Clarence Clemons, 1942-2011

The last time I saw Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band I noticed Clarence Clemons had gold fingernails.

I remember thinking it wasn’t gold paint.

I thought it was actual gold and that’s just the way he grew them. He was just that cool.

You can check out a picture and decide for yourself here in my inconsequential blog review of the Boss’s May 19, 2009, Pittsburgh concert.

It’ll take the death of a Stone to so fundamentally change one of the great remaining bands the way the death of Clemons changes Bruce and the band.

The artistic generosity of Springsteen meant Clemons would often steal the song and always steal the show.

“When the change was made up town and the Big Man joined the band

“From the coastline to the city all the little pretties raise their hands”

His vocal baritone cameos on “Fire,” “10th Avenue Freeze Out,” and the on-stage mugging between Clemons and Springsteen always sent fans into frenzies.

Clemons liberated the saxophone from the high school band room and made it as eloquent a rock ‘n’ roll instrument as the sainted guitar.

I argue he did as much for race relations as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or any of the pretenders to Martin Luther King Jr.’s throne.

That’s him on the black and white cover of maybe the greatest rock album of all time, “Born to Run,” from 1975.

The picture shows the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll star since Elvis draped across the back of a big black man in such an affectionate interracial embrace it seemed to demolish multiple taboos.

This brother was a brother.

It’s fitting, too, because the album is as much his as it is Bruce’s. His saxophone makes indelible contributions on the monumental title cut, “Thunder Road,” “10th Avenue Freezeout,” “Night,” and most memorably on “Jungleland.”

Even as Bruce began writing studio songs away from Clemons, the Clemons solos remained concert highlights.

I listened to all 318 Springsteen songs in chronological order over 23.5 hours to write a career retrospective of one of America’s most important artists.

I’m still struck by the 16-year span from 1986-2002 when Bruce Springsteen chose to not record with one of the greatest bands in American history.

It still stuns. He did a bunch of mostly forgettable solo and often self-indulgent treacle while the scattered band did solo projects that never broke the pop culture surface.

I remember Clemons saying watching Bruce make music with other musicians was like watching your wife make love to other men.

And, you know, it felt like that to the rest of us, too. Each new release of forgettable material was like attending a divorce proceeding in family court where our custody was being decided.

What the hell was he thinking?

It took the tragedy of 9/11 for him to reunite the band for the sake of our national psyche.

That’s when even he understood. This isn’t just a band.

These are our brothers and sisters, our aunts and uncles. They raised us. They’re in all our scrapbooks.

There are times when I, and I’m not ashamed of this, actually look forward to the deaths of our legends, to the days when a well-aged Paul McCartney, Elton John or Mick Jagger struts off to rock ‘n’ roll heaven.

There will be parties at their passings.

Not out of disdain, certainly. It’s just that they’ve given us so much and I truly love them and I’m looking forward to putting their entire playlist on random and getting good and gassed listening to the songs that have meant so much to me.

It’s a kind of mourning we can all enjoy.

The passing of Clarence Clemons doesn’t feel at all like something to celebrate.

This was a death in the family.

True room service: sex with the maid

A recent Newsweek survey convinces me I’m missing out on a lot of casual sex. And, yeah, it bums me out.

It’s one thing to let countless professional opportunities slip away, but losing out on sex with strangers, now that hurts.

Conducted in the wake of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape charge, the survey found 8 percent of married men have cheated on their wives while traveling on business.

That’s not surprising. Many men (and women) are mired in loveless marriages and hunger for affection. And many men (and sadly for those many men, way fewer women) will screw anything that moves.

Or, apparently, comes into the room to change the towels.

Three percent of the cheating men say they’ve made a pass at a maid. Of those, 55 percent said they got shut down cold.

But of the randy three percent, 27 percent said the staffer accepted and, hallelujah, they got more than little mint on the pillow.

The numbers, as they always do, make my head nod like a chicken in the rain. If I’m not mistaken, (55 + 27) 82 percent of the 3 percent either got shut down or got laid.

What transpired among the remaining 18 percent?

Did they hold hands? Share poetry? Watch some HBO? Did the maid convince the guy to help her scrub the toilet?

It doesn’t say.

As a travel writer it’s been my privilege to have stayed in some of America’s finest hotels. It’s never once crossed my mind I could have a romp with the cleaning lady. Maybe that mindset is my problem.

I’ve never been one of those guys that gives off the “I want sex!” vibe.

No, the vibe I’m usually giving off when I’m alone in a posh hotel room with a maid is, “I forgot my toothbrush! Please bring me another one!”

The story included an anecdote about a housekeeper who recalled the time when a guest requested she bring him a blanket. She entered a room of an enterprising gent and found him lying buck naked atop the bed.

“He asked me to touch his genital area and offered me money for it. I said, ‘No, my job doesn’t go that far.’ He spent a couple of minutes trying to get me to come closer and tuck him in . . . I eventually dropped the blanket and ran.”

I have to admit, I read that and thought, “You know, I’ll bet that works maybe once every 100 times.”

But that once would be wonderful.

Who knows? Maybe someday if there’s nothing on TV I just might give it a try.

But I doubt it. I’m not like those 3 percenters who spend most of their waking hours panting about sex.

Sure, I pant about sex, too, but I’m always thinking about Consequences, a word I’m capitalizing for deliberate reasons.

“Not a day goes by when a man doesn’t have to choose

“‘tween what he wants and what he’s afraid to lose.”

“Consequences” is 1990 song by the great bluesman Robert Cray.

That’s what the 92 percent of traveling men think about when we’re not cheating on our spouses.

If a housekeeper came into my room and gave me a little leer, I might think, “Hmm, she must she see how hot I look in this posh robe (I find wearing those fancy robes irresistible). Maybe I could score a little action here.”

That’s when I’d start thinking about consequences.

What if she’s using me to get back at her boyfriend Carlos, the bartender who’s good with a knife?

What if she finds my lovemaking so legendary she feels compelled to stalk me at my home? What if my wife, also good with a knife, finds out?

Or what if she winds up disappointed? Not in my lovemaking talents, certainly, but maybe she thinks by being in this fancy hotel I’m some powerful financial executive like the now disgraced Strauss-Kahn.

What if she finds out I’m more about bloggin’ than bankin’?

There are so many painful and humiliating ways this could wind up ruining my life and the lives of the ones I love.

On the other hand, maybe after this she might want to check out my blog. Maybe she’ll like it.

It’s a consequence I’ll have to consider.

What I won’t go through to grow the readership.

A grave story about cemeteries

Forgot to mention one other amenity on the grounds of our 81-acre mansion.

It had a cemetery.

That’s not so unusual. Our back lawn, for instance, has a cemetery. It’s the eternal resting place of two hermit crabs and two frogs, whose names I never bothered to learn, and of Buster, the 18-year-old cat who finally expired in 2007.

My eyes still mist over whenever I look at where I buried Buster -- certainly not for sentimental reasons. I think it’s residual sting from the barrels of ammonia I used to clean the stinking litter box of an animal I never liked.

There’s nothing really very sacred about our little pet cemetery and the kids wouldn’t care if I clipped too close with the John Deere, which I do whenever I ever feel like taunting Buster’s still-foul-breathed spirit, I’m sure.

The cemetery at Far Away Point wasn’t the final resting place of neglected and disliked animals.

No, buried there were about 20 dead millionaires.

You can tell you have a spacious property when you say, sure, go ahead and plant Uncle Fred out under the willow way out back.

Having so many dead relatives on my lawn would be emotionally disruptive to my peace of mind.

I’d miss a few of them and that would make me sad. I’d be forever agitated realizing that one or two of them probably died owing me some money. And there’d be a few whose deaths brought me comfort and I’d feel like a bad person every time I silently rejoiced at the site of their tombstones.

And those are just my people. There’d bound to be in-laws in among the mortal mix.

Having their graves so tauntingly near would test my conscience every time my bladder filled.

It’ll be an odd recollection, but one of our liveliest vacations will be surrounded by memories of graves.

We stayed Sunday evening at a perfectly comfortable Holiday Inn Express in Annapolis.

It is nearly surrounded by tombstones. It’s in one of those old neighborhoods where urban sprawl was rapacious enough to devour even the graves.

Well, most of them.

Right behind the hotel is a traditional walled cemetery up against the delivery docks of a trendy Whole Foods Market. Then right there on the traffic island separating Riva and West roads is a cemetery with about 15 tombstones.

It’s one of the oddest cemeteries I’ve ever seen. It is just right there in the traffic triangle. It seems so disrespectful, not to mention dangerous. It was loud. Exhaust fumes choked the air. I swear if you listened closely you could hear the coffins coughin’.

Then right down the street was a military cemetery so respectful it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they buried the dead standing at attention. The rows were immaculate, the lawns well kept.

Like the haircuts of the sailors buried there, it was all high and tight.

A nice cemetery is supposed to be all about the view. But whose view?

The dearly departed’s? That makes no sense. Toes up is the default burial position for even those of us who’ve spent our lives sleeping in fetal positions. Everyone, at least those with supernatural vision, is either looking at the sky and straight up the nostrils of anyone paying their respects.

If we truly cared about the comfort and the view of our late loved ones we’d bury them all in adirondack chairs from the neck down, a posture that would certainly challenge the weed-whacking skills of any hungover groundskeepers.

What’s to become of me?

After much careful consideration, I think I’m going to ask I be buried on a busy traffic island.

My tombstone will read, “Honk If You Miss Me!”, offering a drive-by sort of mourning. Truck backfires will seem like 21-gun salutes. And any refuse that collects against my stone will be trashy tribute to a tree hugger who spent so much of his life stooping to pick up the litter of others.

Best of all, anyone who felt the urge to urinate on my grave -- and there’s bound to be a line -- will likely get run over by errant bread trucks before they even get their hands on their zippers.

I’ll be sure to rest in peace knowing I’ve greatly reduced the chances I’ll, yuck, rest in pee.

Our mansion vacation

We’d finished our meals at a place so sumptuous it makes Dick Cheney cheerful when Lucy became momentarily agreeable and said she wanted to return to our mansion.

There, a line that seems so strewn with lies and exaggerations, is 100 percent truth.

We did have a mansion, Lucy was momentarily agreeable and, yes, Virginia, there is a place where Cheney’s cheerful.

It’s St. Michaels, Maryland. We just spent the last three days there.

I don’t know which of the aforementioned truths is more surprising, so let’s get to the one that’s most monumental.

Let’s get right to the mansion.

It was Far Away Point (homes have addresses; mansions, like pets and people, all have names and personalities).

It just sold for $6.1 million and rents for the week for $6,500. 

Far Away Point has six bedrooms, six baths, library, pool, bath house, 81 acres, boat dock, guest house (sleeps 8), and a shoreline overlooking the same Chesapeake Bay eastern shore waters as recent retirees Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

I was there to research a story about mansion rentals in a place that’s home to two men who think they’ve never been wrong and how with their selection of St. Michael’s as the perfect place to retire they got at least one thing right.

Doesn’t quite make up for the whole Iraq War thingie, but let’s give the devils their due.

I remain amazed I was able to stay there without having committed any crimes.

We didn’t break in. We were invited.  I didn’t pretend I was someone else. I was legit. We weren’t supervised. We were so all alone the girls spent most of the time there skinny dipping.

As our host drove up the mile-long driveway, I had the uneasy sense I was about to become Jack Torrance from “The Shining.”

That disquiet was only heightened when after a full 25-minute tour, Lucy, 4 (5 next week!) looked with dead eyes at me and said, “We’ve been here before.”

Far Away Point is 93 years old.

That’s Lucy. She has just three speeds: Spooky, sweet or Satanic (nickname, Lucy-fer).

Then, as soon as the realtor departed, Josie got locked in Far Away Point’s elevator, or as we now call it, the “hellavator.”

It was one of those old, rickety, self-operated three-story numbers that are kid magnets. Both the outer and sliding doors need to be closed for it to run.

Josie, naturally, thought it would be the perfect toy. She took it from the second floor to the first.

Then the outer door wouldn’t budge. Then the light went out.

She started screaming. I yelled, “Don’t panic!” and immediately commenced to panic. I yanked with all my might, I twisted coat hangers, I looked around for a fire ax.

She was in there about 10 minutes. We called the caretaker and the realtor and got no answer. Val finally persuaded her to push the buttons again. The lift had been off the landing. It needed to descend two more inches for the doors to release.

We were off to a frightening start.

But it got better right away.

If there were malevolent spirits in the house intent on retrieving our souls for eternal damnation, I think we won them over. They saw we were friendly. They saw we had no ill-intentions. They saw Val naked.

The girls were naked nearly the whole time. Me, a veteran skinny dipper, was envious.

It soon became one of our best vacations ever. It was magical.

The mansion soon felt like home. It embraced us. We all relaxed and just reveled in the opportunity to have such freedom in something so regal.

In the end, the girls decided they preferred our own home for perfectly 21st century reasons.

For all its glories, it’s many books and lavish places to relax and read, Far Away Point has but one measly TV and it’s about the size of a chess board.

Our home may be tiny and under-furnished, but it has three glorious TVs, one of them a real whopper, and all three could kick the butt of the one in Far Away Point.

Who needs mansions when you have hi-def?

For me the best part was overcoming our initial fears and learning to love this big, old beautiful house on the shore. Our memories of it will never fade.

And to think I for even a fleeting moment believed that true evil lurked in the heart of the home, an evil so malignant that it could possess our very souls.

How wrong I was.

I must have been confusing Far Away Point with down the street at Cheney’s place.

"I love you, men!" Again

This ran on June 5, 2009, when the Pittsburgh Penguins were still driving to win the Stanley Cup, if you can believe it. I think it deserves an encore. I'll be back with something fresh, original and, I hope, lively, in the next day or so. And never forget, I love each and everyone of you. And I'm serious! All you gals, too!

I don’t remember exactly when my brother and I started concluding nearly all our phone calls with “I love you,” but it’s become a natural declaration.

Because I do love him. Since the sandbox, he’s always been a sort of hero to me. He’s one of those great big brothers that never minded when I tagged along. I remember being the bat boy for his sandlot championship baseball team.

When he left home to attend Ohio University, he shepherded me along on getaway weekends where I had the kind of fun that ensured I’d go there, too. It was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

After I graduated from OU, I went to visit him in Nashville where he was working and I landed a job at the newspaper there. We became roommates. I’ll never forget the two of us sitting on the little back porch drinking beers and watching the big jets glide in over Old Hickory Lake.

I think after our father died in 2004, we began to appreciate a special closeness having been sons to a man so fun and rare.

None of that’s really surprising. Sure, many siblings war throughout their lives and cause wicked tension at the family get-togethers, but the reverse is also true. Many enjoy the warm closeness that Eric and I have always felt.

What’s unusual is that I’m beginning to feel strange urgings to tell other male friends that, yes, I love them, too.

Not in the way I love my brother, but I have many close male friends, three in particular, that I love deeply and I’m struggling with how to share this forbidden emotion.

Like most guys, I am emotionally repressed in how I deal with my dear male friends. I certainly feel a deep love for them but I wrestle with how I should express those feelings.

I was thinking of this while I was listening to Kieran Kane’s lovely rendition of the Louie Armstrong classic, “What a Wonderful World.”

I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do?’

What they’re really saying is, ‘I love you . . .’

Why is it so wrong for me to tell my male friends that I love them? Barack Obama is taking steps to bridge the historic gulfs between Christian and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian. Can’t I, for the love of God, unshackle the societal constraints and convey what goes on in my heart to the men that matter most to me?

What would happen if instead of our standard buddy-buddy sign off -- “Hey, man, you take it easy . . . Go Pens!” -- I took a different approach? What if instead of that breezy Happy Hour send off, I looked soulfully into Frank’s cappuccino-colored eyes and said, “Frank, I love you . . . Go Pens!”

I know exactly what would happen. Frank’s bushy mustache would start to twitch the way it does when the bartender says he’s shut off. Why, he’d would be outraged. He doesn’t want my love, (even though I suspect he’s always loved me, too). An awkward silence would descend on the bar. I’d be an instant pariah. Then all the cruel Brokeback Mountain jokes would start.

It’s a strange fact of life in my still-redneck corner of the world that I could lose a friend because I dared to reveal how much he means to me.

It’s not like I’m going to leave my wife and two kids for Frank. But guys like us are so emotionally remote that we have difficult time acknowledging the genuine love we feel for  -- and this is even difficult to type --  our “boy” friends.

Not anymore.

As of today, I’ll no longer deny the urges that are becoming too momentous to ignore. 

I’m going to freely expose myself to the risks that will come with saying without reserve, “Hey,  I love you,” to other men.

I’m going to start right here by telling the whole world of my earnest feelings for three darling buddies who’ve always touched me deepest in my soul.

Here goes . . .

I love you, Moe!

I love you, Larry!

And I love you, Curly!

That wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.

Nyuk. Nyuk.

Hatin' on LeBron

I was raised to love God, family and country. I was taught those cornerstone devotions would make my life whole.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember hearing all you need is love.

Well, that might have worked for guys like Gandhi, but throughout my life I’ve found I have to have a little hate.

My hatreds haven’t really been all that hateful. I don’t hate people of different races, shapes, sizes, sexual proclivities or religious beliefs that don’t involve killing me over our spiritual differences.

Today, there’s hatred running through the land and I must endorse it as healthy.

The whole sporting world, particularly the downtrodden sports fans in Cleveland, is hating on LeBron James.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with Cleveland. I was raised to hate them because they were bitter rivals of my Pittsburgh Steelers. And I attended Ohio University with a bunch of them back when it was a great rivalry. We’d war all fall.

But as the ‘70s stretched into the ‘10s, I began realizing hating Cleveland was like hating Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

Like Barney, Cleveland could be annoying but they were harmless. They couldn’t win at anything.

What really turned my perspective was I began working with a lot of people in Cleveland. They weren’t at all rude. They were fun. They were friendly. They enjoyed a good rivalry.

I began to realize they were just like Pittsburghers, but without the six Super Bowl trophies, the three World Series Championships and the three Stanley Cups (and that’s during my lifetime).

So I began to root for Cleveland and LeBron.

I thought a victory would erase the chip the city’s toted on its shoulder through so many years of heartbreaking loss.

Then came “The Decision” and the sound of a million northern Ohio hearts breaking.

So I ramped up my hatred right along with all my former arch-enemies in Cleveland.

Well, on Sunday the chosen one and his chosen team got thumped by the Dallas Mavericks to lose in one of the most watched NBA finals in the last 15 years.

It was tough for me to watch for a number of reasons: one, I hate Dallas and can’t root for them; two, Miami’s never done a thing for me and I can’t stand rooting for cities where the SPFs outnumber the IQs.

But for me the deciding factor -- “The Decision,” if you will -- came down to wanting to see LeBron who earned $14.5 million, humiliated.

And he was.

Then came the inevitable scolding. I was prepared to hear it from various sports nags and broadcasters.

Just not from LeBron himself.

“All the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today,” James said. “They have the same personal problems they had today.

“They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point.”

Well, here’s what I’m going to do today with my crappy little life.

I’ll do something that’ll require me to look in my pitiful checkbook. It’s never pretty. I’ll realize I’m again in such financial dire straits it’s surprising my checking account hasn’t played bass for Mark Knopfler.

I’ll have all the same problems I had yesterday, the ones LeBron and his $14.5 million salary mocked in his graceless speech about those of us who hate.

But at some point I’ll think about LeBron and be genuinely grateful I’m not him, today a real loser in so many ways.

And, I swear, it’ll feel therapeutic.

Ah, hatred.

You gotta love it.

And on the 7th day, he blogged

Today marks the 14th straight day I’ve blogged something original (well, mostly original). That swamps the old record by 11 days.

The Bible teaches God created the world and the heavens in six days and then rested on the seventh.

I can only conclude God didn’t blog. Had He, He certainly would have taken to the internet and done a little divine boasting.

I sure would have, but that’s just the difference between God and me.

Well, one of them.

Heck, I posted about 700 words the day after I did what I thought was a bang-up job on the annual Duct Tape Festival in Avon, Ohio (it’ll be running this week; stay tuned!). 

But is there inherent insanity in blogging so frequently?

I don’t think so.

As stated on the blog’s third birthday, I’m seizing what I sense is opportunity. I think the more I post the more enthusiastic the readership, and the more people will, I hope, refer worthy items to friends.

I’m hoping every avid reader will link my blog to at least two other readers and that those two will refer to two more and so on and so on.

If that optimistic extrapolation proves correct then my blog followers will by Independence Day surpass the population of China; by Halloween the blog will rule the earth and I’ll need start scanning the Cosmos to find new readers.

My theory has so far proven correct, but on a much smaller scale.

In 14 days, the sun has yet to set on www.EightDaysToAmish.com. For the entire time I’ve been blogging for every minute of every day someone, somewhere in the world has been checking in.

It’s happening in more than 93 countries.

I find that very cool.

I do this ungodly bit of boasting because I’m probably going to float in a couple of re-runs this week. I’m not certain. With my antenna up, blogging once a day hasn’t been difficult. I try and have a suitable idea the night before, roll around in bed with it for about six hours, get up and knock out 600- to 700-words before breakfast.

But this week I’m going to be off schedule.

See, this week -- and this week only -- this blog is “Four Days To Amish.”

I’m taking the wife and kids to have a good long look at Intercourse.

Don’t summon the child welfare department. Remember, Virginia is for lovers, but Pennsylvania has Intercourse.

We’re taking a run at Amish country later this week.

This will be the first time I’ve been to Amish country since I started a blog that pays humble homage to their backward ways.

How do we differ? They grow apples; I write a blog on one.

They make many different types of bread; I make no bread, yeast-based or otherwise.

They get together with good friends to raise barns; I get together with good friends to raise hell.

But I’m going to try and keep up the pace of including something fresh each and every day. People seem to be responding.

I hope so.

I truly enjoy the blog and the reaction it earns.

It keeps my mind sharp. It keeps me involved in the news and keeps me engaged in  critical thought.

Daily blogging keeps me from having to think about tedious ways to earn money.

Four Days To Amish?

Hell, it’s always just right around the bend.