Turn the page: A Bob Seger salute

Right now, guaranteed, some kid in a coffee shop is trying to update the classic 1973 Bob Seger song, “Turn the Page,” for the Kindle crowd.

Perhaps he’ll call it “Swipe the Screen.”

And for that he should be summarily executed.

I was listening to the great live version of “Turn the Page” the other day and it dawned on me that some day young rockers of taste may wonder just what that phrase meant.

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha,

You can listen the engine moaning out as one long song

You can think about the woman, or the girl you knew the night before

But your thoughts will soon be wandering the way they always do

When you’re ridin’ 16 hours and there’s nothing much to do

And you don’t feel much like ridin’, you just wish the trip was through

The thought that page-turning books are doomed to become anachronisms must mortify Seger, 65, who, now that the Beatles have gone digital, remains one of the last major artists refusing to bow to iTunes. If you want a Seger CD, you have to buy a Seger CD, a notion so quaint it practically wears doilies.

I can’t speak for Seger -- heck, I can’t even speak to Seger -- but I’ll bet he thinks the process of downloading things you’re intended to love is similar to phone sex.

The end result is the same, but the essential emotion is missing.

After the quickie transaction, the only thing left behind to hold is a cheap receipt for your wife to find and use to forever ridicule and humiliate you until you feel eternal shame for your tawdry actions.

Or so I’m told.

Here I am, on the road again

There I am, up on the stage

Here I go, playing the star again

There I go

Turn the page

I’m betting Seger doesn’t own a Kindle.

It’s another hefty weight on the scale lurching toward the side I’ll likely never own one either.

I love my iPod, its portability and the way I can play any of the thousands of songs that for that moment mirror my mood.

But I feel a tiny jolt of euphoria whenever I buy a book. It’s the same feeling I got when I bought “Night Moves” in 1976. I loved holding it, smelling it, reading the liner notes and imagining myself with hippie hair like Seger and the all boys from the Silver Bullet Band had.

But books, actual books, mean even more to me. I love being in an airport and having a promiscuous stranger comment about a shared interest in a Tony Horwitz or a Michael Perry book.

And I love my library. I have more than 300 books I’ve purchased and read over the past 25 years. I love going back and referring to something I learned or something that meant so much to me.

I love lending them out to friends, even the ones who never give them back.

Well, you walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road

And you feel the eyes upon you as you’re shaking off the cold

You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to explode

Most times you can hear ‘em talk, other times you can’t

All those same old cliches, is that a woman or a man?

And you always seem outnumbered, you don’t dare make a stand

(repeat chorus)

Like many music lovers, I usually fail to list Seger as one of my all-time favorites. It’s a criminal oversight.

His is a towering musical legacy. His peak pop years (roughly 1975-1988) match up as well as Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen for musical muscle and enduring catchiness.

I so admired his 1995 decision to walk away from music to just loaf and raise a family that I did the exact same thing -- even though, at the time, it was five years before I even had a family.

Seger’s return album, his most recent, was “Face the Promise” from 2006. It’s a credible effort, but I hunger for more depth and nuance.

I’d like to see producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin come in and do a stripped-down Seger the way he did with another legend, Johnny Cash. Seger was writing outstanding weary songs about aging (“Against The Wind,” “Like a Rock”) when he was in his late 30s and early 40s. I’d love to hear his musings on aging as he becomes vintage.

Out there in the spotlight you’re a million miles away

Every ounce of energy, you try to give away

As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play

Later in the evening as you lie awake in bed

With the echoes from the amplifiers ringing in your head

You smoke the day’s last cigarette, remembering what you said

(repeat chorus two more times with increasing menace)

And I think I know why he does not.

It’s pride. He doesn’t want to dilute one of the most outstanding catalogues of authentic American music.

So instead of berating readers with any more thoughts about Kindle and the inevitable trudge of technological intrusions, I’m going to finish the week by saluteing Seger and some my favorite songs of this great American rocker who now seems content to spend most of his time in what I guess is a different kind of great American rocker.

If you’re not interested, then feel free to just go about your web browsing.

Go ahead, turn the page . . .

Damn those nasty anachronisms!

• “Rock ‘n’ Roll Never Forgets,” 1978 -- So I’m a little bit older and a lot less bolder than I used to be. So? This one will get my heart hammering when I’m a toothless relic at the Sunny Rest Retirement Home. It’s his homage to his hero, Chuck Berry: “All Chuck’s children are out there playin’ his licks! So come back, baby, rock ‘n’ roll never forgets!”

• “Sunspot Baby,” 1976 -- I often start pointless bar arguments saying this is one of the three greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever written (the arbitrary others are “I Saw Her Standing There” and the deliciously filthy “Star Star” by the Rolling Stones). It’s just nonsense because it might not even be one of Seger’s three best. But every time I hear this song -- and I hear it all the time -- I think, man, I’m right on the money about that one.

• “Roll Me Away,” 1982 -- This song about a romantic tramp who runs away with a drunken motorcyclist is my wife’s favorite. It’s also the reason I never let Val out of my sight whenever we go into a biker bar.

• “Still the Same,” 1977 -- The lyrics are enigmatic. I can’t tell if it’s about a gambler, a lover or a destititue brother. Doesn’t matter. The dude’s no damn good. Yet the singer feels resigned to steadfastness. Feels to me like the kind of human hangover we all have in our lives.

• “The Fire Inside,” 1988 -- A percussive beat, pounding piano and Seger’s urgent growl make this the best Seger song most people have never heard. I’d advise you to download it, but Seger won’t let me.

• Against the Wind,” 1980 -- I don’t know whether I was wise when I was 17 and first heard this masterpiece or if being exposed to songs like this at 17 made me wise, but I knew even then exactly what he was talking about: This living ain’t for sissies. “Wish I didn’t know now, what I didn’t know then.” What magnificent poignancy.

• “Feel Like a Number,” 1978 -- Still makes me yearn to form a federated brother/sisterhood of underemployed bloggers and freelance writers just so we could sing this one at all the rowdy union meetings.

• “The Ring,” 1986 -- I think for any songwriter to be truly great, they must have an empathetic feel for how a woman thinks. I doubt any woman -- or man -- in an unfulfilling and empty marriage could write a better song about matrimonial desolation than this. Unhappy people listen at your own risk.

• “American Storm,” 1986 -- Bruce Springsteen is justifiably known for his songs about America. I think his best is “This Hard Land.” I think Seger’s “American Storm” is better.

• Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll,” 1977 -- This was the second most played song in the history of jukeboxes, behind only Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” Its iconic status was cemented in 1983 when Tom Cruise danced to it in “Risky Business,” thus Tom Cruises’s finest moment was one of Seger’s.

Read this then go straight to sleep

Many fine Americans are eager to stand up and fight against perceived flaws they believe are harming the nation.

Me, I’m about to lay down and nap over one.

The stigma against sleep is costing America. No one is getting enough of it. It’s obvious in our stress, our productivity and our spiraling ethics.

Well-rested people aren’t prone to violence, sloth or felonious business practices.

We should be inviting sleep, not fighting it. If sleep beckons, we should obey, the exception being people like train conductors and airline pilots.

We’ve all heard hyper-productive Type-A busybodies brag about needing just four hours of sleep per night, but you never hear anyone bragging they enjoy 10 hours of sleep each night.

My nights are interrupted by two tiny sleep bandits, woodsy creature noises and the nervous yipping of a dog with a BB-sized bladder capacity.

I’m on a quest to get everybody under my roof to go to bed two hours earlier and get up two hours later.

The kids would be asleep by 8 and would wake up at 9. Sure, Josie would miss her first hour of fourth grade, but nothing important happens in school until 10 -- and I don’t mean 10 a.m.

I mean 10th grade.

My wife and I would be undercovers by 9:30 p.m. and up at 8:30 a.m.

Doesn’t that sleep schedule strike you as nirvana?

It does me.

Not Val. She got mad at me recently for dozing off at 9:30 in our bed after reading to one of the kids and just, ahhh, staying there like a sedated mental patient clear through the next morning.

For the first time in months, I reached the most hallowed state of sleep. Yes, I hit pillow puddlin’ slobber sleep.

In sleep terms, that’s like bowling a 300.

To her, it seemed like a waste of time. She thinks we should stay awake so long we become actual zombies so we can enjoy adult shows about things like fictional zombies.

In an ideal world -- and in any ideal world, there are no children -- we’d have about an hour of bedtime unwinding, reading, TV or couple cuddlin’ from 9 to 10 p.m. each and every night.

But years ago we made the cheap-skate mistake of not getting a DVR for our bedroom.

Without the bedroom DVR, we are forced to stay awake in the living room long enough execute a series of maneuvers similar to what happens in far flung U.S. Army outposts around the globe.

We need to secure the fireplace, check the perimeter and do a quick head count before finally getting to bed at 11 sharp in time to watch a 1996 episode of “Seinfeld” we’ve only seen 114 times before.

It’s so bad it took us four nights to watch one 2 hour, 45 minute movie. We’d recorded the outstanding 1959 Alfred Hitchcock movie, “Anatomy of a Murder,” starring Jimmy Stewart.

We both kept falling asleep during key segments and would spend breakfast trying to unravel plot lines and determine if we’d spied the Hitchcock cameo he so cleverly asserts into each of his films.

It wasn’t until the movie finally concluded we realized it would have been Hitchcock’s most clever cameo ever.

Because in our sleep deprived state, neither of us ever realized it was an Otto Preminger movie.

Everything would improve if we got more sleep.

Our families would have less time to bicker. We’d all get more done in less time. 

Me, I’d have time to dream up better story ideas and, thus, would start receiving a better class of rejection letters from more prominent sleep-deprived editors.

Sleeplessness is often confused with physical virtuosity. It’s a quality we’ve always sought in our elected leaders and a keystone critique of those right now tromping around desolate Iowa.

It should be the other way around. 

So wake up, America!

And go right back to bed.

We’ll all be better off.

From sea to shining zzzzzzzzz . . . .

"Go Steelers!" & recent tweets

I was making phone small talk with an interview subject in Minnesota the other day. He said, alas, the Vikings stunk this year and good-naturedly concluded, “Oh, well, you can’t be good every year.”

I risked professional good will and retorted, “We can in Pittsburgh!”

It’s true. We’re about to play the New York Jets Sunday in what will be our 15th AFC Championship game since the leagues merged in 1970.

That’s astounding. I’ve been to nine of them. In that same span, the Steelers are an unprecedented 6-1 in Super Bowls. 

This will be Pittsburgh’s fifth AFC Championship game in 10 years. Only the New England Patriots have done better, winning three Super Bowls.

But we can’t forget: they cheated. And admitted to it.

So I’m really excited about Sunday’s game and, in fact, about all the remaining teams. It’s a great and historic line-up of traditional teams. The Chicago Bears playing the Green Bay Packers is a monumental rivalry and Sunday marks the first time the two teams have met to go to the Super Bowl in 182 games.

The Jets have only won one Super Bowl, but everyone has to be impressed with what they’ve done to get to the championship round. 

Plus, all four teams hail from cold-weather cities. That’s important because northern winters can be so nasty and our lives so meaningless and devoid of things like Speedos and beach volleyball, we need competitive football to get us through to spring.

It’s one of those short, busy weeks so I’m going to stop now.

But as I don’t want to short-change anyone who is counting on www.EightDaysToAmish.com to burn off at least four minutes of company time, I feel obliged to throw in an assortment of random thoughts and recent tweets.

Here ya go . . .

• The fact that only 70 people have signed up to follow my tweets @8days2amish doesn’t bother me a bit. For me, twitter is just a handy farm team for little lines that one day might grow up into full blog posts. For instance, it won’t happen with this next tweet, but it might with the one after.

• “I saw a man wearing a musical bellows on his chest during a recent chilly morning. He was dressed accordioningly.”

• “He was a great man, but does JP II really deserve sainthood? What'd he do besides act really popey?”

• Remember Andrew Gold? I heard his 1978 song “Thank You for Being a Friend” on satellite radio the other day. It reminded me of another one of his, “Lonely Boy.” I downloaded both of these tuneful songs and am delighted to have them in heavy rotation again. He was a rare two-hit wonder.

• “I nearly made the bad taste mistake in referring to the healing Gabby Giffords as "open-minded." Instead, wisely chose to use "even-handed.”

• “Soon, ‘dodged a bullet’ won't be a quaint phrase about evading a challenge, it'll be the answer to the question, ‘So, what'd you do today?’"

• “The sun, nearly 109 times the size of earth, is nothing but a big old space heater.”

• “It's unlikely to happen, but for reasons of proper English I'm urging all gardeners to begin describing themselves as petalphiles.”

• “Just once I'd like to hear news reports of a man being slain by a blunt instrument and learn the weapon was a tuba.”

• “New census says there are 308 million Americans. That means there should be at least 308 million-to-1 shots each and every day.”

• “There ought to be hangover parking just a few stalls down from handicapped parking. And there ought to be vendor selling Bloody Marys.”

• Feel free to visit here if you’re interested in reading my msnbc.com story about my quest to find the original, famous Ray’s Pizza in New York.

• Pittsburgh rapper Kellee Maize asked me to share with my readers her YouTube rap “City of Champions.” She somehow thinks mentioning her song on a blog with the word “Amish” in the title will somehow lead to notice I think she deserves. Poor kid. Still, I whole-heartedly recommend it. She’s all black ‘n’ gold ‘n’ blonde and I root for anyone who roots for the Steelers. And the video’s a love letter to great views of Pittsburgh.

• I thought about just cutting ‘n’ pasting the Ray’s Pizza story and passing it off as a blog post, something that would count against the 12 posts-a-month to which I aspire every lunar cycle. But I thought that would be cheating.

• Sort of like this tweet post only not as blatant.

I've forgiven Ben Roethlisberger

“Good afternoon, Pittsburgh Steelers offices.”

Hi. Can I ask you some oddball questions?

“Sure! Go ahead.”

I’m trying to find out how many fans turned in their Ben Roethlisberger jerseys last summer when he had his personal trouble down in Georgia.

“I really don’t know.”

Well, was it dozens? Hundreds?

“I don’t know. That didn’t pertain to me.”

What happened to them?

“I don’t know. I believe they were donated. Why do you ask?”

Well, I turned mine in along with a letter to Art Rooney saying Roethlisberger had disgraced the team with his sexual assault in Georgia.

“Yes?”

And now I’d like to get the jersey back.

“You what?”

I’d like to have my Ben Roethlisberger jersey back in time for Saturday’s playoff game.

“You want it back?”

Exactly.

“Well, I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. They didn’t keep the jerseys. Thank you and goodbye.”

Will the Steelers replace the one I turned in?

“No. Goodbye.”

Of course, I knew the jersey I so sanctimoniously turned in to the Steeler headquarters last April was gone.

But I thought it would be fun to give the Steeler receptionist something to talk about when someone asked her how her day went.

Really, I’m surprised some lunatic fan hasn’t done that for real. There is no limit to excessive fan behavior and with the rival Baltimore Ravens in town things are at fever pitch here in the ‘burgh.

I don’t want his jersey back, but being a lunatic fan during playoff time I do have an announcement to make:

I forgive Ben. 

This is important because I consider myself a moral arbiter about all that’s right and good concerning the Steelers, Pittsburgh and, really, whatever else is going on in the universe.

It’s just what nosey guys like me do. It’s a pity the gig doesn’t pay squat.

But when a 20-year-old college student accused Ben of recreational rape in a club bathroom, I was outraged. Then came all the stories, ones we in Pittsburgh had heard for years, that he was just a total jerk.

He was never charged, everyone involved was drunk and no jury in the world would have convicted him, according to the country prosecutor who still gave him a good scolding.

I wrote that we needed to dump him, that Pittsburgh and the Rooney family needed to hold our players to a higher standard.

I still believe that.

And from everything I’ve heard, Ben is now living up to that standard so rarely applied in professional sports. Local reporters, many of whom are friends of mine, recently awarded him The Chief Award, named after beloved Steeler founder Art Rooney Sr.

The good-guy award goes to the player who is most cooperative with the press. For him, it’s a dramatic turnabout and an indication that his efforts to change are sincere.

I know a guy, too, who attends church with Roethlisberger. Of course, it’s difficult for anyone to seem like a jerk in a church pew, but my friend says he’s been a friendly and welcome addition to the congregation.

That’s all good.

For me, the tricky part is how would me and other forgiving fans feel if he was playing lousy.

Yes, he’s been great. We are a society that overlooks a lot of flaws if they come with a lot of wins.

I don’t think that’s entering into my thinking.

But I’m a big second chance guy. I was very happy to see Michael Vick emerge from a long prison sentence for dog fighting and to have a fantastic year.

I love to see guys like him turn their lives around. It’s why what happens to Ebenezer Scrooge will always resonate.

So Ben seems to have made the most of his second chance.

I won’t rush out and buy another Ben jersey and am relieved the receptionist at the Steeler HQ didn’t call my bluff and tell me to come on down and pick one up.

But as we’re nearing kickoff, I can feel comfortable about rooting for Ben.

I guess I’m like a lot of people in Pittsburgh.

We want our Steelers to kick ass, not prowl around in dingy bathrooms trying to snag pieces of it.

I say nice things about Republicans

It’s a measure of President Obama’s humility that he won’t reveal the healing role he played during his visit to Gabby Giffords.

And being a partisan Democrat, I can’t help but wonder what miracles would stem from a Bill Clinton visit.

If Obama can restore vision to traumatic head shot victims (well, sort of), then certainly the sight of Clinton sauntering into intensive care would cause the ladies to spring out of their hospital beds to start applying party make-up.

Say what you want about his politics, but the man’s got charisma.

It’s been five days since the tree of liberty was refreshed by the blood of patriots. Anyone feeling better about it yet?

I have to think that’s one gem Thomas Jefferson wishes he could take back. I can’t imagine he meant the bloodletting to apply to someone like Giffords.

Could she be a more becoming patriot? No fair-minded observer would describe her as tyrannical (the full Jefferson quote applying to blood from both patriots and tyrants).

She is beloved for being collegial, intelligent and even-handed about difficult issues. Sure, she may have favored prudent health care reform, but she was married to an astronaut. That’s so cool.

Is she the kind of patriot to whom Jefferson was referring?

Was 9-year-old Christina Green?

If I may be so bold, I’d like to edit Jefferson to something more in tune with common sensibilities.

It should read: “The tree of liberty is magnificent to behold in all seasons, but it looks best when patriots of all political persuasions come together to nurture it and hang red, white & blue bird feeders from its majestic boughs.”

There! Now, isn’t that better?

Being a liberal I’m, of course, politically correct. Words matter. 

They matter when you’re talking about patriotic bloodlettings, Second Amendment solutions, and emphasizing the need to re-load rather than retreat.

And I hope the ones that matter most are the eloquent ones President Obama spoke in Tucson.

Our 10-year-old daughter had heard vague details about the shootings over the PA system at school. That pleased me. In football terms, the principal there called an audible. He decided on the fly the event was relevant enough to turn into a mini-civics lesson.

Bravo.

I didn’t want her to see the footage of the mayhem, or the demonic pictures of the madman. I didn’t see that doing her any good.

But I wanted her to see how we grieved.

“America suffered a tragedy on Saturday,” I said. “I want you to watch how America heals.”

It couldn’t have been more moving.

From the native American invocation and the steely poise of intern Daniel Hernandez to Obama’s stirring speech, it’s something I’ll never forget.

Of course, it means nothing if we don’t act on his admonition to care more for one another, to civilize our rhetoric and elevate the political discourse.

Let it begin with me.

I’m going to say a bunch of nice things about prominent Republicans I used to blast for knee-jerk reasons.

Because I’m so new at this, please forgive me if some of it sounds sarcastic.

Here goes:

• George W. Bush! -- He was the right man for the right time on 9/11. I felt exactly the way I do now about Obama’s speech in Tucson as I did when Bush spoke after 9/11. The people who know him best all love him. He’s raised two beautiful and vivacious daughters. He loves baseball. He presided over the presidency during extraordinarily difficult times and he didn’t let it defeat himself or the country he loves. He enjoys a good laugh and isn’t one of those childish sorts who can’t laugh at himself. He doesn’t hold petty grudges. His post-presidential years will be dignified and free of taint. He’s at peace with his actions and is deserving of the happy respite he so enjoys in the Texas he loves.

• Dan Quayle! -- In 2003, I wrote a book called “Hole in One! The Complete Book of Fact, Legend and Lore of Golf’s Luckiest Shot.” The New York Times cited it in 2009 as the Bible on the topic. If The Times says my book is The Bible about holes-in-one, then I can rightly declare I’ve written a holey book. I interviewed dozens of celebrities about their golfing perfection. Quayle was one of the nicest. We talked for about 45 minutes and he couldn’t have been friendlier. He was such a good sport he didn’t even mind when I asked him about his wife Marilyn’s saucy response when someone asked her about reports he’d had an affair while on a golf trip (“Anyone who knows Dan knows he’s much more interested in golfing than sex.”) He just laughed and said she was mad when she said it. He’d had two aces though 2003 and I hope he gets a bunch more.

• Tom DeLay! -- The man’s got balls. Even while under indictment for the crime of which he was just convicted and sentenced to three years, he still went on “Dancing With The Stars” and whooped it up. And before he went into politics, I hear he was a fine exterminator.

• Newt Gingrich! -- He has a true and abiding love for animals, zoos and history. He’s a thrice-married man who still has the buoyant audacity to court family values voters. Did you know he’s a Pennsylvania native? Go Keystone State!

• Rush Limbaugh! -- He loves golf and smoke cigars. He’s indifferent to what people think about him. He had Elton John sing at his recent fourth wedding. When National Enquirer busted him for drug addiction in 2003, he didn’t weasel out and call them a bunch of liars. He said, yup, you got me, thus another monumental victory for tabloid journalism.

• Dick Cheney! -- Now, this is getting tough. Okay. When he shot that guy -- anniversary alert! -- five years ago February 11, he didn’t let his instincts get the better of him and just go finish the poor bastard off.

• Sarah Palin! -- Uh, Sarah Palin! . . . Sarah Palin? . . . Hmmm . . . Okay . . . Sarah Palin is wonderfully childlike in her approach to complicated problems!

That’s enough for now.

President Obama said we needed to start being nicer to one another.

He didn’t say it was always going to be easy.

Imagining a planet at peace

First of all, there’d be no more talk radio. Everyone would have to raise their hands and be recognized before they spoke.

We’d all make eye contact with one another as we strolled down the sidewalks. We’d give little, “Hey, you hang in there” nods of encouragement to everyone we came across to let each other know we’re all in this together.

If we saw someone driving like a maniac, instead of getting enraged at the reckless incivility, we’d all pull over assuming the driver was on the way to the hospital to help deliver triplets.

And that’s exactly what he’d be doing.

Baseball would be more popular.

I woke up today with an impulse to join the shrill fray and give my redundant opinions on who’s to blame, what should be done, and how anyone with any sense saw this tragedy coming.

But the thought fatigues. Like everyone else who opines -- and there’ll be a lot less opining on a peaceful planet -- I’ve already done plenty of that.

I’ve written about the problems with solutions ranging from the silly to the serious.

So I just wondered when any of us is ever going to get a break and just what that would be like.

The only ones who felt obliged to work more than seven months a year would be the ones running all the ice cream stands.

There’d be a lot more hammocks and time to enjoy them.

We’d all play a lot more golf on courses that never got too crowded and never cost more than $29. And when we were done we’d sit and laugh and joke for hours on pleasant porches and still make it home in time for dinner with families that never fight.

We’d read more and instead of talking about politics, we’d talk about the books we enjoyed.

TVs would still be big and hi-def, but there’d only about 40 channels.

Being liked and respected by the dozens of people who really know you would mean more than being famous to millions who don’t.

We’d play more games involving processed wood than games involving batteries and LED screens. All the best games -- chess, checkers, Jenga, Scrabble, blocks -- never need recharging.

We’d be more tolerant of the harmless eccentrics and we’d all agree it’s best that the real crazies shouldn’t be allowed to purchase deadly weapons with fewer restrictions than sane people face purchasing a keg of beer.

And little 9-year-old girls born on days renown for tragedy would grow up to do things so heroic and magnificent we’d all sit around and wonder at the irony that a girl born on September 11, 2001, was part of a generation that ushered in an era of peace on a planet that had been forever riven by violence.

I saw John Green, father of Christina Green, today talking about the death of his daughter. He spoke of his devastation and then surprised me by saying, “It shouldn’t happen in this country or anywhere else, but in a free society, we are going to be subjected to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.”

It’s a stunning, oh, well, reaction to a loss from which he’ll likely never recover.

He’s saying we are all consigned to live in a violent world overrun by the senseless slaughter of innocents. It’s been that way since just after Eden and that’s the way it’ll always be.

But it won’t be that way in a peaceful world. There won’t be traffic, bedbugs, hunger, despair, loneliness or madmen bent on murder. There won’t be evil, there won’t be heartache and there won’t be tears.

So I guess in a truly peaceful world the biggest difference is there won’t be people.

Of course, the grief-stricken father’s correct. It’s never going to get any better.

We just have to hope it does.

Warning: My first adult content post!

It’s about 12-degrees out right now and I’m thinking about having sex on the sunny beaches of Cebu in the Philippines.

Not right now.

I’m thinking about 500 years ago.

Regular readers of this blog know how fond I am of accounts of the godforsaken sailors of the age of discovery.

It’s almost unimaginable the hardships these brave souls endured. They took to rinky-dink sailboats in the 16th century to explore a world as distant and unknowing to them as the planet Pluto is to us.

They dealt with utter isolation, disease, and brutal death at the hands of tyrannical captains, violent storms, predatory sea creatures, war-like natives and even shipmates so overwrought with hunger that eating one another was always an option.

Why these grim histories so appeal to me, I do not know.

Perhaps it’s because, as a lonely blogger, I feel a sort of kinship.

I’m all alone in this tiny office for six hours. If it wasn’t for this cellphone, sketchy internet connection and a nearby bar full of convivial inebriates, the isolation would likely drive me insane.

Sometimes I console myself by thinking, hey, at least you’re not on board the Essex, a ship that in 1819 was destroyed by an enraged sperm whale leaving 20 men in three lifeboats where, one by one, they began to consume the next weakest boat mate. Only eight survived.

It puts it all in perspective, not to mention makes me happy I don’t have a cannibalistic office mate blocking my escape to the Happy Hour.

So now I’m reading Laurence Bergreen’s outstanding 2003 book, “Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe.”

And the book delivers. Magellan’s coming across as a messianic despot who from 1519-1521 tortured mutineers, slaughtered perfectly inoffensive natives for petty reasons and drove many of his scurvy-racked crew to death in his quest for spices, riches and new lands to be claimed in the name of Spain’s rapacious King Charles.

Why, besides often illusory riches, would men volunteer for this kind of duty?

Well, one reason is what I used to hear some straying men call “strange.”

Strange in this case were the natives on the tropical paradise of Cebu in the Philippines.

And what was going on with these natives is as strange a sexual practice as I’ve ever heard.

Now, I’m no kid. I’ve been having sex for as long and as often as willing women have let me. I’ve written about deviates for deviates at both Maxim and Playboy magazines. I’ve fathered two children so I know what goes where. And I still enjoy what’s best called meat and potatoes sex with my comely wife.

And meat and potatoes in this case isn’t a metaphor for carnal relations atop the dining room table. It just means basic sex.

It’s good for me and I know it’s good for my wife. She never fails to express her satisfaction by saying, “There, NOW will you re-tile the bathroom floor?”

Still, I’m forever curious about how others get their jollies so I never prudishly turn away. On the contrary, I often press my nose right up against the glass until the steam from my heavy breathing obscures the view.

Then I close my eyes and listen.

What I just read in Bergreen’s book is something I could never imagine and will now never forget.

Anyone ever heard of “palang?”

Don’t worry. I’ll get to it.

First, like any good romance novelist, let me set the scene.

Magellan and his sea-weakened and love-starved men (excepting the many situational homosexuals) rejoiced to land on the palm-lined sandy beaches of Cebu.

A key to the story is just how devoutly religious Magellan and his men were. Part of their mission included converting the many heathens they came across to Christianity.

So when the local natives emerged from the palms, Magellen must have been delighted to see scores of obvious heathens.

The men must have been delighted for other reasons. As described by ship biographer Antonio Pigafetta, the gals were “very beautiful . . . the prince had three quite naked girls dance for us.”

Strict religious principles prevented the men from carnal canoodling with the women, even though the natives practiced what hippies some 447 years later would describe as free love.

Why? No man was allowed to enjoy sex with a non-Christian.

What followed was a series of what could be called drive-thru conversions. Literally, within minutes these beautiful and quite naked women who’d moments before had worshipped things like coconuts were -- hallelujah! -- turned into Christians.

Let the games begin!

But what most fascinated Pigafetta, an Italian who admits to joining in on the fun, wasn’t the babes.

It was the men.

“I very often asked many, both young and old, to see their penis, because I could not credit it,” he wrote.

It was palang or genital stretching.

I’ll let the old Italian describe it:

“The males, large and small, have their penis pierced from one side to the other near the head, with a gold or tin bolt as large as a goose quill. In both ends of the same bolt, some have what resembles a spur, with points upon the ends, others are like the head of a cart nail. In the middle of a bolt is a hole, through which they urinate.”

It reminds me of something I saw in one of those Time-Life videos I once watched for tips on how to repair a leaky sink.

“When the men wish to have communication with their women, the latter themselves take the penis not in the regular way and commence to introduce it into (the female part) with the spur on top first and then the other part. When it is inside, it takes its regular position, and thus the penis always stays inside until it gets soft, for otherwise, it could not be removed.”

Intercourse involving palang lasted as long as a day or even more, Bergreen writes, as the lovers remained locked in an embrace of passion.

I confess I read the above description about five times and still couldn’t exactly wrap my head around what the heck was happening with all that genital hardware.

Pigafetta moralizes that these pleasure-seeking individuals were of a “weak nature,” equating pleasure loving as weakness. Then, of course, he boasts that the women preferred the Spaniards and their unadorned tools.

That may be. He does not, however, report scores of lovesick native woman jumping on board to beg the Europeans lovers take them along. 

How Magellan managed to ever wrangle a crew back on board those stinking and rat-infested ships after this auspicious landing is a testament to his historic  leadership which, incidentally, came to a bloody conclusion just 10 days later when he and 30 of his crew were slaughtered by a nearby “Make War/Not Love” tribe.

So now as the snows pile up outside, I’m left to wonder if the Cebuan natives and their days and days of lusty coupling had it right. Maybe such exotic additions would please my missus.

In fact, I’m going to ask her if she’d like me to undergo, purely for purposes of her pleasure, the painful and exotic steps necessary for us to bang in palang.

I’ll do anything to keep from having to re-tile that bathroom.