"Man up!" Never a good idea

Can we all agree from now on the only people allowed to say, “Man up!” are those directing pornographic films?

We live in a world historically awash in testosterone and it’s led to a world of trouble. Manned up men are already starting and fighting wars galore around the globe, running roughshod on Wall Street and the manly men who run the NFL are bent on boosting the regular season schedule from 16 to 18 games.

That’s so much testosterone coursing through our culture it’s surprising we don’t need hip waders to keep from staining our (speaking of guys who really ought to man down), Bret Favre-promoted Wrangler jeans! 

We need men to man down because men are good at causing problems, but not fixing them.

This is a tricky topic for me because I’m staunchly pro-man. All my best friends are men -- and I mean that in the manly sense and not in the gooey, “I married my best friend” sense you read about in things like RedBook, which I browse whenever I’m feeling my manliness is about to bust loose from the sanity corral.

I’m one of those men who’s spent most of his life way, way up, and I don’t mean that strictly in the four-hour Cialis side effect sense of “up.”

I mean boisterous fun.

My whole life I’ve been accepting crazy dares, raising hell and being goaded into so many bone-headed misadventures it’s amazing I’m still upright approaching 50.

I’ve wrestled alligators, jumped out of perfectly sky-worthy airplanes at 3,500 feet and had 50-pounds of concrete smashed on my chest with a sledgehammer as I lay on a bed of nails. I’ve eaten bugs for bucks, guzzled moonshine ‘til midnight and been the last man standing at raucous parties around the planet.

And some people think all writers are sissies.

To be fair, only half of those feats were “man-up” inspired challenges; the rest resulted from some National Enquirer editor asking, “Which of our brain-dead freelance writers is in most desperate need of $1,000?”

“Man up” to me implies reacting without thinking. It means to stomp on the accelerator and blow through the red light, collateral damage be damned.

Manning up inevitably leads to dumbing down. It leaves no room for tact or subtlety.

Three of the most consequential men to ever roam the earth -- Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandi and Martin Luther King Jr. -- resisted repeated calls to man up.

They loved their fellow man. They turned the other cheek.

I don’t think someone like Gandhi ever felt the need to defend his masculinity when his drunken buddies said, “Mahatma, man, don’t be a sissy. Man up and have another shot of Wild Turkey!”

Oh, would if I had Gandhi-like restraint at that challenge every time it’s been issued since I was in the fifth grade!

That all three died horrific and brutal deaths at the bloody hands of really manned up men only exalts the examples.

Contrast their accomplishments of these three historic giants to say, well, me.

I have a happy little family, in a happy little house, a bank account near zero and professional accomplishments that won’t earn any historic comparisons to the mentioned immortals.

Yet, in many traditionally manly endeavors, I could kick all three of their non-violent asses. I could out drink ‘em, out race ‘em and in a barroom rasslin’ match I could have the Son of God yelling “Uncle!”

Would that make me the better man?

No, in fact, it would probably earn me global condemnation, not to mention an express elevator straight to hell.

That and a few shots of Wild Turkey from all the manned up men who’d be impressed by my wrestling prowess over the Prince of Peace.

And I guess that would be fine with me because, alas, I’m da man.

Random thoughts on tears, guns and middle names

I’ve had this National Parks Service press release sitting on my desk since October 6. It says “Harry S Truman National Historic Site” to be profiled by the National Parks Getaway series.

Careful readers will notice what looks a typo. There is no period after the “S” in Harry S Truman.”

In fact, there is no period after the “S” in Harry S Truman.”

His middle name is S.

Er, I mean his middle name is S

It’s the kind of thing I keep on my desk for a long time hoping one day -- Eureeka! -- inspiration will strike and I’ll be able to write about why Harry Truman has a middle initial but not a middle name. Turns out it was not uncommon for people of Scotch-Irish descent, a race known, not coincidentally, for thrift.

Alas, inspiration is proving evasive. The only thing I that leaps to my mind anytime I see Harry S Truman is that it must sound like, well, hairy ass Truman.

“Here comes that hairy ass Truman.”

So since I can’t come up with a whole idea based on presidential middle names that must mean it’s time to clean up the desk of the little idea scraps that aren’t growing into anything more substantial.

Yes, it’s time for a Lazy S Blog . . .

• My wife and I just enjoyed the delightful 2009 movie “500 Days of Summer,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one of our favorite young actors. We’ve loved him ever since he played Tommy in “Third Rock from the Sun,” the 1996-2001 absurdist sitcom starring John Lithgow.

The romantic comedy has a fantasy scene about how he feels the day after he and Summer, played by the winsome Zooey Deschanel, finally have at it. To the tune of the bouncy 1984 Hall & Oates song, “You Make My Dreams Come True,” it shows him sauntering down the street to increasingly exuberant greetings. Strangers smile at him, shake his hand, chest bump, boogie down, and lift him atop their shoulders as a marching band appears to accompany the spontaneous good feeling fest. Finally, an animated blue bird lands on his shoulder and tweets a happy hello to a young man enraptured by love. We showed the clip to our 10-year-old and said, “This is what love feels like.” Can’t wait to show her the whole movie with all the dirty talk and innuendo when she’s old enough to understand it. The daddy in me hopes that won’t be until the year 2024.

• As a young reporter, I’d nearly died of boredom in thousands of school board meetings, but never of multiple gun shot wounds. The video of the scene in Florida is breathtaking. What a story. Of course, I’m waiting for the inevitable arguments about how a guy that violent, that crazy, had easy access to a semi-automatic weapon, and how it was a good thing a security guard had his lethal ventilator concealed under his jacket. I’m glad the NRA will be available to explain it all to me.

• I could write a lot about John Boehner’s blubbering, but that’s been done to death. Me, I shed a lot of tears for a lot of odd reasons, but I’d never blubber on 60 Minutes where decorum calls us all to be as stoic as Clint Eastwood at an outlaw’s hanging. Still, we should all be galled by the double standard exposed by Boehner’s maudlin tears. Nancy Pelosi would be pilloried for weeping, and any male Democrat who acted like Boehner would be lambasted by Fox as a posy-sniffing pansy.

• In the interests of healing bi-partisanship, I hope in 2011 some legislation involving abandoned puppies moves Boehner so deeply he runs to the ample lap of colleague Barney Frank and cuddles in for a good, long cry.

• This may surprise readers familiar with my lefty politics, but I like John Boehner, tears and all. He smokes and was raised by a man who ran a tavern. He strikes me as a practical, reasonable man who looks at morality crusaders like Sarah Palin and thinks, WTF? Unlike Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Rick Santorum, etc., if Boehner called me to play golf and then spend the night getting loaded and talking about the great movies that make us both cry, I’d accept.

• Clay Duke, the Florida school board shooter, is being described as a troubled, broke, ex-con with bi-polar disorder and an interest in anarchy. And I’ll bet that’s exactly what he put on the gun permit application.

 • It would be fun to see what outlandish and violent intentions you could include on a gun permit application and -- hey! here you go! -- still get a gun.

• I remain tickled by the information revealed on the stats page at my home blog. It fascinates me how many people from all over the world read my blog. After the homeland (USA! USA!), the second most readers are still in Denmark -- and I’m becoming daily more fond of the Danes. They are followed by Canada, U.K., Brazil, Russia, France and readers in more than 43 countries. Amazing. Thanks! 

• My favorite fact from the stats page? On Thanksgiving Day, four people from Turkey woke up and started reading www.EightDaysToAmish.com. If linking a day when Americans consume millions of turkeys to people who live in a country named Turkey is insulting, I apologize.

• My most faithful reader, however, may be a South Korean. The instant I post this, the page shows that someone in South Korea will start reading it with the way someone races to the mailbox for money. I know nothing about this person, but I think about them just about every time I sit down to write one of these. Thank you, my distant friend.

• I cry at the end of “Big Fish,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Mister Roberts” and during the scene where Rocky makes up with the Mick to heal his breaking heart. I’m not sure why, but I sometimes cry at the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.” Please don’t tell Leslie Stahl.

• I’m in the middle of a really nice run of stories for msnbc.com. None have been more gratifying than the reaction to the one about the Jimmy Stewart Museum needing a George Bailey moment. I don’t know how much money has been raised, but it’s likely to be enough to make a difference. Following up on my story, NBC Nightly News sent a reporter to do a nice segment that ran last week. Things like that make me feel like one day I might earn my wings.

• Maybe my fascination with middle names stems from envy. Neither my brother nor I have them. It’s true, our parents hated their middle names (Russell/Mae) so much they didn’t want to burden us with them. It’s maybe the only way these two loving people with odd aversions to perfectly normal middle names ever neglected their sons. Oh, well. It’s nothing worth crying about.

Sarah & the zombies

People lean in confidentially when they ask my opinion of the bloodthirsty monster dividing the public and causing millions of Americans to lose sleep at night.

And I’m not talking about Sarah Palin.

Yet.

Oh, I’ll get to her.

I’m talking about zombies. They are everywhere.

They are to this holiday season what Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmos were to gentler days gone by. They are red hot.

What do I think of them? I adore them. Can’t get enough of them.

It surprises even me.

One of my favorite comedies of the past five years is the uproarious “Zombieland.” The Woody Harrelson/Jesse Eisenberg movie is a bloody riot, and I mean that in both the literal and the British sense.

My wife and I have already watched it three times. It has cartoon violence, over-the-top giggles and the best Bill Murray cameo ever.

Then there is the exact reverse of that jolly satire. It’s AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

The story is one of utter dread. There are no laughs, no sly lines. Just a horrific tale of urban survival and gore galore. Its slim six-episode run just concluded last Sunday. The skimpiness of its first run meant AMC had little faith in its potential.

Guaranteed producers have in their rush to capitalize on the sensation become like zombies themselves, albeit ones who feast on sushi and not careless humans.

So, yes, I’m currently infatuated with zombies. I find myself wondering about them and how I can differentiate one from, say, my friends at the bar.

Zombies have blank expressions. Check.

They aren’t picky about their looks. Check.

They have nothing to do all day. Check.

They eat with their fingers and are confused by things like silverware. Check.

If you think I’m being unduly judgmental about the boys in the bar, you are mistaken.

I was checking on myself.

I don’t think I’m a zombie, but apparently that’ll be an option if the kitchen ever runs low on chicken wings.

So with “The Walking Dead” in production, our TV is event free on Sunday evenings.

God help me, I decided to fill an hour of programming about the walking dead with an hour of TV featuring a woman who is just so, golly gee, full of life it’s surprising someone hasn’t jammed moose entrails down her throat to get her to shut the hell up.

Honest, I was just about to write a post congratulating myself for not having mentioned Sarah Palin all year.

The stinging Aaron Sorkin blast about her killing a caribou to show her bona fides to voters who think Ted Nugent an agile-minded man of reason was, I guess, what got to me.

But the real reason I had to watch was the same reason I used to watch a professional wrestling match when two titanic villains were set to grapple.

Yes, last night it was Sarah Palin vs. Kate Gosselin.

And, let me tell you, it was better than a cage match between George “The Animal” Steel and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

The show started with Sarah shopping for guns, talking about how much she loves guns, about the many problems guns can solve and why guns give her the kind of feelings the rest of us get from watching things like E.T.

I’ve never heard her in any interview gush as much about husband Todd, although guns, even unloaded ones, certainly have more to say than he does. 

The show wound up with the Palins camping with the Gosselins. It couldn’t have been more awkward. Sarah spent the entire time rhapsodizing about the joys of Alaska and Kate kept saying, in essence, gee, I hate Alaska.

Kate looked like I must look when a Jehovah’s Witness is eager to proselytize to me during a Steeler game, only with a snazzier haircut.

Sarah’s father rudely said of mega-mom, “She did nothing but bitch as soon as she got off the plane.”

It was fascinating. Here were the two stars of second tier network doing their best to sabotage each other.

News today is that Sarah is in Haiti on what’s being called a humanitarian mission. I heard some rah-rah sound bites and can only imagine they’d edited out the part where she says the solution to all Haiti’s godforsaken problems is to relocate the entire island to suburban Wasilla.

Coincidentally, Haiti is where zombie folklore originated in 1937. You can look it up.

So it makes perfect sense to cynics like me.

She wasn’t on a mercy mission. She was campaigning.

The only people who can see her in a position of leadership any more are truly brain dead.

My new $295 dictionary

I can generally gauge the foolhardiness of any impulsive purchase by the sound my wife makes when I tell her about it.

It’s the same involuntary gasp she makes when a deer jumps out in front of her car.

When I tell her I just spent $295 for a dictionary I can’t hold, can’t own and will only be able to access for 12 months, it’ll sound like a 14-point buck just appeared three-car lengths from her front bumper.

The color will drain from her face and she’ll swear I’ve made a grave mistake, one in a long line that’ll continue to ensure my poverty.

She already considers me something of a dictionary polygamist. Besides computer spell checkers and myriad on-line freebies, I already own three dog-eared dictionaries. 

So why did I need to spend nearly $300 on a subscription to the on-line version of the Oxford English Dictionary? 

As I’ve mentioned before, my sole professional ambition is now to get one of my 58 (and counting) coined words in a reputable dictionary. 

My theory is that writing one really good word that will last an eternity will be more gratifying than writing a 75,000-word bestseller that will be yanked from the shelves in time for next summer’s beach reads.

And, geez, just do the lazy man’s math: one word versus 75,000 words.

It’s a no brainer.

There are 1,803 books that fit the description “dictionary” in the august Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh.

There are bartender dictionaries for mixologists, medical dictionaries for physicians, plant dictionaries for those with botanical bents. There’s even an “Equine Dictionary.”

Who knew horses had vocabularies so advanced they’d find themselves stumped in pastoral conversation? I imagine it would be great fun to watch frustrated ponies trying to turn pages.

But what is known as the OED is the Mt. Everest of them all. The elegant 20-volume hard cover weighs 137.72 pounds and sells for a whopping $1,165. It’s the granddaddy of all dictionaries containing the definitions to more than 600,000 words (the average person knows and uses just 5,000 words).

In just a few days it’s become the cerebral staple of my web surfing. I love sleuthing the history of unusual words, when they were formed and how their meaning has shifted over the years.

For instance, “pussyfoot” is a word that tips its hat to prohibition. Who knew? It was the nickname of W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson (1862-1945). He was a staunch prohibitionist who used underhanded -- maybe underpawed -- and behind-the-scenes methods to further his truculent and, I say, brain-dead opposition to Demon Rum. For reasons of taste, I’ll withhold comment that a man named Johnson was the inspiration for a word featuring what is now an anatomical vulgarity.

There are browse features galore, timelines and, sure, you can randomly jump to any point in the entry field. It’s web surfing for savants. I can search the 2,304 Mark Twain quotes the OED used to illustrate the meaning of words. Give it a freebie test drive at www.oed.com.

I’ve learned the word “puck” definition involving hockey is but the fourth most common historical definition listed behind “an evil, malicious or mischievous spirit or demon of popular belief” and “a cattle disease.”

Yes, the vulcanized rubber disc that is the focus of a popular winter game had four previous incarnations centuries before Don Rickles made it a catchphrase insult. 

And I can predict almost exactly what my friends in the bar will say next time I try and foist that fact on them during a break in the action.

“WTP?”

Already I’ve learned fascinating and previously unknown things about many of my favorite swear words I’ve been using since the fourth grade.

You can search the exact year words first appeared in the OED. I like that the word “boink” first appeared in 1963, the same year as I was born. But you won’t hear me  bragging that my birth year also coincided with the evident need for the word “dipshit” to be saluted with OED recognition.

I feel like I’m wading into a vast lexicographical ocean. It’s exciting. I feel enriched every time I log in with my secret handshake of a password and only hope I can retain a fraction of all I’ll learn with each fascinating search.

So, no, paying $295 to subscribe wasn’t a mistake.

Telling my wife about it, now that’ll be a mistake.

"Hey Hey Johnny," songs for dead celebs

An old friend of mine used to keep a list of people who should have been shot instead of John Lennon. It was a very long list and he tended it with a maniacal fervor.

Of course, there were men like Kim Jung Il, Idi Amin, the since decapitated Saddam Hussein and other tyrants bedeviling the planet about 25 years ago.

But there were also numerous garden variety miscreants who, I felt, certainly didn’t deserve ballistic ventilation. I remember his list included one wobbly NFL kicker for the Detroit Lions whose scattergun field goals had cost my friend a small fortune in ill-considered wagers.

It’s wrong, of course, to talk about the need for more gun violence on a day so marred by tragic gun violence, but I always think about him and his list on December 8.

I was too young to be moved by the grief tsunami that swept across the country 30 years ago this evening.

Of the Beatles, he’s probably only my third favorite behind Paul and George, which is like finishing last since who cares about Ringo (in fact, I think Ringo was on my friend’s list).

My favorite solo song of his is “Watching the Wheels,” but the rest move me very little. And I maintain all the best and most tuneful Beatle songs were Paul’s creations (“Hey Jude,” “Penny Lane,” “Yesterday,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Eleanor Rigby”).

And then there’s the whole Yoko Ono thing. We have, as a nation, watched her for more than 40 years and no one has yet to figure out what he saw in her.

Lennon’s hailed for his devotional fatherhood to Sean, but no one ever mentions how he abandoned his first family and never paid a minute’s worth attention to his first son, Julian, who released a fine album I recall from about 1985, and seems to have grown up normal despite John’s cold absence. 

Still, I’m fascinated by Lennon and understand my friend’s list wholeheartedly.

Why him?

His contributions were incomplete. It was Lennon I thought of after Paul’s recent diss of George Bush. McCartney praised Obama and hinted it was great we had a president who knew how to read.

Conservatives howled because, well, that’s what conservatives do best.

My first thought was, “You guys ought to be glad some one shot John Lennon. I wish he’d been around as we were ramping up to fight this goddamn ridiculous Iraq war. Man, he’d have been raising holy hell.”

We lost so much when we lost him -- and the music wasn’t the half of it.

That’s what I lament about his death. We lost an agitating jester.

I never let this day pass without playing the two great songs written to commemorate his death and life. They are monumental works and I still struggle to get through them without wiping tears.

The first is “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny),” written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John, who was one of Lennon’s best friends and with whom he made his last concert appearance.. 

It’s a fascinating friendship. Elton bet Lennon that if his version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” went No. 1, Lennon would have to perform at Madison Square Garden with him. It did and their lively version of, ironically, Paul’s song, “I Saw Her Standing There” is Lennon’s last live performance.

Elton performed “Empty Garden” once and couldn’t make it through. Propelled by a heartbeat rhythm, the song is so plaintive, so heart wrenching, it combines rage and grief to create something beautiful. He’s never played it again.

The other is “All Those Years Ago” by George Harrison. It’s the flip side of the Elton song.

It’s a bouncy delight about the joy he knew by being friends with John when it was just the four of them bouncing around in the van as it rolls across the English countryside. It’s the side of John Lennon even Yoko never knew.

How he wrote a song this beautiful, this euphoric, about something that had to be so devastating to him leads me to believe angels exist and they love to dance.

Here’s a short list of other worthy songs inspired by dead celebrities:

• “Candle in the Wind,” Elton John, about Marilyn Monroe. It pained me when he and Taupin re-wrote the lyrics to commemorate the death of Princess Diana. Seemed kind of cheesy. Still does.

• “American Pie,” Don McLean, about Buddy Holly and, really, the death of era. Still one of the most compelling pop songs ever and the best to over-analyze in the company of good friends and a warm bong.

• “Song for Sonny Liston,” by Mark Knopfler, about the legendary boxer. Knopfler is one of the best storytelling songwriters. This 5:07 song makes me want to read books about Liston.

• “American Roulette,” by Robbie Robertson, about James Dean, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe. Concussive beat, stinging guitars and urgent vocals make this feel like an ambulance ride to the ER after an OD.

• “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” by Drive-By Truckers, about Ronnie Van Zant, George Wallace and Bear Bryant.” Man do these guys cook. This starts at a simmer and burns to a boil. Every southern band is compared to Lynyrd Skynyrd.   It’s time to start comparing bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Drive-By Truckers.

• “Alcohol and Pills,” by Todd Snider about Hank Williams Sr., Elvis, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons and Jimi Hendrix. Another cautionary tale: “Alcohol and pills, it’s a cryin’ shame. You think that they’d have been happy with the glory and the fame. But fame don’t take away the pain. It just pays the bills. And you wind up on alcohol and pills.”

• “Family Tradition,” by Hank Williams Jr. about Hank Williams Sr. I don’t know if Hank III has updated this one, but I’d buy it. You can’t go wrong with any of the great Nashville Hanks. Dallas Wayne has a great song that describes the blueprint for a really great night. It’s meant for Senior, but could apply to any of the Williams boys: “Crack the Jack and Crank the Hank.”

Imagine the fun.

The lies we all long to hear

I had my stand-offish Sunday morning face on. I hadn’t showered and didn’t want any human interaction other than that six or so words I’d exchange with the clerk where I buy gas.

I finished pumping, crossed the parking lot and pulled open the door to the local Sheetz convenient mart.

It was like I walked into a one-man surprise party and I was the guest of honor.

“Bill! Hey, Bill! Man, is it good to see you!”

I looked around. I was all alone. I was Bill.

Now careful readers of this blog know I am not Bill and have never pretended to be Bill.

But the elderly stranger who thought I was Bill was thrilled to see someone he was convinced was Bill.

He was probably in his late 60s. He had a very kind face that was enlivened by seeing what he thought was an old friend. He had his fist salute extended and was waiting for me to bump knuckles.

I realized I was in a common social predicament. He’d confused me with a good friend.

He looked coherent, but who knows? Maybe he was one of our numerous village idiots. I’m friends with most of them, but they are accumulating like snow these days and it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

What was I to do?

I raised my fist, gave him my warmest buddy-buddy greeting and said, “Hey, how the hell you been! You look great!”

And he did. He looked like I look when I’m driving down the road and hear John Fogerty and Creedance singing, “Doo! Doo! Doo! Looking out my backdoor!”

He was delighted.

My still-slumbering mind was racing through dozens of calculations. What was the risk here? Should I let him down gently or play along? What if the real Bill walked in?

You can converse with a stranger for about 90 seconds of generic conversation involving some form of the question, how are you?

Then the gentleman upped the ante. He wanted to know how Bonnie was doing.

We’d reached a turning point. I was left with a choice of either backing down and, perhaps, ruining the splendid start to his day or pushing another stack of lies to the center of the table.

“She’s great! Just finished all her Christmas shopping. Her mom slipped on the snow last week, but she’ll be all right.”

He was sorry to hear that. He asked me how work was going, allowing me the opportunity to venture into a rare burst of honesty.

“It’s been slow, but things are turning around. I’m optimistic better days are on the way.”

The guy at the counter was buying lottery tickets and the other clerk was fetching change. My high-wire act couldn’t endure forever. C’mon, let’s get those registers ringing.

“And how about Mark? How’s he doing?”

He was a family guy so I figured Mark was my son. I know kids today have their problems, but it was the holidays. I wasn’t going to ruin his day by telling him Mark’s in rehab.

“He’s great. He’s up at Clarion University. He wants to be a veterinarian.”

This pleased him. He had fond memories of Mark.

The guy at the counter was putting his change in his wallet and I was hoping Bonnie and I didn’t have any more kids.

Finally, it was his turn to pay just as the other clerk stepped up. At just about the same time, we both realized our little holiday was over. We looked each other in the eye and put our right arms around the other’s left shoulders for brief man hugs.

It was a beautiful moment.

We wished each other a Merry Christmas and I told him I’d be sure to tell Bonnie he’d said hello.

It reminded me of the final scene of the great 1995 movie “Smoke,” in which the Harvey Keitel character tells the William Hurt character about an encounter he had with an elderly blind woman who thought he was her nephew. He wound up staying for dinner. Hurt thinks he made it all up, but as the credits role they show the scene he recalled as the Tom Waits’s song, “Innocent When You Dream” plays.

It’s magnificent.

I thought about the right and wrong of what I’d done as I drove home. I’d told a slew of lies to a kind-hearted gentleman who may one day wind up very confused next time he sees Bill or Bonnie out getting gas.

But I think my bigger sin was not the lies. It was the size of them.

They were all too small.

I should have told him our bowling team won the league championship, that Bonnie had a book of poems published, her mom had won the state lottery and that Mark was studying to be an astronaut.

I should have told him they’d discovered a cure for cancer, the wars were all over and they’d discovered a way to fax leftovers to the hungry.

I should have told him that this Christmas everything was going to be all right.

Because, really, that’s what he wanted Bill to tell him. It’s what we all want to hear.

I hope even a fraction of all that happens.

And I hope Bill, Bonnie and Mark have a wonderful Christmas and Mark doesn’t ruin the holiday by drinking too much.

Bah! Humbug! to bah humbug II

One of our most popular lies is, “I hate to say I told you so, but . . .”

Saying I told you so, is one of life’s great joys. It doesn’t matter whether it involves lost wagers, misguided presidential votes or failing marriages, telling a buddy you were right and they weren’t is a glorious moment.

I was thinking about that as I pondered the lie, “I hate to spring a blog rerun on my readers, but . . .”

Why would I feel bad about rerunning something seasonal from a year ago when my whole being is focused on dashing off to Happy Hour?

It’s not like someone’s going to call the blog police and have them revoke my license to blog. It couldn’t possibly lead a blog pay cut.

And does anyone even remember the original? Probably not. If they did, they might enjoy the reminder. I still watch the “Seinfeld” episode where Kramer and George set up a photo shoot to entice a comely blonde George met at the photo shop. I’ll always watch it.

Plus, I believe the following idea is akin to a public service announcement. It bears repeating several times each Christmas season until the misunderstanding if vanquished. In that regard, maybe I should rerun it two or three more times before Christmas.

Maybe I’ll do just that

So I guess I don’t feel bad about the rerun and I’d be lying if I said I did.

You want to know the truth?

I hope you have a great weekend!

On U2’s 1988 album, “Rattle and Hum,” singer Bono intros “Helter Skelter” by saying, “This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.”

Well, in 1843 Charles Dickens stole the word “humbug” from proper usage.

I’m stealing it back.

Contrary to seasonal custom, humbug has more to do with WMD, the Salahis and Bernie Madoff than it has to do with a dyspeptic dislike for Christmas.

In today’s tabloid saturated age of cheating golfers, straying politicians and silicone saturated Botox Barbies draped like tawdry tinsel across every front page, true American humbug reigns all year long.

Let’s start with the American Heritage Dictionary which defines humbug as: “1. A hoax, fake; 2. an impostor or charlatan; 3. Nonsense, rubbish.”

Of course, our dictionaries are compiled by -- and I’m making what may be a wild and unfair assumption here -- pointy-headed dorks whose cloistered existences allow no popular culture references to illuminate the inner walls of their ivory towers.

And pop culture is from whence the power of the humbug misusage stems.

“Bah Humbug” is the pejorative phrase most associated with our most powerful story of Christmas redemption. It first appears on the third page of “A Christmas Carol.” Here’s the passage (and note the exclamatory punctuation that deliberately separates what’s morphed into a non-sensical run-on phrase):

“A merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

“Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!”

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

“Christmas, a humbug, Uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

Clearly, he’s referring in two distinct declarations that the idea of a happy holiday is an excessive hoax or fraud.

As the book progresses, each subsequent reference to humbuggery refers, not to seasonal Christmas elements, but to something that might be cooked up by the likes of  Penn & Teller.

When apparitions of old Marley’s head replace those of Biblical figures depicted on artistic fire place tiles, Scrooge exclaims, “Humbug!”

Inexplicable banging from down the stairs? “It’s humbug still! I won’t believe it.”

As Marley’s ghost begins to diminish into the ether, Dickens writes, “He tried to say ‘Humbug!’ but stopped at the first syllable.”

In fact, the misappropriation of the term must be infuriating to an egotistical Dickens contemporary who so reveled in the joy of artful humbug that he in his 1855 autobiography called himself “The Prince of the Humbugs.”

That would be P.T. Barnum.

The satirical fingerprints of America’s most authentic impresario are today on every reality TV program and tabloid news story.

Here’s some humbug, American-style.

Barnum enjoyed his first commercial success in 1835 by purchasing for $1,000 an elderly slave woman named Joice Heth, who he claimed to be the 161-year-old nurse to George Washington. Paying audiences sat in rapt attention as the blind, toothless and withered ancient spun religious and patriotic tales about being the de facto mother to the father of the country.

Days after her February 1836 demise, Barnum allowed newspaper skeptics to autopsy her brittle remains. Hired medical examiners cried fraud and said, humbug, she wasn’t a day over 80. Barnum then fueled the uproar by releasing a story to publisher James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald that said the autopsy was a fake and that the real Heth, now pushing 162 years old, was alive and well (and still drawing huge crowds) in Connecticut.

He then offered a third “real” story: that he’d found Heth in Kentucky, yanked all her teeth, taught her baby Gen. Washington anecdotes and that he’d capriciously increased her age by 10 years along the tour until she’d finally hit 161.

Barnum scholar Terence Whalen writes: “Every true story is rendered false by a succeeding explanation, and ultimately the various explanatory links seem to merge into a great chain of humbug.”

Even the straw-noggined Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz” gets it right. When the Wizard is revealed to be a shameless charlatan, Dorothy’s outraged friend sputters the most contemptible insult he can muster.

“Why you! . . . You! . . . You humbug!”

If the most famously brainless character in pop history can get it right, how come the rest of us can not?

Today we are besieged by humbug and the moralists decry the decay is eating away at the soul of America’s character.

To that, I say, “Bah! Uh, hogwash!”

Roll the punches, America. The hyperbole is a uniquely American phenomenon. Sit back and savor all the silliness.

And may each of you enjoy a warm and Happy Humbug this Christmas and all year long.