Capt. Mark Kelly, a heavenly hubby

On this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to salute Capt. Mark Kelly, husband of recovering gunshot victim, U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords.

He’s succeeding in looking like Earth’s most steadfast husband while preparing to abandon his brain-damaged wife to go on a million-mile jaunt with six of his buddies.

Yes, every happily married couple needs a little space.

The news of her recovery since the January 8 shooting that left six dead and 13 injured has been astonishing.

That anyone could be shot through the head and suffer relatively minor injuries is either a miracle or evidence that much of the average human brain is full of lots of stupid or otherwise useless grey matter.

I don’t think that’s the case with Kelly. To me, the guy’s a genius. Clearly, he’s using his full brain.

I’m not suggesting he doesn’t love his (second) wife. He and Giffords met in 2003 at a Young Leaders Conference in Beijng.

Or so I’ve read. I wasn’t invited. Even if I had been, I’d have been unable to attend  having previous obligations at the Middle-Aged Followers Conference here in Latrobe.

Truly, it is a great love story about a very appealing couple.

Yet I can’t help but marvel at Kelly’s deft ability to maneuver public opinion into crowning him husband of the year at the very instant he’s planning to blast off from his wife’s hospital bedside to go into outer space.

I know husbands who struggle to wrangle spousal okey-dokies for long golf weekends in Myrtle Beach.

It’s a pity. I’ve had some of my best times there with the boys. We play golf, cards, get a little drunk and spend the nights enriching one dollar bill at a time the mysterious college funds of pasty-bedecked girls whose names all seem to end in the letter “i.”

When you look at it that way, it sounds almost wholesome.

The matrimonial reluctance to spend time apart baffles me. 

I’m convinced marriage benefits from more time apart -- and don’t confuse that for cynicism. I’m a man who loves his wife and his two darling daughters, one who just happens to revel in every chance he has to get the hell away from them.

Like the sky-bound Kelly, I need a little space.

Of course, so does my wife. The kids, 10 and 4, are at an age when they are acting increasingly like war-minded Romulans.

They’re driving both of us crazy. But it’s a lot easier for me to justify up and vamoosing than it is for her.

Like Kelly, one of just 65 NASA astronauts, I can always claim my credentialed travels are business-related. (“Honey, do you think I WANT to spend four days in New York City?”)

I’m sure, rather than New York, Val wishes she could board a space shuttle for a months-long mission exploring the effects of cabernet on low-gravity, stressed-out mothers.

A really long space vacation would be her dream vacation right now. Me, too. I’d love to arrange a two-week space flight for just the two of us. Instead of things like ant farms and petri dishes, we’d freight the craft with Snuggies, pillows, books, cases of wine, and the complete DVD collection of “The Sopranos” series, which we’re getting back into.

The seclusion would be heavenly.

But we had trouble Saturday arranging a babysitter for lunch and an afternoon matinee of “The King’s Speech” (loved it!). How are we going arrange two weeks of lunar day care?

The logistics would be out of this world.

So we’ll hustle through another half-assed Valentine’s Day hoping conversely the two of us can soon enjoy both more time together and more time apart.

Me, I’ll be watching in admiration as Kelly on April 19 boards the Space Shuttle Discovery for two weeks away from his healing wife, time he can spend gazing down on earth, and basking in the knowledge he’s circling a planet where millions of wives swoon, “Now, there goes a husband who really cares.”

The only way I’ll be more impressed is if the space shuttle makes an unscheduled landing for four days in Myrtle Beach.

I have work to do

It’s two days ‘til Valentine’s Day and I’m in love. I want to send flowers, write sappy poems and tell my darling sweetheart about the tender feelings our coupling inspires.

My wife?

That’s a given. 

But this isn’t about my betrothed. This is about the one that will maybe one day allow me buy the tangible things for Val that words, the impoverished blogger’s cheapskate gift, can’t convey.

This love letter is dedicated to msnbc.com.

Isn’t she lovely?

I might be the only man on earth who considers a corporate media monolith cuddly, but such is the circumstance of the last three years.

It was a time when I felt unloved by anyone with the power to sign a paycheck.

Since about 2007, I’ve steadily been depleting my life savings and groveling for any rare paying assignments that would allow me to keep my nose just above the water.

I’m not ashamed of that. I know many talented freelancers who just up and quit.

What they’re doing instead, I do not know. I know of a book about the pitfalls of freelance writing called, “Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal.”

I remember it so well because it suits me. I love telling stories about interesting people and places. It just doesn’t pay all that much.

I know people who work very hard at difficult jobs that rule their lives.

The world needs people like that.

But it also needs people like me. Ambition-free men and women willing to on occasion rise from our hammocks, survey the world, comment on what we see and plead, “Won’t SOMEONE for the love of God fetch me another pina colada?”

For reasons I can’t fathom, the endeavor doesn’t pay all that much.

That’s why I’m so tickled that, thanks to an old friend, I’ve landed what seems to be a really reliable gig with a prestigious news outlet, millions of readers and decent pay that shows up on time without the indignity of unseemly hassling.

Given what you know about me, can you see why I’m stricken with romantic feelings every time I see guys like Al Roker and Brian Williams?

In the past 10 weeks, msnbc.com travel has run eight of my features, often with prominent top of the page display. They ran three in just the past week.

And I have six fresh assignments waiting for me to dig into.

I wake up in the morning and, gee, I have something fun and productive to do.

It’s all thanks to Facebook. Sure, what they helped bring about in Egypt was nifty, but finding me work might be more historic.

I buddied up with Bill Briggs with whom I was a young reporter at the now-defunct Nashville Banner back from about 1985-1989.

It was a magical place to learn the craft of news writing and storytelling. I still have so many great friends from there and the memories of the fun remain vivid.

Today, Bill is traveling the country promoting his book, “The Third Miracle: An Ordinary Man, A Medical Mystery & A Trial of Faith.”

He also contributes wonderful travel, health and business stories to msnbc.com. I’m unclear as to how the connections were offered -- I don’t think my begging was too unseemly -- but he put me in touch with three friendly editors there.

I didn’t realize how much I missed the pulse of writing for a daily news outlet. I’ve spent much of the past 10 years writing for magazines that publish six months after the story’s been accepted (and pay about two months after that).

It’s a terrible grind.

True story: I wrote a 2,000-word assigned story for the world’s biggest men’s magazine in August 2008. They paid me, but the story has yet to run. I heard from the editor this week. He says it’ll appear this August.

The topic? The importance of being patient.

I swear to God.

Now, my stories are appearing so rapidly I hear from subjects before they hear from me.

Even better, the editors hunger for fun, offbeat topics that aren’t too different from what I explore here on the blog.

For instance, when the news outlets were all fired up about stories involving invasive TSA pat-downs I knew there had to be about 1,000 people named Pat Downs in America.

I turned in a story idea: “What do Pat Downs think about pat-downs?”

The editor called and asked if I could have it to them in 12 hours.

It took me two hours.

That’s an indication of how I’ve hungered to work on fun stories with tight deadlines.

I’m having a ball.

So how can I thank my old friend?

I bought his book and intend to write some deservedly good reviews about the book that details how once-regular folks become saints.

The process is riven with as much seedy bureaucracy as majestic and is particularly timely as the scandal-plagued Catholic Church hurtles toward making Pope John Paul II the fastest man to become a saint in church history.

But I, of course, feel obligated to do something more concrete, maybe a restaurant gift certificate so he and his wife can enjoy a nice meal. Too bad he’ll have to wait until about 2015 for that.

Despite the boost in productivity and income, I’m still feeling about Eight Days To Amish.

I’d intended this to be a story about the stories behind the stories, but this got away from me. Maybe some other time. But here are some links to recent features they’ve run.

I think you’ll understand why I’m having so much fun.

• Ray's Pizza  . . . http://tiny.cc/zns40

• Welcome to Mars, Pa.! . . . http://tiny.cc/3kder

• What Pat Downs thinks about pat-downs . . .  http://tiny.cc/oxubn

• Upscale ice fishing . . . http://tiny.cc/4ndko

• A little love for Intercourse, Pa.  . . . http://tiny.cc/tkwpb

Zsa Zsa & when it's time to go

I’m seeking friendly subversives who’ll help me start a rumor that Zsa Zsa Gabor’s amputated foot is up for eBay auction.

Hell, I’d pay through the nose for a celebrity foot.

Gabor, once one-third of the most glamourous sister trio on the planet, celebrated her 94th birthday on Sunday.

And I’m again reminded of the cruel indignities of excessive age.

As many people die too old as do people who die too young. I think most everyone who’s ever been born would live conversely more full lives if we all died about 18 months before we actually do.

This puts me at odds with rascally Prince Frederic von Anhalt, Gabor’s ninth husband since 1986. His life philosophy reminds me of a great Robert Earl Keen song, “The Road Goes On Forever (and The Party Never Ends).”

The prince released a horrific picture of him presenting her a “Happy Birthday Baby!” cake days after the amputation, a drastic operation many anorexics might confuse with a novel way to lose weight fast.

The picture shows Anhalt beaming above an expressionless Gabor who with her left hand appears to be pawing at the cake’s pink icing flowers. Her once voluptuous body sprawls beneath a hospital gown.

It’s pathetic and should never have been made public.

He said he released the photo so “people can see that she’s not half-dead,” an odd unintentional play on the old glass half full/half empty debate.

At 94, the woman I remember most for playing Erika Tiffany Smith on “Gilligan’s Island,” looks way past seven-eighths dead to me.

Really, if you’re 94 and the doctors say the most prudent medical thing to do is to start, piece by piece, removing parts of you, I’d say it’s time to close the book.

In my observations the people who seem to enjoy life the least seem to cling to it the most. They go to desperate lengths to add days to lives spent in shadow.

This certainly wasn’t the case with the ever-vivacious Gabor, author of the 1970 book, “How To Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man & How to Get Rid of a Man.”

She flitted from marriage to marriage, role to role, and seemed to enjoy having her life play out on the front pages of National Enquirer. She joked her greatest role was that of housekeeper: “I’ve been married eight times and every time the marriage ended I got to keep the house.”

She made sensational headlines in 1991 when she slapped a Hollywood police officer over a routine traffic stop. She she did a funny send-up of the incident during the opening credits of the hilarious “Naked Gun” sequel starring Leslie Nielsen.

So it saddens me to see her slow death being played out as if its some virtuous sort of testament to an indomitable spirit.

No, it would be far better if she’d have died, oh, probably about four years ago.

Now, the best we can hope for is that her husband the Prince -- and that’s a story too tangled for snappy distillation -- loses control of her chair as he’s wheeling her out to the limo and she zips down the drive and out onto the freeway where, for reasons of slapstick impact, she gets run over by a runaway steam roller.

I swear if the doctors ever come to me and say, “It doesn’t look good. We’re going to have to remove a foot.”

I’ll tell them to forget it. I intend to die with dignity. They’re not taking a whole foot off me.

“Heck, doc, I’m only 5-9. I can’t spare even an inch.”

Maybe they’ll conclude the sensible thing to do is relocate the point of amputation.

Like at the neck.

Dealing with life's disappointments

Yesterday’s callers all sounded as if they’d been dispatched from the suicide hotline.

“You gonna be okay?”

“It gets better, believe me . . .”

They all thought the Pittsburgh Steeler Super Bowl loss had me way out on the ledge.

Ha!

In the great canon of my life’s disappointments, this one barely registers.

I can’t recall the disappointment that inspired the attempt, but I once set out to divine history’s most pessimistic summation of this great practical joke we all call life.

Here’s what I came up with:

“Life is a series of disappointments, each one greater than the last, leading inexorably to the grave.”

It doesn’t, I admit, have the same pithy ring of “Have a Nice Day!” but the essence is evergreen.

This has been especially true for someone like me whose life has been plagued by persistent delusions of grandeur.

Perhaps the clearest example of this was spring of 2009. The Pittsburgh Penguins had just won their third Stanley Cup.

Pittsburgh was hosting a raucous parade attended by 250,000 revelers. The Pens rode in open cars and basked in the adulation of a metropolis they had by the tail.

I remember sitting home watching the euphoria on TV and thinking, man, I can’t believe no one called to invite me to be part of this.

And I wasn’t talking about the parade. Homeless derelicts were welcome at that.

I meant being up their on the podium with the champs.

Let’s for a moment examine this. I was an outstanding amateur hockey player -- and that’s no delusion -- but I ceased playing after high school. I covered the Ohio University Bobcats hockey team for the college newspaper, and later coached an area high school hockey for three bewildering seasons (combined record 8-42).

As for the Penguins that year, I’d done basically squat. I hadn’t attended a single game or contributed anything to the local media driving more rabid paying fans.

Sure, I watched the games on TV and wore my Penguins hat to the grocery store for milk whenever my hair was misbehaving, but that was it.

Yet for some reason, I felt the heads of the Penguin organization should have extended an invitation to have me be part of the team festivities -- the parties, the stag dinners, the midnight gatherings at the private strip clubs.

Why I feel this way is a complete mystery.

I do know this: everyone would have enjoyed themselves more if they had invited me -- and that’s no delusion.

As for my professional life, each and every day is, I swear, a crushing disappointment.

I go to bed each night distraught that some prestigious editor hasn’t called to say they want my novel and that Stephen Spielberg is interested in discussing the screenplay.

And then there’s this deadbeat blog. I figured it would take about a six months to gain an enormous audience and interest from wage-paying syndicates who’d want to shower me with praise, perks and piles of cash.

It’ll be three years in May and there’s still no sign it’s destined to become the national mania I was convinced it would be.

The strange thing about this is I know pockets of people who are absolutely insane for it. They give me just the reaction I’d hoped for when I commenced this solitary uphill climb.

They become despondent if I go more than three days without posting something fresh. They can’t all have substance abuse problems or foolish beliefs if they say nice things to me I’ll pay them all the money I owe them.

Talk about your delusions of grandeur.

So, yes, the Steelers loss was a disappointment. But I shall press on.

It’s all I know to do.

Because life is full of disappointments. The best we can all do is to cherish what we have while we have it.

Me, I’m going to divert my sporting interests to the Penguins and hope they are on a joyful march toward a fourth Stanley Cup.

Maybe this time someone will think to call me for the celebrations.

I’ll be disappointed if I’m not first to sip champagne from the Cup.

Pittsburgh, City of Champions, will win

Sometime soon the NFL will demonstrate its commitment to competitive equality by forcing the Rooney family to sell the Pittsburgh Steelers to Pirate owner Bob Nutting.

I think that’s what it’ll take to level the playing field that has now for four decades been dominated by the Black ‘n’ Gold.

Today will be the eighth Super Bowl involving the Steelers in the 45 years they’ve been playing the game. The Steelers are 6-1 prior to today’s kickoff.

During that same time, the city has won two World Series championships (pre-Bob Nutting’s involvement) and three NHL Stanley Cups.

That’s afforded perpetually immature men like me 13 opportunities to defect from reality and pretend we have a vested interest in the home team success.

It’s surreal.

No other city even comes close. The only cities with comparable achievements (Los Angeles, 13; Boston, 12; and New York, 12) are disqualified because each of their championship tallies are tainted by departed franchises (New York Giants, 3) and victories in professional basketball, which I don’t consider a sport.

Every other sport requires athletic ability. All you need to succeed in basketball is freakish height.

Sure, the sport involves some good athletes, but if you or I woke up tomorrow and had a growth spurt that left us 7-foot-8 inches tall, guaranteed, some NBA team would make us instant millionaires. Why? Simply because we’re tall.

So, sorry, LA with your 11 Laker Championships, get in line.

Too bad, Boston. Your six Celtic rings might as well be Crackerjacks toys.

And no will dispute that the most important morale boosting victory any city can enjoy is the Super Bowl.

Right or wrong, it is the big enchilada.

Only two teams have won five (no teams have won four). Four teams have never even won one.

Pittsburgh tonight is contending for its seventh.

And it expects to win.

The police are feeding the riot horses extra oats for tonight’s bus-tipping revelry and Pittsburgh City Schools have already announced a two-hour delay to Monday’s school start to allow staff and students the chance to sleep it off

When the schools did this in 2009, national commentators howled this set a terrible example for hungover Pittsburgh students and showed just how out of touch the city is from conventional priorities, as if pandering to the sports obsessed in America could ever backfire.

I thought it was brilliant and suspect we’ve already seen a stealthy influx of families who’ve moved their children to Pittsburgh just so they could sufficiently recover from future Super Bowl victories.

I call them Steeler sleeper cells.

Of course, this Pittsburgh run could end at any minute. For years, we’ve said, gee, this could be the last one.

I no longer think so. The key pieces to this run will remain in place for at least the next five years.

In that time, we could have twice the number of Super Bowl victories as the second most accomplished teams.

Today, Pittsburgh gets a leg up on that ascension and they’re going to do it in convincing fashion.

Pittsburgh 37, Green Bay 10.

Tweet of the week @8days2amish: “Astronaut Mark Kelly decides to leave wife Gabby Giffords' side to fly Space Shuttle. It’s understandable. Married men need their space.”

Our opposite daughter

I’m standing outside the glass wall looking at a roomful of frightened 4 and 5 year olds and one very alarmed supervisor when an alien thought enters my mind.

“So this is what it feels like to be a pervert.”

The children have clearly been well-schooled when it comes to dealing with suspicious strangers. They’re backing away toward the far wall and looking to the adult for safety instruction.

One heroic boy looks ready to break free from the grocery store child care center and dash over to Aisle 7 for defensive cutlery.

Me, I continue to kneel down and make more desperate funny faces and hope maybe -- maybe -- the world’s most confounding daughter will bail me out and acknowledge that, yes, that’s my Daddy.

Fat chance.

This is the fourth time this has happened. My wife and I have taken separate cars to the grocery store. Val puts Lucy, 4, in the play room and begins her solitary shopping.

I sneak in and hope to surprise the kid by making her smile with my goofy antics on the other side of the secure room’s glass.

Instead of, as normal daughters do, lighting up with surprised joy at seeing her great big buddy clowning just for her, she freezes, her face betraying zero recognition.

I’ve read enough news stories to know what strangers think when they see a child react to an adult like this. So has the supervisor.

“Danger! Creep! Pedophile! Snatcher! Tase! Mace! Knee testicles!”

It’s very disconcerting for a father who considers himself the World’s Best Daddy and was given a beer mug to support the egotistic contention.

I can’t believe she’s already so subversive that she is pranking me -- and it’s a prank I’d admire because it’s highly embarrassing.

But there are indications this is exactly the kind of girl she’ll grow up to be.

The first daughter, 10, played by all the rules. We knew which actions would trigger which emotions.

This one has a nasty streak that emerges at odd times.

I remember when she was 3 and quietly playing with her dolls. She was chirping sunshine to the tiny figures as she moved them about the dolly dance floor. I felt swept up by the emotion of watching her play.

I knelt beside her, my heart swelling with parental affection, and gushed, “Lucy, you are so beautiful!”

Her face reddened, she quietly turned and seemed to rise up the size of a Sasquatch. Her voice quaking with anger, she unleashed what to her was the most stinging insult she could conjure.

“No! YOU’RE beautiful!”

I’ve been called worse.

I like to play loud rock around the girls in hopes it’ll take root as a musical disinfectant when they’re exposed to all that godawful Disney crap.

I remember the time The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was playing. I was holding her in my arms and singing the righteous anthem that always gets my pulse pounding. I held her little face close to mine and sang the euphoric chorus: “We won’t get fooled again!”

Without emotion, she looked at me with dead eyes and prophesied, “We WILL get fooled again.”

So we sense she’s an opposite daughter. There are many inherent risks raising a child who always does the opposite of what you tell her to do.

It bends all your instincts of perceived wisdom. 

You tell her to, go ahead, it’s fun to play with Nana’s heirloom vase and, no, the hot stove won’t hurt you, darling.

The biggest concern is, gee, one day she will doubtless cease her oppositions and do exactly what you tell her to do.

Knowing this, the girl we named Lucinda and often call Lulu, will likely do it at some all-school assembly when the children are asked rah-rah questions about how they intend to grow up and contribute to society.

She’ll say, “My Daddy tells me I’ll need to always remember to be mean, lazy and do lots and lots of drugs!”

She is, indeed, a Lulu.

I think she ignores me at the play room window because she just loves her Mommy so much. When she’s been left alone she doesn’t want to see me.

She wants to see Mommy.

Thus, it’s essential I stay on Mommy’s good side.

It’s one thing when I’m standing there explaining to the play room supervisor that I’m Lucy’s dad, I’m not a pervert and my loving wife will be here any second to prove it.

But I don’t know what I’ll say the day Val walks up and delivers a line I’ll still, even in handcuffs, have to admire for reasons of subversive genius.

“I’ve never seen this creep before in my life.”

Can't hate the Packers, but . . .

It’s been a disconcerting week for Steeler fans like me who need hearts heavy with hate for Super Bowl motivation.

Hate the Packers? It’s one of the most storied franchises in football. They shoved Brett Favre out the door when he became a recidivist jerk, a role I’m confident he’ll be fulfilling for at least the next five years.

Plus, I can’t recall meeting a single soul from Green Bay and, as a liberal, I can’t hate, disparage or kill what I do not know.

I do know dozens of darling people from Packer-mad Wisconsin. I spent a fall week there in 2008 on a glorious golf assignment. They wined and dined me with such relentless joy the Badger State vaulted to near the top of my favorite destinations.

They showed me Milwaukee. I had my picture taken with the Bronz Fonz. I reveled in burger heaven at Sobelman’s Pub & Grille. I golfed at prestigious Erin Hills and Whistling Straits. I ate the finest meals and drank free top shelf booze till the bourbon washed all the hatreds from my heart.

They did everything but offer me a free hooker.

(Prospective PR hosts take note: In order, I’d prefer redhead, blonde, bald chick, silver-haired granny.)

Ethical aside: I just spoke to Mrs. Renee Stallings Greater Latrobe High School journalism class about what I for lack of a better word call my “career.” We talked about stories, research, etc., but the class broke down when a sincere student asked me to discuss the importance of ethics.

Four days later and I still can’t quit laughing.

I was laughing so hard I was unable to mention the one relevant line I remember about the importance of ethics, one I try and share with aspiring journalists, but it applies to all professional disciplines.

“Once you get past ethics, the rest is easy.”

That’s a line from J.R. Ewing of the show “Dallas.”

Yes, Dallas. Now there’s something that gets my hateful heart revving.

And I’m talking about the town in general and the Dallas football team in particular. The only thing I like about Dallas is “Dallas.”

The Super Bowl is being contested in the massive Dallas ego dome that is Cowboy owner Jerry Jones’s gaudy $1.2 billion tribute to himself.

My fondest wish this entire football season was the Steelers would play the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. This would have pleased Jones.

Then the Steelers and their fans could have humiliated him buy buying up three-quarters of the seats and turning Cowboy stadium into a home game for the team from Pittsburgh, which is just what Steeler fans do. You’ll see on Sunday.

Then to complete the humiliation, the Steelers would win 52-3.

Still, having the Steelers there will be plenty humiliating to Jones, and that pleases me.

I travel enough that I have a good sense of how the country regards people from Pittsburgh.

My sense is this:

They love us!

It’s true. I refer to an illustrative anecdote from The River Bar at Blackwolf Run, part of the amazing Kohler complex in Wisconsin.

I was sitting there sipping a jumbo triple Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. A group of three couples came in and we instinctively decided to be friendly.

Madison residents up for a weekend frolic, they immediately embraced me when I told them I was from Pittsburgh. A big garrulous fellow threw his beefy arm around me and said, “Man, I’ve never known anyone from Pittsburgh who wasn’t a really great guy!”

I told him he’d yet to know me after three giant glasses of bourbon.

We laughed. They could tell my friendliness would only go up as the bourbon went down.

It may be difficult for those rare individuals who’ve spied me sober to comprehend (sitings of albino rhino are more widespread), but I’m way, way more fun after three big bourbons.

In fact, the world be a happier place if guys like me were encouraged to have bourbon for breakfast.

So what am I to do?

Here’s what:

Kill ‘em, Steelers! Take no prisoners. Beat ‘em like J.R. always beat Cliff Barnes, dirty tricks and all.

Sure, it’ll make my heart heavy to know a state full of people I like and admire for their cheerful generosity will have their feelings hurt, but they’ll get over it.

I didn't drink up all their bourbon.