Curmudgeon in Training

Of the benefits enjoyed while aging, perhaps none is as sweet as the status of being a curmudgeon.  While I don't aspire to be as curmudgeonly as Andy Rooney or Ed Asner (perhaps he's just bitter), I enjoy the freedom to rant and rail about things with the understanding that it's merely the musings of one who is moving beyond middle age.

In no particular order here a few of my least favorite things:

1. Anything made DeLonghi.  We buried our second 50-cup coffee maker in 20 months.  The espresso machine never worked...the overpowering flavor of metal is not condusive to Italian coffees.  So in my mind DeLognhi=shite.
2. To the arshehole who keeps leaving advertisements in the form of empty sports drinks in the locker at 24-Hour Fitness...stop already.  If I find out where you live I'll leave a DeLonghi espresso machine on your lawn.
3. While I am on 24-Hour Fitness...it must be incredibly difficult to figure out how to replace the paper towels and the cleaning solution at the same time.  Invariably one or other is out, usually in separate locations.  Who knew that you needed someone who gets mail from Mensa to replace these janitorial supplies?  And can the company make a decision on what system it will use for club entry? Biometrics with a security gate to a card and no security gate back to biometrics.  Frankly, I am little concerned about where everyone else's index finger has been.
4. Las Vegas...to paraphrase Disney, must be "The Seediest Place on Earth."  What happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas and it should be quarantined.  The Strip is a cesspool, filthy, littered with cards and leaflets, teasers for escort services.  OK, why be even remotely politically correct? These are cards and leaflets for prostitutes, or as my dad would say, "hoo-ers."  Walking the Strip means running a gauntlet of illegal aliens slapping the cards and shoving them in your face.  The city is an assualt on the senses.  Want to get Al-Qeada terrorists to talk?  Send them to Las Vegas for a weekend!
5. Anything NFL. I have watched maybe a half dozen games since that pissant Eli Manning threw a shit fit after being drafted by the San Diego Chargers.  (None watched in the last two years, including the Super Bowl.) I don't care for the game and the outsized gang of thugs and sexual predators that strut across the field pounding their chests or creating a recognizable celebratory dance that they bust out each time they do something significant, like break wind.  While trying to kill myself yesterday on the eliptical trainer at the aforementioned 24-Hour Fitness, ESPN was broadcasting the arrival of players prior to a game.  First of all, is this supposed to be significant?  Second, nearly everyone of these overpaid egoists was wearing an industrial set of earphones.  God forbid that they should have to recognize, wave, or shake hands with a commoner.  No, they escape to their own private world.  Want to win a Super Bowl, coach?  Ban earphones.

And no, I don't feel better.

...and a good time was had by all

It was at our 20th Reunion in 1995 that I began to see the faces of the old men we would become in the faces of the young boys who graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1975.

As a class we boast several interesting distinctions.  We are the most attrited class of the 20th century, graduating barely half of those who were sworn in on June 30, 1971.  A large number left after the draft lottery numbers were announced, a predictable number fell due to academics, conduct, and aptitude, and cynicism got the rest.  We also have a large number of our class who made flag rank, Marine Corps generals and Navy admirals. 

We stayed at the home of one my roommates, Gary Ingold.  Gary and his wife, Ginny, who have been married for 35 years, graciously opened their Annapolis home to several of us.  Gary, an Illinois state champion wrestler, was also a wild child during his days as a midshipman.  Yes, there were those among enough with enough pluck to turn USNA into a party school.  The irony is that now Gary is the Catholic deacon at the Academy, this coming as a shock to many who attended the memorial service to honor our fallen comrades.  Fortunately, none suffered heart attacks at the ceremony to add to that number.

We had the obligatory lunch at Middleton's Tavern, a walk through downtown Annapolis (where I visited my friends at Laurance Clothing on Main Street, and The Smoke Shop on Maryland Avenue), the class dinner, a tailgate party that offered the world's best crabcakes (a consensus view), a disappointing football game, and snatches of conversation.

I did wear my kilt on Friday night.  Predictably Pat Gottschalk, a former Secretary of Commerce for the Commonwealth of Virginia, attempted to turn me into a hand puppet, and other pals tried for the up-kilt look to ascertain is I was going as a "True Scot."  Nae with this crowd!  Lynn nearly passed out laughing when we hit the dance floor.  And the professional photographer wisely chose not to have me sit in the front row for photos.

Speaking of photos, Ken Hamerick, one of the Plebe basketball team members, brought along a black and white shot of the team from the 1971-2 season.  No, I wasn't a guard.  I was a team manager, a desperate and successful attempt to get a seat at the training table, where all the folderal of being a plebe was suspended and something like a real meal could be shared among the team.  We reprised the photo with the seven members of the team who were in attendance that evening.  It appears to be my lot in life to be in photographs with preternaturally large men.  Standing in front of the other six (Bob Burns nearly was voted out because he started!) I look like a kilted-version of a lawn jockey.  Shout outs to Bobby, Billy, Doug, and John, who in addition to the aforementioned graced this "instant classic" shot.

We were also joined by three classmates who left us early and did not graduate with the class.  Pepe Galito does contract work in Iraq, Bill Etsweiler still lives in PA, and Jim Hickey is a pathologist in Baltimore.

None of my 21st Company mates is still in uniform.  Those who retired from the Navy did so as Commanders or Captains, and we had a 20-year Marine Corps officer in our midst as well; Bobby Clark flew missions during Desert Storm and now flies for FedEx.  Most are on to second careers, airline pilots, school teachers, defense industry executives, health care, engineering.

But what we will mostly remember about the 35th Reunion is a single word.  During our stay in Scotland we connected a near-Pavlovian response to the word "Aberdeen."  Aberdeen is a city in Northern Scotland, nicknamed the Silver City.  It is also the hub of the Scottish oil industry, being the jumping off point for many of the North Sea oil platforms.  We heard this reaction first at The Stand, the comedy club in Glasgow's West End.  A young comedian said that he was from Aberdeen and the entire audience (sans the Yanks) shouted "Sheep-shaggers!"

Yes, that's the word..."Sheep-shaggers!"  We must have said it 40 or 50 times.  There are those among us who don't know what it means.  One Southern Belle had difficulty in pronouncing it, often booming out "Shagger-Sheep" or "Sheep-Shiggers", but she rose to the occasion when we filmed "Aberdeen: The Movie", a 21-second shout out to our friends in Glesga.

At our 30th reunion in 2005 a few of our number had moved into the ranks of grandparents.  That number increased mightily over the last five years. 

We also had a chance to reconnect with Admiral & Mrs. O'Connor.  Admiral O'Connor, class of 1949, is the father of my classmate Tommy O'Connor.  The Admiral is still laughing, and has more than a bit of Irish blarney going 61 years after his graduation.

There is always something bittersweet about these twice a decade gatherings.  Promises to stay in touch, to meet somewhere and sometime in between these five year gaps.  We do, however, have a rallying point.  Navy-Notre Dame, September 1, 2012, Dublin, Ireland.  As we said in the old days, "Be there or be square."

...and the winner is...

The Harris Poll announced that New York City is the most popular city that people want to live in or near.  San Diego, which bills itself as "America's Finest City", finished second to "The Big Apple."  Ironically, New York City also finished first in the least desirable city poll as well. 

These ubiquitous city polls always seem a bit strange to me.  Healthiest city, greenest city, you pick it.  From Outside to Money, everyone has a different yardstick.

As my mates in Glasgow would say, "What a load of bollocks!" or perhaps, "At's a load of shite!"

People ask me my favorite river for fly-fishing, and I answer, "I haven't found it yet."  When asked what his favorite wine was, a friend of mine answered, "The one that's in my hand."

This lusting after what we don't have is almost as pernicious as the pomposity of actually basking in these spurious polls, as if you had something to do with it.

I have many "favorite" cities:

• San Diego...I live here, the weather is great (well it used to be great, we've had a challenging few months), there's a decent Little Italy, many of my friends also live here, and it happens to be the place where I earn a living.
• San Francisco...former haunt, current mailing addresses for the Tenuto heir and heiress, who are following their artistic dreams in the People's Republic.
• Chicago...city of broad shoulders, hometown, the Bulls (last professional sports team I can muster any interest for), wonderful restaurants, and The Hawk, a wind so fierce that it takes the breath away.
• New York City...swagger, strut, the best Little Italy (Mario Battali has superceded Umberto's Clam House where Joey Gallo had some lead with his dinner), teams you love to hate, and parking rates that take your breath away faster than the aforementioned Hawk.
• London...gentile, historic, so pukka.
• Glasgow...Scotland's version of Chicago, the blue-collar city teeming with hospitality, pubs, culture, and a number of great names for rain.  If the Eskimos have scores of nuances for snow, Glaswegians have a similar number to describe the rain.  Like smirr.

To quote Gandhi, "Wherever you are, be there."  That's the point of this exercise.  Why have a favorite when there are so many wonderful places in the world?  Learn to enjoy where you are.

OK, maybe not Detroit.

Footnotes...

Yesterday I heard Mayor Jerry Sanders, Eddie Osterland, (America's First Master Sommelier), and Russ T. Nailz, politically incorrect comic, all within the space of three hours.  This is a real feat of mental legerdemain.  The wine certainly helped.

Midweek I had lunch with my good friend, Alan Russell.  Alan is the tallest mystery writer in America, and maybe the best writer you don't know about.  He is the mystery writer other mystery writers read.  Check out his award-winning Mortal Wounds.

Wall Street My Money Slept and other pop offs on pop culture

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to the Michael Douglas-Charlie Sheen-Oliver Stone Academy Award Winning 1987 movie, maybe one of the worst movies of all time.  An instant Razzie candidate.   Where to start?  Michael Douglas sleepwalks through the part, he's more a mannequin for really beautiful suits and ties.  Shia LeBeouf?  I don't get Shia LeBeouf...at all.  Carrie Mulligan cries throughout the entire movie.  Charlie Sheen makes a gratuitous cameo, with two women on his arm, perhaps some cross marketing for his tasteless television show.  The movie's only redeeming quality is Josh Brolin, who plays an amoral banker.  He got his moral compass the same place Carrie Mulligan's character got her wedding ring, out of a Cracker Jack box.  The plot is predictable, the only surprise being that the tickets cost $13.00 each. 

Let's just say that the weekly box office is dropping faster than the Dow Jones Industrial Average did in 2008.  Look for this one in Blockbuster Video...what, they filed for bankruptcy?  OK, Netflix...add this to your Netflix queue.  The wait won't be long.

As a recovering Wall Streeter myself (I left in 1996), and a fan of the previous movie, I felt somewhat obligated to go, despite the suspicion that the movie was going to be a dog.  I based that on the not very scientific observation that every third commercial was the trailer for the movie. 

The trailer was interspersed between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman ads.  I'm including political ads in the pantheon of pop culture.  These two are vying for the governor's mansion in Sacramento.  If Brown wins he may symbolically close it down to live in his Jesuitical austerity in an apartment, or maybe an ashram.  If Meg Whitman wins she may symbolically close it down to live in something with a bit more square footage.  With a population larger than Western Europe you'd think that the state of California could produce two better candidates than this lot.

Redemption of the arts came in the form of a book.  Each year I am fortunate enough to stumble upon a sleeper, totally unexpected.  A couple of years back it was The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway's fictional take on a true incident from the siege of Sarjevo.  A big tip o' the hat to John Hamilton, that irrepressible Kiwi, for loaning me a copy of this year's sleeper, The Amateurs, penned by John Niven.  The funniest book I have ever read.  Since I read most of the book armed with a cigar and a Guinness in my backyard, I am somewhat surprised that my neighbors didn't call the police to report a cackling madman running amok on my property.  Laugh out loud funny...or LOL, I guess for you emoticons.  (Though, parenthetically, emoticons are preferable to neocons.)

The premise of The Amateurs: a golfing hackmeister in a dead-end job and a loveless marriage, connects with the purest golf shot he has ever hit, at the same time he is felled by a errant drive, denting his skull and sending him to hospital and a long coma.  When he recovers his senses he lives with three aftermaths: he cannot hit a poor golf shot, he has a wicked case of Tourette's syndrome, and another malady that results in his never needing any Viagra, a priapism of palpating proportions.  He wins his way into the British Open.  The book is set in a small town in Scotland and peppered with colorful Glaswegian phrases.  Caveat emptor:  There are any number of books with the same title.  Look for the cover with a bloody golf ball.

                      





Old School or I see dead animals

Spent most of the week with the team from LAZ Parking, which resulted in a trip to Hartford, Connecticut.  As always, we were swept up into that vortex, that force of nature, Alan Lazowski, LAZ Parking's CEO, who seems to get more stuff done in a week than most mere mortals do in a month.  In addition to two days huddled up with the senior leadership team, there was also a political fund raiser he hosted for Mike Blumenthal, Democratic candidate for Chris Dodd's abandoned seat.  Frankly, Al should be running.

The meetings and the fund raiser, conveniently were held at The Hartford Club.  The company's new CFO, Nathan Owen, an English fellow, immediately submitted his application for the club, because "It reminds me of England."

I don't know if Nathan meant the food, but he certainly meant the decor.  And since it is a private club there is actually a "Gentlemen's Cigar and Billiards Room."  (I am quite certain that distaff members of THC are quite welcome.)

The room is redolent of the pleasant smell of cigar.  Wood panelling, private humidors, leather chairs, a bar, dead animals on the wall, and the requisite photo of Samuel Longhorn Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.  Clemens was a member, and the photo showed him in his trademark white suit, leonine head of hair, and the ever-present cigar.

While we never saw the room in actual use, one imagines suited gentlemen rustling their copies of The Wall Street Business Journal or The Hartford Courant, sipping a glass of port, and indulging in their favorite smoke.  Harkening back to simpler times. 

My cigar venue of choice was a bench outside of McKinnon's Pub on Asylum Street.  On Wednesday evening the pub was packed with musicians who played Celtic music in a come-one-come-all style.  A squeebox, a few fiddles, guitars, a mandolin or two.  No pipes.  The only drawback was having thye Guinness served in a plastic cup, as pint glasses were not allowed outdoors.  One must suffer occasionally for one's vices.

And now back to San Diego, where it is becoming increasing difficult to find a place to indulge in a cigar.  Beaches and parks have banned all smoking.  You can't drink on the beach, either.  There are a few cigar stores where patrons can light up.  But a private club...if you know of one I'd like to know.

My life in nine weeks & Hypocrisy

First, it was March 12th, nine weeks before our trip to Scotland.  Suddenly the plans and time telescoped.  Books on Scotland's rich and warlike history to read.  Highlighting Rick Steves and other guidebooks on planned sites to visit.  Telephone numbers, addresses, signing up for Skype, getting the iPhone...

Then, the trip itself.  Nine weeks chronicled here in detail.

Now, nine weeks after our return.  To mark the occasion I called Callum and caught him (shockingly!) at Jelly Hill.  The turnout, he said, was low.  He and Lucy were there along with Kirtseen and Callan.  The fire fighting duo were expected.  Callum blamed the weather, 55 and raining...true Glaswegian weather. 

So, half a year passed in this trio of nine week blocks.  A certain symmetry if you will.

And now to the purpose of today's missive.  Hypocrisy.  Two events from the sporting world and from a world (football, or American football) where my interest is slightly less than studying the mating habits of three-toed sloths.  My friends know that I have watched less than five professional football games in the last five years, even eschewing last year's Super Bowl.  You can blame the over-entitled pissant Eli Manning, whose fit of pique and refusal to play in San Diego finally demonstrated what a callow bunch runs across our less than Elyssian Fields.

Reggie Bush, the electrifying all-purpose back who was indeed the best college player in 2005, returned his Heisman Trophy.  His crime, he took some money when he was an undergraduate, thus making him ineligible.  The results of that are now visited on a coach and players who were nowhere near the campus in 2005.  The irony of the NCAA and its punishment.  The USC coach at that time, Pete Carroll, now coaches an NFL team and makes a multi-million salary that has him rooting for an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts.  (In this case the Bush in question would be George W. and not Reggie.)  Reggie is a pro football player with the current world champions, the New Orleans Saints. 

The report was that the Heisman committee was considering asking for the trophy back.  Bush relieved them of that hollow wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by returning it of his own volition.

The hypocrisy is the entire system of college athletics.  Coaches who earn millions of dollars, schools that earn comparable sums for appearing in bowl games, ticket sales, television revenue.  Hell, Notre Dame has its own network, NBC!  The only ones not making money, the kids on the field.  Who are also banned from holding jobs or risk loosing their scholarships.  And the Heisman itself.  If you want to go and watch the presentation, a ticket will cost you $500.00. 

Our second example of hypocrisy is Ines Sainz.  Ms. Sainz, who might be a member of Mensa, was certainly not hired for her intellect.  She is a stunning beauty.  Walking Cialis.  She would get the College of Cardinals electing the next Pope to melt into paroxysms of cat-calls and wolf whistles.  Ms. Sainz walks into a locker room full of naked Jets and expects what?  She was also upset that the team ran a play near to where she was standing on the field.  These two incidents offended her.  She was, well, treated like an object.

No journalist, male or female, actually needs to be in a locker room.  There are press areas and mandates that require athletes to make themselves available to the press.  This access is an anachronistic throwback to the days of fedoras, spiked stories, and cigarettes drooping from the mouths of Heywood Hale Broun or Red Smith.

The hypocrisy...do I really need to explain it?  Thought not.  But you might be interested to know that male reporters are denied access to the locker rooms of the WNBA, the Women's National Basketball League.

Working on my intolerance

Reverend Terry Jones, a Gainesville, Florida man of God, wants to burn the Koran, his personal and peculair way of commemorating September 11th, which also happens to be his right under our Constitution.  How is burning the Koran any different than burning the flag, or hanging and torching various politicians in effigy, or placing a crucifix in urine and calling it art?  And that's just here in the good old U. S. of A.

We have all been treated to countless scenes of "the Arab Street" burning Old Glory.  We have all witnessed what to our minds have been disproportinate displays of displeasure at political cartoons, or comments from Pope Benedict.  These responses went well beyond burning a flag or two, they blossomed into arson and general mayhem.

Our Consitution guarantees Rev. Jones' right to burn the Koran. It is called free speech. Once we start to make decisions on what type of free speech is protected by the Constitution we begin a slide down a slippery slope. Years ago I read Nat Henthof's wonderful book, "Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee." The book should be read in every Civics and Government class.  While I may not agree with Rev. Jones' act, I hold his right to do it as sancrosanct. The media has whipped the flames of this fire into a conflagration of Biblical proportions without the good reverend even striking a match. (Poetically a match works better than a Bic lighter. You've got the whole smell of sulphur and the fire and brimstone thing going for you.)


Frankly, I am getting a bit weary of being asked to understand this or that abomination under the guise of political correctness.  I am also bone tired of being tolerant.

Especially since our call for tolerance (and let's broaden this to include all of Western Culture) seems to fall on deaf ears.  The Taliban destroying the ancient Buddhas of Bamyan comes to mind.  How many Catholic Churches are in Saudi Arabia?  None.  See this Time Magazine article: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1723715,00.html  Somehow, we have the burden of tolerance and must forgive intolerance in others.

My recent travels to Scotland were edifying in a number of respects.  The Scots are fiercely proud of their country, their heritage, and their history.  They make no apologies for who they are.  They are independent and outspoken. 

I wondered and continue to wonder how many of us in America can make the same claims. 

I am proud of my country.  I am proud that I live in a country where every crackpot or nutcase can express his opinion.  I am proud of our heritage, a country of immigrants (though these days it feels like the melting pot is being sectioned like a bad TV dinner.)  And I'm proud of our history.  We haven't got everything right, but we get most of it right.