Goodbye, my friend

A long time ago – I don’t remember the exact year, but I think it was 1983 – I was attending Gordon Junior College, a little school in Barnesville, Ga., and I had one of those chance encounters that changed me.

I was standing outside the small student center there, and I noticed this odd-looking little guy standing next to me. He was several inches shorter than me, and he was wearing a dark coat and carrying what I thought at first was a briefcase, but turned out to be a trumpet case. What a nerd, I thought.

But we began to talk, and after a few minutes, we discovered that we had something in common - music. We were both big Beatles fans, and there were several other groups that we both liked, and before long we were discussing how cool it would be form our own band.

That’s how I came to know Vic Chesnutt, who died on Christmas Day in an Athens hospital, only 45 years old, his body and his spirit apparently broken, 20 years after the world discovered the wonder of his music.

We never really got a band going back then, in part because I had no discernible musical ability. But Vic did. He could play guitar and keyboards and trumpets and he was already writing his own songs. Many afternoons I would go over to his house near Zebulon, along with our friend Todd McBride, and listen to music and try to play some and sing and make each other laugh. I don’t think I was ever around him for more than 10 minutes without laughing, and vice versa.

The laughter was interrupted one night when Vic lost control of his station wagon and crashed into a ditch, a wreck that left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. A few of us went to see him shortly after the wreck at the Shephard Spinal Center in Atlanta, and it was a very difficult thing to deal with. But even that day, he made me laugh. We were on an elevator with a group of nurses and doctors and he put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and said, “Mmmm, good doobie. Good doobie.”

Though he was never able to fully regain the use and agility in his right hand, he figured out a way to play guitar, and was soon making music again. Several of my friends and I found ourselves in Athens, eventually, some going to college, some playing in a band. Vic and Todd and some others formed a band, and for a few short months, I actually joined them as their drummer. Those were some of the best times of my life.

I can recall many times, sitting around at somebody’s house in Athens, hearing Vic play his newest song. I was always amazed. His songs were quirky, funny, heartfelt, personal, and unlike anything else I’d heard. You don’t really see his music compared to many others, because he was that rarest of breed, an original.

I graduated from UGA, moved away, started raising a family, so my trips back to Athens and my chances to see and talk to Vic became rarer and rarer. He gave me a guitar, a cheap Yamaha acoustic that he had adorned with plastic stickers. He encouraged me to learn how to play, and to write songs, and I did, though none of them are as good as his. I still have that old guitar, even though it’s long past being playable, and it is one of my most treasured possessions. I’m glad he never asked for it back.

Vic got his big break not long after I left Athens. Michael Stipe, always a big fan of Vic’s, produced his first two albums, and they were a sensation – Little, and West of Rome. Music critics loved him, as did other musicians. Vic never made it big commercially, but he had a devoted following all across the country and in Europe. He was friends with Lucinda Williams and recorded with Emmylou Harris and was in “Slingblade” with his friend Billy Bob Thornton. He was, in my eyes at least, a huge star.

As too often happens with old friends, we grow apart, we lose touch, we go years without seeing each other or talking to each other. The last time I saw him was several years ago, in an Atlanta club, where was playing a show to promote his CD Silver Lake. I only got to speak to him a few minutes after the show, but when he saw me his eyes lit up and he started pointing at me, and for that few minutes we were the same as we were in 1983, laughing at each other’s dumb jokes and enjoying each other’s company.

For many, many years, I would have regularly have dreams in which Vic would appear, and in all of them, he was not in a wheelchair, but he was walking and running. I guess that’s the way my mind wanted to remember him. Today, and for the past couple of days, he’s been not in my dreams, but in my waking mind, and I don’t picture him running or walking, but I picture him laughing, and pointing at me, and picking up his guitar to blow me away again. That’s how he will always live in my mind. Rest in peace, my friend.

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….

With no particular place to go

I took my old Ovation guitar down to the Record Heaven music store in Griffin the other day to see if anything could be done to spruce it up. The guitar man there – I didn’t catch his name – shook his head ruefully and said, “Ain’t worth fixing.”

I didn’t expect to hear that. What did that mean?

The guy looked at it and said, “I can fix it, but there ain’t no way I can make it sound worth a toot.” Well, I’ve been playing it for 15 years, and I’ve never been able to make it sound worth a toot, either. But he told me that it would cost $300 to get it into passable playing shape, and even then he made no guarantees, so I decided to pass.

I was a little down after leaving there, so I decided to indulge one of my favorite pastimes – I went riding around.

Riding around is what I spent about 75 percent of my teenage years in Griffin doing. There wasn’t much else to do there besides school, church and work, and I didn’t find any of the three to be fun. So my buddies and I would climb into our cars that got about 20 feet to the gallon and we’d ride around aimlessly, past all the same old places.

The best time of day to ride around is twilight, or in the loaming, as I’ve heard it called. The setting sun casts a softer light on the world, and everything just looks better.

Of course, a key part of riding around is having some good music to listen to. An activity like that needs a good soundtrack. On the day I got the bad news about the guitar, I went with The Allman Brothers’ Eat A Peach album. You can never go wrong with Duane and Dickie. They always sound worth a toot.

I rode past the house I lived in as a small child. I have almost no memory of it, which is just as well, because that whole neighborhood has been taken over by trashy people and the house looks like hell.

Then I just rode around on some country roads, looking at cows and fields and old churches and mobile homes with Rebel flags still flying out front. My reverie was broken when I got a phone call reminding me that I needed to go by Walgreens and the grocery store. Riding around was a lot more fun before cell phones.

When I was a teenager, my mama didn’t like it when I would tell her that I was going to go riding around. Y’all are just going to find trouble out there, running the roads, she said. No, I would think, if we find trouble, then we’ll stop the car. But I never said that to her. She wasn’t the kind of mama you sassed.

In truth, we never got into trouble riding around. We didn’t drink or do drugs, and girls didn’t have much interest in just driving aimlessly. Anyway, if you had a girl in the car, your goal was to park it somewhere, as soon as possible.

Now, I do all of my riding around by myself, and it never lasts as long, but it’s almost always a good time, even with a dying Ovation lying in the back seat.

Flat broke

I was up at the Emory Clinic this morning and I was getting ready to leave. I knew I’d have to pay for parking, so I opened my wallet for some cash or a debit card, and there was nothing there. It was as bare as a cooch dancer’s midriff, to quote Foghorn Leghorn.

Now, just two days ago, in addition to the debit card, there was $30 in cash in my wallet. I had not spent a red cent in the meantime. So, it should have still been there. But it wasn’t.

There are three other people who live at my house, plus my dog Lucky. All three humans have denied taking the money. Lucky was mum on the subject, but I don’t suspect her. She might steal a biscuit out of a grizzly bear’s mouth, but she has no use for money.

Apparently, the $30 just took wings and flew out of my wallet. I hope it found its way to somebody who needs it. As for the debit card, it somehow was in my wife’s possession. My debit card has my photo on it, so I don’t know what good it would do her. She’s never, to my knowledge, even sported a goatee.

Luckily, the nice people at Emory gave me a token for free parking when I explained my predicament. I’m glad they did, because I was going to have to go to Plan B, which was to say, “Wow, the doctor just told me I have two weeks to live, and now this happens.”

I should be used to money flying out of my wallet by now, as I have two kids in high school, and every day I’m shelling out money for something – senior dues, football dues, parking dues. Cheerleading is the worst – last year my daughter was a cheerleader, and it cost approximately $500,000. You could buy a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader for what I spent on cheerleading (trust me, I looked it up, but figured I didn’t have anywhere to put her).

Earlier this year, I had to buy an ad for my son for the football program, then join the booster club, and all this AFTER shelling about $400 just for him to have the privilege to play football. Maybe he’ll get a lot better and bigger and go somewhere where they’ll actually pay HIM to play, like Florida or Alabama.

Now I am told that I need to purchase an ad for the high school yearbook, since my daughter is a senior. This ad costs roughly the same as a new Buick. And I was made to believe that if I didn’t purchase this ad, I would be the worst father this side of MacKenzie Phillips’ dad.

My daughter informed me the other day that she was going shopping. Interesting, I said. For what?

A new outfit, she said.

Then I asked the most important question – with what? So she gave me that “daddy’s little girl” smile, and once again my wallet parted like the Red Sea.

I guess I’ve learned a valuable lesson. From now on, I’m inspecting my wallet before I leave the house, or maybe I’ll just start hiding money in the freezer, like my mom used to do. I always thought that was crazy, but now, I understand.

Sentimental journey

I just got back from the beach, and it made me realize that I have reached a few new stages in my life.

One of those is the “should no longer be seen in public without a shirt” stage. I’ve put on a few pounds since my last trip to the beach. Small children were standing under my stomach for shade. I think I heard somebody say, “You don’t often see humpbacks in the Gulf of Mexico.” Not very nice.

I also realized that I’m getting to be a sentimental old cuss. The older I get, the more nostalgia gets to me. I used to only cry when I watched “Old Yeller,” or when something hit me in the groin. Nowadays, I’ll get teary-eyed at the drop of a hat.

Case in point: As we were packing up the leave Orange Beach Wednesday morning, it got to me. And not because I was leaving an environment of crashing surf, sandy beaches and pleasant breezes to head back to one filled with traffic, unpaid doctors’ bills and nasty letters from credit card companies.

What made me emotional was realizing that it may have been one of our last family vacations together, at least of this kind. We’ve done the same thing for many years – when the kids are out of school for their fall break in September, we go down to the beach and spend a few days to a week.

It is always such a great time, in part because I get to spend time with the kids without all of the distractions that bombard us daily. We go for walks on the beach at night looking for crabs, and we ride the waves in the Gulf, and we go to the tacky arcade-amusement park where we try to win cheap prizes and always have a competitive game of putt-putt (I was dethroned this year for the first time ever, but that didn’t make me sad. I’ll get even). We eat every meal together, and for a few days, the kids even act as if they like each other.

But they are growing up, damn them. This time next year, my daughter will be in college somewhere. My son will be a junior in high school and probably won’t want to miss football practice. And as they get older, their interests in other things and other people will grow, and playing putt-putt and looking for crabs with Dad will just seem stupid. I know that, and I accept that, but it doesn’t mean I have to look forward to it.

I hope that the memories of the family vacations will be as special to the kids as they are for their mom and dad. I hope that someday when they take their families to the beach, or to the mountains, or wherever they go, they’ll smile and remember how much fun they used to have, and they’ll realize how much it meant to old Dad.

I’d better end this now, before somebody walks in on me, and I have to try to convince them that I’ve been watching “Old Yeller” on YouTube.

Welcome to Wal-Mart

You probably read or heard about the story recently concerning the old man here in Georgia who told a woman to make her 2-year-old stop crying or he would, and when she didn’t, he slapped the kid around a little bit.

This happened in a Wal-Mart. Well, of course it did. It is yet another example of why I avoid Wal-Mart like I avoid hard work.

Oh, and here’s another reason.

I refuse to go to Wal-Mart. There are three massive ones within 5 miles of my house. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one. How much cheap stuff can people buy?

I could tell you that my Wal-Mart boycott has to do with how they have ruined small-town America, and they import everything from China and screw American suppliers, and they have questionable employment practices, and their produce tastes like it was grown in the buttcrack of a buffalo.

But I’m not that high-minded. I just can’t stand seeing the people you see in your average Wal-Mart. Most of them look like they came there straight from a meth lab or a Tennessee football game.

Does this make me snotty? Maybe so. But here are a few tips I’d like to give Wal-Mart shoppers before they head to the store:

1. Bathe.
2. Make sure your clothes have been washed within the past month, and don’t have holes you could put a quarter through.
3. Don’t wear your T-shirts with obscene or vulgar words on them. That’s fine for the family reunion at the trailer park, but not for the public.
4. Shoes – wear them. Even your kids. Especially your kids.

I prefer K-Mart to Wal-Mart, but there aren’t many K-Marts left. I used to actually work at K-Mart, and it was fun, because the store was huge and I could hide for almost my entire shift.

I remember once, a guy got busted for crawling up above the ceiling and looking down into the women’s dressing rooms through the security mirror. I thought this was a very sick thing. I mean, at the time, I understood the urge to look at women undressing. But not women who were trying on clothes at K-Mart. It ain’t exactly Victoria’s Secret, is all I’m saying.

K-Mart was cooler, because they had blue-light specials, where they’d put a flashing blue light on somewhere and put something on sale for a limited time. My mother and father both bought a lot of useless junk because they were blue-light specials. Somewhere there’s a 10-pound barrel of cheese popcorn we never ate.

I don’t care if you go to Wal-Mart. If your conscience will let you, and you don’t mind swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool for a while, go right ahead. Just don’t buy me anything.

Rainy days and Fridays always get me down

I got up at 6:30 this morning and it was as dark as Mordor outside and bucketing rain, and I thought to myself (because who else would you think to?), “It should be against the law to have to go to work on a Friday like this.”

Your hear that, President Obama? Screw the health-care reform. You want my vote in 2012, you’ll make this happen.

I got in my car and began the torturous drive to work. As anybody who has driven to work in Atlanta knows, 99 percent of the other drivers act as if they have a closed head injury. This is magnified exponentially when there’s a drop of rain on the road, and today it was like God had out the hosepipe.

I often drive into a work via a route that includes Moreland Avenue, past quaint cute little neighborhoods with names like “Grant Park” and “Kirkwood” and my favorite, “The Ghetto.” There’s not much drainage in this area, perhaps because there are dead bodies clogging the drains, so when it rains hard Moreland Avenue becomes an aqueduct. I thought at any moment I would be sucked into a swirling eddy like Marshall, Will and Holly in “Land of the Lost.” Waves were breaking over the hood of the Impala. Scary stuff.

This marked two days in a row of a testy commute. The day before, I was driving home down a road cleverly named “Boulevard.” (I guess “Street” was taken.) This is a little bit of a shortcut, but it runs right past the federal penitentiary and some housing projects, so you have to know how to navigate this stretch safely. In other words, keep the doors locked, don’t get too close to the car in front of you in case somebody tries to carjack you and you need to make a quick getaway, and avoid making eye contact with the hookers in the parking lot of the convenience store. Do all of that and you’re perfectly safe.

But Thursday, I found the way blocked. I saw police cars and a school bus and flashing lights, so I had to take a detour. I think the street I turned on was called “Crackhouse Lane,” but I was driving too fast to read the signs. I got home and watched the local news and learned that a naked man had climbed on the school bus and some kids had jumped off and finally the bus had run into an empty field. The naked man was subdued, and nobody was hurt or impregnated.

I am hopeful that these misadventures will soon stop. I joined in with about 30 co-workers and we pooled together to buy a bunch of lottery tickets for tonight’s $325 million drawing. The odds of winning this are about 1 in 175 million. We have 150 chances to win, which increases our odds to about 1 in 174.99999 million.

Let me tell you something, if we win, this department will be a ghost town Monday morning, especially in the area of my cube. I’m never coming back. They can keep all my stuff, though I would like the Elvis magnet, for sentimental reasons. Everything else I can replace, and I will never get out of bed on a rainy Friday ever again.

Feet don't fail me now

My company brought in a podiatrist on Thursday to give free foot checkups to employees. I take my excitement where I can get it these days.

I have not traditionally paid much attention to my feet. As long as they don’t smell bad and it doesn’t hurt me to walk, I figure they’re ok.

I know a lot of guys these days go get pedicures, and my wife has told me that I should do so, as well. The answer is no. Why don’t you just buy me a poodle and a cardigan and make me watch Dancing With the Stars, while you’re at it.

I remember, as a kid, what my dad’s feet looked like. He didn’t get pedicures. His toenails looked like the trees in the petrified forest. He used a chainsaw to clip them. There were calluses that could stop a bullet. Those were men’s feet.

I subjected my feet to a lot of abuse when I was young, because I didn’t often wear shoes. I learned the art of walking on gravel (step very lightly and slowly), or across hot asphalt (run like somebody is chasing you). I learned it felt good to squish mud between my toes and walk across cool green grass, and it felt bad to step into a pile of fire ants or on a rusty nail.

Going barefoot led to a lot of stubbed toes, or as we called them, stumped toes. Well, whatever you called them, they hurt like crazy, and you always hoped your mama was nowhere near when you did it, because there is no way to stump your toe without immediately screaming a cuss word, or several.

Then there’s that little toe on the end – I believe the technical term is pinky toe, or the last little piggy – and that thing could find the corner of a piece of furniture like a divining rod. I’ve hit that little toe so hard on things before it, it’s a wonder it didn’t just pop right off.

My feet aren’t that bad, but that’s because I lead a cushy life with a soft desk job. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Nobody sees my feet unless I’m at home or at the beach. I don’t wear sandals.

But I needed to go see the podiatrist because I have these two little knots, one on the bottom of each foot, and about half the time it feels like I’m walking on nails. The podiatrist was a very cheerful fellow who told me, between giggles, that I have a corn on one foot, and a plantars wart on the other. He squeezed them, said “I bet this hurts,” and laughed. He needs to work on his stool-side manner.

I asked him if I could just get a pocket knife and cut them off, but he just laughed a little too loud and said, “It won’t do any good, but it will hurt.” While I’ve done many things in my life that fit that description, I think I’ll take his advice and go by the drugstore and see what Dr. Scholl can do for me.

Stop saying that!

I was in a meeting the other day and several times I heard people say, “I don’t disagree with that.”

I’m going to have to insist that this phrase be stricken from the language. It is pointless and idiotic. Just say, “I agree.” You save two syllables and a bunch of letters and in these tough economic times, I think it’s important to be frugal.

I am going to compile a list of phrases and words that should be stricken from the language, and then I am going to work tirelessly to see these new regulations implemented. The penalty for breaking these regulations will be death. No sense monkeying around.

Also on the list is “teachable moment.” After going 44 years without ever hearing this, I have now heard it 7,569 times in the past month. It was recently used to describe the case of the Harvard professor who got arrested. Well, first, a “moment” can’t be teachable. People can be teachable. Dogs can be teachable, though not mine. But a moment can’t be taught. And here’s what incident taught us: Cops can be jerks, so don’t talk back to them. I learned that the hard way one hot afternoon on the streets of Griffin, Ga.

People are now fond of saying, “It is what it is.” This has to be stopped. Now, while I admire “I yam what I yam” as one of the great quotes of all time, “It is what it is” is nonsense, is what it is.

The word “unbelievable” is used way too much, especially in sports. Sportscasters will deem anything even slightly out of the ordinary as “unbelievable.” I think that word should apply to something that is so extraordinary, we don’t believe it. Therefore, Albert Pujols hitting a grand slam is not “unbelievable.” He does it all the time. Now, Ryan O’Neal hitting on his own daughter at his ex-wife’s funeral – ok, that was pretty close to unbelievable.

Sportscasters also like to say, “You have got to be kidding me!” First, let’s drop the word “got” from all phrases like that. AOL helped popularize the misuse of “got” with its signature “You’ve got mail” sign-on, when it should be, “You have mail.” And second, it’s clear nobody’s kidding them. Now, if I were to walk up to you and say, “I’ve just been asked to play guitar with the E Street Band cause Little Steven is quitting,” you’d say, “You have got to be kidding me!” And then I’d admit that, yes, I was kidding you. But we’d get a good laugh out of it.

Finally, consider the phrase, “He wants to have his cake, and eat it too.” This is a stupid phrase. I guess it’s used to indicate that someone is greedy. But I don’t think it’s really over-reaching to expect to eat cake if you have it. Why else would you have it, anyway? What other purpose can cake possibly serve? Maybe it should be, “He wants to eat his cake, and some ice cream, too.” That would be more appropriate.

There are surely more words and phrases we should eliminate. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know. I’ll remember you and appoint you to my staff when Obama makes me “Unnecessary Words and Phrases” czar.

Alien vs. pancreas

After 6 months of tests and doctors visits to see why my stomach and back hurt, the doctor narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities – either chronic pancreatitis, or I have an extraterrestrial creature growing inside of me, like in “Alien.”

After the latest test, a most unpleasant thing called an endoscopic ultrasound, it looks like he’s settled on the pancreatitis. That’s disappointing, because it would be really cool to have an alien pop out of my belly. I was hoping to film it and get it on Youtube.

I hope this means the tests are over. I’ve had more things stuffed into my orifices this year than Madonna.

When they’re looking for things in your gastrointestinal system, there are two ways to get there. One is through the mouth and down the throat into the stomach. This was the method of my most recent test, and I guess it went fine, except when I woke up from the anesthesia I couldn’t breathe and my chest hurt. The nurse came in, took some readings and said something you never want to hear a medical professional say, “Well, I’ve never seen this happen before.”

They did an EKG and took an X-Ray and had me drink something that made me feel all warm inside, and after an hour said I was OK and ready to leave. My wife took me to a Folks restaurant, since I hadn’t been able to eat or drink all day, but I was cold and when I sat down to eat I started shivering and shuddering violently, like I was lying on a vibrating bed in a Panama City Beach motel. I opted to take my food with me, since the odds of my turnip greens actually hitting my mouth were pretty low.

The other way they check out your gastrointestinal system is they go through the service entrance, running some sort of device into your hindquarters. This is known as a colonoscopy. (I typed, then erased, several jokes here that were in poor taste).

The day before a colonoscopy is a lot of fun, as you go through a “cleaning out” process. I’ll spare you the details, but you wind up spending more time on the throne than Louis the 14th.

Through this process of probing, prodding and squeezing, I have lost all sense of shame and modesty. After the colonoscopy, I was in some pain, and the nurse told me that it was because they pumped gas inside me during the procedure. All I needed to do was break wind a few times. Hell, I thought, I’m good at that. But it still took about an hour.

Anyway, the colonoscopy was fine. The doctor said everything looked good back there. Well, tell me something I don’t know, doc. They send you home with pictures after these procedures, I guess as souvenirs. I’m thinking about doing a scrapbook.

I’m glad to finally have some of diagnosis, though I haven’t found out yet if anything can be done this, or how to treat it, etc. I’m not even sure what the pancreas does, but apparently you need it, so removing it is not an option. Unlike the alien, I’m stuck with it, for good or bad.

Back to the vet

I came home from an overnight trip Saturday to find that my dog Lucky looked as if she’d kidnapped by Michael Vick and forced to go three rounds with a Rottweiller.

There was a big sore on the side of her face and it was pretty ugly. There was blood caked in her fur, she seemed kind of droopy and, most telling of all, she hadn’t eaten her food in a couple of days. My mother used to say the way she knew my father was really sick was if he didn’t eat.

I had no idea what had happened. There’s nothing she could have gotten in a fight with in the back yard. She’s too slow to catch the squirrels, and the frogs don’t generally appear too violent. But whatever caused it, she looked terrible.

So I had to take her to see the vet Monday afternoon. As I’ve mentioned before, we didn’t do this when I was a child. You slapped some motor oil on the dog and wished him or her luck. But I’m a modern, sensitive man, and I decide to go flush another $200 down the toilet, i.e., take her to the vet.

She had actually been there a couple of weeks before, to get her annual shots, and apparently she remembered, because when I got her out of the car she dug her claws into the asphalt and bowed up. I told her to stop being such a baby, but she didn’t move, so I half-carried, half-pushed her into the office past a startled woman holding a trembling poodle.

We don’t really fit in at that vet’s office. For one, Lucky is a yard dog, and she’s a mutt, and quite frankly, she smells a little bit. In addition, the sore on her face had become a huge, bloody, oozing mess.

Sitting around us were a few people, holding their little polite pedigreed dogs in their laps. They took one look at Lucky and recoiled in horror, clutching their dogs to their chests in abject fear.

Meanwhile, Lucky plopped down on the floor, bloody-side down, so every time she moved there was a little red smear on the linoleum. She must have felt bad about that, because a couple of times she helpfully began to lick it up, until I stopped her. A woman holding a terrier nearly had a heart attack when she saw that.

Somebody walked through with a white dog and one of my kids said, “Hey, that’s the color Lucky used to be.” Ok, so she’s a little bit dirty. She’s the canine equivalent of Pig Pen from the Charlie Brown cartoons.

They finally called her back, and the doctor said that she had contracted a bad staph infection. Nothing to worry about, but she was going to need to stay overnight, because apparently the initial attempts to shave the hair around the affected area had not gone well, and they were going to need to sedate her in order to do it. Do you see now why I don’t attempt to groom her?

I asked the vet what could have caused the staph infection, and she said to me, with a straight face, “Well, their immune systems can get compromised when they’re experiencing stress.” Stress? This dog does three things – eat, crap, sleep. All in voluminous fashion. What could cause it stress?

I’m the one who’s stressed. I’ve spent more on that dog in the past two weeks than I paid for my first car. It’s a good thing she’s so lovable and sweet and licks my toes, or she might be walking around right now with a face covered in motor oil.

Sleepless nights

The song “Sleepless Nights,” penned by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

However, there is nothing at all beautiful about actual sleepless nights.

I have gone through a lifetime of sleepless nights, or nearly sleepless ones, anyway. Lying there unable to sleep hour after hour is one of the most miserable feelings you can experience, just between stubbing your toe and losing to Florida on the misery scale.

The first sleepless night I can recall is when I was a young boy, and I watched an episode of “The Night Gallery” in which this old couple who had been murdered crawled out of their graves in the night and then attacked their killer with pitchforks. I slept with the windows locked for a few nights after that, even though it was hot and we didn’t run the air conditioning after dark.

It was a big thrill when I was a boy to see if I could stay up all night. My friend Greg and I would camp out in a tent in his back yard and talk big talk about things we knew nothing about, like jumping motorcycles over cars or kissing girls. One night he snuck out one of his daddy’s cigars and a Playboy magazine, but we were afraid to light the cigar. I’m not saying whether or not we looked at the magazine.

One night we were out there in a little camper-trailer his parents owned, trying to stay awake until the day broke. We were lying in our sleeping bags and we had the radio playing, and the song “Time Has Come Today” by the Chambers Brothers came on. It was one of those songs that radio deejays would play in the ’70s because it was 11minutes long, which gave them time to go in the studio bathroom and do something illegal before they had to come out and change the record. Why else do you think “Free Bird” and “Stairway to Heaven” were so popular?

Anyway, when it got to the part where the song slows down and they just chant the word “time” over and over, the record got stuck. I guess the deejay figured he’d caught a break because he just let it play, and for about 10 minutes all we heard was an echoing beat of the drum, then the singer saying “time” over and over and over. It freaked me out more than the old couple with the pitchforks, and we didn’t try to stay up all night again for quite some time.

Even when I do sleep, it’s not very restful because I have a lot of vivid and long and involved dreams. Some people say they don’t remember theirs, but I usually do. I have a bunch of recurrent dreams – dreams about tornadoes, and being chased, and going to school or work in my underwear, and going in for a final exam I haven’t studied for, and going in to a big office to do a mindless job every day. Wait, that last one might be real.

I don’t really think dreams mean anything. At least I hope they don’t. I don’t think they really reflect what you want in your subconscious. For example, I never dream that I’m winning the Masters, or being interviewed about my Pulitzer-prize winning book, or being called onstage by Bruce Springsteen to take the second verse on “Born to Run.” Instead, I dreamed the other night that I was plunging down a steep bank toward a river in my minivan. I assure you, this is not what I want.

Often times, I realize in the middle of the dream that I am indeed dreaming, and I try to do something to wake myself up. Just last night I dreamed I was on top of a building with people shooting at me, so I made a conscious decision to jump off, and sure enough, I woke up before I landed. I hope I don’t do this one day and realize about halfway down that I wasn’t actually dreaming.

When I can’t sleep, I usually just get up for a while and try not to fight it. I’ll read a book or watch TV until I think I can go to sleep again, or maybe just some put on my iPod and listen to music until I drift off. You can believe I don’t have any songs by The Chambers Brothers on there.

Me and my big mouth

My family and I go to a relatively small Methodist Church, and I have learned a valuable lesson in the three years since we joined. And here it is – don’t ever let anybody there know that you have any skill at doing anything, because if they find out, they will ask you to do it for the church.

I learned this the hard way recently, when I accidentally let it slip that I once played drums in a band. Within the week I was being approached by people who had never spoken to me before, saying, “What’s this I hear about you being able to play drums?”

Our church has one of those new-fangled “praise bands” that plays at the early service every Sunday, with guitars and drums and bass and keyboards and all sorts of things that aren’t even mentioned in the Bible. The regular drummer is in the military reserves and often gets called away, so when word got out that there was another potential drummer in the house, they were on me like fire ants at a picnic.

Calling me a drummer, however, is a stretch. It reminds me of an old Henny Youngman joke: An orchestra is playing, and after the violinist does a solo, somebody stands up and says, “Tell that sonofabitch to stop playing.” The conductor turns around angrily and says, “Who called the violinist a sonofabitch?” And the guy answered back, “Who called the sonofabitch a violinist?”

Understand, I last played the drums in 1986, in a band in college in Athens, Ga. I played a very basic style, because I didn’t know how to do anything else. There were no fancy Keith Moon-like sonic explosions emanating from my drum kit. It was just “boom-boom-boom-bam, boom-boom-boom-bam,” over and over and over.

I remember once Michael Stipe came to one of our shows, and he was talking to us outside after we finished, and he looked at me and mumbled, “I really like the minimalist thing you’re doing with the drums.” And I said, well, Mike, you know, my philosophy is to not let the drums overpower the music, but to play a more subtle, supportive role, underpinning the lyrics and the melody. He mumbled something else and walked off. True story.

Anyway, after only one practice, I took the stage this morning, playing a set of electronic drums through six songs, all of them “contemporary Christian”, except for the Jackie Wilson song, “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher.” This was really quite a leap for me to do this, because it involved a number of things I am against, including electronic drum kits, contemporary Christian music, and getting up early on a Sunday morning.

I guess I did OK. Nobody laughed or covered their ears, I didn’t drop the drum sticks, and they’ve asked me to fill in again next week. And truth be told, I actually had a pretty good time doing it and wouldn’t mind playing some more. Just don’t let anybody at the church know.

A break in tradition

For 12 of the past 13 years, I’ve celebrated the Fourth of July by getting out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and going into Atlanta to run 6.2 miles in the Peachtree Road Race with 55,000 other idiots.

I varied that routine slightly this year by instead sleeping to 9, then taking the kids to Waffle House, where I ate a nutritious breakfast of bacon, grits, eggs, toast, and a biscuit smothered in white gravy. In my defense, I only ate half the biscuit.

Our waitress was a little younger than your normal Waffle House beauty. My daughter whispered to me after the girl took our order, “She was in P.E. class with me my freshman year in high school.” See, I said. She’s gone out and gotten herself a job. Maybe you could do the same.

My daughter got the same disgusted look she always gets whenever I say something inappropriate (you know, words like “work” or “job” or “no”), and said, “She dropped out of school because she was pregnant, dad!” Well, I said, that just shows you that she’s doubly ambitious – she’s working AND raising a family, and I can’t get you to feed the dog, except at gunpoint.

The drive over to Waffle House was a lot of fun, as I let my son take the wheel. Armed with a learner’s permit and an ego that far outstrips reality, he confidently drove us the one mile to the Waffle House while only giving me three minor heart attacks.

I am learning some things about my son as he learns to drive. For one, apparently he suffers some form of dyslexia I never knew about before. For example, he sees the word “Stop” on a sign, he reads it as “Slow down a little bit.” And to him, “Yield” translates to “Accelerate.” This disability also apparently causes him to add 10 miles per her to every speed limit sign.

Seriously, it should be against the law to have two teenagers at one time. The Chinese know how to handle this sort of thing.

After the Waffle House trip, I continued celebrating my country’s independence by plopping down on the couch to watch a little TV. I watched a few minutes of "Shatner’s Raw Nerve," and William’s guest this morning was Jenna Jameson, whom he described as a “modern renaissance woman.” Thankfully he didn’t go on to list her talents.

My better angels took over and I changed to channels to watch a few episodes of “The Revolution” on The History Channel. It’s interesting to contrast the courage and character and determination of the leaders and politicians of that time with the morons and preening lightweights we have in office today. Nobody ever had to listen to George Washington whine about his Argentinean “soul mate.” If you even said the words “soul mate” to him, he would shoot you between the eyes with a musket.

The Fourth of July is probably my favorite holiday. Later on I’ll grill some burgers, then we’ll drive over to a local elementary school, from where you can see three fireworks displays at once. Then I’ll come home and spend the rest of the night reassuring Lucky, as she freaks out when all the neighbors start setting off their own fireworks in the street. She’s not a fan.

And next year, I swear, I’m skipping Waffle House and running in the Peachtree.

Rest in peace

I put on my Navy blue suit yesterday and went to a funeral for my Aunt Peggy, my father’s sister, who died in her sleep a few days ago.

I didn’t expect it to be a real emotional experience, since I had hardly seen her in the past 10 years, and she’s been in failing health for a while. But there were still a couple of moments that got to me.

They used all pre-recorded music at the funeral, which was a first for me. The first song was some over-produced “contemporary Christian” song that went on longer than Stairway to Heaven, but wasn’t nearly as good. I bet Aunt Peggy wouldn’t have chosen that one.

But then they played George Jones’ version of Amazing Grace, in which he sings the first verse a cappella. I looked over next to me and saw some tears in my daddy’s eyes, so naturally I lost it for a minute. If you can sit in a funeral chapel and listen to George Jones sing Amazing Grace and see your daddy crying and not tear up yourself, then I don’t want to know you.

The whole experience was sad, but more in a nostalgic way than a mournful one. It reminded me how little I see anybody in my extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins. These are people who were once a big part of my life, and now there are some of them I hardly even recognize.

I remember as a kid, I would see my family a lot, not just once a year at Christmas. They weren’t just names and faces, they were central figures in my universe. We’d go over to an aunt or uncle’s house to eat, or just visit, or we’d see each other at one of my grandmother’s houses. I’d hear my mama and daddy talk about them, so I knew about their problems, their joys, their triumphs and their failures.

On my father’s side of the family, my uncle died about 20 years ago, and my grandmother died a few years later, and we all just stopped getting together. People moved away, and I’d go years without seeing some of them. It’s a shame.

One thing that struck me at the funeral is how much older everybody is getting. My poor Uncle Joe, married to Peggy for 60 years, was just a shell of himself. The years and a case of Parkinson’s Disease have taken their toll. My memory of him is that of a hard-working, down-to-earth man with a firm handshake and a quick laugh. The man I saw at the funeral was not my Uncle Joe.

And Aunt Peggy was quite a character, a Dolly Parton-type who was partial to wigs, jewelry, makeup and flea markets. Her house was always loaded with things she picked up at flea markets. My mama never could understand why somebody wanted “all that mess” in their house.

I got together with my mother’s side of the family not long ago, to celebrate my grandmother’s 97th birthday. That was nice, but we probably won’t see each other again until Christmas, unless something bad happens, God forbid.

But, what to do? It’s a problem without a solution. I could say I’m going to make more of an effort to see everybody, but I know that’s not going to happen. Everyone is too scattered with too many things going on in their lives. Sometimes, memories just have to suffice.

Father Knows Best

I was watching TV today and a commercial came on, and it featured the president of the United States telling us that we needed to do something with our kids and be good fathers.

Now, that made me wonder. Is there really someone out there today who saw that commercial and suddenly realized, “Hey! The president is telling me go spend time with my kids. I think I’ll take them bowling.”

Probably not. Either you know how to be a good father, or you don’t. A president can’t tell you how, and you can’t learn from a Web site or a TV commercial or a public service announcement on the radio. If you’re counting on that to guide you in fatherhood, you’re probably a lost cause.

But there is someone who can show you how to be a good father – and that’s your own father. A father is the most important influence on a child’s life. If you don’t believe me, go to any prison or strip club and ask the men and women there about their fathers.

My father taught me how to be a father mostly by example – you work, you provide, you don’t complain, you be there when they need you, you do whatever it takes to make sure the family is taken care of. The rewards are you get to see your children grow into good human beings, and you get control of the TV.

My dad never really sat me down for those Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best kind of father-son talks. He usually kept his instructions pretty simple and unambiguous. If I were going out of town or somewhere with friends, he would simply look at me and say, “Don’t act the fool.” And I knew exactly what he meant. I didn’t have to take time before I did anything to ponder whether, if I took that action, I would or would not be “acting the fool.” I just knew. And 99 percent of the time, I chose not to act the fool.

About two weeks before my college graduation, when I was home on the weekend, he walked into my room and said, “Do you have a job lined up yet?” I said no. He said, “Get one.” And he walked out. That was pretty clear. So, I got one.

When it was time to cut the grass, he didn’t come ask me to cut the grass. He didn’t negotiate with me, or offer me money, or tell me that it might be nice if I cut the grass. No, he’d walk into my room, and say “Go cut the grass.” And that’s what I did. There was no point in putting up an argument. I was going to lose, because he had God, the law and the power to withhold food on his side.

Of course, when you become a teenager, you tend to discount your father’s advice, because you’re smarter than he is, or so you believe. But sooner or later, and it may take years, you are going to realize that he was right.

I remember once I got lazy and didn’t want to change my own oil, so I went to one of those oil-change places. My dad told me that I needed to be careful when I did that, and I should always crawl under the car myself and make sure they put the oil filter back on tightly. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard, and took my car to these places for years to get my oil changed without incident.

Then one day, about three years ago, I went to such a place just before I drove to Savannah on a business trip. I should have been suspicious, because the guys working there looked like they’d smoked more dope than Bob Marley, but as usual I did not check to see if they tightened the filter.

Sure enough, two days later, I’m driving out of Savannah on I-16, and I hear a “thump,” like I’d run over something. In a matter of moments, my engine overheated, smoke began to come out of the engine, and by the time I pulled over to the shoulder of the road, the engine had locked up. I looked under the car, and sure enough, no oil filter. Only a few oil splatters and a smoking engine. That explained the thump. They hadn’t tightened it and it fell off.

I wound up riding back from Savannah in the back seat of a pickup truck with a family of rednecks who smoked, argued and listened to modern country music very loudly for 4 hours, singing along to every Toby Keith and Tim McGraw song. Yep, I was thinking the whole time, I should have listened to my daddy.

So I hope you had a chance today to call up your daddy and tell him that you love him, and you appreciate everything he’s done, and you promise that even when you weren’t listening to him, he was making an impact on you. Happy Father’s Day.

Back in time

I sojourned back up to Athens Friday night to watch The Dashboard Saviors play a show at the Caledonia Lounge.

You have perhaps not heard of this band. They were big in Athens, and other places, in the late ’80s and early-to-mid ’90s before they gave up chasing the dream, but they still get together every now and then to run all the redlights on memory lane.

They are a fantastic rock and roll band. I may be accused of being a little biased, since the founder, songwriter and lead singer, Todd McBride, has been my friend since kindergarten. But you don’t have to just take my word for it. In 1992 they were featured in Rolling Stone magazines “New Faces” section with an enthusiastic writeup. R.E.M. guitarist Pete Buck liked them so much that he produced and played on their first album.

The band toured the United States and even Europe, mostly Germany, I believe. In their heyday they were a hard-driving, tight band playing intelligent rock music, driven by John Crist’s propulsive drumming and Mike Gibson’s Southern-fried shredding on the guitar. (Sorry about that attempt to be a music writer).

But, they never “made it.” They couldn’t get on MTV or on the radio or ever seem to get that one big break that would put them over the top, or at least get them to the point where they could make a living playing music.

Why didn’t they make it? Who knows. Maybe they weren’t pretty enough, or cheesy enough, or just couldn’t get lucky. Instead, other questionable rock and roll bands got big during the period, like Blind Melon and the Goo-Goo Dolls and Hootie and the Blowfish.

Freakin’ Hootie and the freakin’ Blow-freakin’-fish.

I used to go see the Saviors play a lot, mostly in Athens or Atlanta. I hopped on stage with them one night in Greenville, S.C. and delivered a blistering lead vocal on Johnny 99. Too bad that’s not on YouTube somewhere.

Whenever I watched them play, I always wished that I had the guts to get up there and do what they were doing. They did inspire me to teach myself guitar and learn how to write a few songs. They even played one of my songs one night at an Athens club, which was a big thrill.

Their show the other night was good. You couldn’t tell it was the first time they had played together in a couple of years. While they were onstage, I imagine that the boys were transported back to the days when they thought it was going to work, when playing in a band was all they could imagine. When you’re 25, you can’t see yourself at 45.

I felt a little sad when the show was over. I wondered how they felt. Did it make them remember how things used to be? Did it tempt them, ever so briefly, to try and give it another shot? Did they feel like they gave up too soon, or maybe not soon enough?

But when they were onstage, it didn’t matter. In that hot, crowded little Athens nightclub the other night it was 1991 again, everybody was having fun, and I was wishing once more that I was one of the ones up onstage.

Out of place

One thing I don’t like much about my job is occasionally I have to go to meetings, where I am definitely a square peg in a room full of round holes.

I had to drive up to Athens this week to sit in a room with a bunch of politicians and business leaders and chamber of commerce people. I wore a suit and tie, just like every other guy there, but I suspect that’s about all I had in common with them.

I just really don’t know what to talk about to these people. They will usually come up and introduce themselves to me, and after reading my nametag, they realize they don’t know who I am. So then they ask me what I do, on the off-chance that I might be somebody important enough for them to be nice to. Inevitably they are disappointed by my answer, and soon find a way to excuse themselves.

I was listening to a “classic rock” radio station on the drive up to Athens, so as a result, I had a lot of things on my mind when I walked into lunch. For one, I’ve always wondered how, as a teen-aged boy, I didn’t seem to notice that Freddie Mercury was gay. You have to understand that, for a boy of that age growing up in the South in the ’70s, the idea of a man being gay was not something we could really grasp, let alone accept. Yet I’d see pictures of Freddie prancing around in tight pants with his porno moustache, and all I thought was, “These guys rock!”

Also, I heard a song by the band Boston, and that reminded me of my theory that Boston was not actually a group of musicians, but rather some sort of computer program created by Tom Scholtz, founder of the “band” and holder of a Master’s degree from MIT. Really, does their stuff sound human? Go listen to Long Time and tell me you can find one ounce of human emotion in there. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I wondered some other things, too. Like, in AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long, Brian Johnson sings in the verses of a certain “she” – “she” was a fast machine, “she” kept her motor clean, etc., etc. But in the chorus, he’s singing to someone directly – “you” shook me all night long. So, was it two different women? And would he be telling the woman who shook him all night long about this other woman, who knocked him out with her American thighs? I don’t think that would be very smart.

Anyway, these are the things I wanted to talk about to my lunch companions, but I never really found a way to work it into the conversation. The woman sitting to my right is the director of some hospital and she was wearing an outfit the same color as an orange Creamsickle. I made a couple of attempts to talk to her, but we weren’t clicking. She struck me as more of a Celine Dion fan than a classic rock fan, so I didn’t bring up my theories.

Part of the buffet was some fruit salad, and I had some on my plate, but I was having trouble eating the grapes with a utensil. Grapes are really not suited for a fork, because it’s hard to stab them, or a spoon, because they tend to roll out. I couldn’t eat them with my hands, because I was in such high-tone surroundings.

So I looked over at Creamsicle woman and said, “You know, you would have thought we would have invented some new utensils by now. How long have we been using the fork and spoon? Hundreds of years? Why did we decide to just stop utensil development there? And please don’t bring up the ‘spork,’ because it’s not good for anything.”

She just sat there quietly, looked again at my nametag, and found a reason to excuse herself.

Eventually the lunch meeting ended, and I slipped out a side door, climbed into my car, put in a Louvin Brothers CD and took the long way home because I like riding through the country. At least the day wasn’t a total waste.

I need a vacation

So far this year, I have experienced the following:

- an overflowing toilet that led to a 4-week home repair.

- a mysterious medical issue that has resulted in visits to eight different doctors, an operation, a plethora of unpleasant tests and medical bills piled to the ceiling.

- uncertainty at work brought about a couple of weeks ago when we learned that upper management was bringing in consultants who were looking at “cost containment issues” by discussing ways to “maximize efficiencies” resulting in a more streamlined “target organization.” In other words, don’t buy any green bananas.

On top of that, my house needs a new roof, the dryer is squeaking, the upstairs shower isn’t working and I’ve been letting my 15-year-old son drive the car. If anybody has a Valium stockpile they’d like to unload, call me. And you thought Jon and Kate had problems!

In other words, I am ready for a vacation. How’s this for irony – this week my daughter went to Disney World with a friend, and next week my son is going to the beach with one of his friends. Meanwhile, mom and dad – the ones who actually have jobs and make money - are stuck at home. We need better friends.

In some ways, I like to follow my father’s lead when it comes to being on vacation. He would get into the hotel room, park himself in front of the TV, strip down to a T-shirt and boxer shorts and eat like a feral hog.

This is why I’m generally against the idea of taking non-family members with us on vacation. If they do go, they need to understand that they will see me in my boxer shorts, covered in Doritos dust and belching like a volcano. Perhaps I should have them sign a waiver.

My dad also always took a pair of binoculars to the beach. I thought this was odd, but he would tell me that he liked to sit on the hotel balcony and look at the ships as they passed by. He seemed to always have them trained on the beach, though. Finally I hit puberty and understood why he brought them. Way to go, dad!

We took a yearly vacation to Panama City Beach in Florida. My dad didn’t believe in making reservations before we went, so we would ride up and down the strip looking for vacancy signs. Then the hotel and the hotel room had to pass my mom’s inspection, so it could be a harrowing few hours before we finally found a place to stay. Bless their souls for saving the money and taking me on vacation, but I do not recommend their methods.

These days, we like to go down to the Gulf Coast of Florida or Alabama, to places like Perdido Key or Orange Beach. The beaches are nice and not nearly as crowded as Panama City, though you do have fewer options if you decide to go get a tattoo or an air-brushed T-shirt. And you don’t see as many big girls in tiny rebel-flag bikinis.

I don’t know if I’ll get to go anywhere this year or not. We are planning to go to Disney World in November, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, but that’s not a very restful trip. I need a good week of sleeping late, eating doughnuts and looking for ships through my binoculars.

And if anybody wants to invite me along, I’ll even buy some new boxer shorts.