.

Ever since the damning press conference by Georgia District Attorney Fred Bright, I have been confounded by what to do with the damn thing. Didn’t want to burn it. Couldn’t give it to an impressionable.

So after much consideration, yesterday I got in my car and drove an hour to the Steeler’s headquarters on Pittsburgh’s South Side.

I handed the jersey and a letter to Steeler president Art Rooney II to the receptionist and asked her to give them to Mr. Rooney. She smiled and said, “I’ll be sure he gets them.”

Here’s what the letter says:

Dear Mr. Rooney,

I don’t know what to do with this Ben Roethlisberger jersey. I can no longer wear it. I can’t give it to my nephews because I don’t want them thinking No. 7 is someone their uncle would want them to cheer on.

I won’t give it to charity because I don’t want someone less fortunate to think Ben’s someone they should emulate. I can’t give it to a friend because I don’t want to see him or her wearing it at the stadium where the sight of it will disgust me.

So I’m giving it to you. I’m a second generation Steeler season ticket holder. I travel a good bit and have friends all over the world. Like many avid Steeler fans, I consider myself an ambassador for the team and the city I love. I wouldn’t do anything to disgrace those proud affiliations.

Wearing this jersey in public would do that.

I trust you’ll know what to do with the jersey. I don’t want to ever see it again.

And the same goes for the son of bitch who’s worn it for the past six years at Heinz Field.”

Now I’m in the market for spiffy new Terry Bradshaw jersey.

I’ll pay big bucks for one.

Just as soon as I hear the man’s dead.

Home improvements & looming heart attacks

I don’t know when kids stopped eating paint chips, but recent duties have me wishing they’d resume the practice. It would ease clean ups.

Kids have always been picky, but I seem to remember a time when children ate paint chips the way parents wish they’d eat things like broccoli.

It’s one of the things I thought about during a recent 60-hour stretch it’s taken me to re-do a bedroom that to me was perfectly suitable for every single bedroom activity a man can conceive -- and that includes acts involving conception.

Alas, I’m lacking in more visionary aspects of homemaking. That reality has been hammered home with crushing certainty.

Our 3 year old, the one who looks like Susan Boyle and talks like Joe Pesci, was doing routine destruction on our heirloom dining room table when my wife exploded: “Stop that! You’re destroying the only nice thing in this entire house!”

The insult ricochetted off the non-plussed child and scored a direct hit on me.

Gee, wasn’t I nice?

She apologized, but it’s clear the home we moved into three years ago needed improvements.

And now I’m determined to make them before I have my first heart attack, which I’m on schedule for in about 2013.

So I went right from bitching-about-snow-shoveling season to bitching-about- doing-my-taxes season to bitching-about-re-doing-a-bedroom season.

It’s the kind of bitch, bitch, bitch you’d expect to see only at a really successful dog grooming venture.

And it all goes completely against my grain.

Not the bitching, certainly. I’m talking about work.

It’s alien to my being because I had a perfectly pleasant and lazy man as a role model.

I don’t remember ever seeing my father lifting a paint brush in his life. My enduring image of him was sitting in an neutral-looking room in a blue Lazy Boy recliner, watching sports, eating chips (the potato-based kind, not paint), and drinking beer after beer after beer.

To this day, the recollection soothes me.

I asked Mom if the old man ever painted a single room in the house, which I remember being uniformly egg-shell white.

“Yes, he’d paint and do things to keep the house up,” she said.

A lot?

“More than most men, I’d say.”

More than me?

“No way! I don’t know anybody who works as hard as you!”

Because of fear it would sound scripted, I’d missed the opportunity to have her make the statement in front of my wife, who thinks the reverse is true. She thinks everyone works harder than me.

I blame Martha Stewart. Men never used “re-do” rooms. Now many wives think nothing of changing the paint scheme in a room the way they change seasonal wardrobes.

But to do it right it’s a big job. Always. There’s careful taping, furniture rearrangement, drop cloths, vent and outlet removal, sanding, etc.

I’m not exaggerating that’s taken me 60 hours, either. I had four layers of wallpaper to strip, spackle to apply, walls to sand, primer and textured coats to apply, then the final double coats of Mint Celadon green

The worst part of it is -- God help me -- I’m starting to enjoy it. I haven't golfed even once this year, but I’m recalling some aspects of the project the way I used to herald recollections of negotiating a difficult par 5 dogleg over water.

“See up in that corner? The previous owner was an adhesive-crazed bonehead whose carelessness left me no alternative but to rip a chunk of drywall off. Took me four scalpel-like swipes with a 4-inch putty knife heaped with dry vinyl spackle to repair the damage.”

Message: Me, skilled handyman; previous owner, loathsome jackass (a topic for another day).

Another bonus is that, cocooned in the bedroom, I’m enjoying a solitude and an opportunity to watch whatever I want, a rare occasion in a house with three girls.

I’ve watched “Slapshot,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” “Cool Hand Luke,” the excellent Tom Petty documentary “Running Down a Dream,” and portions of the Rolling Stones “Four Flicks” multi-DVD concert extravaganza.

I’ve watched baseball, golf, March Madness and enough aggregate Moe, Larry and Curly to equal 27 Stooges.

Touch-ups remain, but I’m mostly done.

I feel flushed with achievement and feeling flushed is a helpful state of mind for what I know is in store.

Val says the bathroom really needs re-done.

Our big bear is back

The bear is back and you all know what that means: can’t let the kids fill the pool with honey for any more midnight swims.

Your idea of secure parenting takes a significant shift when a 300-pound black bear turns up for snacks just outside your big living room window.

After a two-year absence, that’s what happened with us again early Sunday morning.

It was about 2:30 a.m. when I was awakened by a crashing sound. I did what I always do in these situations. I crept out of bed, pulled on my Star Wars Wookie pajamas and said a short, fast prayer that I wouldn’t have to do anything remotely heroic.

I like the idea of being a hero, but don’t like the odds of it happening in my home in the dead of night. Unless I can gulp a Bloody Mary or two, I’m just no good before “The Price is Right.”

Plus, if it was an in-home intruder, I’d be worried about subduing the crasher with sufficient force to ensure its docility, but not disabling it so much he or it couldn’t clean up the eventual mess while I went back to bed.

If I’m going to be a hero, I’d like it to happen in broad daylight in front of a TV station where I was returning from my barber and have the recipient of my heroics be a pretty single mother who wasn’t either Kate Gosselin or the Octomom.

So all this is on my mind as I stumble through the darkened house. The basement was clear. Maybe it was the front storm door which has a habit of banging around in the wind.

Yes, it was open. I pulled it shut, but not before considering doing something country boys perched on porches have been doing for years.

It was a brilliant moonlit night. I thought about taking a leak off the porch while staring up at the stars.

But it was a bit cold out. Had it been warmer, I might have died an embarrassing and bloody death.

Because for my final reconnoiter, I turned on the outside lights for one last looksee.

What I saw had me trying to rub the Twilight Zone out of my eyes. It looked like someone had parked a black Volkswagen right under the window.

The bear was back. It had pulled down a small bird feeder we’d suspended from the gutter to feast on sunflower seeds.

When we moved into the house up in the woods three years ago, it was an festival of bear sightings. We’ll never forget the night we saw a mama and three cubs in a tree behind the house.

We gloried at the thrill of rough nature right outside our walls. Then one day my daughter alarmed me by asking, “Daddy, do you think the bear would let me pet it if I gave it a marshmallow?”

Plus, as mentioned, on many nights I revel in taking a country boy leak. My fear was I’d one day be found dead, bear mauled, my pants down around my ankles.

Investigators would be stumped until a buddy would tell them with straight face: “What he was doing in the woods with his pants down, I cannot say. But this much I do know: He always talked about how much he loved animals.”


So now I’m more circumspect. I raced down the hall and woke Val with the news.

It’s difficult to convey just how unnerving it is to have a 300-pound animal with maneater potential just two feet from your couch.

It seemed unlikely that it would spring through the picture window and start chasing us around the kitchen, but the full effects of Global Warming are still being determined so it was an open question.

We took some Zapruder-quality pictures through the window. The flash eventually annoyed the big omnivore enough for it to wander away. But not before it stood up and gave us its full measure. It’s about 7 feet tall.

The next day Val and I argued about which of us was more afraid (trust me, it was her).


Now I have to reckon with what I’ll do next time the bear shows up near my porch to menace me and my family.

I suppose I could try and scare it off with an insulting splash from the only weapon a pacifist country boy conceals.

Or maybe it’d be better if I just answered nature’s call in a more refined way before my next investigation.

The big bear might surprise me first and I wouldn’t want to do anything that might risk ruining my Wookies.

A short distance runner

The three young men were dashing in every sense of the word. I was at a cross walk at the University of Pittsburgh when the shirtless trio came running past.

They were trim, fit and ran with a husky kind of ease you see in Olympic athletes.

Had they paused momentarily to take stock of me, a middle-aged man trending toward paunch, they may have felt pity at my physical decline. They may have thought my days of running were past.

That’s what I thought, too, and the idea pleased me. Running is a sweaty, arduous and unpleasant exercise. Plus, it’s one of the many ill-conceived tortures people resort to for health reasons that often end up having unhealthy consequences.

There are muscle pulls, aching joints and careless, iPhone-fiddling drivers who absentmindedly veer onto the shoulder where you were sure you’d be safe.

So running, I thought, was something I’d forever outgrown.

Of course, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Not two hours later, I was on the run again. And I realized just how joyful a really good run can be.

Here’s the key: A good run should never exceed 40 feet.

I was ending the class I teach early that night to chaperone the students to a journalism function featuring author John Grisham. I hadn’t told them we’d be attending and had carried on routinely as if they’d be subjected to another grinding evening of me talking about how unfairly the world’s always treating me and how if they wanted to do well in class they’d all write lavish essays telling me I’m great.

So they were thrilled when I announced a deviation from all the preening.

I mentioned the assignments and began in slow measured tones: “So let’s all head across the street to the ballroom . . . First one to the elevators drinks free all night!”

And I was off. In my mind it was like one of those nature shows where the cheetah flies through the brush. I ran 15 feet through the classroom, 20 feet down the hall, and about two feet to the elevator.

I’d won!

The act was so exhilarating I just stood there jubilant as the students came filing up. I’d beaten the field by a good 12 seconds.

My euphoria was so overwhelming that I’d forgotten to summon the elevator and we all stood there like morons for about two minutes until one girl reached out and pushed the “Down” button.

This led to a dispute over who actually won. Hard feelings were averted when we got there and realized everyone could drink free, a situation which would have made it my best class ever even if John Grisham had never said a peep.

Really, it was the greatest run of my life.

Many years ago I had some memorable runs, but they were always away from things, not towards them. I’ve run from police, begrudged girlfriends and angry men who wanted to beat me up for reasons I can no longer recall.

Self-preservation is a terrible but wise motivator for speed.

Now fresh from my hallway victory, I’m aware to how much I’m running and I’m thoroughly enjoying the activity.

Just yesterday, our 9 year old, as she is wont to do, challenged me to what she calls a “Silly Race” while we were waiting for the school bus.

Her rules involved skipping down the driveway, touching our noses to the headlights of both cars, making a rooster sound, then repeating up the other way.

She knows instinctively that, as I did with my class, it’s easier to win when you set the rules and announce an advantageous starting time like while your opponent is reading the baseball box scores.

“Ready!Set!Go!”

I was so hopelessly behind I knew I had to cheat to save face. With my recent victory fresh in my mind, I turned the burners on full.

She disputes the outcome, but I swear I won by a step. But this victory was not without a price.

Today, my tight leg muscles feel like piano strings.

In my euphoria, I’d foolishly exceeded 40 feet, a mistake I won’t make again.

To maintain my appreciation of the exertion, I’m sure the distance I run will continue to shorten.

If what I see from all the commercials aimed at men like me during the Masters golf tournament are any indication, in a few years my idea of a really good run will be making it 10 feet from the couch to the bathroom before I embarrass myself.

Whether I’ll win those distant races is a matter for another day.

Right now, I gotta run.

Tiger, tips & teeth

There is much criticism today over how the herd golf media was cowed by Tiger Woods.

Me, I’m just happy for the opportunity to describe paunchy writers who cover a pastoral game as being a cowed herd.

Of course, no one should have expected any revealing news to emerge from Tiger’s press conference.

Golf media are so timorous their idea of a tough question is asking an arthritic old caddie if the lordly Davis Love III used a 5 or a 6 iron when he dunked his approach into a pond.

And who can blame them? It’s a great gig. It’s free food and free golf at some of the most idyllic places on the planet. It’s a boat only a fool would want to rock.

Why do you think someone as lazy and unscrupulous as I engaged in golf writing from 2000-2007?

Still, I couldn’t resist the urge to play armchair golf journalist again.

I had two questions and the topics were tips and teeth.

My first question: “Tiger, your former 1,000-watt smile’s now registering only about 920. Why is your left front tooth a shade darker than the rest?”

I think that would have been an artful way of shaking some truth from him. He’s said his only injuries from the November 26 accident were a sore neck and five stitches on his lip.

There are armored tanks in war zones less safe than the $50,000 Escalade he was driving that night. He grazed a curb, a fire hydrant and a tree and wasn’t going fast enough in any of the bumps to cause the airbags to deploy.

So how did he lose the tooth? It’s a simple question.

The second question is in-directly related to the first: “Will you, a man who as recently as last year was worth nearly $1 billion, strive to become a better tipper?”


Many wise observers are saying that what happens between him and his wife is between him and his wife. True, but that ignores the universal impulse to lean closer to the open window whenever the neighbors raise their voices.

But cheapness is an affront to all mankind. I despise it.

Stories of him stiffing waiters and waitresses are legion, and I’m not talking about the parking lot kind of stiffing he gave Mindy Lawton, who earned $8 an hour slinging pancakes in the cream and green uniforms issued by Perkins.

I’m talking about how he mistreated all the women who were either hookers or underwent extensive plastic surgery to ensure everyone would think they were hookers.

Even in those tawdry sorts of encounters, the parties are entering a social contract that is loosely defined but understood by all.

He gets lots of wild sex. They, in exchange, should expect some lavish perks that go with bedding a superstar athlete on the hush.

They should get cars, jewelry, luxury rendezvous apartments in fabulous places.

It’s just understood, sort of like Elin had a right to expect some old-fashioned fidelity from her husband.

But Jessica Junger ended her affair after Tiger refused to help when she was in danger of eviction.

Lawton, the Perkins waitress, said the only thing she ever got from Woods was a chicken sandwich wrap from Subway, which might be acceptable if she’d been screwing that Jared guy. But not Tiger.

If he really wants to turn his life around, he should become a one-man stimulus package.

Me, I’m an extravagant tipper and it feels great. I recently left $5 tip for two beers and a friendly smile. The bartender rang the bar bell and yelled, “Man, you’re awesome!”

And for that moment, I was. I know most people in the hospitality industry would rather be home with their kids than out pretending my jokes are funny.

It’s such a simple gesture and it won’t break anyone, but you’ll feel great doing it and when they’re home soaking their aching feet they’ll say prayers asking God to bless people like you.

And God will.

So I’d advise Tiger to fix his marriage and stop screwing Perkins waitresses either in parking lots or with less than 20 percent gratuities. If I were him, I’d never leave less than a $100.

And, for heaven’s sake, don’t skimp when it comes to picking a dentist you rely on to get the shading of your replacement tooth just right.

Those are my tips to Tiger.

Damn, that felt good.