Short Circuits (36 page)

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YOU IS OR YOU AIN'T

I decided it was about time I wrote a funny blog, filled with my own special brand of wit and clever wisdom. So I sat down and wrote about 36 first sentences. They were about as amusing as the lead sentence in an obituary. I have come to the conclusion that there are certain things in life that one simply cannot do by just deciding to do them: keep your eyes open while you sneeze; go to sleep when you tell yourself to;
not
looking at the clock every two minutes while laying in bed wondering what time it is and why you aren't asleep yet; and deciding to write a funny blog. Can't be done. When it comes to being funny, you either is or you ain't. And today, apparently, I ain't.

Laughing has always been one of my favorite things to do, though my personal humor runs more along the lines of quirky tongue in cheek than out-loud guffaws. I love guffaws. I love laughing so hard I have to grasp for air and my stomach hurts. On reflection, I haven't done that for quite a while. No idea why. Maybe all this Iraq/Iran/economy/Who-the-hell-gives-a-damn-about-Britney-Spears/mean-spirited Christian Fundamentalist nonsense has just overwhelmed me. Guffaw-funny seems to be in tragically short supply of late.

Oh, there's plenty of it left. There are tons and tons of rolling-on-the-floor-laughing things around…except when you need to reach out and grab a few to stick into a blog.

The world seems to have gotten much too serious for its own good. I always enjoyed the definition I once read of Puritanism: “Puritanism is the deep, abiding fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.” I'd say we were becoming a nation of Puritans, but the fact is that we are a nation founded by Puritans and we largely remain Puritans.

Political Correctness has become an 800-pound gorilla in every room, grabbing anyone who dares to make a dumb blond joke by the neck and throttling the life out of him. The fact of the matter is that there is not one single thing that can be said to which someone, somewhere, cannot and will not find offense. Alexander King's classic comment on obscenity applies to those who take offense at everything: “There are those who see obscenity in the crotch of every tree.”

I can't think, as a matter of fact, when I had my last really good laugh, let alone a guffaw. I would certainly hope much more recently than I am able to recall at the moment. Again, I'm sure it's just because I'm trying to think of an example that I cannot. My mind has a sense of humor of its own and apparently takes considerable delight in not cooperating when I ask something of it. I want something funny and instead I get mental images of babies starving in Darfur.

Fortunately, it hasn't always been like this and I know it won't be like this forever. But at the moment, I do have to stretch back quite a while to even remember a specific good laugh.

I do distinctly recall the time when I was in about the sixth grade, sitting in a very hot classroom on a late fall afternoon. A large housefly wandered casually across my desk, too sapped by the heat and humidity to be very enthused about anything. I remember “walking” my fingers across the desk until they were right behind the fly, who didn't seem to notice or, if he noticed, to care. Very carefully I reared back my index finger and booted him in the rear end. He fell off the edge of the desk and managed to fly off just before he hit the floor. I spent the next three minutes laughing. Neither the fly nor my teacher appreciated the humor of the situation, but I didn't care.

Maybe I should look for a fly to boot in the rear.

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READING THE SIGNS

I get a kick out of signs. I suppose it goes far back to the dawn of time when, on long road trips before the invention of the interstate road system, the boredom would be broken by a succession of small signs spread out over half a mile or so. (“Shaving Brushes…You'll soon see ‘em…on display…in some museum…Burma Shave” or “On curves ahead…remember, sonny…that rabbit's foot…didn't save the bunny…Burma Shave”). At the height of their popularity, there were more than 7,000 of these signs spread across the United States.

And I have always loved, still talking of road trips, the ones that say “Eat at Rosies! 7 miles ahead! We're OPEN!” “Eat at Rosies! 6 miles ahead. Yessir, we're OPEN!”…and you know damned well that when you get to Rosies, there will be a sign on the door saying “Closed.”

And how often have you passed, at night, a dark and shuttered store with a prominent “Open” sign in the window.

A large gas station in Los Angeles has the comforting slogan: “Your Only a Stranger Here Once.” My reaction was always “That's nice, and if you ever learn to spell I might actually come in.”

At a supermarket I frequented near my home in Northern Wisconsin, the new deli/bakery put up a large sign trumpeting their “Bacon Powder Biscuits.” My pointing out to them that perhaps they might have meant “Baking Powder” was met with a totally blank stare, and the “Bacon Powder” sign remained up for another week or so. During deer hunting season (a huge tourist draw for the area) the deli's baker came up with a brilliant idea to draw shoppers: tiny balls of dough he advertised as “Deer-droppings Donuts.” Yummy! And for St. Patrick's Day one year he featured “Green bread!”…not, I suspect, one of the store's best sellers.

But my favorite sign of all was in front of a small church in North Hollywood. It proudly proclaimed this to be “The Church of Our Blessed Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Lest anyone confuse it with a synagogue or mosque, under the church's name was helpfully included, in parentheses, the word “Christian.” Almost incentive enough to make me take up church-goin'. But not quite.

I remember fondly a co-worker's car which was plastered with “America for the Americans!” “Buy American!” “U.S.A is #1” “America! Love it or Leave It!” The car was a Volkswagen.

Bumper stickers…sadly seldom seen much nowadays…are a class all in themselves, probably more related to the old Burma Shave signs than anything else. But while I love them, their humor was thought out in advance. (My favorite, seen on a car in Alabama, featured a Confederate flag with a red slash through it and the words: “The war's over! You lost. Get used to it.”)

Signs are everywhere…and if you like to include newspaper headlines you might enjoy the recent headline on the satiric
The Onion
: “The Iraq War: Celebrating four years of winning!”

Where would we be without the ability to laugh?

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DE PROFUNDUS

One time during my sophomore year in college, a girl I didn't know very well said to me: “You know, Roger, you really are a pompous ass.” I don't remember exactly what had provoked the observation, but I do remember that rather than being insulted I was actually rather flattered. It had never occurred to me before that anyone might consider me being anything other than totally bland.

I have subsequently realized that I do have something of a tendency to pontification, soapbox oration, and not-infrequent melodrama—which I suspect may have occurred to you from reading these blogs. And that I find endless fascination in this odd mixture of arrogance and insecurity allows me to ramble on (insecurity) and try to figure out just what makes me, you, and humanity in general tick (arrogance).

The fact of matter is that, like most people, I do have very strong feelings on a number of subjects, but unlike many, I have no hesitation in voicing them. That by doing so I risk being considered somewhat daft—a word seldom used nowadays, but I like it—certainly doesn't slow me down. In the sincere belief that while you are probably too busy with your own life to devote too much time to frivolous thought, you might be willing to indulge them from time to time in my company. I do try to be careful to point out that I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, but part of me is quite firmly convinced that we all have much more in common than we generally acknowledge, and therefore when I talk (and talk, and talk...insecurity) of me, I am to some extent talking of you (arrogance). Since I am always delighted to learn, through comments I've received on these blogs, that other people do find bits of themselves in my thoughts, it's merely an extension to think you might do the same. I take great comfort thinking that we are not quite as isolated as we might assume we are.

My trips into pseudo-profundity and melodrama are definitely related to my constant awareness and appreciation of life. Melodrama is rather like zooming in on a photograph…it brings out details otherwise overlooked or ignored. My life-long fascination with disasters, from the Chicago fire to the San Francisco earthquake to large ship sinkings to 9-11, stems not from the human suffering they produce, but for the all-too-rare nobility and unity they almost inevitably bring out. This selflessness and unity, demonstrated in countless individual stories of courage and braveness, are to me evidence of what humanity really could become if it tried a bit harder.

The world…our society, our culture, our race…is a mad whirlpool of contradictions, of good and evil, of kindness and cruelty. I have always taken comfort in the thought that we so concentrate on the bad things in life simply because all the good things are so common as to go without comment. Love and kindness are the accepted and expected norm against which hatred and cruelty are measured, and the fact that we are shocked by them speaks to the fact that there is indeed hope for us all. Our media bombards us with so much evil and tragedy and bad news that we tend to be blinded to the good. There are far more puppies and kittens and babies in the world than axe murderers, yet it is the axe murderers who make the headlines.

So I get up on my rickety soap box and orate and wave my arms and pontificate in hopes that somehow, somewhere, some way, I might make the tiniest bit of difference in someone's life. I say “in hopes” because, in the final analysis, hope is our salvation.

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THE PLEASURES OF DREAR

Don't let the fact that there doesn't seem to be any such word as “drear” bother you…it's a nice word which should exist even if it doesn't.

Today was what undoubtedly most people in Chicago consider to be dreary (get the connection?): heavy, heavy overcast, drizzle and light rain mixed with torrential rain mixed with wisps of fog, chilly winds…sort of a picnic-on-the-moors, Hound of the Baskervilles day. And I love it.

I've always liked it when Mother Nature shows emotion. Anybody can enjoy sunny skies and puffy clouds and warm, gentle breezes, and I like them, too. But it takes a special outlook to be able to appreciate days that drip with lugubriosity (I just made that one up, too). One of the reasons I left Los Angeles was because that was about all there was: sunny skies, puffy clouds, etc. Every single day was June 25. You could plan a picnic six months in advance and be almost guaranteed that it would be a sunny day with puffy clouds and warm breezes. Los Angeles days tend to be like one of those perky little blonde cheerleaders who is just always so…well,
perky
…that you want to throttle her.

Ah, but “drear” has its own quiet pleasures. Living in a high rise isn't quite the same as being at ground level, where one can watch the trees outside the window swaying wetly, or the water running off the eaves. But standing at my 9th floor window looking down at the umbrella'd people scurrying along the glistening streets, cars' tires like the bow of a ship sending up little sprays of water to each side, neon lights reflected off the sidewalks, the passing elevated trains shooting off sparks from their wet wheels on the electrified track…it's all very comforting, somehow. It's rather like my other favorite calmative pastime, walking through a cemetery, reading tombstones.

Drear provides the backdrop and sets the mood for quiet contemplation and reflection, and if there is the sound of rain to create background music, all the better. Granted, some fine-tuning is required to keep out the static of regrets and missed opportunities, or errors made, but once you've got everything right on pitch, it's wonderful.

I also enjoy, still using music as an analogy, when Nature segues from quieter contemplative pieces featuring fog and overcast and rain to the full orchestrals of storms: booming tympani of thunder, cymbal crashes of lightning, full-brass of wind and fierce rain…watching the trees, as if caught up in some frenzy of emotion, whipping back and forth. I love it!

I remember once, as a teenager, during a terrific thunderstorm in the middle of a summer night. I got out of bed to stand in front of the open window and watch it. I was between the drapes and the window for a better view. My mom came in to close the window, thinking I was asleep. When she moved the drapes aside to get to the window, I scared the wits out of her, poor thing. (And you see? Even thinking of that on a day like today gives me pleasure and comfort rather than the sorrow of knowing it could never happen again.)

Life is full of drear. It's how we see it and react to it that makes the difference.

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POTPOURRI

Whenever I make the mistake of turning my back on my mind for ten seconds, it inevitably goes running off wildly in all directions.

I was waiting for a bus the other day when a very short, balding little man with a horseshoe of white hair around his pate and an absolutely huge pot belly walked past carrying a briefcase. My immediate thought was: “I am May-or of the Munch-kin Cit-ty.” Go figure.

From there I for absolutely no reason thought of a place called “Preview House” in Los Angeles. People would stand out on busy street corners and offer you free tickets to see and rate TV pilots. I made the mistake of taking one.

Preview House was a very nice theater, with each seat having a small hand-held control unit with a dial and ten numbers, with which we were to record our reactions. Once everyone was seated, an unctuously hail-fellows-well-met M.C. (or whatever it was he was supposed to be) appeared on the small stage in front of the screen to welcome us and say that we would be seeing two prospective pilots on which the networks would like potential audience reaction before scheduling them in prime time. To enhance the verisimilitude of the TV-watching experience, he advised us they'd also be showing some new commercials as well, and that we should rate them also. He gave us detailed instructions on dial-turning, which he apparently assumed most members of the audience would find difficult to grasp. The houselights dimmed and, the commercials began. Lots of commercials: it seemed like ten or twelve of them, and we all duly rated each one. Finally the first promised TV pilot began.