When will I see you again?

(662 words)

I’m feeling melancholy, like you do when a long winning streak comes to an abrupt end. I’m about to experience what is for me the longest stretch of sobriety since, I think, gee, I was in the 4th grade.

See I don’t drink alone and I don’t drink at home — at least not enough to qualify as real drinkin’.

No, I’m a bar guy. I enjoy being out amidst the bustle of people and the happy babble of carefree voices. I’ve been this way since I got my first convincing fake ID back when I think I was in, gee, the 5th grade.

First fake ID name? 

Hap Hazard!

I think a big part of that is I’ve since 1992  “worked” all alone. Just me and the thousand lunatic voices inside my head.

I enjoy all my friends and any opportunity to make new ones. This has happened a good bit over the last two years. People stop by out-of-the-blue to say hello. It  happened frequently enough that I had some stock answers as ready replies.

I’d hear the creaky steps outside my door alerting me of a visitor’s approach. There’d be a tentative knock and a nervous stranger would poke his or her head around the door and say, “I hate to disturb you, but …

“Disturb me?” I’d bluster. “You’re too late. Hell, I’ve been disturbed since 1992!”

It was always a reader who’d hoped to say hello, have me sign their book and maybe have a little conversation.

They’d get that and more. I’d drop what I was doing and spend the next hour or so being chummy. They’d get a half-assed tour, some boozy insights and a signed book or two.

What’d I get out of it?

A new friend!

The recollections suggest I’m not cut out for this social distancing.

I still instinctively reach out my hand when I see a familiar face. I feel awkward maintaining the recommended six feet between myself and a fellow conversant. And wiping down my entire surface world is yet to become a habit.

It’s no fun.

I wonder if it’s fun being a COVID-19 germ.

I wish they had a spokesgerm. I have a lot of questions.

Is your goal world domination?

Would you consider discriminating like, say, only infecting New England Patriot fans?

President Trump has declared war on you. Are you open to a negotiated peace? Like will you cease infecting us if we grant you free weekends at Mar-a-Lago?

Now they’re saying we’re looking at an 18-month worst-case scenario where life goes on just like this. No bars. No restaurants. No sporting events. No church. No high school musicals.

No fun. 

Eighteen months? I’m wondering how I’ll make it through the weekend.

On the bright side, I’m glad this befell us in the spring, a time when both flowers and hope bloom. 

Imagine if the self-quarantine had happened in November. Thanksgiving and Christmas?

Dunzo.

Spring is when Mother Nature puts on her make-up. Fall’s when she climbs into her coffin.

Another potential positive: positives are bound to spike.

Humans are resilient. Smart, too!

Some researcher right now is working on what will become the cure for coronavirus. It might take them 18 months or they might brainstorm it  — eureka! — today during lunch.

It could happen.

Or — who knows? — the virus could mutate into something that maybe consumes trash plastic and belches ozone. And wouldn’t that be great?

Our cities would be unveiling germ monuments in parks around the world.

So let’s not rule out some game-changer good happening with surprising swiftness.

And on that day, my social-distancing friends, you and I will shed our full body condoms right along with our fears and we’ll once again kiss, dance and celebrate how happy we are to be human.

I just hope it happens soon ‘cause I miss you.

Heck, I’m already starting to miss myself.

Let's run the Derby w/o jockeys

(559 words)

I did some checking and just as I’d feared the only enduring national sporting event still on the calendar involves competitive hot dog eating.

Yes, set your DVRs, Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is set to take place July 4th, 10:30 to 3:30, on Coney Island. Last year, the top three contestants ate 71, 50 and 47 hot dogs in 10 minutes

The event used to dismay me because I sensed we could end world hunger by fore-going the all-American gluttony. Now that toilet paper shortages are on everyone’s mind, I wonder if as an unforeseen secondary gastro-intestinal benefit we could end world wiping.

My fear is that by the time the hot dog eating contest is held, I’ll be so sports- deprived I’ll actually give a crap — that’s assuming there’s still enough food to keep my bowels functioning.

The absence of live marquee sports is where COVID-19 is impacting a-not- insignificant number of shallow men like myself. Because this is maybe the best time of year to watch sports on TV.

There’s March Madness, NHL playoffs, The Masters and professional baseball’s opening day. All gone.

And I just read that one of my favorite events, The Kentucky Derby, has postponed until September.

The move seems short-sighted — and, please, don’t interpret that as a cheap shot joke about the diminutive jockeys.

In fact, I propose they run the race as scheduled for the first time without jockeys.

I mean, are jockeys really necessary to horse racing?

I’m no NASCAR fan, but I appreciate the necessity of a human driver to automobile racing. There’s a reason every race begins with the announcer dramatically intoning — and it’s been a while so I’m guessing here — “Gentlemen and Danica Patrick start your engines!”

Without the human driver, the sport would be like three hours of drinking over-priced domestic beer and staring from afar at a crowded parking lot full of expensive cars with parts decals.

(God help me, right now even that sounds fun.)

But a horse doesn’t need a human to run around a track.

Now, fuddy-duddy purists will say jockeys are essential to enjoying “the most exciting 2 minutes in sports.”

That’s bullcrap. Horsecrap, actually.

In fact, if I have any complaint about Derby Day, it has nothing to do with the pageantry or the conditions and everything to do with the brevity. What could be better than a 2-minute mile-and-a-quarter race? How about a 2-hour one.

That’s what might happen in a jockeyless race. 

“And they’re off!”

Or not. 

With no jockeys to kick or whip the animals — hello PETA — into motion, these thoroughbreds might just stand there, giving viewers a chance to sip fine Kentucky bourbon and bask in their magnificence.

“Race” officials could then introduce primal incentives to coax the horses ‘round the track. I’m thinking a bucket of premium oats or, better, a pretty filly in fragrant heat.

My, the times I’ve dashed a mile-and-a-quarter for that kind of recreation.

So I hope they can with some alterations still hold the Kentucky Derby. I’ll need something to get me through the spring sports drought.

Either that or else I’m going to have to start following the news more closely.

Tell me: Anything going on I should know about?

Related …

Horse racing needs jumbo jockeys

Horsin’ ‘round in the ‘ol Breed Barn

We're ALL essential

(657 words)

When I heard our duly elected leaders are asking only essential workers report to work, like many of you, I looked myself in the mirror and asked myself an existential question:

“Are you essential?”

I thought about what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years and if any of it would have any positive impact on this COVID-19 crisis. Would it save lives? Ease fears? Promote humanity?

There was!

I could blog!

I am essential!

I’m kidding. I concluded, c’mon, I’m perfectly non-essential — nearly useless — and climbed back in bed for an hour-long doze.

I did this knowing armies of essential doctors, nurses, researchers and federal, state and local decision makers are on a mortal deadline to save asses like mine. Or is it more accurate to say asses like me. 

These professionals don’t have time to look in the mirror and ask themselves precious questions about whether they matter or not.

I doubt they even have necessary time to pray or be scared.

Well, allow me: “Please, God, help and protect the all the people who are helping and protecting all the people.”

See, I’m not among those who think this is a media-driven hoax. I don’t believe it’ssomething you can belittle with a pejorative nickname or a clever tweet.

It’s a germ. You can’t hurt its feelings.

How about you? Are you essential?

You are to me.

I hear from so many people who say they enjoy reading my stuff it makes me feel, — uh, what’s the word? — grateful?

That’s my friend Jim Gregory up there who said he turned to my book for inspiration Sunday before returning today to Harrisburg where Jim, a Republican, serves the people of the 80th Diistrict in the state legislature.

He said: “This book gave me what I needed today. Your words help keep perspective of what's important during this crisis.”

Thank you, Jim. You’re essential.

Police and other first responders are essential, but so are truck drivers. And I can find something essential about every baker, brewer and banker, too. And librarians,, florists, newspaper reporters, etc.

Should the gizmos that link our TV’s access to things like NetFlix, the man or woman on duty to carry out repairs will become to my family in that instant the most essential person on the planet.

They’re closing down the bars and restaurants. I understand the preventative rationale for the move, but I’m losing access to people and places that are essential to my happiness. 

I really enjoy my life and all the people who populate it.

I suspect some of them are going to go away for a while and some, sadly, forever.

But of this I’m confident: There’s going to one day be a headline that says in big, bold type: “CORONAVIUS CURE FOUND!”

I hope it hits like a gloom-obliterating bolt of lightning. I hope it not only cures the disease it ends doubt and hopelessness; side effects may include increased tolerance and acceptance if those with whom we disagree.

And I hope it comes in a liquid form and that for some crazy reason the first cases of cure all get shipped right here to the ol’ Tin Lizzy.

Cheers!

Oh, what a party it’ll be.

Until that happy day, I’m going to try and do my part. I’m going to blog, just so you can have one slim corner of the internet that won’t be all doom and gloom.

If blogging is all I can do then all I’ll do is blog.

Sure, it’s not exactly Dr. Jonas Salk (Pittsburgher!) and the cure for polio, but it’s all I got.

It’s too late for me to enroll in med school and begin actually saving lives. I’ll leave that essential stuff to the doctors and scientists dedicated to finding a cure. 

It’s up to them to prolong our lives.

It’s essentially up to you and me to make our lives worth living.

Related …

Jonas Salk & the man who would patent the sun

Dr. Nancy & the Ebola River Blues

Hair farms & the Cure for Baldness

Results from my first physical in 18 years

Save health care; cure hypochondria!

Random thoughts on, oh, what's it called?

• I love America and I love Americans, but given what I know about both, I’m convinced right now CDC hotlies are jammed with people who are asking some form of the question: “I just saw a Tom Hanks movie on Netflix. I have no symptoms, but just to be safe should I self-quarantine?”

• I wonder what Citizen Trump would have said had President Obama in different circumstances said he was imposing a travel ban on all Africa “except Kenya were I urge people to go to vacation at my golf resorts.”

• I admire the NBA for suspending the season, rather than playing games in empty arenas, a move that hurts thousands of ticket takers, vendors and ancillary businesses. It’ll be interesting to see how the greed-meisters who run the NFL will react to the same situation. Prediction: They’ll postpone the games and re-work the schedule so that all teams will be forced to play doubleheaders with fans being obliged to buy two tickets per seat.

• I’m no doctor and I’m not sure it’s even a medical term, but it seems to me that in America today even the otherwise healthy people have a case of the heebie jeebies.

• Today is one those days I wish I was still working as a reporter at a daily newspaper. I’d be calling area funeral directors asking how they were planning on dealing with the body boom. Are they hiring? Expanding facilities? I have to imagine one or two of them, if they were being honest, would say, gee, I hate to see us go through this, but I just found out the dorky kid needs braces so …”

• Fair warning: I’ll no longer shake hands, fist bump or man hug any friend. No, I’m just going to skip the foreplay and — brace yourself — shove my tongue right down your throat. And I’m talking about you ladies, too!

• I once infuriated an on-line friend, a Berliner, by posting a mediocre joke about how they must go through a lot of hand sanitizer in land called GERMany. Who knew Germans were so sensitive?

• Covid-19 is overnight turning the planet into a place of many germs/GERMany.

• If Covid-19 is causing this much havoc, what are we going to do when Covid-20?

• I’m already so sick if “an abundance if cautiousness” I can’t wait to resume impetuous recklessness.

• The reason Mr, and Mrs. Hanks were in Australia? Tom is playing Col. Parker in an Elvis biopic. I'll see that.

• Many of the same people who last week were dismissing the virus as a Fake News media hoax are today standing in line at Costco to begin hoarding toilet paper.

• How did I get this far in life without ever hearing about Covids 1-18?

Leaper tweets of the month

• I used to make prognostications but I was so wrong so often I predict it'll never happen again.

• Because I enjoy security cam video of news that can only be described as miraculous, I hope today to see a massive sinkhole open up on a busy highway where an equally massive and adjacent landslide fills it in so neatly passengers in an advancing bus never notice either potential calamity …

And because I enjoy uninformed FB vitriol over things no one can explain, I hope the bus is full of either MAGA-hat wearing NRA conventioneers or rainbow-haired women's volleyballers on their way to a Pete for Prez fundraiser.

• I’d like to be in Boston today to inform Patriot fans who out of habit the day after the Super Bowl begin to set chairs out along the parade route that if they want to see honest champions they'd better get their asses to Kansas City.

• Two of the least popular people in the Republican Party are today two Republican senators chosen by Republicans to lead the Republican Party in two of the most recent presidential elections.

• I wonder where the strangers who appear in our dreams go when we're awake and if they sleep in that place and have dreams that include people like us.

• Those who say they've lost everything and have no where to go but up often ignore the depth of a grave.

• Not to be an alarmist, but who wants to bet that within the next 30 days one of our politicians will declare in the interest of public health we sink the cruise ships full of quarantined Coronavirus victims?

• Every four years I'm forced to overcome the confusion over whether Dixville Notch is an electorally significant New Hampshire village and not some anatomically precise porno jargon.

• I don't understand the need for the redundant spelling of tsetse fly. Is there a tse fly or a tsetsetse fly from which it needs distinguishing? Really, I don't tse the point.

• I know what you're thinking 'cuz I'm thinking it, too: "I just turned 57 and I STILL haven't sucked face with Madonna! What's taking so long?" Thanks, my friends, for all the birthday wishes.

• Most people confuse being opinionated with being correct. Just because you say something in a loud voice absent doubt doesn't mean you're right. Of course, that's just my opinion.

• ”Titanic" concluding now on AMC. I like the subtle irony of a movie where a painter gets framed and a woman whose name sounds like "ROWS" is hauled into a lifeboat and given an oar.

• Given the spread of Coronavirus, how long before Pirate owner Bob Nutting orders -- for prudent health reasons -- a game be played without fans? And given Pirate fan disdain, how long before anyone notices the difference?

• Be honest: How much 'living' do you do in your living room? In fact, it should be called the "watching room" or, worse, the "ignoring-your-loved-ones room.”

• I wonder if any of the forward-thinkers at PETA have game-planned a pro-active position paper anticipating Jurassic scenarios where the organization defends the dinosaur's absolute right to roam free in the cities and the countries.

This book is worth (at least) $150

(646 words)

I’m not suggesting it will play a role in toppling international currency markets, but one of my books was a key factor in a six-figure transaction that required a notary and five responsible witnesses.

Sure, the necessary inclusion of a decimal point knocks the transaction into modest four figures and, yeah, one of the “responsible witnesses” was a distracted toddler and one of them was, well, me.

But I was sober and alert, enough so that I made one of the craftier deals of my life.

I bought a car with a book.

And, no, it wasn’t one of those little Matchbox numbers.

It was a 2010 Ford Focus (color: “Brilliant Blue”) with 99,891 miles.

Of course I needed to supplement one crayon-signed  “Use All The Crayons!” with a tidy stack of dough (color: “cash green”), but that pesky detail will soon be dismissed.

A reputable car dealer defrayed a not insignificant chunk of change for my book.

If someone had told me 35 years ago that buying a 10-year-old used car with nearly 100,000 miles on it would make me this happy, I’d have said, “Which way to law school?”

But that is my lot.

My other “lot” will from now on be Superior Motors on Rt. 30 across from the Arnold Palmer airport. They were the best.

Understand, I’m not at all a car guy. In fact, when I’m seated with car guys and they start talking about cars, I mitigate the boredom by thinking about girls I’ve known who liked to kiss.

It’s a coping mechanism I’ve used since puberty and one of the reasons I got through school with C averages and why at the age of 57 shopping for $5,000 used cars qualify for me as high finance.

But I a car guy buddy, aware of my meager means and needs, said, “What you need is a Ford Focus,” he said. “They’re practically bullet proof.”

I didn’t ask what that meant, but in America today buying anything described as bullet proof seems like a sensible purchase,  like Eskimos paying for parkas.

Still, I was dreading the day, as dread I do anything that involves me giving what for me is a large pile of money to strangers for something I can’t eat or drink.

But salesman Tom couldn’t have been nicer — and when I told him my name he knew me.

Thanks to so much friendly local media coverage, it’s becoming clear I’m in the midst of warm and rising recognition. It happened later that day at Barnes & Noble where I’d been summoned to sign another stack of new books.

The staff were all solicitous and complimentary. I’m even getting recognized by readers who’ve seen me at readings or on TV. They all want to know when my next book’ll be out.

It’s the kind of reaction I dreamed I’d get seven years ago when “Crayons!” came out. I remain exuberantly proud of that book because all the people who tell me it makes them happy. 

It’s not uncommon for me to gift one to strangers who’ve done me a friendly or two.

What is uncommon — unprecedented — is for me to use it as an audacious bargaining chip in a major purchase. But that’s just what I did at Superior Motors.

“I’ll pay cash,” I said, “but I’ll throw in this book for free if you’ll knock off another $150.”

Now, I know they were just being nice and that no one would value that book at $150. But they were just so friendly they played along.

It was the best car purchase I’ve ever made. Superior Motors is staffed by superior people.

Now, if only that book will begin to fulfill its promise and lead me to a security that for so long has been evasive, well, it won’t be valued at $150.

It’ll be priceless.

Superior Motors can be reached right here

Related …

Wrecked my car, ripped my shirt; life lessons from a bad day

It’s my “new” car! Yeah right …

“Use All The Crayons!” at Barnes & Noble

A 10-star “Crayons!” book review

My business plan: Keep feeding the unicorn