Open wide

I went to the dentist today. It’s shaping up to be a pretty good week. Monday I had a “performance review” at work, and tomorrow I have to go through driver training, even though I’ve been driving every day for 28 years.

To cap off the week, I plan to be waterboarded on Thursday, and spend all day Friday watching re-runs of “The View.”

I am paying the price now of not taking care of my teeth when I was younger. I drank too many Cokes and ate too many Kit-Kats and sucked on too many lemons (who knew this was a bad thing?).

My teeth aren’t really all that bad. I mean, I don’t look like I should be sitting on a river bridge playing a banjo. But they could definitely be better.

I have spent way too much time and money in that dentist’s office the past few years. I’ve had fillings, crowns, root canals, caps, and a bridge. My teeth have had more work done than Dolly Parton.

I’m like a celebrity in my dentist’s office now, I go so much. They take me to a VIP waiting room and comp all of my floss, toothpaste and toothbrushes. The dental assistants show me pictures of their kids and call me on my birthday. The dentist’s Mercedes has a vanity tag that reads, “Thanks Mark.”

I went in this time for a cleaning, which sounded pretty innocuous, until the hygienist pulled out a torture device that looked like a grappling hook and began to scrape my teeth, going “tsk-tsk” the whole time. It made me feel bad that I disappointed her.

After that she polished my teeth, then took out a piece of floss as wide as a shoelace and forced it down to my gums, then pulled it back and forth like she was sawing down a Redwood. I’m going to ask to be put to sleep before my next cleaning.

The dentist came in, and he asked her if I’ve been flossing properly. She gave me a disapproving look, and then said to him, “well, he’s doing ok, but I told him there are a couple of areas where he needs to be more diligent.” She damns me with faint praise! I felt like a failure.

Then my dentist took a look in my mouth and I heard him say, “Oh, boy.” He always talks to himself when he’s working on me. I’ve heard him say things like “Ooops!” and “Damn, that’s not good.” This does not make for a reassuring experience.

I didn’t have any serious problems this time, though I do have to get yet another filling replaced. Basically, every filling I got when I was younger has had to be replaced. It makes me wonder if my old dentist knew what he was doing. What was he filling my teeth with, Play-Doh?

But, hey, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. Maybe someday I’ll have a radiant smile and I’ll be flashing my gleaming pearly whites all over the place. Or maybe I’ll be like my dad, and wind up keeping my teeth in a jar by the sink (a cause of many childhood horrors, by the way).

It could go either way.

Making a fashion statement

I was dragged by my wife Saturday to a grocery store on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta called Whole Foods, or as I like to call it, “Hell on Earth.”

The store is great. It’s always crowded, the aisles are small, and you get the opportunity to pay double the ordinary price for produce because it’s “organic.” I guess that means the farmers don’t use pesticides. I don’t really have a problem with pesticides. They call them “pests” for a reason, don’t they? So let’s get rid of them.

To get to Whole Foods, you take a lovely drive down a street called Ponce de Leon, which I believe is Spanish for “Where the crack whores walk.”

I remember when I was a boy, on some weekends we would get in the car and drive 40 miles to Atlanta, where we would visit fun places like the K-mart on Cleveland Avenue, which was the closest one to us. Then we’d ride over to Stewart Avenue and go to Zayre’s, and the Sears liquidation store, which I hated because it didn’t have a toy department.

Stewart Avenue has since been renamed Metropolitan Parkway, which sounds nice, but doesn’t mask the fact that parts of it make Fallujah seem like a nice vacation spot.

On these trips I would beg my dad to take us somewhere fun, like the zoo, but instead he would do what he considered the next best thing. We’d ride over to Hippietown and look at the hippies.

I don’t recall exactly where Hippietown was, but it was somewhere near downtown Atlanta. We found the hippies very amusing, with their long unwashed manes and their scraggly facial hair and their dirty, tattered clothes. And that was just the women.

Hippies aren’t as popular as they used to be, but I saw one in Whole Foods. He had long stringy hair, and a beard that I’m pretty sure was hiding some nesting bluebirds. His eyes were as red as a candied apple and he smelled like roadkill.

But none of that bothered me. As my mom used to say, it takes all kinds. But I was a little disturbed by his fashion choice, as he was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Charles Manson on the front.

Now, wouldn’t that make a mother proud? I suppose the young man was trying to make a statement, and he succeeded. The statement is, “I’m pretty freaking stupid.”

There’s nothing redeeming about Charles Manson. I have the same reaction when I see people wearing T-shirts with pictures of Che Guevara or Chairman Mao, or wearing an O.J. Simpson football jersey.

I’m not one for wearing clothes with other people’s pictures on them, anyway. The last time I did that is when I was 14 and I had a Farrah Fawcett T-shirt, the famous one where she’s wearing a one-piece bathing suit. Trust me, it was a big thing back in the day. And at least Farrah never killed anybody.

To each his own, though. I’m a believer in free speech and if somebody wants to do something ignorant, I say let them. Only in America!

Guitar hero

Have you ever been driving and seen one of those idiots in a car next to you singing along at the top of their lungs to the radio or CD player, beating the steering wheel like it was drums or pretending to be playing guitar?

I’m one of those idiots.

The other morning I drew some stares in the parking deck here at work, because I was listening to Dazed and Confused off of Led Zeppelin I, and just as I pulled into the parking space the song was at the breakdown in the middle, where Jimmy Page starts going off with his solo and it melds into Bonzo’s manic drums and – well, you had to be there.

But clearly, I couldn’t get out of the car until the song was over. Several people walked by and looked over at me funny, though I toned down the performance a bit. The minivan is equipped with a rocking stereo, even though one of the front speakers doesn’t work, and I had that baby cranked up to 11. If this van’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.

I have always been a frustrated musician. I was one of those goofy kids who would crank up the stereo and get a tennis racket and pretend it was a guitar. I’m not sure my dad has ever recovered from walking in on me during a particularly animated rendition of Cat Scratch Fever.

I took up playing guitar at the University of Georgia, when I was given an old Yamaha acoustic by my friend Vic Chesnutt. My favorite chord was E-minor, because it only required two fingers to play. So I mastered that baby pretty quickly.

Then I moved on to learn whole songs, sticking to ones that began with E-minor. There aren’t that many – Eleanor Rigby, Knights in White Satin, Horse With No Name. Not the kind of stuff you can woo college girls with.

I have continued to play through the years, though never very well. I have dreamed at times of buying a real nice expensive guitar, like a Gibson or a Martin, but I’m not sure it would make much sense, given my playing ability. It would be like buying a monkey a Mercedes.

I now play an Ovation, which is a perfectly nice guitar, especially if you’re one of those guys who plays earnest songs in a coffee or a wine bar. It’s the kind of guitar John Belushi would smash on the frat house stairs.

I suppose that if I found a genie and a lamp, one of my wishes would be to be able to play a note-perfect version of Romeo and Juliet. I’m referring to the original version or Mark Knopfler’s live performance from the CD with Emmylou Harris, not the abomination by the Indigo Girls, in which they suck the life out of the song (insert your own joke here).

So if you see me in the car sometime acting the fool, have some courtesy, have some sympathy and some taste. I’m not insane, even though I may be making a “guitar face” and arching my back while simultaneously merging a 1999 Plymouth Voyager into Atlanta rush-hour traffic. Let’s see Eddie Van Halen do THAT!

I read the news today, oh boy

It is with some sadness that I read about the newspaper business dying, but it doesn’t shock me, because newspapers generally treat their employees like crap, pay them like cabbage pickers and provide a work environment just this side of an Indonesian T-shirt factory.

Other than that, it’s a pretty swell job.

I worked at newspapers for about 10 years, and though I often loved what I was doing, it was rarely worth it. The robber barons who owned the newspaper companies were making money hand over fist, while the writers and editors and photographers generally had a standard of living just higher than dumpster divers.

I remember when I graduated from college and I began to call around to see what sort of bountiful opportunities awaited a bright, ambitious young graduate just itching to make his mark on the world. My first offer was from a weekly newspaper in north Georgia, which offered me a whopping salary of $10,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot of money now. It didn’t sound like a lot of money in 1986, either. Cause it wasn’t.

I took a job at my hometown paper for (slightly) more money than that, and commenced to newspapering. The glamour of the job didn’t last long. I think it went away my second week, when I had to cover a Rotary Club meeting. The speaker was a guy showing us slides from his recent trip to Amish country (they don’t drive cars!). We opened the meeting by singing God Bless America and The Old Grey Mare, She Ain’t What She Used To Be, led by a woman who looked like Lillian Carter on an out-of-tune piano. I had arrived.

Later I became sports editor. That was a special day. The editor of the paper came to my desk one Monday morning and said “Don’t you like sports?” I said yes. He said, “You’re the new sports editor.” It was the only conversation we ever had. He bumped my salary up $15 bucks a week, which, if you divided it by the number of hours I actually worked, came to about .00004 more cents per hour.

I moved on to another paper as sports editor after that and stayed there for four years, during which time I covered a LOT of exciting events. I once reported on a girls’ basketball game with a final score of 70-4, and the game wasn’t as close as the score indicated. I like girls, and I like basketball, but I really didn’t like girls’ basketball.

I left that job for a news editing job back in my hometown, which was the worst career decision I ever made. The place was an absolute madhouse, overseen by this little bantam rooster of a publisher who liked to tell you that he had done, during his career, every job at that newspaper. To which I would always say under my breath, “And none of them well.”

I inherited a group of reporters working for me there who shouldn’t have been hired to write grocery lists, let alone newspaper stories. They had the collective vocabulary of an Atlanta cab driver and the ambition of a mollusk.

Once during a story meeting with them I said, “You know, you guys aren’t exactly Woodward and Bernstein.” There was not a glimmer of recognition on any of their faces. So I said, “Do you know who I’m talking about?” Nothing. “Anybody heard of Watergate?” They had not. I fired them all on the spot. Then somebody reminded me that I didn’t have the authority to fire anybody. So I asked if I could shoot them, and was again turned down. They are probably all still out there today, infecting the world with stupidity.

Small papers have been hit the hardest and are going under, and quite frankly, for the most part they deserve it. I still have some friends in the business, and God bless them, but I could never go back. I have a recurring nightmare where I’m working again at a newspaper, and I’m sitting at the same shabby desk, looking at the same moldy walls, and the bantam rooster is strutting around barking out orders. It’s worse than the “going to work in my underwear” dream.

It’s a shame, because at a newspaper I could write things people might actually be interested in. I used to write a regular column and enjoyed it when I would get a reaction. Now I write this blog, and I’m not sure anybody even reads it, most of the time. But at least I don’t have to deal with the rooster.

Blessing or a curse?

I’ve been getting blessed a lot lately, and it’s confusing me.

Not blessed out – that happens, too, usually after I pull away from the window at a fast food drive-through. I mean blessed, as in people keep telling me to “Have a blessed day.”

What do they mean by this? Blessed by whom? Blessed in what way? (By the way, I discovered recently that some churches have services in which they bless people’s pets. I think Lucky would like this. Assuming she doesn’t eat the altar.)

I suppose “Have a blessed day” is some variant of “Have a nice day,” only with a religious connotation. But do they really care if I have a blessed day? Nobody ever tries to confirm that I did.

The cashier at Kroger who wished – no, commanded – me to have a blessed day last Friday didn’t call me later that night to find out if I did. I could have died in a fiery accident, but his conscience is clear, because he urged me to have a blessed day. It’s not his fault if I didn’t.

People are always telling us to do things we can’t control. Like, “Have a safe flight.” Number one, it’s really not up to me whether the plane crashes or not. And number two, is that a necessary thing to say? Is there anybody, besides maybe an ex-wife, who hopes you don’t have a safe flight? It seems to me that it could remain unspoken. Same with “Get well soon.” I would if I could, buddy.

I know, these folks mean well, but they can’t resist the urge to say something when they really don’t have to. This happens a lot on elevators. I have no problem with looking at my feet the entire time, or pretending to be checking an important message on my Blackberry. Awkward silences don’t bother me. I embrace them.

But sure as shooting, on every elevator ride I take at work, somebody will mention what day it is (Is it Friday yet? You doing OK for a Monday?), or say something about the weather (Whew, it’s hot/cold/windy/rainy out there today), or ask me if I’m staying busy, which is really just an opening for them to tell me how busy THEY are, completely oblivious to the fact that I couldn’t possibly care less.

Another problem at work is you feel like you have to say hello every time you walk past somebody, even though it might be the 10th time you have passed them that day, because neither of you likes to work and is constantly getting up to go to the bathroom or the Coke machine. At what point is it OK to stop saying hello? How about this – the first time of the day you walk past a person, say hello. The second time, just nod. After that, you are free to pretend the other doesn’t exist.

This will spare me from having to endure comments such as, “Wow, we must be on the same bathroom schedule,” or “Do you just walk around the office all day?” Well, maybe I do, but there’s no need to point it out.

Does all this make me a curmudgeon, a grumpy old man? Perhaps so. Maybe if I get blessed enough times, one day I’ll start being nicer.

An honest day's work

Every time I get the urge to complain about my job, which is more often than it should be, all I have to do is get in my car and ride around my hometown of Griffin, Ga. to remind myself that I really don't have it too bad.

Griffin is littered with the ghostly remnants of textile mills, which have sat empty for years since most of those jobs moved to Mexico and China, where people are willing to work for a few dollars a day.

The mill sites now consist mostly of dilapidated, falling-down buildings, abandoned railroad tracks and overgrown parking lots. One of them used to have a sign on the outside that said "future lofts", but I can't imagine anybody wanting to live in such a place.

There was a time when cotton was king in Griffin. Everyone in my family, but me, worked at a textile mill, or cotton mill, as we called them, at some point. My father did, before he moved on to an assembly line job with General Motors; my mother did, both my brothers did, my grandmother did. If you lived in Griffin, odds were high that somebody in your
family worked at a mill.

And it was hard, nasty, unforgiving work. When the whistle blew, you could see the workers walking out of the mill slowly, fatigue riding on their shoulders, lint clinging to their clothes and their hair. The word "linthead" was used to refer to these workers in a derogatory way, but anybody who ever said that should be ashamed. Including me.

I can remember on a few occasions going into the mill with my mom, and being overwhelmed by the roar of the machinery, and all the dust and lint flying through the air. My mom would tell me stories of people getting hurt at work, losing a finger in one of the machines or burning themselves on a hot piece of equipment. It makes the times when somebody heats up smelly food in the microwave in the breakroom seem like not such a big deal.

I’m not saying I haven’t had a couple of crappy jobs along the way. I worked at one newspaper with the biggest collection of miscreants and single-helixed morons you’re likely to see this side of a traveling carnival. I’ve worked long hours for low pay before, but nothing like the backbreaking factory work everybody else in family knew at one time. The closest I came to that was a summertime job picking apples, and at least I got to be outside.

I didn't know what I was going to be when I was growing up, but I knew one thing for sure - I was not going to work in a cotton mill. It just didn't look like much fun. I looked down on it then, but now I greatly respect the people who climbed out of bed every morning, trudged into those dusty, noisy sweatshops and put in an honest day's work, day afterday.

And I know my parents hoped that I never would have to work there, and that's part of the reason why they did - to make a better life for their kids. And for that, I will always be thankful.

Car wars

Now mister the day the lottery I win,

I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again - Bruce Springsteen, Used Cars

I bought my daughter a used car recently, and I made it through the process without assaulting a used car salesman, which surprised me. I rank used car salesmen somewhere between University of Tennessee fans and Chairman Mao on the humanity scale.

I get tense when a used car salesman even walks up to me. No other purchasing experience in America is as painful. When I go to the grocery store, the clerk doesn’t have to go consult his manager before he can tell me how much a loaf of bread costs. When I go to the sporting goods store, the cashier doesn’t say “make me an offer” when I pick up a box of golf balls. If I go to a restaurant and I tell the waiter I don’t like shrimp, he doesn’t try to convince me to taste it first.

I try not to make eye contact with car salesmen, because it’s like feeding a stray dog. Once you do that, you can never get rid of them. They lie to you, they try to trick you, they insult your intelligence, and then they expect you to do something that helps them out. They’re like presidential candidates.

Luckily, I found the right car for Allie after only going to a few places, and I lucked into a salesman (saleswoman, actually) who wasn’t pushy, and didn’t make me want to punch a wall after talking to her for five minutes. So I bought the car.

I fondly remember my first car, a metallic blue 1968 Mustang with a white top. It had white vinyl seats, to which bare legs would stick on a hot summer day. If I ever got in there on an August day wearing shorts, I’d need skin grafts after I tried to stand up.

It had the 2-by-55 air conditioning system – you know, roll down both windows and go 55 miles per hour. It didn’t have power steering, so after driving it for a few months I had Popeye forearms. It only had an AM radio, so I listened to a lot of Paul Harvey and “golden country oldies.” It got about a mile to the gallon and it handled like a Sherman tank, but I was very proud of that car.

Then I had a 1978 Honda Accord, which had a manual transmission with five speeds, all of them slow. It was so small you couldn’t cuss a cat inside it without getting fur in your mouth. If I drove it on the interstate, I may as well have put a ramp on the back of it for all of the other cars to jump over me.

I had some other cars that weren’t great during the years, most notably a 1987 Dodge Shadow, or as I call it, the “American Yugo.” What a piece of crap that car was. It had more defects than Michael Jackson.

Now I drive a beige 1999 Plymouth Voyager mini-van, or as I like to call it, “The Chick Magnet.” That baby will go from 0-60 in a week. It is impossible to look, feel, or be cool driving a vehicle like that. The interior is awash in dog hair, since nobody will ride in it with me except Lucky. And even she ducks her head in embarrassment when we pass other dogs.

I don’t see me getting a cool car for quite some time. What I really want is a great, big Cadillac, as big as a boat, with a dashboard that lights up like a Christmas tree at night, with plush leather seats and a ride smoother than a baby’s butt. Basically, a pimpmobile.

I just hope I don’t have to buy it used.

Take me out to the ballgame

I took the family to a Braves’ game the other night. My kids are spoiled, because we go to several games a year, and I always have company tickets that I have stumbled into. My strategy at every place I’ve worked is to find the secretary who controls the corporate tickets, then go by her desk every so often and tell her how nice she looks in that dress.

My experience going to games as a kid was quite different. We would go about once a year, to the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, which was always a sea of empty blue seats, because the Braves were atrocious for the entire decade of the 70s and almost all of the 80s.

I remember July 4, 1972, when my dad decided to take me and my brother Terry to a Braves’ game. The great Denny McLain was pitching for the Braves, only he was no longer the great Denny McLain, the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season. At this point he was the fat Denny McLain, who allegedly had his toes broken by a mobster for not paying a gambling debt.

We didn’t have tickets in advance, because that wasn’t my dad’s style. It was a rare large crowd for the Braves in those days, and the parking lots were full, so we parked in a sketchy neighborhood and gave some south Atlanta entrepreneur $5 to not break into our car, or let anybody else do that. We walked about a half-mile to the stadium, only to discover the game was sold out. We knew nothing about scalpers, so we saw no Braves that day. And of course there was no refund of the $5, since the “security guard” we hired had long since vanished.

Another night my dad decided he wanted to go see the Braves, so he asked my mother to call the radio station and make sure they were playing. She reported back that yes, they were playing Montreal. So we drive the 40 miles to the stadium, and it’s empty. Seems mom had not asked for the important detail of where the game was being played. From then on, we always checked the newspaper first.

We would sit in the outfield, in dead center, in the upper deck, and I would bring my glove. Talk about an optimist. It would be hard to drive a golf ball that far, let alone hit a baseball. Even a steroid-addled freak like Barry Bonds couldn’t do it.

I dated a girl once whose family had Braves’ season tickets, and I was pretty upset when we broke up. I didn’t really care for her all that much, but they were dugout level seats, for God’s sake. I could hardly bear the thought of another boy sitting in my seat!

It was a dream come true when I was a sportswriter and I got to go cover the Braves a few times. The first time I went in the clubhouse was during the 1991 World Series, and I was standing at Greg Maddux’s locker, interviewing him, and I thought, “This is pretty cool.” Then portly relief pitcher Juan Berenguer (see above) walked past me, completely naked, and the thrill was gone.

I have seen some interesting things at Braves’ games, mostly in the old stadium. I saw Craig McMurtry and Gene Garber stop Pete Rose’s 44-game hitting streak. I saw the Braves turn a triple play, Bob Horner to Glenn Hubbard to Dale Murphy. I saw Karl Wallenda walk across the top of the stadium on a wire between games of a doubleheader with the Dodgers. When he got halfway across, he stopped, pulled a baseball out of his pocket, and dropped it to a fielder below. I’m pretty sure Jerry Royster dropped the ball.

And I was sadly there for the home opener in 1990, when the late Jim Varney – star of the “Ernest” movies – was a featured part of the Braves’ promotional campaign. He was booed lustily when he came on to the field to throw out the first pitch, and again when he led the stadium in singing Take Me Out To The Ballgame, all in character as Ernest. It was worse than you are imagining it was. And so were the Braves that year.

I kind of miss the lovable, losing Braves, though it looks like they’re on the verge of making a return. I think my favorite Braves’ memory of that era was one night against the Astros, when Buzz Capra was pitching, and Biff Pocoroba was catching, surely the only Buzz-Biff battery in the history of baseball. The runner on first tried to steal, Biff fired the ball toward second – and watched it carom wildly off the head of Buzz, who had forgotten to duck. Even Ernest couldn’t top that.

Walk like a man

Johnny Fontane: Oh, Godfather, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

Don Corleone: You can act like a man!
- The Godfather, 1972

So I was in the gym yesterday, on the treadmill, sweating like a cat in a microwave (my writing teachers always urged me to use colorful imagery), and I looked over to my right and saw something disturbing.

There’s an exercise room there, with glass windows so you can watch what goes on in there. It can be pretty entertaining, especially during yoga. But yesterday they were doing a hip-hop aerobics class, in which a lot of women put on tights and shake their booties quite vigorously.

And right there in the middle of them all, rump-shaking and hip-thrusting and head-bobbing, was a guy! A dude! A fella! What in the wide, wide world of sports is a’going on here?

He was really into it, too, making those intense exercise faces as he swooped to the left, then swooped to the right, getting jiggy with it. At first I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, and thought maybe he was in there just to meet girls, but the room wasn’t exactly full of Miss Universe contestants. Besides, he was really, really enjoying himself.

I heard on the radio, just that morning, a guy talking about the “feminization of men,” making the argument that men seem to be getting wimpier, and he was wondering if that’s what women really want. God, I hope not.

A few years ago I learned of the phenomenon of “metrosexual” men, meaning guys who were really into their clothes, and moisturized their skin, and went to hair salons, and got manicures and pedicures and generally stayed in touch with their softer side.

Oh, yeah, I remember guys like that when I was younger, only we had a different word for it – gay.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Seriously, if this is what women really want these days, then it’s a good thing I got married a long time ago. I don’t think I could adapt. I can’t fathom getting a pedicure. So what if my toenails look like the petrified forest? I’ve never worn a pair of sandals in my life, so it’s not like anybody sees them. Besides, my feet are ticklish.

Some of these guys shave their chests, like that little fella who used to play Slater on “Saved By the Bell.” He also likes to dance, apparently. There’s really only two reasons a normal guy will dance voluntarily. Either he’s drunk, or he’s trying to entice his female companion into some sort of amorous activity.

Now, I will grant you, when you are dating a woman and you really like her, it’s OK to make a few sacrifices, because you have a goal. Nobody will hold it against you if you watch HGTV with her, or voluntarily go to Bed Bath and Beyond, or claim that you really like cats, or get talked into rollerblading.

But then you have to become a man again, and regain control of the TV remote, and cut your toenails with a pocket knife, and leave some socks lying around the house occasionally, just to show who’s in charge.

And ladies, this all may make me sound like a Neanderthal, but you gotta make up your mind. Do you want a guy who borrows your Neutrogena, or do you want a guy who can replace the garbage disposal and fix a tire and step on a spider? You can’t have both. I don’t know if real men eat quiche, but they certainly don’t do aerobics.

Rock and roll all night

One interesting thing about getting older, other than the attacks of gout and the desire to go to bed at 9:30 on a Friday night, is that you eventually turn into your parents.

This is especially true if you have children, because you realize you are doing and saying exactly the same things to your kids that your parents did and said to you. And of course your kids ignore you, the same way you did your parents.

I clashed with my parents over the music I listened to. I was a pretty normal, well-behaved, clean-cut son that every mother would be proud of – and then, when I was about 14, I discovered Kiss.

I mean the band, not the activity. Sadly, that took another couple of years. But I was a huge Kiss fan, and my poor parents had no idea what to do or how this could have happened to their sweet little boy.

Looking back on it now, I can totally understand my dad’s consternation. He grew up on a farm in South Georgia during the Depression, he served in the Navy in World War II, he worked for years on a General Motors assembly line, and he was a faithful church-goer. And suddenly his son is infatuated with four men who had long hair, painted their faces and wore platform boots and costumes on stage. Oh, and one of them spit blood and blew fire.

I had to convince my parents that Kiss was not a gay band, and they were not Satanic, and the letters in their name did not stand for “Knights In Satan’s Service,” as some preacher had told them. They gave me the benefit of the doubt, though I don’t think they were ever really convinced. But I didn’t drink or smoke or skip school or torture kittens, so they probably figured, all things considered, they could live with it.

They did put their foot down a couple of times. My mom walked into my room once just as I was listening to my new Ted Nugent Double Live Gonzo album. She heard Ted drop a couple of F-bombs, and that was it. I had to take it back to the store. In retrospect, she probably did me a favor.

One night, the new preacher was coming over for a visit, and just to be safe, my mom slipped into my room and took down three posters – one of Kiss singer Paul Stanley on a motorcycle, one of Led Zeppelin, and one of Suzanne Somers in a fetching blue one-piece bathing suit. I thought that last one was going a bit far. The preacher should have been worried if a 14-year-old boy WASN’T in love with Suzanne Somers in 1978.

Kiss is not the only band I was into at that time. I rebelled against the disco craze during my teenage years by liking any and all “hard rock" bands, which put me in league with the rednecks at school, or as we called them, the “hoods.” All of the hoods smoked, and they wore Army jackets. That’s how you identified them. Oh, and they didn’t wash their hair.

They would write the names of their favorite rock bands on the backs of the jackets with magic markers, but would frequently misspell the names. I can’t tell you how many times I saw a jacket with “Linnerd Skinnerd” or “Arrowsmith” or “Ted Nugget” or “Almond Brothers” written on the back. I mean, didn’t they own the records? Couldn’t they have just looked at the album cover and copied the name? I’ve never understood this.

So now, many years later, I’m a parent, and I clash with my kids over what they listen to. I’ve gone through my daughter’s I-pod a few times and made her delete an objectionable song, which is something no other parent in the world does, to hear her tell it. And I once vetoed a poster of Usher because he wasn’t wearing enough clothes to suit me.

But for the most part, what they listen to is pretty tame, unless they’re sneaking something past me, which is possible. After all, I’m the guy who hid his Sex Pistols album under the bed. There were some things mom just didn’t need to know about.

The last shall be first

There are a lot of groups fighting discrimination in the United States, and with the exception of the occasional whacko bunch, that's a good thing.

But there is blatant form of discrimination that still goes on, and nobody does a durn thing about it, and I'm angry because I'm one of the victims.

I am talking about alphabetism, which is discrimination against those of us whose last names start with a letter found near the caboose of the alphabet.

It began in kindergarten. We were organized in alphabetical order. We sat in our seats that way, we lined up that way, and we got in line for lunch that way. So while Kay Adams and Jimmy Bass were always going first, living large, people like me and Jimmy Zminski were always bringing up the rear. What did we do to deserve this?

Think of the poor kids at high school graduations whose names are Thompson or Wilson or Young. By the time they get their diploma, the crowd has gotten so rowdy you can't hear a word, because the idiot parents are celebrating the last positive thing their child will ever do, graduate from high school.

You'd think you might grow out of this as you become an adult, but no. I was victimized again today when I had to appear in traffic court on a charge of failure to yield. Which is not true. I yielded, just not soon enough. Is it my fault the other driver had the reflexes of a sloth and couldn't avoid my mini-van?

I missed my original court time and had to go to a later session, so for a few hours, I was actually a fugitive from the law. That made me feel kind of cool and dangerous. What did I do while I was on the lam, you ask? Well, I answered a few e-mails. I surfed the Web for a bit. Had a nice grilled chicken salad down in the company cafeteria. There's nothing like living on the edge.

When I did show up for court, they called us in front of the judge - you guessed it - in alphabetical order. How is this fair?

I was getting nervous, because the judge was asking people why they had missed their court date, and fining them $100 for doing so. One guy missed his court date because, he said, "I was incarcerated at the time." The judge noted that a second date had been set and missed, and the guy said, "I was re-incarcerated at that time." The judge found this plausible, and waived the $100 charge. I thought it was a decent thing to do.

The afternoon had its moments. One pudgy frat boy, whose first name was Rollins (of course it was) pleaded guilty to speeding, then told the judge, "If it makes a difference, I was trying to get to my new job on my first day." The judge affixed him with a look reminiscent of Strother Martin in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when he says to Robert Redford and Paul Newman, "Morons. I've got morons on my team."

I was the last person to be called, and I had my excuse ready. I won't bore you with it, but it involved a bus accident, a fire, and me heroically saving 17 Guatemalan children from sure death. But the judge was tired by this time, too, because he waived my failure to appear charge before I could even open my mouth, accepted my "no contest" plea, and called it a day. I didn't even get to break out my Al Pacino, "You're out of order! Your whole court's out of order!" routine.

Meanwhile, the alphabetism continues. But I'll get even one day. Doesn't it say in the Bible, "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last?" Let's see who's laughing then.

Rasslemania

I really can’t get into the ultimate fighting craze that is so popular now.

I guess if it had been around when I was younger, I would have enjoyed it. Instead, I grew up as a fan of wrestling, or rasslin’, as we called it.

Every Saturday I watched the NWA wrestling show on Channel 17, hosted by Gordon Solie. And as a special treat, my dad took me a few times to a place called The Sports Palace, a fancy name for a metal building with some bleachers inside and a wrestling ring in the center.

They would usually start the night off with a “scientific match,” which was very boring, because nobody threw fire or snuck a lead pipe in their trunks or hit anybody over the head with a cowbell. Then it got to the good stuff.

One night, Mr. Wrestling No. 2, my favorite of all time, had already won his match and retired to the shower. In the last match of the evening, Dick Slater was battling Abdullah the Butcher, who as I’m sure you recall was part of Gary Hart’s Army, who were all bad guys. Abdullah was known as the Wild Man from the Sudan, but it turns out he’s actually from Canada, and now he runs a restaurant called “Abdullah the Butcher's House of Ribs and Chinese Food.” But back to the story.

In an incredible display of bad sportsmanship, just as Slater was about to whoop Abdullah, suddenly Gary Hart and The Sheik jumped in the ring and ambushed him, and began to beat and stomp him about the head and shoulders. We were all screaming at the referee, who somehow seemed not to notice what was happening! This was not right!

Then I heard a big cheer from the crowd, and out rushed Wrestling 2, fresh from the shower. I know this because he was covered in soap, even though he still had on his mask, trunks, and wrestling boots. Anyway, he jumped in the ring, and a couple of atomic knee lifts later, Hart’s Army was defeated.

By the way, the craziest fans there were middle-aged women who sat near the front and jumped and hollered and screamed and shook their fists and generally went berserk the whole time. Not unlike what happens at a Bon Jovi concert now.

My friends and I used to mimic the wrestlers’ moves, which was not a great idea. James Keith almost got his neck broken from a pile driver. I got in trouble for knocking the wind out of Ronnie Stephens, the nasty little boy who lived across the street, with an atomic knee lift to the gut. But he had it coming, cause he claimed the Spoiler would whip Wrestling 2. Puh-leeze.

Wrestling lost a little of its mystique when I learned that my friend’s father worked with either Mr. Wrestling 1 or Mr. Wrestling 2 at the General Motors plant in Doraville. I got a little older and I began to acknowledge that not all of the action taking place was real. Perhaps it’s not possible, I realized, to be hit repeatedly in the head with a lead pipe and not bleed. Or to get a pencil jabbed in your eye, but not lose your sight.

One night I was out with a couple of friends, and we ran into this guy who said he was training to be a professional wrestler, so I asked him, “Come on, tell me. Is it all fake?”

He took a long drink, looked at me thoughtfully, leaned in toward me in a conspiratorial manner, and said in a low voice, “Let me put it this way. I ain’t saying it is, and I ain’t saying it ain’t.”

Well said, my friend. Well said.

It's OK to cry

It was pretty upsetting news the other day when UGA VI, the University of Georgia’s beloved mascot, passed away. I have heard that it even made some grown men cry.

I did not cry at UGA’s passing, though I am a big Bulldogs fan and there are a couple of things that could make me cry. Like if I ever read the headline, “Richt gets FSU job; Goff to return to coach Georgia.” I suppose I might have cried the last time we lost to Tech, but Lord, that was so long ago, who can remember it?

Some people thought the level of reactions to UGA’s death was a bit over the top, and it got me to thinking about when it’s OK for a man to cry. It’s much more accepted in today’s culture, and there are some instances that are universally considered tear-worthy. The death of a relative or friend, for example, or the birth of a child, or when you have to fill up your car with gas.

I guess the last time I had a good cry was when my dog Benji died. Benji was a slobbering fool with a brain the size of a walnut and a heart the size of Montana. She drove poor Lucky crazy because she shadowed her all over the yard, staying about an inch away until Lucky would go against her good nature and pin her to the ground by the neck. But even old Lucky was sad for a few weeks after Benji passed away.

It’s OK to cry during certain movies, I suppose. Old Yeller always gets to me. Same with My Dog Skip. Something like Schindler’s List can bring a tear. The movie Mama Mia almost made me cry recently – not because I saw it and it was sad, but because I thought for a moment my wife was going to insist I go see it with her.

There are a few other occasions when I get a little misty-eyed, and it’s not embarrassing. It happens when my kids do something to make me proud, like winning an award in school or making me a sweet Father’s Day card, or remembering to close the refrigerator door.

Certain songs can hit me at the right time and get my eyes a little moist. I don’t care how corny “Coat of Many Colors” is, I get choked up thinking about those mean kids making fun of Dolly. And there might be somebody out there who can hear Emmylou Harris sing “Boulder to Birmingham” without getting a lump in their throat, but I don’t want to meet them.

There was a Tom Hanks movie where he said, “There’s no crying in baseball.” I beg to differ. When I was playing in Babe Ruth League, I was in left field one day after spraining my left wrist, and I was a little skittish about catching the ball, cause it hurt. So of course, first guy in the game lines a single to left, and I charged it, and just as it hopped to me I flinched with my glove and pulled it back a little early, leaving the ball with an unobstructed path to my – well, you know. I was not wearing a protective cup at the time, so yes, there was some crying in baseball that day. In between the vomiting.

The older you get, the less hung up you are about crying. I try to avoid it because it gives me a headache, but hey, if the tears are going to come, let them come. Life is too short to pretend you don’t care.