Seeing "Wonderul Life" a national obligation (from '15)

(652 words)

It is my patriotic conviction no one in America should be allowed to see “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” until everyone can prove they’ve seen “It’s A Wonderful Life.

It’s that important to our national well-being.

I’m dumbfounded over how many people haven’t seen our most essential Christmas classic.

It is, I guess, understandable for younger generations. They’re subjected to too many techie distractions, are reluctant to engage programs older than “SpongeBob,” and many are unfairly burdened by moronic parents.

But, c’mon, everyone over 40 should have by now seen it and should make time each Christmas to see it again and again.

Why?

Because watching it makes everyone feel better about themselves. The message — that every life has enormous worth — is one that needs constant reinforcing.

And it’s just perfectly entertaining. It’s funny. It’s sentimental. And it gives us heterosexual men our annual opportunity to fall in love with Donna Reed all over again.

I practice what I preach.

I was appalled when I learned a 45-year-old friend of mine had never seen it.

“Okay, that’s it,” I said. “You’re calling in sick this afternoon. You and I are going so spend the afternoon getting drunk and watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’”

Oh, he demurred, I can’t. I’m too busy.

“You have to! You can’t go another minute without seeing this movie!”

He said people were counting on him. His job was too important. And getting drunk in the middle of the weekday was irresponsible … 

Blah, blah, blah.

When did they stop putting auto pilots in commercial jet liners?

It’s that important to me. 

So, by all means, be sure you watch the movie. It's on NBC tonight at 8 p.m..

Or how about this?

Wait until next year and join us on our annual holiday pilgrimage to The Jimmy Stewart Museum in the actor’s native Indiana, Pennsylvania.

We were there Saturday. We go every year.

The museum is wonderful. Stewart is indelibly linked to George Bailey and vice versa. As Stewart was a Boy Scout, a war hero, a father and consummate gentleman, it was the best typecasting since “Wizard of Oz” producers cast a dog named Toto to play a dog named Toto.

Best part? The museum includes a cozy theater that throughout the year matinees “Harvey,” “Rear Window,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and other famous Stewart films. At Christmas, of course, the feature is “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

We don’t stay for the whole thing (that’s for Christmas Eve at home), usually just to the honeymoon scene.

This is the year we’ll remember because the audience included a woman who we think must have escaped from the local lunatic asylum.

We deduce that because she laughed hysterically at even the most mild laugh lines.

She roared when George was shopping for luggage, she cackled when Harry Bailey was carrying plates on his head, and when the floor to the pool opened up she laughed so hard we thought the building would collapse.

It was excessive and we figured the woman, about 40, was probably nuts.

Or maybe she was just one of those perfectly nice and joyful people, the kind of person you’d imagine Jimmy Stewart was all the time.

Either way, it’s pretty clear she’s the kind of person who won’t cut in line, ruin your day with road ragery or cause a nasty Facebook fight over pointless political differences.

For those reasons alone, I hope she carries the movie’s message with her throughout her every day for as long as she lives. 

I hope she wakes up realizing her joyful exuberance is making a difference throughout the world, that she is an inspiration to those who struggle and that by finding happiness in even little things, she is making everything better.

Because she matters. A lot.

We all do.

Because it’s a wonderful life.

It’s a pretty darn good movie, too

Related . . .

“The Jimmy Stewart Museum,” an MSNBC travel story of mine

Christmas book sales and what I sign

“That’s my steak, Valence.”

Faking your death to lure Christmas guests

Whole world needs to LOL right now

Read this then go straight to sleep

Seeing "Wonderful Life" a national obligation

(652 words)

It is my patriotic conviction no one in America should be allowed to see “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” until everyone can prove they’ve seen “It’s A Wonderful Life.

It’s that important to our national well-being.

I’m dumbfounded over how many people haven’t seen our most essential Christmas classic.

It is, I guess, understandable for younger generations. They’re subjected to too many techie distractions, are reluctant to engage programs older than “SpongeBob,” and many are unfairly burdened by moronic parents.

But, c’mon, everyone over 40 should have by now seen it and should make time each Christmas to see it again and again.

Why?

Because watching it makes everyone feel better about themselves. The message — that every life has enormous worth — is one that needs constant reinforcing.

And it’s just perfectly entertaining. It’s funny. It’s sentimental. And it gives us heterosexual men our annual opportunity to fall in love with Donna Reed all over again.

I practice what I preach.

I was appalled when I learned a 45-year-old friend of mine had never seen it.

“Okay, that’s it,” I said. “You’re calling in sick this afternoon. You and I are going so spend the afternoon getting drunk and watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’”

Oh, he demurred, I can’t. I’m too busy.

“You have to! You can’t go another minute without seeing this movie!”

He said people were counting on him. His job was too important. And getting drunk in the middle of the weekday was irresponsible … 

Blah, blah, blah.

When did they stop putting auto pilots in commercial jet liners?

It’s that important to me. 

So, by all means, be sure you watch the movie on Christmas Eve, 8 p.m., on NBC.

Or how about this?

Wait until next year and join us on our annual holiday pilgrimage to The Jimmy Stewart Museum in the actor’s native Indiana, Pennsylvania.

We were there Saturday. We go every year.

The museum is wonderful. Stewart is indelibly linked to George Bailey and vice versa. As Stewart was a Boy Scout, a war hero, a father and consummate gentleman, it was the best typecasting since “Wizard of Oz” producers cast a dog named Toto to play a dog named Toto.

Best part? The museum includes a cozy theater that throughout the year matinees “Harvey,” “Rear Window,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and other famous Stewart films. At Christmas, of course, the feature is “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

We don’t stay for the whole thing (that’s for Christmas Eve at home), usually just to the honeymoon scene.

This is the year we’ll remember because the audience included a woman who we think must have escaped from the local lunatic asylum.

We deduce that because she laughed hysterically at even the most mild laugh lines.

She roared when George was shopping for luggage, she cackled when Harry Bailey was carrying plates on his head, and when the floor to the pool opened up she laughed so hard we thought the building would collapse.

It was excessive and we figured the woman, about 40, was probably nuts.

Or maybe she was just one of those perfectly nice and joyful people, the kind of person you’d imagine Jimmy Stewart was all the time.

Either way, it’s pretty clear she’s the kind of person who won’t cut in line, ruin your day with road ragery or cause a nasty Facebook fight over pointless political differences.

For those reasons alone, I hope she carries the movie’s message with her throughout her every day for as long as she lives. 

I hope she wakes up realizing her joyful exuberance is making a difference throughout the world, that she is an inspiration to those who struggle and that by finding happiness in even little things, she is making everything better.

Because she matters. A lot.

We all do.

Because it’s a wonderful life.

It’s a pretty darn good movie, too

Related . . .

“The Jimmy Stewart Museum,” an MSNBC travel story of mine

Christmas book sales and what I sign

“That’s my steak, Valence.”

Faking your death to lure Christmas guests

Whole world needs to LOL right now

Read this then go straight to sleep

Cryin' horseradish tears over profane love songs

(809 words)

If we catch the town’s one traffic light, we can make it to church in just over 4 minutes without having to violate any of the posted traffic laws.

My wife plays the church organ there and there are times when she’s made it, I’m sure, in 90 seconds. Even though there are hairpin turns she takes on two wheels, she’s never had an accident or run over the neighbor’s goat.

God must watch over tardy Lutheran church organists determined to sooth the saved with a soulful prelude. He must watch over goats, too.

I’m never in that big of a hurry to get to church. I enjoy church, but I know if I get there a little late it’s not like I’m going to miss an important plot line that will leave me confused about the role of religion in our lives.

Well, leave me more confused.

I’ll remember yesterday as the day when I tried in vain to set the record for the world’s slowest drive to church.

I was trying to stretch it to five minutes and 30 seconds.

Why?

I wanted the girls to hear the first 3:24 of Bruce Springsteen’s “Queen of the Supermarket.” It came on the XM “E Street Radio” channel about two minutes into our drive. 

It’s controversial with some fans who think the dippy lyrics about him falling in love with a supermarket check out girl are preposterous. They’re right. 

I like it because at the 3:24 mark of 4:39 song, Springsteen lets fly with a gratuitous F-bomb to emphasize his feelings for the hairnet honey.

I contend he, too, is embarrassed about the song and included the F-word to ensure it would never be played on commercial radio. It’s very odd.

Still, I thought hearing the F-word in an otherwise sweet love song would be a great way to enliven the minute or two before Palm Sunday worship. 

That my daughters weren’t interested and hustled off to the pews made me wonder dumbfounded what kind of righteous kids my wife is raising while I’m spending all my nights and most of my days in a tavern.

Part of me was sad.

Coincidentally, three hours later tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was crying harder than I’ve ever cried in my life.

It wasn’t because my daughters didn’t share my appreciation of pre-church profanity.

No, yesterday was Kielbasa Day at Angry Bill’s. The day includes making and encasing 100-pounds of pork kielbasa and 40-pounds of pungent vinegar-enriched horseradish.

I’ve written about Angry Bill the bartender before. In fact, he’s on page 28 of my book where I compare him to Nick the bartender in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” only he’s the perpetually nasty one in Pottersville after it’s revealed what the world would be like if George Bailey’d never been born and everyone everywhere is crabby and mean.

The nickname’s unfair to Bill. He’s a great guy who at times could justifiably be called Hilarious Bill, Thoughtful Bill, Kind Bill, Generous Bill and Caring Bill.

So maybe it would be accurate to call him Emotional Bill, but that might draw a more therapeutic clientele to The Pond and I’m sure he’d eventually become Homicidal Bill and Dave would need to find a new bartender for Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

I’m vague on Kielbasa Day origins, but this was the third time I’ve attended. About 20 of us show up around 10 a.m., with four or five guys grinding the sausage and churning it into about 40 yards of lamb intestinal casings. 

For those of you who’ve adhered to the old Otto von Bismarck phrase about avoiding watching sausage and laws being made let me enlighten you about the former:

It’s not bad. It’s mostly a bunch of us standing around drinking and making dick jokes as the sausage packs into the condom-like casings. So it’s probably a lot like what happens in congress only with us sipping week-old ridge moonshine instead of heirloom Scotch like the must do on Capitol Hill.

Making horseradish in a poorly ventilated basement, now that’s another matter.

I’ve for years sniffed horseradish to clear the sinuses when I’m feeling a cold coming on. But that’s about a 30-second exposure to a teaspoon of the stuff.

This was the basement detonation of a biological weapon, simultaneously devastating and exhilarating.

It was disconcerting to be standing elbow to elbow with some of my best buddies, tears streaming down our faces, noses running and saying to one another, “Man, this sure is f---ing fun!”

And hearing them say right back, “It sure f---ing is!”

That sharing such profane fellowship with my pre-adolescent daughters is still years off makes me sad.

To me it’s a crying shame.

It really f---ing is.

Related . . .

I’m so #@*%! sorry

In praise of profanity

Keith's bio: Warts 'n' warts

Today is a momentous day in my life: I'm about to admit I made a mistake.

My first.

And it’s one of those whoppers that will for better or worse forever alter perceptions of me.

Ready? Here goes.

I read the Keith Richards book, “Life.”

I spent a week learning about his decades-long incapacitations so thorough he needed teams of flunkies just to keep mopping up the vomit and changing his soiled bell bottoms.

I learned how he reacted to the death of his 2-month-old son Tara with the same nonchalance as he did critical slams of “Emotional Rescue.”

It’s tarnishing all my enjoyment of my favorite band.

Of course, it could be worse. I could have written the Keith Richards book “Life.”

Talk about career-killing mistakes. Keith may have killed the only thing he loves more than himself: The Rolling Stones.

He violated the number one rule of the warts ‘n’ all autobiography genre: He actually makes himself look worse than the public perception of him.

His book is warts ‘n’ warts.

I know it makes zero sense for me to be disappointed when a man I’ve always admired for his defiant excesses writes a book defiantly celebrating those excesses, but that’s how I feel.

I might feel differently if he was even the least bit deferential to Mick Jagger, only the greatest performer the world’s ever known.

He devotes four pages to how he wrote the riff for “Satisfaction,” and barely credits Mick as the song’s lyricist

“Satisfaction” is maybe the most important song in rock history. But “Brown Sugar” is a better song.

Here’s all Keith had to say about that one: “‘All Down the Line’ came directly out of ‘Brown Sugar,’ which Mick wrote.”

That’s it. Five words.

He writes about Jagger as if he were the bass player, not the man without whom he’d be nothing.

Keith makes it seem like he did all the writing, all the performing and he’s the reason we keep showing up to see the band perform.

They aren’t true brothers so any Freudian interpretations must be shelved. This isn’t a sibling rivalry.

It’s a sniveling one.

He accuses Jagger of diva-like behavior. He says he acts entitled. He insists on posh frivolities. He demands perfection of those performing with him.

Good heavens. Who does he think he is? Mick Jagger?

Jagger performed a Solomon Burke tribute at last year’s Grammies. It was mesmerizing.

He is electrifying. He is lithe. He moves like quicksilver across polished marble.

He is 68.

There are 1,000 guys like Keith who make great, memorable music that stay true to the roots of rock ‘n’ roll that will forever inspire.

But, c’mon, there’s only one Mick Jagger.

Today Mick is making forgettable music with disposable musicians. Keith is re-forming the solid, but unremarkable X-Pensive Winos.

I wonder if they’ll ever write or perform together again. Jagger hasn’t said a word of graceless rebuttal about the tawdry book, proving he’s truly a man of wealth and taste.

I used to believe Keith was the swashbuckling heart and soul of the Stones, the one who kept them blues-based and more about the music than the giant inflatable hookers Mick liked to bounce around in on stage.

Now I’ve come to believe Mick’s the heart.

Keith’s more like the sole.

With this book, he’s certainly proven himself to be a real heel.

"Waiter, there's some hair in my bar!"

The boys in the bar were making fun of how long my hair was getting. Understand, when I’m talking about the boys in the bar, I don’t mean Vidal Sassoon, Paul Mitchell or Jay Sebring.

These guys don’t cut hair. Heck, these guys barely have hair. My bar, The Pond, is not some swanky Manhattan cocktail lounge populated by thin pretty boys and girls fresh from their fashion shoots. It’s what me and my underage friends used to deride as an “old man’s bar” before we all became old men.

It’s a friendly tavern, but on some days there is a throwback element to a 1950s sort of danger, kind of like the kind George Bailey finds in Nick’s after his “wish I’d never been born” prayer turns Bedford Falls into Pottersville.

In fact, one bartender is exactly like Nick, the owner of the place where Bailey and apprentice angel Clarence Oddbody retire for a double whiskey and a “mulled wine with a lot of cinnamon and just a little clove,” respectively.

The exotic order prompts Nick to seethe: “Look, mister - we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don't need any characters around to give the joint ‘atmosphere.’ Is that clear, or do I have to slip you my left for a convincer?”

That’s what it’s like on Tuesdays when Bill’s working only with Bill every other word would have NBC censors diving on the five-second delay the way heroes dive on live grenades.

I’m often the target for ridicule because I consider it my duty to give the place atmosphere. I differ from most of my fellow drinkers in that I dress dapper, profess liberal opinions and use common silverware for things like salad and spaghetti.

If they ever start stocking mulled wine, why, I’ll be the first to order a big snifter full and load it up with the cinnamon I keep with the cloves and other spices I always carry around in my handy little fanny pack.

My critics are strictly the ballcap and tube sock crowd. And that’s not even the most noticeable difference in our appearance.

That would be hair. I have it. They do not.

In fact, I have a lot of it. It’s thinning a bit, but what I have behaves like the East Germans did after the Berlin Wall came down. It’s having a party.

I go as long as eight weeks without getting it cut. I do this for many reasons. It saves money. It saves time. It keeps me from having to go to that awful unisex salon where I feel they’re psychologically cutting off things more dear to me than hair every time I enter and am assaulted by music from people like Beyonce.

The days when men with long, lively hair were considered effeminate ended throughout most of America about 30 years ago. That means it’ll be another 15 years or so before it ends here in Western Pennsylvania.

But I argue that these men so concerned about their masculinity are actually behaving more lady-like than I.

They devote more time and product to their appearances than I ever do. I get out of the shower, run a brush through the noodles, and I’m done. The whole procedure takes maybe 12 seconds. Then the hair is at liberty to do as it pleases for 24 hours.

If tedious facial shaving is any indicator, my tormentors probably spend 15 or 20 minutes every other day gazing into the mirror at their ape-like faces as the try not to nick their noggins with the buzzing little groomers.

The smooth result is that when two of them put their heads together to talk confidentially about guns, Sarah Palin or NASCAR the combined effect looks like one wide bottom is trying make an angry point by mooning some invisible cross-bar antagonist.

Of course, like most bar arguments, this one is an utterly pointless diversion. Increasing numbers of my once stout hairs are becoming cowardly deserters. They go AWOL and one day I recognize that I, too, will be just another butt head sitting around the old man’s bar.

Oh, well. That’s the circle of life.

Hair today. Gone tomorrow.