It's almost here

Here it is, three days before Christmas, and I’ve already finished my shopping. It’s kind of a letdown. I don’t know what to do with myself now. I’m a guy who’s been known to bang on the doors of a K-mart store that just closed on Christmas Eve like Dustin Hoffman at the end of “The Graduate.”

I guess it helped that we’ve sort of eliminated the element of surprise when it comes to gift-giving in my family. I bought gifts for my wife and both children while they were in the store with me. They actually all tried their gifts on before I bought them. Then we came home and wrapped them and put them under the tree, for some reason.

And I know what I’m getting from the kids, too. Allie is giving me a new putter, which I practiced with in the sporting goods store before she “bought” it. I’m pretty sure she used my debit card to pay for it. David went out shopping for me and I got a text that read “What size belt do you wear?” I took that as a pretty good clue.

I don’t mind knowing that the gifts are. It’s better than getting something you don’t want. My dad probably still has unopened boxes of Aqua-Velva and soap-on-a-rope lying around his house somewhere.

I still had to go in a few stores this Christmas season, but I pretty much avoided the mall, except for a couple of brief excursions. I learned long ago that the trick, if you’re married, is to make every trip to the mall so unpleasant and excruciating for your wife that she’ll never ask you to go again. They should write this into the wedding vows – “Do you promise to love, honor, obey, and never try to drag your husband to a shopping mall?”

The people who work in retail stores must go insane in December. Not only from the big crowds and frantic shoppers, but from the incessant Christmas music that every store feels it must play 24 hours a day. I was in one store and “Frosty the Snowman” was playing the whole time, in Spanish. It’s irritating enough in English. Those poor women had to be homicidal by the time they went home from work.

I really don’t care what I get for Christmas. I never could name anything specific when I was asked what I wanted. Though I really could use some nice new pajama pants. Maybe it’s not too late, depending on who’s reading this.

The spirit of Christmas

People had begun to look at me funny recently when I told them we didn’t have a Christmas tree up yet, so the family and I trundled off together to a tree farm Friday to continue our family tradition of cutting one down.

We argue every year about whose turn it is to pick out the tree. We decided long ago we would rotate, but we basically haven’t known whose turn it was since 1999. I don’t believe I ever actually picked out the tree. This year, my daughter claimed to have written documentation that it was her year, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t a forgery.

Anyway, we got to the farm about 10 minutes before dark, and it was extremity-numbing cold, so we picked out the tree in record time this year. One of the good parts about the kids getting older is my son is now old enough to saw down the tree. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling handing him that saw, let me tell you. Not because it made me proud to see him becoming a man, but because my back was killing me.

As usual, we cut down a tree that scrapes the ceiling in our living room. Every year, we look at our tree and say, “Wow, that was too big, we need to get a smaller one next year.” And every year, we don’t. We’re like alcoholics waking up on Sunday mornings with a hangover, swearing we’ll never drink again.

The fun begins with these trees when I have to get them into the Christmas tree stand. There are some inventions that have not advanced technologically in hundreds of years – toilets, toothpicks, slingshots, and Christmas tree stands are among them. King Charlemagne probably used a Christmas tree stand exactly like the one I bought at Walgreens last year.

My son offered to help me get this year’s cypress beast into the stand. By help, he meant stand there with one hand on the tree while text-messaging a girl with the other. I’m lying on the floor, twisting a rusty screw into a gnarled tree trunk, and he’s tapping out “I wnt 2 C U 2” to some girl on his phone.

I did not realize we had cut down a tree that would defy the laws of physics. But every time I’d get it straight up and down in the tree stand, I would step back and it would start to lean and wobble like Otis Campbell on a Saturday night. At one point I was lying on the floor, the tree on top of me, the pungent odor of branches in my nose and the tap-tap-tap of cell-phone Romeo in my ears. I perhaps uttered a mild curse word or two and asked the boy to either help me, or have a Marvin Gaye experience with his father. He saw the light.

After a couple more false starts, and me slapping the phone out of his hand, we got it to stand up, albeit at a 45-degree angle. Well, that’s nothing that a few magazines can’t fix, so we wrestled it into a corner of the living and held our breath. When after 30 seconds it didn’t fall, we both exhaled and figured our job was done.

My wife and daughter got home, and it didn’t take Nostradamus to predict what they were going to say – “It’s not straight.” Well, I told them, it as straight as it’s going to get. Christmas is not about everything looking perfect, anyway. It’s about the birth of Jesus and giving presents and being with family and friends and watching Christmas shows on TV while the room is bathed in the light of a crooked, too-big tree filled with home-made ornaments and a strand of lights where only half the bulbs work. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Falcons' "fans" are embarrassment

I have been a Falcons’ fan for as long as I can remember, and believe me, it can be pretty tough.

I was a Falcons’ fan when they lost 59-0 to the Los Angeles Rams. I was a Falcons’ fan when we had to suffer through terrible coaches like Dan Henning and Marion Campbell and June Jones. I endured the embarrassment of the team being led by the likes of Jerry Glanville and Jim Mora Jr., and I have been able to still support them despite the presence of idiots like Andre Rison and Deangelo Hall and Jeff George.

But yesterday in the Georgia Dome, I believe I witnessed a new low in Atlanta Falcons' history – specifically, in Falcons’ fans’ history. I walked out of that place shaking my head, embarrassed and disgusted and believing that the city of Atlanta does not deserve a pro football franchise.

It wasn’t so much that they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. Five of the team’s offensive starters were injured and missed the game, so it wasn’t surprising that they would lose. But there is no excuse for the behavior of many of the team’s so-called “fans.”

Sunday marked the return of the disgraced Michael Vick to the Dome. The lazy ignorant dog-killer quarterback is back in the league with the Eagles after taking $100 million and almost single-handedly destroying the Atlanta franchise. He’s with the Eagles now, and I don’t begrudge him getting a chance to play. He did his time, so he should be allowed to come back.

As I looked around and saw all of those morons wearing Vick jerseys in the crowd, my faith in humanity was challenged. I don’t understand grown men and women wearing football jerseys anyway, but that’s another story. But here’s what those people were saying – we’re not Falcons’ fans, we’re Michael Vick fans.

And don’t let anybody fool you. It was not a mild reaction to Vick. There were thousands of people cheering for him in that stadium. They cheered when he scored a touchdown. That’s right, people wearing Falcons' jerseys, in the Falcons’ stadium, were excited when a player from another team scored a touchdown to help beat Atlanta. In the fourth quarter, they chanted “We want Vick!”, and celebrated like he was a conquering hero when he trotted on to the field. And when he threw a touchdown pass, you would have thought the Falcons had just won the Super Bowl, the way it sounded in there.

Make no mistake; there is a definite racial element to all of this. Almost all of the Vick supporters were black. Can someone please tell me what they see in him? Do they like him simply because he is also black? Because I can see no other reason that they would go so crazy for him.

Here’s the thing, people. When he was here, he didn’t care about you at all. He didn’t stay in Atlanta in the offseason and work in the community. He high-tailed it back to Virginia as soon as he could to hang with his homeboys and watch over his fighting dogs. He flipped the fans off, he embarrassed the franchise with some of his public actions, and by his own admission he didn’t bother looking at film, learning the offense, or working hard at helping the team win. He wasn’t even that good of a quarterback. Every now and then he would break off an exciting run, but he never progressed as a passer, and his last two seasons with the team, they didn’t even make the playoffs. This is your hero?

And even if you thought he was a great player, which he wasn’t, did his absolute lack of character not bother you at all? Do you really want your sons to emulate him and see him as a role model?

Thank goodness the Falcons actually have a real quarterback now, one who comes early and stays late, who is conscientious and works hard and does the right thing. I will gladly continue to cheer for Matt Ryan, but I will do it from the comfort of my living room. I don’t want to be surrounded by those people again.

Mmmmmmm mmmmmm goood

I’ve rediscovered something in my life that has been missing for a while, and I’m glad to have it back.

No, I’m not talking about exercise or motivation or hair that’s not grey. I’m talking about potted meat.

When I was younger, I loved potted meat. It was one of my favorite snacks. Give me a little can of potted meat and some saltine crackers (which we used to call soda crackers) and a Coke to wash it down and I could make a meal out of it.

The uninformed will often look at potted meat and just go, “Ewwwwww!” This is what everyone in my house feels compelled to do every single time I sit down to enjoy my processed meat delight. But as caviar is more than just fish eggs, and escargot is more than just snails, potted meat is more than just some congealed meat by-product.

What is potted meat? Well, I’m not exactly sure, and I don’t think I want to know, and I don’t really care. It’s meat, and it’s potted, and I like it. ’Nough said.

There are some cousins to potted meat, but I don’t really like those. Vienna sausage are packed in some sort of toe jelly that keeps me away. Starbucks coffee smells like Vienna sausage to me, therefore I don’t drink it. Spam is kind of a dressed-up version of potted meat, but I don’t enjoy it. And deviled ham? Please. Don’t insult me.

My grandmother used to serve fried tripe. I didn’t even like the sound of that, and I liked the taste even less. Apparently it comes from an animal’s stomach. I don’t know why that’s any grosser than eating an animal’s butt, which we do all the time, but somehow it is.

At some point, I decided that potted meat had too much fat (true) and too many calories (true) and too much sodium (true) and no nutritional value (debatable), so I should take it out of my diet. But all the while I continued to eat other unhealthy things, so it didn’t make much difference. Plus it’s a little bitty can, how bad for you can it be?

Since the doctor made me stop drinking beer, I figure popping open a can of potted meat every now and then is not such a bad thing. And you won’t get a ticket for driving after eating too much potted meat, though it might not be a fun ride for the other people in the car.

If you haven’t experienced the joys of potted meat, I suggest you go to your local grocery store, get a couple of cans (make sure it’s Libby’s – the other brands aren’t as good), get some soda crackers, pop the tin top off the can and commence to eating. You’ll thank me, even if your cholesterol doesn’t.

That was a close one!

A funny story in my family concerns how my mother once went to The Omni in Atlanta for a gospel music concert on New Year’s Eve, featuring The Gaither Family and others, and accidentally wandered into the wrong bathroom.

It was her first trip to The Omni, and quite possibly any major sporting arena, so she wasn’t used to the bathroom setup. She went into the restroom, and she said later that she remembered thinking it was odd that there were so many water fountains against the wall, and so few stalls. As she was sitting in the confines of her stall, she heard male voices and realized that what she had glimpsed were not water fountains at all, but urinals.

She sat there, paralyzed with fear, until finally all the voices died down and she made a mad dash out, embarrassed and horrified. To her knowledge, nobody saw her in there, and later, once all the red went out of her cheeks, she was able to laugh about it.

Well, I wish she was still with us, because boy, do I have a story that she’d enjoy.

I had to go to Emory Hospital this morning for a CT scan, and I wasn’t feeling great. I was having what we’ll call “tummy miseries,” even though I hadn’t eaten anything since 6 o’clock the night before. And these are the kind of tummy miseries from which there are no escape – once they hit, they must be addressed immediately. I will say no more.

I was in the car, heading back to work, and I suddenly knew that I had to stop ASAP. The nearest place was a Whole Foods grocery story, so I pulled in there, asked a guy stacking cantaloupes where the restrooms were, and shuffled off in that direction, doubled over and grimacing.

The men’s bathroom in this place was your standard single-seater, and there was a guy in there with the door locked, and it didn’t seem like he was in any hurry. I could see that the women’s restroom, just across the hall, appeared to be bigger. It had a swinging door that didn’t lock, and it didn’t sound like anybody was in there.

At this point, my stomach informed me that I had a decision to make. I could leave and try to go to another store, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it. I could bang on the men’s bathroom door, but I could hear the guy turning magazine pages, so that wasn’t going to work. So I sort of gently pushed the women’s bathroom door open, saw there was nobody in there, and there were two stalls, no waiting. My decision was made.

I didn’t plan to stay long. Maybe 30 seconds. I just needed immediate relief, or I was going to die. So I slipped in unnoticed, went to the stall against the wall, and thanked Jesus for the empty bathroom.

I had been there maybe 15 seconds when I heard voices just outside the main bathroom door. It was a man, telling a little girl to go on in, and he’d wait outside. Oh no, I thought. This can’t be happening. But it was. I heard the door open, and I heard him urge her to go on in, because a man can’t come in the girls’ bathroom, he explained, and he would just wait outside.

So she came on in, and now my stomach troubles weren’t a big deal, because I was instead having a heart attack. I could see the little girl’s shoes in the next stall, and she walked in, and she just stopped. Oh Lord, I thought. She’s going to look under here and see me, then she’s going to run outside and say, “Daddy, there’s a man sitting on the potty!”

I considered my options. I looked for a window so I could climb out, but it was too small. If the man came in and confronted me, then I could tell the truth, but who would believe that? I wouldn’t, if it happened to my little girl. I would have figured the guy was a pervert and I would have given him a beatdown.

Well, I thought, if he comes in, I’ll just have to charge him and knock him out of the way, then run for my car as fast as possible and drive straight to Mexico, and maybe come back in six months after getting plastic surgery. But with my luck, he’d probably be a professional wrestler, or an off-duty cop carrying a gun. Every way I looked at it, I was screwed.

After a minute, the little girl went back to the main door and said, “Daddy, I don’t know which potty to use.” Then he stuck his head in the door and directed her to the empty stall, and again assured her that he would be right outside. Finally, the little girl came in, did her business, and I just sat there praying to God and Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and the Dalai Lama and Oprah that I wouldn’t be noticed.

She finished up, went out, and I counted to 15, then slipped out of my stall, peeked out the door, saw the coast was clear, and walked as fast as humanly possible out of that store into my car. I should be in the clear, unless they had some sort of security camera rigged up. So if you see my picture on the evening news with the caption, “Police still searching for bathroom lurker,” I promise you I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.

They write the (bad) songs

I am a huge music fan, and I have toyed with the idea of starting a separate blog totally dedicated to it, but I’m too lazy for that. I can barely crank out one entry a week for this one.

Well, you get what you pay for.

I have decided instead to just occasionally post some of my musings about music here. Sometimes I will write about things I really enjoy, and about music that uplifts me and gives me chills and hope for humanity. Today is not one of those times.

I don’t have satellite radio or a CD player in my car, so when I listen to music these days, a lot of the time it’s via some “classic rock” station out of Atlanta, which plays the same Boston and Styx songs five times a day. And it’s made me realize that there are some really bad songwriters out there, so I decide to compile a list of what I consider to be the very worst.

I am aware that a lot of people don’t pay any attention at all to the lyrics in songs. I’m afraid I am a slave to them. My number-one complaint with what they play on country radio stations today is the lyrics are almost 100 percent asinine and stupid.

When I’m talking bad songwriters, I mean bad lyricists. And listen, I understand that not all songs have to be Dylanesque pieces of literature or great poetry. I like “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Rock And Roll All Night” as much as the next guy. But those are just feel-good party songs that touch on the two parts of the trinity – sex and drugs. It’s OK to be silly when writing about those things.

I had a few qualifications in making my list. I am limiting it to what are considered rock-and-roll artists. Trust me there, there are plenty of bad country songwriters (Kenny Chesney, anybody?), and I can’t claim to understand rap and hip-hip to know what’s good or bad.

Also, I am picking from people who have been successful and have thousands of times more money than me. Yes, I am jealous. But that doesn’t make me wrong.

So here is my partial list of what I consider to be the worst songwriters, and some of the worst examples of their crap – er, craft. I am listing them in alphabetical order, which works out, because the one I consider the worst is at the very end. Here we go.


Jon Bon Jovi
Most egregious example:

We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got
It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not
We’ve got each other and that’s a lot
For love, we’ll give it a shot
- Living on a Prayer



This guy has made a living between adopting a wannabe-tough guy stance and breaking out the sensitive, love-has-wounded-me pose that still makes soccer moms across America weak in the khoulats.

His piece de resistance has to be “Dead or Alive,” in which he envisions himself as a cowboy, if cowboys wore eye makeup and teased their hair and rode groupies instead of buses. He sings, “Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink (If this is Hennessy, it must be Tuesday?), and sometimes when you’re alone, all you do is think.” I find it hard to believe that this song was the product of any actual thinking. Dead or Alive? Well, I think you know which way I’d vote.

Phil Collins
Most egregious example:

We had a life, we had a love, But you don't know what you've got 'til you lose it
Well that was then and this is now, And I want you back
You can run, and you can hide, But I'm not leaving less you come with me
We've had our problems but I'm on your side
You're all I need, please believe in me
- Something Happened On the Way to Heaven


First of all, this guy’s a drummer. Need I say more? He is the all-time king of clichés. I believe the song above sets a modern-day rock-and-roll cliché record.

Phil’s most famous song, and one of his worst (and that’s saying something), is “In The Air Tonight.” It features one of my favorite clichés, “I saw it with my own two eyes.” Really? Who else’s eyes could you possibly see something with?

Apparently an urban legend sprouted up that the song was about some tragic or sinister event Phil witnessed, perhaps even done by or to some unnamed prominent person. If only it was that interesting. Phil said himself, in a BBC interview, “I don't know what this song is about.” I know what it’s about. It’s about four minutes of drivel. (rimshot).

Michael McDonald
Most egregious example:

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He’s watching her go
- What a Fool Believes

A running joke in the movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin is that there’s always a Michael McDonald concert playing on the TVs in the appliance store where many of the characters work, and it’s starting to drive them crazy. I feel that way every time I hear one of his Doobie Brothers’ songs.

“What A Fool Believes” sounds like somebody wrote down a bunch a short sentences, put them on strips of paper and put them in a hat, then pulled them out and sang them in that order. It’s easier to follow James Joyce after taking an Ambien than it is to ferret out what he’s talking about. To be fair, he co-wrote that song with Kenny Loggins. Maybe Kenny’s responsible for all the really stupid lines. How do you rise to one’s apology, anyway?

Steve Miller
Most egregious example:

I feel the magic in your caress
I feel magic when I touch your dress
Silk and satin, leather and lace
Black panties with an angel’s face
Abra-abra-cadabra
I want to reach out and grab ya
- Abracadabra

Ok, dude. Please never use the word “panties” in a song. It makes you seem like a pervert and it makes me uncomfortable. And is he saying there’s a face on the panties? Now that really would creep me out.

This guy wrote so many bad songs it’s hard to list them all. How about “Take the Money and Run”, in which he paints a sympathetic picture of Billy Joe and Bobby Sue, whose redeeming qualities are as follows: they get high, they sit around the house, they watch the tube, they rob people, they shot a man. Hey, I know writers have to give their protagonists a flaw or two, but this goes too far.

Steve Perry
Most egregious example:

She loves to laugh, she loves to sing, she does everything
She loves to move, she loves to groove, she loves the lovin things
- Any Way You Want It

The lovin’ things? Please don’t tell me he means, you know, gadgets.

Steve’s powerhouse voice and those ridiculous videos (“Separate Ways”) sometimes obscured how bad his lyrics truly are. I defy you to explain to me what the hell is going on in “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Apparently, the small-town girl and the city boy happen to get on the same train, admit, heading anywhere. But then they wind up in a smoky room (is this on the train? Like a dining car?), smelling wine and cheap perfume, and for a smile, they can share the night. Sounds more like the kind of place where for $50, they can share the night.

Then we have some strangers on the boulevard, and something called “streetlight people” living just to find emotion. I just found an emotion – boredom. Then in the last verse Steve switches from the third-person, omniscient narrator storytelling style to the first person – he’s working hard to get his fill, everybody wants a thrill, paying anything to roll the dice just one more time. I’d pay anything to never hear this song again.

Sting
Most egregious example:

It’s no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabakov

- Don’t Stand so Close to Me

Seriously? You just rhymed “cough” and “Nabakov?”

I don’t know what was worse – the creepy ham-fisted “love songs” like “Every Breath You Take” (Hello, he’s a stalker!) or “Message In A Bottle”, or the pretentious crapola mysticism of songs like “Wrapped Around Your Finger” (Caught between the scylla and charybdis???) or “King of Pain” (There’s a skeleton choking on a crust of bread – I swear that’s the actual lyric). I guess what always bothered me most about Gordon Sumner – er, Sting – was the phony Jamaican accent he used to sing with.

Bernie Taupin
Most egregious examples (he gets two):

Say you don't know me, or recognize my face
Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place
Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight
Too many runaways eating up the night

Marconi plays the Mamba,
Listen to the radio
Don't you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll!

-We Built This City


Mars ain’t no kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them
If you did.

- Rocket Man


Taupin, of course, was the lyricist for most of Elton John’s biggest hits, and he also penned the single-worst song in the history of rock and roll, “We Built This City” as performed by Jefferson Starship.

What you have in any Taupin song is a jumble of insipid phrases. It kind of goes to show you how talented Elton John was, in that he was able to disguise the banality and scratch-your-head idiocy of Taupin’s words with his singing voice and beautiful melodies. I mean, have you ever read the words of “Your Song” without the music? “But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song, It's for people like you that keep it turned on.” Try diagramming that sentence.

And he just made up things that sort of sounded like they maybe were real, but they were just figments of his imagination. There was no Crocodile Rock. There was no band named Benny and the Jets. Levon and his father and Alvin Tostig are all made up. Ridiculous.

There are some others who should make the list – Huey Lewis, Geddy Lee, Chris Martin, Dennis DeYoung - but I’m too lazy to go any further at the moment. Paul McCartney has written more than a few stinkers himself, but he was a Beatle and he wrote “For No One” and “You Never Me Give Me Your Money” so he can pretty much do and write what he wants for the rest of his life.

If anybody actually made it this far in the post and has any additions, I’d love to hear. And I promise I’ll do a “best songwriters” list soon.

Ain't no cure for the wintertime blues

I took Lucky for a walk the other night and I noticed a chill in the air, a little bit of fall nipping at my nose, with leaves turning beautiful colors and pumpkins on doorsteps and the sky a smogless blue, the way it gets at only this time of year.

It made me want to throw up. Because you know what fall means? It means winter is coming.

The walk itself was okay, other than the foreboding coolness in the air. Lucky was in fine form - she peed on three mailboxes, took a crap in an overgrown yard and got into a fight with a yappy furball that looked like Don King’s hair. All in all, just your average half-hour with Lucky.

Lucky doesn’t mind the impending cold, as she has a natural sweater, and a big new pile of hay out back that she likes to burrow down in. And of course when it gets cold in the evenings, she’ll come inside to snore and fart all night, for our amusement.

People say stupid stuff like, “I like having different seasons.” Well, I do too, and here are the two seasons I like – early summer and late summer. There’s your seasons, right there.

Some folks enjoy seeing the leaves on trees turning brilliant colors in the fall, and that’s great, except that means they’re about to fall off. I have about 15 trees in my yard, so I’m raking and bagging leaves from Halloween to Thanksgiving. I’m thinking of cutting them all down and replacing them with artificial trees. Might look right nice.

And next weekend, of course, we’re going to turn our clocks back, so it will get dark even earlier. This is not a good idea. I say we turn them forward again, and give us an extra hour of daylight, not one less. Let’s keep doing this until it stays daylight until midnight. Who cares that it will be dark until around noon? I’m not a morning person anyway.

This was bad planning, by the way, on God’s part, to give us less daylight when it’s colder. It’s like he thought, well, they won’t be depressed enough by the freezing cold and all the dead trees and the grey skies. Let me turn out the world’s lightswitch at about 5:30.

(In case God is reading this, I didn’t mean it as a criticism. I’m just funnin’, I swear. I would never imply that you didn’t know what you were doing when you were creating everything, and I would not dare to question it. Though I would like an explanation as to why you created a few things, like fire ants and PMS and the University of Florida).

I suppose that since I live in Georgia, I can’t complain about winter too much, since ours is fairly mild. We get about a half-inch of snow every year, at which time we all go crazy, and it rarely gets below freezing for more than a few hours. But still, winter is winter, which means it ain’t summer, which means I don’t like it.

Yet even if I had a Moses experience and got to talk to God, I don’t think I’d complain about the winter. He’d probably just tell me to move somewhere warmer. He helps those who help themselves….