Cheer up, America!

It hasn’t even been 10 years since 2002 when Dick Cheney famously said, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”

It was the reason he used to justify the massive Bush tax cuts to then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Those trickle-down tax cuts and the Iraq War fiasco are the reasons the $230 billion Clinton surplus went, “Wheeee!!!”

Now last night in the museum dedicated to the sainted Reagan all the leading Republicans asserted nothing but deficits matter.

Well, Cheney was for the most part right. Most deficits don’t matter, certainly not to the hysterical extent the Republican presidential candidates currently contend (at least until one of them becomes president).

But there is one key deficit that goes unmentioned because it runs counter to the scare-mongering so prevalent in Congress.

It’s the optimism deficit.

The country is morose at a time when it should be getting ready to strut.

Why?

The biggest reason happens Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

We’ve survived 10 of the worst years in the history of the republic. The attacks and our misguided overreaction -- Iraq -- could have devastated America. Instead will wind up fortifying us.

Historians will look back and wonder how we survived the last decade.

We survived Bernie Madoff, Fannie & Freddie, al-Qaeda, gulf oil spills, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, the steroid dismantling of baseball’s most hallowed records, the collapse of Detroit, Sanjaya, shoe and underwear bombers, TSA pat-downs and the 15th anniversary of Radio Disney.

Man, are we ever due.

We survived the untimely death of Texas troubadour Stephen Bruton (1948-2009). He co-wrote many of the songs for the fine Jeff Bridge’s movie, “Crazy Heart,” a 2009 Oscar winner dedicated to his memory.

This is from his 1995 song, “Right on Time,” and it strikes me as Americana apropos of the past decade.

I watched my luck run right out that door

I felt the future slam in my face

You know with luck this bad, I just had to smile

I’m only sticking around to see what else is gonna take place

We are witnessing the end of a really messy epoch in American history. It won’t bookend until the next election.

But, I swear, we’re on the short end of it. Detroit’s been miraculously reborn and businesses are sitting on nearly $1 trillion in profits and are bound to soon pull the trigger on more hiring.

The daily headlines scream you should be afraid.

Nonsense.

This isn’t about defeating the menace of global Communism or killing Osama bin Laden.

We’re being terrified by a bunch of accountants.

To me it seems almost treasonous to be so afraid of a future in a country so historically exuberant. This country positively percolates with great, innovative men and women who when challenged kick ass.

We defeat polio, bloodthirsty tyrants and nations audacious enough to think they can beat us to the surface of the moon.

These have been some damned tough times. People are struggling.

Hang in there. It’s going to get better.

Here’s a quick booster shot of some things that ought to make you more optimistic when the headlines scream you’re a fool for feeling that way.

• The NFL’s back and Brett Favre isn’t.

• With the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the Republicans at the debate didn’t all look as batshit crazy as you’d think they might have been. That bodes well for an issue-based 2012 presidential race.

• In 2001, the pessimists predicted we were on the verge of Islamic theocracies sweeping the Middle East. Ten years later the Arab world is rising up to demand Democracy. They’re dying for it in Egypt, Libya and Syria. And Bill Clinton hasn’t even paid them a visit yet.

• We’ve still got Clint Eastwood!

• Tea Party influence has peaked and so has Sarah Palin.

• You’re starting to see evidence everywhere that major corporations are finally starting to take eco-issues seriously.

• Kate Gosselin’s out of work.

• A coalition of CEOs led by Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz is gaining traction in a movement to get America working again. The group is pressuring Congress and business leaders to focus on innovative job creation. This could get interesting.

• Moammar Ghadafi hasn’t had a good day in at least five months.

• Only 16 shopping days until I rerun my ever-popular Lt. Frank Burns tribute on September 29, birthday of the late, five-times married actor Larry Linville!

I’m not sure if any of that will help perennial pessimists who are morose about the future.

But I’m optimistic it might.

Rooster risings: alarm clock alternatives

Being sensitive to any potential feelings, I try not to refer to our bedroom timepiece as an “alarm clock,” but rather “the clock that sometimes alarms.”

I don’t feel knee-jerk alarm anytime I look at it. Instead, I usually feel an annoyance of the awareness that time, like the lives of the people I love most, is essentially beyond my control.

I wish instead of a snooze button it had pause button for the times when a day is going splendidly or a fast-forward for when the day’s a real crapfest.

I wouldn’t want a rewind button for fear it might malfunction and I’d have to endure the Bush/Cheney years all over again.

If I were the clock, I’d hate being called the “alarm” clock because I think people would begrudge me for my near daily duty. It’s the stink bug of bedroom appliances.

It’s like calling the obnoxious little neighbor boy “the nosepicker” when we could just as accurately refer to him as “the dog torturer,” “the tantrum tosser” or the “mommy infuriator.”

In times like this, I always try and channel Jed Clampett. I figure he’d probably call his fancy alarm clock the “electronic rooster.”

Many working people will resent me for this, but I’m perfectly at peace with my electronic rooster.

The primary reasons I use the alarm function is when I have an early tee time or a flight to catch.

It rarely alarms us and I usually begin to rise without artificial interference with the dawning sun.

It’s a clock radio and we used to like to enjoy waking to terrestrial radio before it became such a nasty commercial-ridden harangue.

Now the only sound it makes is the harsh “BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!” that makes my heart feel like it’s going to detonate.

I’ve been thinking about the old clock lately because it’s destined to become yet another anachronism we’re all bound to miss as our smart phones take over yet another life function.

Yes, the time for bed stand clocks is running out.

My iPhone has a dandy alarm clock feature I’ve renamed ROOSTER. I like it because I can fine tune my wake-up mood. I can select from any of about 300 time-themed songs on my iTunes library, time being a popular song subject.

For a while I used “Time Waits for No One,” by the Rolling Stones but its insistent beat made me feel like dashing naked out of bed to catch a rush hour bus.

Kathy Mattea has the nice “Time Passes By,” but the country fiddles made me feel like I ought to keep a bottle of Tennessee whiskey beside the bed for a wake-up blast, which I learned through hard experience leads to inherent pitfalls.

So I mostly stick with Bob Dylan’s “Born in Time” from the 1990 release, “Under The Red Sky.”

It’s soothing, descriptive and like much of Dylan’s work makes absolutely no sense to critical thinkers.

Of course, waking up to even good Dylan doesn’t measure up to the very best way to arise in the mornings. And that, of course, is being kissed all over.

Yes, waking up to sex after spending most of the night dreaming about it is the perfect way to start the day.

You feel loved! You feel invigorated! You’re gettin’ some!

Of course, me waking up to morning sex would certainly alarm my wife who’d insist on knowing why there was a naked stranger sharing our bed.

She’s resistant to my pleas for a carnal sort of wake-up, figuring getting the kids ready for school takes precedent. And she says she needs every minute of sleep she can get.

So my wish for a euphoric wake-up goes ungranted.

I guess even the most loving women have a hard time when the cocks crow too early.

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.

What you're reading right now

One of the things I enjoy most about blogging is it is virtually self-perpetuating.

It used to be pre-internet columnists for newspapers had to maintain a level of consistency or be banished.

“I could write the world’s greatest story today and then I’ll have to wake up tomorrow and write another one just as good or everyone will say I’m slipping.”

That’s what one of my old favorites, the late great Lewis Grizzard, once told me. Thrice married and divorced, he died of a congenital heart defect at just 47.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him the equivalent times he was married and I think one of our interviews exceeded the duration of one of his marriages.

The man was a doozy. And a great writer.

But I think about his point whenever I peek at my stats page and it tells me someone is reading a story I posted from maybe three years ago.

That’s the beauty of writing in the internet age.

To turn Grizzard’s phrase on its head, I could have written the greatest story three years ago, given up writing to sell insurance and today that story could make me famous.

Today our stories are eternal.

I’m reminded of this nearly daily when I see that people trolling the internet have found my blog and mined something I barely remember writing and, bless their hearts, have begun referring it to all their friends.

I thought I’d give you an example and show you the top 10 stories people are reading right now and my thoughts that some of these arbitrary deadbeats are actually starting to make me proud.

I’ll omit a couple of obvious high rankers from the last two weeks.

No. 1 party boy from America’s No. 1 party school, August 2 -- Reaction to this boozy love letter to my Ohio University alma mater has been very gratifying. It got a huge readership right out of the gate and continues to draw near daily readers from all over. I think I was just a bit hungover when I wrote it.

Turn the page: A Bob Seger salute, January 21 -- I could really be onto something if I just picked one cool celebrity and focused laser-like on the subject. Anytime someone googles the great Seger song, “Turn the Page,” or other Seger-related queries, this post pops up.

Even stink bugs need love, September 30, 2010 -- This one continues to plod along and doesn’t stink at all. I thought it had some nice subtle sweetness about how even the lowliest creatures deserve some tenderness. Favorite line: “How can dedicated entymologists be anything but bug-eyed?”

Talking to nudists about Casual Fridays, June 3, 2011 -- I enjoy the daily updates to the newly added “search term of the day” feature up there in the right hand corner of the blog. I thought it would be fun to include some of the oddball ways people find my site. Guaranteed, at least once a day someone finds my site by including some variation of the search term “nude.” There’s been “amish nude,” “casual nudes,” and “nude recreation week.” I did a story about National Nude Recreation Week back in July and had a lot of fun with the research. I expect this one will be evergreen.

Time on my hands & everywhere else, August 31, 2009 -- This surprised me when it landed with a thud. I sort of thought it was the kind of breakthrough post that would really drive some readers my way. Wrong! But it’s becoming a little engine that could. It turns up in the readership rosters all the time. It’s a good one if for no other reason than the opening premise: “I’m thinking of getting a $75 tattoo of an $18,000 Rolex on my left wrist.”

R.I.P Buster the 19-year-old cat, September 4, 2008 -- Well this is certainly a surprise. Someone’s trolling around in the back catalogue and stopped by on the birthday of this post I wrote exactly three years ago. So odd. It’s not bad, but it makes me wonder if I should go back and weed out some of the ones I don’t really like. I have over 500 blog posts now and the world would be none the wiser if I trimmed that in half. Heck, maybe I should just delete all by the top 25. I’d look like a genius.

A Brad Pitt-y Party, January 13, 2009 -- A fine selection. I feel like a snooty waiter complimenting someone on selecting a rare vintage. This is the kind of oldie but goodie I’d keep if I whittled down the stack. Bashing celebrities is so much fun I wonder why I don’t do it more often.

867-5309, February 15, 2011 -- I contend this is the last phone number we’ll all remember. Our numbers have become our names. We just dial the contacts. This doesn’t pop up too much and I’m always pleased when it does. “Jenny! Jenny! Who can I turn to?” So much digital nostalgia.

Boston Corbett: America’s Greatest Eunuch, April 26, 2010 -- What a fascinating and insane man. Corbett’s the man who killed the man who killed Lincoln. This gets a lot of traffic. I like to think bleary eyed and scholarly researchers stumble on this and are revived by a strong shot of historical irreverence.

My 2010 office party: Canceled!, December 22, 2010 -- Just what the hell this is doing here I can not explain. Just about every day of the year for the past nine months someone, somewhere clicks this on. It’s confounding. It’s okay, but what’s the big deal? If today’s like every other day, at least a dozen people from all over the world will tap into this story that was topical for about two days last winter. Amazing. Oh, well. What can I do except wish those readers a very Merry Christmas!

And Happy Labor Day to the rest of you!

Thanks for reading!

Five li'l piggies went, "Ouch!"

It’s been two days and I remain enthralled with the interview I saw with John Hutt, the Colorado lumberjack who severed five of his own toes when a piece of heavy equipment pinned his foot.

The guy was so funny, so matter-of-fact, that if it wasn’t so anatomically misleading I’d call his sense of humor disarming.

“Instead of calling an ambulance, I thought about calling a tow truck,” was just one of his zingers.

They made the movie “127 Hours” about climber Aron Ralston’s harrowing limb removal. They ought to at least give this lively joker his own reality show -- at least for as long as their are enough parts of him still left to film.

I’m morbidly drawn to stories about self-amputation and human cannibalism.

I think it goes back to a week in 1997 when I was covering a story about a central Pennsylvania logger who severed his leg below the knee to escape the fate Hutt feared -- bleeding to death all alone in the godforsaken wilderness.

It’s not a story for the faint of heart.

A tree he was felling twisted and crashed down on his right leg. He used a pen knife to remove the shattered limb.

He then hobbled up a gravel hill and drove a bulldozer a quarter of a mile to his vehicle, which he then drove 12 miles to the emergency room.

The only thing that could have made that part of the story better was if he’d pulled into a tavern for a booster shot of Wild Turkey before proceeding to the ER.

The story dominated the news for nearly two weeks.

That’s why people were surprised when I told them my assigning magazine, National Enquirer, passed. The reason was the saturation coverage and the one-legged woodsman fell for the comely charms of the fair Connie Chung and granted her a blockbuster exclusive.

That logistical rationale was far too boring for such a magnificent story so I upped the ante with a dandy lie.

“The story wasn’t compelling enough for the Enquirer,” I said. “For it to be an Enquirer story, to survive the man would have had to have eaten the leg.”

Truly, it would have added a great dramatic element and, perhaps, the only time in history when a right leg served as a leftover.

We can’t help but internalize these sorts of stories. What would we have done had we been in Hutt’s shoes, one of which is now suddenly more roomy.

“I couldn’t reach my cell phone,” he told reporters. “I knew I needed to do something before I went into shock or dropped the knife or something like that.”

The pinky was the first to go.

Factual intermission: Even veteran podiatrists call it the pinky. How delightful!

It may be taking my knee-jerk political correctness to the extreme, but how can dark-skinned races have a body part with the root description anchored with the word pink?

I’m sure the incongruity’s already occurred to men like the Rev. Al Sharpton, but it’s probably pretty far down on their to-do lists.

Anyhoo, Hutt mowed ‘em down one by one.

“I’d cut some and then it’d be pretty painful so I’d stop and take a breath or two and then keep cutting until I got them all cut off.”

Amazing. It makes me feel like a sissy for all my bitching when my scarred wife insists I cut my jagged toe nails.

Hutt then called his wife -- she didn’t pick up -- and left the message: “Please call. I cut off my foot.”

So well played. Overlooking the exaggeration, he deftly communicates he nearly died while she’s too busy to even answer his emergency call.

What moxie. The only thing missing was, “And have a nice day!”

He may be missing five toes, but the man now has ample upper hand in his marriage.

Who wouldn’t tune in to watch a guy like this limp through life?

Episodes can feature him doing things like making a toe bone necklace and customizing all his right sandals so they don’t slip off.

And we’ll all tune in to watch him cajole his wife to do his every bidding by gently reminding her of the time he nearly bled to death while she yapped on the phone.

Call it, “Toe-tal Recall with John Hutt.”

Even with just five toes, I’m sure we’ll all get a real kick out of it.

Cars need sleep mode (from 2009)

I'm tempted to shut myself in the office and knock out a quick blog about Colorado logger John Hutt, who severed five toes to free himself from a piece of heavy equipment in the remote woods.

But, geez, it's the Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. Even people who aren't as work-resistent as I are hanging it up for the week.

Why shouldn't I?

The girls are at the pool. I'm racing off to join them. But I'll file that sucker about the toe cutter early tomorrow morning. And that's a real commitment and on a holiday weekend to boot.

So here's a post from July 2009 offering another sensible solution to a pressing global problem. So far, no hint anyone's bothered to act on it.

I was sitting motionless in traffic for so long I began wondering if I could sneak in a refreshing nap. Studies show that a few quick winks can do wonders for increasing our productivity and longevity.

Yet, as I sat there and thought of ways to momentarily shut down for my own benefit, the tank in which I was being cushioned in air-conditioned splendor soldiered on and on, bless its mechanical heart.

The engine of my 2007 Saturn Vue was operating with nearly the same crisp efficiency as if it were powering the vehicle to 65 mph.

Our society is bedeviled by unnecessary motion. We fidget. We’re always on the go. We’re rarely idle.

But our running vehicles often are. It’s an hour drive from my home in Latrobe to downtown Pittsburgh where we go once a week for grannies and giggles. During that time, my trusty Saturn can be completely motionless for up to 25 minutes.

It’s like watching TV in the pre-DVR days when we were all held hostage to all those awful Geico commercials.

I let my mind graze on magazines, books, or newspapers I keep handy for long red lights and the portions of the trip when congestion brings all traffic to a complete halt. But for nearly half the trip, my car continues to consume fossil fuels and pollute the atmosphere when its sole duty is to keep me sheltered from storms or sun and play the groovy tunes that keep my soul sweet.

And I’m not alone. To my left and to my right, from the front to the back for as far as the eye can see are other cars are doing the same nasty and unnecessary business. It’s like being in a mall parking lot at Christmas where all the cars are left running while everyone goes inside and shops.

Why can’t our cars have a sleep mode? Imagine how many fewer barrels of oil we’d need to import if smart cars could power down when the owner instinctively recognized advancing was momentarily futile.

Why can't cars be like golf carts, which by all standards are like idiot cousins. They're smaller, less rugged and far less intelligent.

Yet the only time the hillbilly golf cart is in motion is when I press down on the accelerator. It doesn't run and run and run while I'm three-putting on the nearby green.

Detroit engineers who right now are feverishly working to find ways to make cars more efficient when they go from zero to 60 need to consider ways to make them vastly more efficient when they aren’t going anywhere.

Concerned motorists everywhere should band together to insist that smart changes are applied to every new car.

It’s a movement I’d lead myself, but I can’t generate that kind of energy.

I never did get that nap.

Splendors that out-glitter gold

If grandma really does have a heart of a gold you might want to rethink that humanitarian organ donation. Her 10-ounce ticker’s worth about $18,250.

Crime will take a disturbing new twist if a really good human heart ever becomes considered as valuable as stuff we dig up from the dirt.

Fat chance of that.

Who’s buying all this commodity gold? What besides base hoarding can you do with it?

You can’t eat it. You can’t cuddle it.

In those regards, a pound puppy ought to be worth more, especially in desperate times.

I don’t want to do anything that would instigate a harangue from Ron Paul supporters, but the mania for gold strikes me as more than a little crazy.

Yet gold and the possession of other earthly baubles drive the economy and has been at the heart of so much great cinema and literature.

I just finished re-reading “The Pearl” by the peerless John Steinbeck. Based on an old Mexican folk tale, the story’s about how oyster-diver Kino finds the world’s most magnificent pearl while diving for simple sustenance. The discovery leads to all the world’s worst miseries being unleashed on him and the family he adores.

The novella ends with godforsaken Kino heaving the pearl back into the ocean.

Similar devastation awaits nefarious Auric Goldfinger in “Goldfinger,” still maybe the best Bond movie. Goldfinger’s Midas-like lusts lead him to try and radiate all the gold in Fort Knox so it will be worthless for 58 years, thus driving up the worth of Goldfinger’s stash.

His greed is his undoing and Bond saves the day and winds up with Pussy Galore.

And the resolution seems to please Bond.

I’ll resist embracing all the nudge-nudge puns the name solicits, but I must be Bond-like in at least that regard.

Agent 007 never cared about money.

Me neither.

The problem is people pay me in money and other people immediately begin lining up to take the money right back.

Like Goldfinger, they all want treasure without soul.

I’d like to get paid in something I enjoy, could share with others and be ephemeral enough that no one could ever snatch it from me.

I’d like to be paid one quarter in cash and three quarters in three-hour lunches.

The lunches don’t have to all be at fancy restaurants, but most of them had better be.

And I can bring a guest. And we can enjoy two bottles of wine and anything on the menu. No restrictions.

And I want at least a 20 percent tip included to keep the pretty waitresses smiling.

The three-hour lunch might be the world’s most perfect splurge.

I enjoy golf, but a day of golf always leaves part of me sad and part of me sore. And I enjoy a long sumptuous dinner, too, but after a long dinner I feel like going to sleep.

After a long lunch, I feel like going to a tavern.

I’ve enjoyed splendid three-hour lunches with Val and friends around the country. I remember one in particular in New York.

It was me, Val and a buddy at the Sea Grill at Rockefeller Center right in the heart of Manhattan. Our al fresco table was at the center of what in the winter is the famous ice skating rink.

The NYC Visitor’s Bureau had set the whole thing up so I could write a Big Apple travel story. It was among the most convivial three hours of my whole jolly life.

The second bottle of wine is key. With one, most everyone is relaxed and pleasant. But the magic starts once the second one is uncorked.

We all become more witty, more relaxed more charming.

Really, if I had the budget and time for the logistics, I’d send everyone who reads my blog a couple of bottles of hootch with instructions they guzzle it on down before clicking on my latest post.

I’d be sensational.

Sort of like Bond, James Bond.

Ah, the two of us have so much in common.

The only reason either of us would ever step inside Fort Knox is if someone told us they’d opened up a really swanky restaurant amidst all the ungodly billions in bullion.

That’s not all. He’s agent 007.

And right now my balance shows there’s about $0.07 in my savings account.

There’s Goldfinger and then there’s me.

Goldfingernail.