Reviews, journalism, musings
Sometimes you meet someone when you’re twenty who has such an effect on you, you remember what they said and how they talked. If you’re lucky, you have a picture.
August 30, 1968, 5:00 PM
This week doesn’t start out so lucky. But it sure ends that way.
I meet PK.
June 7, 1968
I’d rather be in so many other places than here. In line to see the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Waiting for Jimi Hendrix to go on at some festival. Prowling through a used book barn in Wyoming. Instead, I’m standing at the counter of the only drugstore in Windsor, Colorado. I’m almost 21 and home from school for the summer. The store’s empty except for Mr. Mercer, who’s leaning on the counter reading a newspaper he’ll probably unload onto the next customer. Not me.
Because I’m not here for newspapers.
“A priest, a minister and a rabbi are discussing when life begins. The priests says, ‘It begins at conception’. The minister says, ‘Life begins at 24 weeks gestation’. The rabbi says, ‘You are both wrong, Life begins when the kids move out of the house and the dog dies.'”
Family friend Wally forks his last piece of tenderloin steak and washes it down with Chivas Regal from my father’s store. He guffaws at his own joke, like Red Skelton. Continue reading “The Night That Opera Saved My Ass”
Not exactly. I’m something else.
Where I live, the old men sit around the spa after workouts sipping coffee. Once in a while, they’ll gloat about their now-easier lives. One day one said, “You know Pete, we’re survivors.”
“Not me,” I replied, “I’m an escapee.”
Here’re some notable things I’ve escaped from: Continue reading “I am Not a Survivor”
Getting laid off is often the best solution to a bad work environment. Sometimes you can even engineer it yourself.
Getting laid off isn’t so bad. Sometimes it’s even necessary.
In my thirty-year career in high tech, I was lucky. I never got fired. I was, however, laid off. Six times.
Three of the times I engineered myself.
Why would anyone want to lay themselves off? Continue reading “How to Lay Yourself Off”
Joe Biden’s all wrong when it comes to dealing with Donald Trump.
I’m feeling insecure these days. I’m not sure Joe Biden knows how to handle Donald Trump in the current race for the presidency.
Early last August, Trump was speaking in Clyde, Ohio.
He said this about Biden: “He’s following the radical left agenda. Take away your guns, destroy your 2nd Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God.”
Biden’s response: “For President Trump to attack my faith is shameful.” Well of course it was! That was the point. Maybe what Biden should’ve said was, “My faith is my own private business. Like President Kennedy, I believe in the separation of church and state.”
My advice to Joe: spent some time watching reruns of Andy’s Gang, a children’s show that ran from 1955 to 1960. It featured an impish puppet called Froggy the Gremlin. Here is a memorable episode.
Froggy was disparaging bunny rabbits. Andy was appalled.
ANDY: You shouldn’t say that about cute bunny rabbits. They’re so nice. FROGGY: Well, one way to settle that. You see that picture of water over there? ANDY: Yes, a nice frosty pitcher of ice water. FROGGY: Go over to the pitcher. (ANDY does so.) Grab the pitcher tightly by the handle. ANDY: (bewitched) What next, Froggy? FROGGY: I want you to pour the water all over your head. ANDY: Pour the water all over my head. (He does so, then snaps out of it.) Awwww Froggy! You got me all wet! FROGGY: (bounces around on his perch) Haw haw haw! There’s your answer! Haw haw haw!
Don’t play in Trump’s sandbox, Joe. Remember who you’re dealing with.
IN WHICH I learn the subtle side of conflict.
Paul Dabuse was the toughest kid in the seventh grade and I knew this because I once saw him fight. It was enough to brand him in my brain as someone I didn’t want to mess with. Continue reading “Another Bully for Me, Part I: Complications”
This article will be in the “Chapters” section of my memoir-in-progress, Greatest Hits of Junior High, a Memoir of Friends, Bullies, Girls, and Catholics (Illustrated).
Continue reading “Bullyland, Part I: Fast Learner”This article will be in the “Special Features” (appendix) section of my book-in-progress, Greatest Hits of Junior High, a Memoir of Friends, Bullies, Girls, and Catholics (Illustrated).
Continue reading “Why We Listened to Gene Pitney”Chris Montez1 had it right. “Any old dance that you wanna do.” When I was 13 at Holton-Richmond Junior High2, attending class in wooden desks with dried-up ink wells, I used to go to the school dances that happened third Friday each month. They were called “mixers,” because that’s what the girls and boys were supposed to do. Mix with adults gaping on. Of course not many of us did. The concept of a sock hop, with minimal supervision and an outta sight disk jockey, was yet to be in Danvers, Massachusetts. Continue reading ““. . . the Twist, the Stomp, the Mash Potato too . . .””
