When rasslin' was fake and boobs were real

My daughter and I were walking down the sidewalk the other day when an eccentric approached. He had a blue hair, lip studs and exotic full-torso tats sprawling out from under his cut-off black tee shirt. You could practically see the stink lines shooting off him.

Josie, 7, reflexively coiled a little closer and said, “Look out. Here comes a weirdo.”

I came to a complete stop and knelt down while simultaneously mounting my parental pedestal.

“Listen, just because he looks different doesn’t mean he’s a weirdo,” I said in a firm whisper. “We don’t judge people by how they look. We judge them by what’s in here.”

I bullseyed my finger right at her heart.

She looked confused. “You mean boobs? We judge people by their boobs?”

Sigh. Another sad misfire in my attempts at skillful fathering.

Alas, I do judge people by their boobs. But it’s not like it was when I was in junior high school and comely Ms. Gilliam, the voluptuous phys. ed. teacher, launched us eighth grade boys into puberty by demonstrating basic trampoline technique.

She had a natural beauty that still shimmers in my memory. I can close my eyes and see her bouncing, bouncing, bouncing on that trampoline. Her long, feathered brunette hair flying like a maestro’s arms conducting a magnificent symphony. Her firm athletic legs like springs as they deftly kept elevating ever upward.

“It’s easy, see?” she said. “Let your weight do the work and the rest of the motions’ll just come natural. It’s fun!”

I still think about her and those innocent times and I wonder what me and the boys would do if she showed up on some trampoline time machine, still perfectly proportioned, still beckoning with a dewey sexuality and an invitation to join her for a playful jump.

I know what I’d do.

I’d turn to the guy next to me and ask, “You think those are fake?”

I’m growing nostalgic for the days when guys like me used to spend a lot of idle time wondering if professional wrestling was fake.

Now, if a truly beautiful woman walks into my local bar the first thing we do is speculate about the authenticity of her womanly features (the second thing we speculate about is why on earth would she come to a place like this to drink with guys like us).

I wish I was less superficial. I wish I could accept that some women feel, perhaps because of societal notions imposed by men, the need to enhance their breasts. I wish it didn’t bother me that someday probably in, oh, about a year or so, I’ll have to tell my precious daughter that she’s beautiful just the way she is and, no, she shouldn’t bother asking Santa if he can bring her some bigger boobs.

I think about all this as the man my daughter instinctually labels a “weirdo” approaches. I want to try again to tell her that character is what matters and that looks are unimportant

Instead, I pick her up in my arms and dash across the street to avoid the guy.

Weirdo or not, he’s at the very least a real boob for dressing like that in a small western Pennsylvania town with little tolerance for non-conformists.

And Ms. Gilliam aside, I’ve always in my heart been more of an ass man.

A Disarming Idea: One Bullet Per Person

Thursday’s Supreme Court decision to enshine handgun ownership is causing predictable reactions, neither of which is doing anything to make America safer.

Here’s a sensible idea that will:

Every one over the age of 18 gets to carry a loaded gun, holstered or concealed, any where they want, any time they want. That means every place people gather -- offices, airplanes, sporting events -- plenty will be packing.

But you get just one bullet. One bullet per person.

Use it or lose it and, in addition to any existing criminal charges, you need to go before a judge and explain what happened to your bullet before he or she decides whether or not you get another one.

Guns don’t kill people. People don’t kill people.

The bullets are the killers and the astronomical number of them invariably leads to deadly recklessness.

One Minnesota firm, Alliant Techsystems, boasts on its web site (www.atk.com) that it makes up to 600 million bullets each and every year all by itself.
The most hateful, paranoid person on the planet would be hard pressed to enumerate 600 million people in history who really deserve to be shot.

An attorney once told me there are three types of homicides: unnecessary, justifiable, and praiseworthy. If everyone was entitled to just one bullet, many of those serving hard time at tax-payer expense for unnecessary homicides would today be productive citizens.

The jails are full of otherwise good men and women who in moments of drunken or drug-fueled rage emptied guns at victims who didn’t deserve lethal ventilation.

But if a drunk or crack fiend had just one bullet, most of them would miss their targets and they’d be subject to the laws of the land.

Judge: “Why did you shoot your bullet at Mr. Smith?”

Mr. Wesson: “Well, it sounds silly, but I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.”

Judge: “Is that any reason to shoot a man?”

Mr. Wesson: “Nah, but I was really drunk.”

Judge: “Well, it’s a good thing you missed. I’d advise you to stay home with your kids instead of engaging in barroom staring contests. Understood?”

Mr. Wesson: “Yes, your honor.”

Anti-gun people are loath to admit it, but everyone’s manners become more refined in the presence of a loaded gun. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to quote Al Capone, who was known to say: “You can get more accomplished with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.”

The crossfire of pro- and anti-gun groups has become the rhetorical equivalent of trench warfare. The mindsets are so ingrained that any attempt to breach the deadlock with fresh thought is automatically shot down -- even by people who are organizationally opposed to shooting anything.

“Our theory is that even one bullet can kill someone,” said Nancy Hwa of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence.

True, but doesn’t it stand to reason that fewer people would be shot if everyone had just one bullet?

“Well, yes, but . . .” she began reciting familiar arguments before realizing she’d descended into what she called “wonk babble.”

“Sorry, but it’s hard to think about new ideas.”

Exactly.

Out of fairness, I had to call the National Rifle Association, the scary, dour people with the bumper stickers that are always alluding to their “cold, dead fingers,” and treasonously hinting that so-and-so is their president, when the person mentioned is someone the majority of Americans didn’t even vote for.

And I’m not talking about George W. Bush.

NRA spokeswoman Kelly Whitley’s reaction caught me off guard.

She burst out laughing. And she continued to laugh. It was such a joyful laugh that I felt a rush of affection for this unseen, distant stranger. It has me hoping nobody has to pry anything from her cold, dead fingers for many, many happy, productive decades.

I called back the next day and she was still laughing. She still hasn’t gotten back to me, but I imagine her sitting there still laughing maniacally as her superiors check their HMOs for psychiatric coverage.

One bullet per person might be a silly idea, but there just aren’t any new ideas coming from either side, certainly none that at least one person in the pro-gun lobby finds so ironically disarming.

Interviewing Arnold Palmer

For the two years I was on his payroll, I was convinced the first time Arnold Palmer was ever going to mention my name was when he looked up in alarm and said, “We have to fire this Chris Rodell!”

My project with www.arnoldpalmer.com ended in October. I’m no longer on the payroll, but when I went into his Latrobe office yesterday to interview him for a magazine article, he greeted me warmly with, “Hello, Chris. Good to see you!”

To me, it’s an absolutely surreal development.

From 2005-2007, it was my job to write all the gushy stories about Palmer for his website. I was the one who wrote about his charitable contributions, his aviation milestones, his historic victories, his chummy relations with Ike, Queen Elizabeth, Ronald Reagan and every other president that’s ever swung a golf club.

I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. I was the guy who brewed it.

The consumers were the multitude of those aging vets who marched in the campaigns under the banner of Arnie’s Army. To me, that vast, good-hearted sum could be distilled down into the soul of one fine man. My late father.

Paul Rodell served his country as a U.S. Navy chaplain’s assistant. It is almost impossible to conjure a less perilous title -- Army pillow tester? -- for a World War II veteran. That’s why his stories as a foot soldier in Arnie’s Army struck his sons as more stirring than did his days dusting Bibles on behalf of God and Uncle Sam.

Dad got sunburned at Oakmont in ‘62. Stiff new golf shoes blistered his feet on a long march following Palmer at Firestone in ‘75. He caught hell from mom for spilling beer reaching for a Kleenex to mop up sentimental tears as Palmer crossed the Swilcan Burn for the last time in ‘95.

I was raised with a reverence for the man for whom, out of genetic respect, I’ve always referred to as Mr. Palmer.

That reverence was intact during the first fledgling interviews I’d conducted with Palmer. I saw him through my father’s lens and treated my every utterance the way grandmother treats the china. I didn’t dare go off-script, be provocative or ask questions cooked with smart-alec irreverence.

My first formal interview with him was a mutual sleepwalk through redundant questions about his rivalry with Jack Nicklaus. Yawn. Ensuing interviews followed suit with me playing the role of worshipful scribe and Palmer dutifully answering questions he’d answered a million times before while rarely looking up from a daily stack of autograph requests. My father’s golden adorations haunted the room.

That all began to change the day I went to interview him about a mulligan. His dog Mulligan, to be precise. I started with, “So what’s an old rules stickler like you doing with a dog named Mulligan?”

Engaged, he set down his pen and said, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a mulligan during a friendly round. It’s a first tee custom here at Latrobe.”

(With Palmer’s sanctifying stamp, it instantly became my first tee custom anywhere around the globe. If anyone objects, I cite Palmer and it’s like I’m invoking Moses among bearded foursomes of rabbinical scholars.)

He lamented that Mulligan was a lousy on-course dog who chased the balls and slobbered them all up. “Probably because at least once a day, I take him out back and hit a tennis ball with my sand wedge off the tee behind my office. He’d chase balls all day. Man, that dog can really fly.”

I was seized by the kind of impetuosity they warn you against in disciplined journalism schools.

“Oh, yeah? I’d like to see that.”

His eyes took on a devilish gleam. “C’mon!”

Two questions into it, the interview was over. We became two kids who’d cut class. We jawed about politics, the war and baseball. He uttered a reflexive profanity about the lowly hometeam when I said I saw he’d gone to a recent Pirate game.

He told me he remembers his first ace with more romantic clarity than his first kiss.

I asked him if he had any suggestions about how I could get a good score the day I was slated to play Oakmont. “I’d suggest you play a different course.”

Now, when I see him I ask him the questions many more accomplished writers would deem too impudent to pose to Palmer. We chat about golf on the moon, our favorite local restaurants and what it’ll mean to America since it’s assured our next president will be, gadzooks, a non-golfer.

By God, we banter.

Many journalists say it’s unwise to ever meet your heroes because you’ll see huge chunks of gold come crashing off them as the all-too-human flaws emerge.

There’s not a day that goes by now that I don’t wish my old man was still around, not to brag about how I get to rub elbows with the legend he idolizes.

Nah, I’d like to introduce him to my friend Arnold. I think he’d really like the guy.

Go Green! Run all the reds

I saw red the first time my local gas station posted unleaded at $4 per gallon. I vowed it would be the last time I ever saw red again -- at least when it came to traffic lights.

Now, I’m colorblind. I no longer see reds or yellows.

Yep, I’ve gone totally green. And when I say gone, I mean really gone. Look for me at the stop signs and all you'll see are my fading tail lights.

On July 4, I intend to launch a movement that’s truly about movement. For the good of the environment and to reduce our demeaning dependence on foreign oil, I’m calling on all Americans to stop stopping at red lights.

There’s a fascinating study making the rounds about how U.P.S. saves millions by routing its vehicles to make more right turns.

This is from a recent Elaine Jarvik story from the Deseret Morning News: “The world wastes a lot of time and fuel waiting to turn left -- which is why UPS is going the extra mile to make sure its drivers mostly turn right.

“The package-delivery company has long encouraged its drivers to avoid left-hand turns whenever possible, because turning left in busy intersections is more dangerous, takes more time and uses more gas. Now the company has developed a ‘package flow’ software program that maps out routes to avoid backtracking and left-hand turns.

"UPS, which last year drove 2 billion miles to move 14.8 million packages and documents from one place to another, says all those right turns will save millions of dollars a year. In Washington, D.C., the new route planning technology trimmed 464,000 miles, saved more than 51,000 gallons in fuel, and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 506 metric tons over an 18-month period, according to spokesman Dan McMackin at UPS headquarters in Atlanta.”

Of course, if they save that much gas by keeping the vehicular Big Browns going right, it makes sense that simply keeping them going would save them even more.

I’ve always been keen on running red lights for intellectual reasons. This makes me sort of soulmates with Cajun man.

I’ve read that nothing infuriates a Cajun more than having to sit at a red light. Why, Cajun man asks, does a stupid machine have the right to tell him when he can and cannot go?

Cajun man doesn’t want to wreck his vehicle. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. But Cajun man (and I realize this is devolving into an old Adam Sandler skit here) knows better than a traffic light if it’s okay for him to go or not.

Cajun man isn’t blind and Cajun man isn’t stupid.

Neither am I.

It makes no sense for me to sit at a red light when, if I give a sober look left and a sober look right, I can see no one’s coming.

I’m not advocating anarchy here. Until Detroit electrifies the world by announcing the manufacture of invisible cars, it’s simple common sense.

If we’re allowed to go right on red when sparse traffic warrants, why on earth can’t we go straight in the same situation? Or left?

Of course, I know better than the traffic light. So do you. I’m not talking about being reckless. Not at all. I don’t want to wreck my car, hurt anyone or risk jail by fleeing an accident I’ve caused by trying to keep my tank full.

I just am confident I know better than the robotic light.

So I’m declaring the Fourth of July my own sort of Independence Day.

I do hereby declare that I will henceforth shed the tyranny of the traffic light. I will go when I can do so safely, without risking bending the fenders of my fellow man. I will do so confident that I am reducing America’s fuel consumption, saving precious natural resources and that what the state police consider an act of lawlessness, is in fact an act of patriotic rebellion worthy of our tea-dumping founding fathers.

As of July 4th, traffic lights are no longer the law of the land.

They’re merely suggestions.

Word quest

I’m consumed with trying to coin a word whose usage will become so widespread that one day it’ll earn a place in the Webster’s Dictionary. Here are some of my efforts that, so far, have failed to catch any lexicographical fire. And “lexicographical” is an existing word.

You can look it up.

Here are some you can't.


Glibberish -- pointless party chatter between two people who’d rather be be talking to anyone else.

Teastosterone -- the surplus hormones that get men so consumed with ambitious lust that women find them universally repulsive.

Error-plane -- Typical commercial flight that leaves late, is overbooked, and loses luggage after landing at the wrong airport.

Crapple -- A flavorless apple.

Birthquakes -- labor pains.

Motorvator -- top notch mechanic.

Vagetarian -- An avid lesbian.

Comatoes -- condition of one's foot falling asleep; Latin, parasthesia.

Slimitators -- Impressionable young girls intent on looking like Hollywood anorexics.

Stork-Raving Mad -- post-partum depression.

Shamorous -- A person, male or female, whose ugly nature is concealed under makeup or plastic surgery.

Decrapitate -- An editorial elimination of all the bullshit from a piece of writing.

Santaclaustrophobia -- The fear of sitting in a department store Santa's lap.


Feel free to use these at will. They make great Happy Hour glibberish.

Agents want me, want me not

I’m one of those writers who spends a little time trying to find an agent for his unpublished novel and an extravagant amount of time daydreaming about how much more successful he’d be if he had one.

The acknowledged disparity explains a lot.

It’s been about seven years since I finished my novel that at the time I called “Boomer Rang.” I think back then when I tortured my poor, pregnant wife into reading it it was something like 12,500 pages long.

Yep, that’s pages.

And she thought giving birth was tough. Yeah, not only was it long, but it really sucked. Still, I clung to its merits because the first agent I ever sent the book's proposal to called immediately to say, “It’s a great idea and we’d love to see the rest. Right away!”

I remember setting down the phone and thinking, “Hmmm . . . Should the Cadillac be black or red?”

Then came gushes of rejections in Biblical torrents. I saved about every one of them and today have a footstool sized stack of them sitting in my office providing grim inspiration.

But with every rejection came a little wisdom. The book had to get better. I’d spend hours honing it, polishing and cutting, cutting and cutting.

I’d set it aside for sometimes as much as year at a time. Discouraged, sure, but constant in my belief that it was good and would someday find an enthusiastic audience.

Found a small publisher for it in 2003, but then an agent came along and assured me she could find me a bigger publisher. Bigger publishers proved her wrong and then she vanished from my life, and it was back to square one.

The satirical book, now called “The Last Baby Boomer,” is about the life and death of, duh, the last baby boomer. Because his impending death will symbolically tombstone a generation known for selfish excess, the 117-year-old senior agrees to be part of a lottery ghoul pool. Contestants pay $25 to be in a museum suite with him for 15 minutes. If they are present when he expires, they win the multimillion dollar jackpot. One problem: the old SOB won't die.

I close all my proposal letters with the nugget that the now 201-page novel is “a coming of old, old, age story. Because we all have to die, but only one of us gets to die last.”

Clever, huh.

I began this year by making a real push to get it published. And good news started flowing in. Nearly a dozen agents responded to my query letters favorably with half of those requesting to see the full manuscript.

But each one eventually said, sorry. It’s great. There’s an agent out there that can’t wait to get a hold of this. Just not right for me.

One said, “I’d wish you best of luck, but I know you’re not going to need luck with a story this strong and well-told.”

Each fresh rejection provided its own form of exquisite heartbreak.

All but one.

They said they wanted to represent me and the book and sent me a contract. They didn’t say the loved the book or me. That we were about to embark on a fun journey together. No praise. No plans.

Just a contract.

My literary daydreams often involve powerful New York agents who’ll invite me to pricey three-hour lunches to tell me how great I am.

This was a Houston-based group. And, strangely, their website says most of their clients are hip hop artists.

There’s no picture of me here, yet, but I swear that’s not me. I’m not hip and I can barely hop.

So I sat on the contract and polished the book some more and hoped someone else would respond to one of the other queries that were still floating around out there.

None did.

So two months later I sent back the signed contract with a note saying, “Hey, I can’t wait to hear from someone who’ll tell me how we’re going to sell this thing.” Instead, they sent back a note saying, “Sorry, but we didn’t hear back from you promptly enough. We’ve moved on. Good luck.”

Now I’m left to laugh at the numbskulled way I’ve approached another step in avoiding any success that may be due to me.

I figure I could write a really funny book about a blissful idiot who skates through life with little talent, no drive and a perpetually unbalanced checkbook, but figure no one would buy that either.

Too sci-fi to sell, I’m sure they’d say.

I only wish it were true.

R.I.P. Tim Russert/F.O. Unctuous media mourners

Just finished watching the Tim Russert (1950-2008) “Meet the Press” tribute to the late, beloved moderator. I liked Russert and was raised not to speak ill of the dead. That means you’ll find nothing here but praise for Russert and his equally dead Buffalo Bills (2007 record, 7-9; overall since 1960, 355-388).

But his untimely passing and the Beltway reaction to it gives us a good opportunity to examine the ritual of journalistic deaths.

It was all on display this morning on the set of “Meet/Depress.” As host Tom Brokaw began to get weepy, my wife asked incredulously: “Aren’t they going a little overboard here? I mean the guy was great and everybody liked him, but it wasn’t like he was Walter Cronkite.”

Or even Harvey Korman.

She was miffed that the recent passing of Korman, the side-splitting straight man for Carol Burnett and the comic actor who played Hedley Lamarr in “Blazing Saddles,” didn’t receive as much attention as Russert.

I was surprised she was surprised.

I spent about five years in the newspaper business and have been an avid reader throughout my life. I’m convinced the only reason anyone stays in the business is that they’re assured a really snazzy obit.

I’ll never forget the day when the death of Pope John Paul II coincided with the death of a “curmudgeonly” long-time copy editor at one of the Pittsburgh papers.

Now, history will forever recall that JPII was one of the most celebrated and significant figures in the history of the Catholic Church, if not the entire world.

The curmudgeonly thrice-married copy editor -- and “curmudgeonly” is journalistic shorthand for “nasty coffee-breathed bastard” -- had spent a lifetime chasing errant commas, split infinitives and infuriating better informed writers by changing their carefully crafted leads until they had a near-libelous impact.

Yet many readers of the Pittsburgh paper that day could be excused if they’d read the front page and allowed, “What a lamentable day. The world’s lost two men of true greatness. Oh, how will we carry on without these two titans?”

Media people figure an elegant obituary is the best reward for a lifetime of low pay, terrible hours, public scorn and job security so tenuous that they’re all afraid to read the business pages of their own papers.

What’s happening with Russert -- watch Matt Lauer treat Russert’s son Luke like the Luke that knew Jesus on Monday’s "Today" Show -- is similar, but with that peculiar Beltway twist.

What’s particularly galling to me is that Russert, a truly outstanding journalist, is being eulogized on a panel featuring disgraced plagiarists Mike Barnicle and Doris Kearns Goodwin. I don’t understand how verifiable plagiarism is not the career death sentence in places specifically organized to promote journalistic integrity.

Included in the panel was James Carville and Mary Matalin, the repulsive reptilian couple that makes millions of Americans, both Republican and Democrat, dive for the remote whenever they’re reminded that they’re a couple.

The only thing missing was Don Imus.

He’d have fit right in sitting around Russert’s empty chair telling us how great he was, what a family man he was, how every president, senator, and congressman in the cozy circles they all run in are better because of Russert. And, implied is the message that, don’t worry, we’re all still here to carry on for him and take care of you simple folks out there in the great flyover.

Come on. Enough’s enough.

I mean, it’s not like the guy was Harvey Korman.