EZer Times

When I was a kid, I used to spend part of my summers up at my grandparent’s cottage on a lake in Ontario. It was an 8 hour drive to get there… 8 hours in the big green American sedan, just my grandparents and me. 8 hours of listening to my grandfather’s radio stations.

If nothing else, he was very consistent with his musical tastes.

For the first hour, we would listen to this city’s easy listening station, EZ101. For those of you too young to remember, EZ listening was elevator music. Popular tunes, played Lawrence Welk style. For a teenager, EZ listening was similar to having a bug gnawing through your brain.

After an hour in the car, the station’s signal would begin to fade. That was not a problem for my well organized grandfather. He would just hit the next button on his radio and we’d be tuned into the next region’s EZ station.

So it continued for 8 hours. Once one station was out of range, he’d tune in the next.

Then, when we got to the lake, he would tune, no, lock the house radio to CFMO Radio "The Songs of Our Times."

Most kids were rockin’ out during the summer. I was listening to Ray Conniff, The Hollyridge Strings, Sergio Mendes… and of course, Mantovani.

My first Walkman was the greatest gift of my life. For the first time, I could listen to what I wanted.

Of course, the Walkman is gone. Instead I have my 60 gig Ipod, with 5000 songs on it.

When my friend Lemon Gloria asked today whether readers have embarrassing selections on their MP3 players, I had a confession.

I have an EZ Listening playlist.

Paul Mauriat’s Love Is Blue; Frank Mills’ Music Box Dancer; Hot Butter’s Popcorn; and a sitar version of The Who’s I Can See For Miles.

Individually, each song is, well, perhaps wretched. As a group, the music reminds me of the smell of the cabin, the sound of the wind, and summers where my biggest stress was what kind of music to listen to.

Not Healthy, Wealthy or Wise

I had one of those days today, where I just couldn’t get out of bed. It wasn’t a depressed, hide under the covers, stay in the darkness kind of thing. I was just really tired.

So tired that I gathered up what little strength I had and called out sick.

Sleeping sickness is a disease. I needed to rule it out as the cause of my lethargy.

I made the most of my day. I took a load of whites down to the washing machine. Then I got back into bed. That’s where I stayed until late afternoon.

Again, I wasn’t down or blue, just really tired.

Once I hauled my lazy ass out of bed around 5:00, I made a long list of chores to do. I always feel great guilt when I call out of work, so to alleviate the feeling I like to try to be productive.

Somehow, my apartment is more of a mess now than when I started Operation Clean The Pit.

I threw out bags of stuff, have a box of clothes ready for the Salvation Army, but somehow it still looks like a bomb went off.

That’s all for now. It’s late. I have to go to bed.

Spotted

Cosmo and I were out for an evening walk last night. While he stopped for a sniff at a tree, my eyes wandered to a window that looked into a basement apartment.

I was only gazing for a second or two when a young naked woman walked into my field of vision. She immediately looked out the window, where she could see me, not my dog, peeking in like a pervert.

This whole event took no more than 4 seconds from sniff to peek to busted.

She lives half a block away from me, at least I assume she does. Maybe she was visiting her big boyfriend who is now going to be on the lookout for a guy in a big red winter coat who likes to stare into strangers’ windows.

Look, I like naked women as much as the next guy. They’re great.

But how much fun can a guy have catching 4 seconds of a naked woman while standing on a cold street in the middle of the city?

Well, it appears that the answer is not what you might think.

Several years ago my station started to look into a gang of peepers in this city. They knew all of the places to go, all of the prime real estate, to see people (men and women) getting dressed, in and out of the shower, all the stuff we do in our homes, when we don’t think anyone is looking.

Apparently, people might be.

Members of this gang, according to unconfirmed reports, would even climb up fire escapes and walk along rooftops in order to get the best views.

EEEwwww.

Again, I ask: How much fun can a guy have catching 4 seconds of a naked woman while standing on a cold street in the middle of the city?

All I can say is that I’m taking Cosmo on a different route for a while. I don’t want to run into the angry boyfriend… or a t.v. station doing a story on peepers and have them get the wrong idea.

Looking Forward to "The John Club"

A darling friend of mine returned to town last night. She is my social circle’s Paris Hilton, except we love her, she has a job, and contributes to society. Yet, she’s still very Paris-ish.

In the course of conversation she talked about how her husband was in a quandary because he’d just been offered 87-million-dollars for the business he founded 13 years ago.

Actually, there was no quandary. He wasn’t interested in selling. He’s in his late 30’s, what would he do for the rest of his life if he sold the company?

Huh?

I’m not saying that money buys happiness, I do think it can buy plenty of things to keep you busy for the next 30 years or so.

But he likes his job!

So do I… but with 87-million-dollars I’ll never set foot in the place again. For 87-million I’ll forget I ever worked there. People will ask me, when they visit me at my Parisian apartment, what I did before I was rich.

“I don’t know.”

Part of my post-87-million-dollar life would include work as President and Supreme Commander of my philanthropic organization. The John Club will send under privileged kids to college and seek better treatment and a cure for Alzheimer’s. I’ll also be like that guy who used to write the column in the paper, and read letters from people who want money, and if there’s something about their letter that I like, I’ll send them a check.

(Don’t send your requests just yet… my tax refund isn’t enough to help anyone)

I actually have an idea for an internet venture. I don’t think it’s an 87-million dollar idea, but it might be worth something. Until last night I didn’t have a clue what to do with the idea, but listening to Paris talk about her husband, whom I do like a lot, I realized he might be about to help me.

I’m sure he gets all sorts of stupid ideas sent to him… but mine isn’t stupid.

And I’m not worried about him ripping me off.

If he’s willing to blow off 87-million, because he likes what he does, I don’t think he’s going to steal my 50 cent idea.

If the name of this blog becomes The John Club, he helped me score. Then you can start sending me your wishes.

Not Funny At All

I work in a television newsroom and we do stories on all sorts of dreadful things. And there are very few stories that we can’t make jokes about.

I, for one, can make, and have made, tasteless comments about anything, anyone, any disease or tragedy. It’s not because I don’t care or am mean. It’s just part of the way I pretend that the terrible things that I write about every day aren’t real.

Sometimes a sensitive soul will say “oh that’s awful… how can you say that?”

My justification is that my cynical, snide, or dark humored comment doesn’t make the plight worse for anyone involved in the story, yet it keeps me and my coworkers from curling up in the fetal position.

"What if it was your mother?" It’s not… and it’s not your mother either. If it is, I’ll shut up.

And truly, if you don’t laugh you cry.

I have cried. The Oklahoma City bombing was tough. What you didn’t see at home were the pictures from the daycare center as firefighters pulled young children out.

We all remember 9/11.

And being in New Orleans was brutal for the first few days. But, once the exhaustion kicked in, we could laugh about anything again. Someday I’ll write about the dog and the corpse. Good times.

This week we’re covering the sort of story about which there are no jokes. We just hear more and more of the details and our jaws hang open.

A grown man and two female cohorts, accused of sexually assaulting children over a period of several years. Some of the victims were infants.

Are you kidding me?

How is that possible? How can a human being see anything sexual in little children? How can a human being look at an infant and get turned on?

How does a guy get a couple of friends to help him carry out the sick plan?

Of the three people involved, how could not a single one think, “hmmm, this is a crime against humanity and all that’s good and natural in this world”?

Fortunately for everyone in the world, stories like this don’t happen very often. And that is why it’s news. Fortunately for us in the newsrooms this doesn’t happen very often, or we wouldn’t be able to come to work.

And the truth is, if I couldn’t pretend a little that a lot of the bad stuff I write about everyday had a little bit of humor in it, I wouldn’t ever be able to come to work.

Hellooooo Kingston!

I have figured out how to stick a visitor counter on my blog, to see how many people read it and to get a rough idea where they come from.

There have been a couple of interesting discoveries.

The first is that as far as I can tell, my friend Lemon Gloria may very well be the only person who has visited this page more than once.

And that’s fine, because I haven’t told anyone about it; I’m not a link on Drudge or GreatUnheardOfWriters.com. I’m willing to give the magic of the internet time to work.

Another interesting stat is that someone from Kingston, Ontario blew through the page once. I say "blew through" because the person only stayed on for 2 seconds, hardly enough time to digest the weight of my words.

What makes it interesting is that, not only have I been to Kingston, I’ve been to Kingston many times. I actually went through some sort of strange time warp or wormhole there… more on that in a second.

My family has a cabin on a lake in Ontario, about an hour north of Kingston. For years I only knew of the city because it had the nearest hospital, in case my grandparents ever tumbled down their hill. It’s a long ride from the cottage to the Kingston hospital for an 83-year-old woman, but Mema was fine and able to laugh about it for years afterward.

Once I was old enough to have a car up there, Kingston was a daytrip to get away from the rest of the family for a bit. It has stores and bars and restaurants and a big canon aimed across Lake Ontario. They say the canon was to fend off invaders during the War of 1812. I’m not so sure. We need to watch those Kingstonians to make sure they aren’t priming the guns for a surprise assault on Burnham Point, N.Y.

Shopping in Kingston is interesting, because everything is in Canadian dollars, and it’s easy to forget whether you’re getting a good deal or a terrible one. $15.00 for a paperback seems like a lot, but is it really? No one really knows. Plus, there’s the added value of it being a Canadian paperback as opposed to a regular old American book. That has to be worth something.

They also have a Canadian Tires store in Kingston, which is the single greatest store in the world. Any place that sells car batteries, hockey equipment, linens and DVDs deserves its own blog entry.

Now, the time warp.

One summer I was up at the cottage with friends and we took a daytrip to Kingston. We shopped, ate and drank until dark.

I need you to set up your mental map here…

We were on the EAST side of town. We drove WEST, with the lake to our left and the distinctive domed City Hall to our right.

We continued this way for about 20 minutes, and then turned right, or NORTH. We believe this was the only turn we made.

We didn’t recognize the road, but it was dark, and heading NORTH, as my internal brain compass confirmed, would take us up to the lake.

La la la… so we drove, until one of my passengers said look, that building looks just like the distinctive domed City Hall in Kingston. Why, yes, yes it did.

It was coming up on our right.

There was a large body of water on our left, looking a lot like Lake Ontario.

Lake on the left, City Hall on the right… we were not just in the general area of where we had started. We were at the exact same place where we had started our trip back to the cottage: We were on the EAST side of town, with the lake to our left and the distinctive domed City Hall to our right.

How the f#%k did that happen?

The only explanation was the supernatural.

And that’s another reason to love Kingston.

Miles to go...

I’m headed east.

I’ve just booked my tickets for a two-week trip to Japan. I’ll spend part of it with friends in Okinawa, and then I’m heading out on my own to Tokyo.

My hope is for a Lost In Translation sort of meeting there. If all goes according to my wishes, a Scarlett Johanssen-type woman will be at my hotel, without all of the strings that Scarlett had in the movie, and of course, we’d be closer in age… but you know what I mean.

If that doesn’t work out (but I know it will) I’ll go touristy in Tokyo. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing I can get some good sushi there.

In the meantime, I’m trying to make the most out of my jazillion frequent flier, driver, stayer, buyer miles. I travel a lot for work and have been a member of every customer club. This seemed like a great trip to start getting something back.

The first thing I’ve gotten so far is a sense of marvel over the way the programs work. For years, I have had a US Airways Dividend Miles card. Even when I fly with United, they’ve told me, no problem, you can get US Airways miles with a United flight. And they’ve been right. So most of my jazillion miles are with US Airways.

Ah HA! Here’s the funny part.

Even if you earned those miles on United… you can’t USE those miles on United. They’re only good on US Airways. I have enough for an upgrade to business class, to and from Japan. But those miles might as well be dollars from Zimbabwe because on United they're worth nothing. (just a joke explainer... 1 Zimbabwe dollar = .3 american cents)

Oh well. Screw United… I booked on All Nippon. It and US Airways are members of Star Alliance.

Star Alliance - the airline network for Earth was established in 1997 as the first truly global airline alliance to offer customers worldwide reach and a smooth travel experience.

Whatever.

It appears that US Airways is the only airline in Star Alliance that doesn’t transfer its miles for upgrade on other Star Alliance airlines. I know I'm crazy here, but I was thinking that transferring miles is the whole point of such an alliance… but clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about.

So I'm preparing my 6’1” frame to be crammed into steerage next to the goats and chickens. That’s where bird flu comes from, by the way.

I am close to finagling a couple of free nights at my hotel in Tokyo, but even that has tested my logic skills.

Come to think of it, that would be a good part of the SATs. Give students 100,000 miles in an airline account and tell them to figure out how to parlay them into a 5,000 mile car rental upgrade. If they do it, they get to go straight to Wharton.

Friendship Includes What You Don't Talk About

My roommate for two years in college is without question, my best friend, the kind of person I know would do anything to help me, and I would do the same.

He is a Marine lives in Japan with his Navy Officer wife. She’s a doctor, he flies helicopters.

Right now the Corps is offering him various assignments. One involves living in a cave in Afghanistan with some other Marines. He thinks it sounds interesting.

I think he’s insane.

And that’s one of the more remarkable things about our friendship. We don’t really seem to have anything in common.

He’s a conservative from Ohio, I’m a northeast liberal elite.

Not only does he belong to the NRA, he worked for the group.

He’s also a hunter.

Now, I have nothing against hunting, and I believe it can serve a purpose. Just look at the overpopulation of deer in city parks, scrawny nasty looking deer, and I don’t think it’s a reach to agree that culling the herd is ironically humane. I also can’t really argue with people who hunt to eat.

I eat meat, I know someone has to kill it.

I, however, havc no interest in being the one doing the killing.

One fine fall day about 15 years ago, my roommate and I were taking a hike through the woods on his parents property in Ohio. They own a ton of land. 100… 200 acres, I don’t know, just lots and lots of land.

As the sun was going down, we began to head back to the homestead and we heard something move in the brush next to us.

It was Bambi.

A cute looking little deer was standing right there, feet away from us.

Awww… how sweet.

Until we realized it wasn’t running anywhere. It just stood there staring at us. So we looked a little closer and saw that it’s back leg was caught in an old barbed wire fence. It was badly broken and there was no way of freeing the animal.

After much angst we agreed there was only one thing to do. So roommate went off to the house to get a gun. I stood by Bambi, trying not to become emotionally attached.

By the time the Great White Hunter returned, the little deer and I had become close friends. She wanted to leave the forest and live with me, become a domesticated deer, fetch my paper in the morning, guard against intruders, curl up in front of my fireplace at night.

I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that she was going to become venison.

When my roommate returned with a big rifle, he asked if I wanted to do the shooting.

Not only did I defer, I covered my eyes like a little girl while he did the dirty work. He accomplished the job with one shot. Not too hard since we were standing just feet away. He later confessed that it was a good thing Bambi didn’t flinch, because in his haste, while he had brought the right gun, he only had one bullet. To this day he’s not sure how that happened.

It turns out that not only was I a sissy when it came to shooting the adorable little animal, I also had a major pansy attack when it came to carrying the thing back to the farm.

So the roommate hauled the deer up over his shoulders and carried it the half mile himself.

I followed, grossed out but also a quite embarrassed by my sudden lack of manliness.

To his credit, when we talk about the incident, he always leaves out my wimpish behavior. He does laugh at himself for only carrying one bullet. That was a silly mistake on his part. Mine was a deep personal reaction, the sort of thing he knows isn’t something you make fun of, or ever bring up again.

That’s the kind of friend he is.

Thanks Redd Foxx

I had a particularly foul day at work yesterday. And when your workday, like mine, ends at midnight, there is often no relief in sight once you get home. Frasier reruns only go so far in cheering you up.

While driving home I turned on my Sirius satellite radio and listened to the uncensored comedy channel called Raw Dog. For the first few minutes, it played bits I’ve heard many times. Good stuff, but not fresh.

Then came a voice that was familiar, but not one that I’d heard much on the radio.

Fred Sanford owned a junk store owner in Watts, lived with his son Lamont, fended off religious rebirth from his sister-in-law Esther, and was just one heart-palpitation away from going to join his late wife Elizabeth.

Of course, he was played by Redd Foxx. I’d always heard that Foxx’s stand-up act, before Fred Sanford came along, was the stuff of comedy legend. They said he’d paved the way for the likes of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.

I’d never heard any of it until last night. I could have gone to jail for DWLMAO (driving while laughing my ass off).

It started with a giggle or two with his The Cop & The Waitress and Pussy Face bits. Then he launched into, what I can only guess is one of his classic routines: “My Dick II”

Now don’t just assume it’s about his body parts, no, he’s calling a horse race with thoroughbreds named My Dick, Cabbage and Anna’s Ass (who was scratched).

Eventually I learned that My Dick was a mudder and had been up against Anna’s Ass before.

I can’t really remember why my day was so crappy yesterday.

Thanks Redd Foxx.

On The Truth

Off hand, I can really think of only three public figures whom I despise so much, that even my coworkers know my true feelings.

If Ann Coulter appears on a talk show, they know it’s a matter of seconds before I scream obscene things about her. No one at work would even consider letting music by Jewel hit my ears. And when that f*cking liar James Frey comes up in conversation, look out.

Frey, you may recall, is the guy who wrote A Million Little Pieces and the follow-up My Friend Leonard.

I was one chapter away from finishing the first book when it became public that the work of non-fiction was in fact, made up. I went from being riveted by his tale, to refusing to finish it.

People have asked why, if I was so captivated, I stopped reading. It was still a good story, right?

It was a good story, and I’d have been a fan if it had been presented as “inspired by true events.” But it wasn’t. It was a lie.

Jaws is a great movie, but imagine how you would have felt if it were true, if the words “you’re gonna need a bigger boat” had actually been uttered. In addition to being a summer blockbuster it would have been a haunting cautionary tale on the deadly results of ignoring marine biologists.

As a journalist, I find the truth even more important. When I write a story for my profession, it’s true. End of story.

If a book says it’s based on true events, it had better be.

But now we come to this blog, and I think I need to clarify some things.

For example, I didn’t really forget that dogs can’t type. I added that line because, c'mon, it’s funny, right? Right!?

So how are you, the reader supposed to know the truth and know when I’m taking license?

A story that includes animals talking or writing or taking my laundry to the cleaners is probably embelleshed.

If there’s a story about a night out, my family, a woman I might be pining over, that’s at least based on truth.

If the punch line to a story is funny or really funny, it’s true.

If the punch line is really really funny, I made it up… or stole it from someone else.

To make a long story short, go by this: Inspired By True Events… But My Dog Didn’t Really Come Up With An Online Password.

Let Me Plunge Right In

There is no more vile household tool than the toilet plunger. Not just because of what it physically does and what it sloshes through during its work, but because of what it seems to imply: “John has a digestive system that plugs up the plumbing.”

In truth, my apartment’s biggest flaw is its lack of hardy flush power. It doesn’t take very much at all to stop the outflow dead in its tracks. Blow your nose and flush the Kleenex at your own risk.

As a result, it’s close at hand in my bathroom. And trust me, even the daintiest of houseguests has uttered an embarrassed “Oh” and put the tool into use. (Another unfortunate flaw is the paper thin wallboard that allows me to hear the “oh” and other sounds that are really meant to be private… Hint to visitors - the faucet is nice and loud and can drown out most noises.)

So there the plunger sits, right there in plain sight. All I have to do is look at it, and I’m forced to scrub myself head to toe with bleach and antibacterial gel.

The house I grew up in, however, must have had industrial strength suction in its bathroom facilities. I don’t recall ever needing to use a plunger. Not once. And I do remember flushing entire rolls of toilet paper, just because as a 5-year-old I thought it was fun.

We did have a plunger, though. It was part of a gag gift my parents had received; a plastic parking meter that was a piggy bank. It was called the “John Timer.” The post on which it was attached was actually a plunger.

As I child, I was unaware that John was a name for a toilet. All I knew it was my name. I also didn’t recognize the plunger for what it was. To me, it was a giant suction cup with a long wooden handle. Like other suction cups, the best way for it to get a firm grip on the wall or a window was to have its rim moistened. The whole contraption was a big toy.

Others didn’t see the fun. There was one cocktail party at which I turned my parents’ friends gray. I marched through the crowd, licked the plunger rim, and then stuck it on the wall of the living room. I still remember the shrieks of disgust.

Really, it had never been used.

I do worry that I may have played with plungers at friends’ homes, also thinking they were big lickable rubber toys.

Just the thought makes me want to gargle more of that antibacterial gel.

His View From The Couch

I got an email this morning asking about Cosmo's webpage and how often it would be updated.

Saddly, I have to report that the answer is probably never.

Here's what happened:

Cosmo got excited about story telling a while back. He'd heard about that sappy Marley & Me book and figured he had some really good tales to tell. Not just of eating rolls of brie, letting children ride on his back or why he's afraid of stuffed animals, but real issues that modern day dogs face.

Cosmo is a product of a broken home. While the joint custody agreement has served my ex-wife and me well, it means he has to pack his stuff up and travel back and forth from one house to another. The holidays are tough. He has to put up with very different parenting styles. In my apartment, he has a single father. At MB's house he has two mommies.

This is great stuff.

So we sat down together, and I set up a page for him. We picked out a couple of pictures for his profile, set up the template, he thought up a password. We were well on the road to making My View From The Couch a huge draw.

Then we looked at each other and at the same time realized the problem... the big problem.

Son of a bitch.

Dogs can't type!

Unfortunately this realization has also led to the suspension of all work on Juliet's book, "The Cat That Came In From The Cold: How I Clawed My Way From Catching My Own Food In The Forest To Sleeping On Egyptian Cotton Sheets."

Sorry.

That was nice...

Cosmo and I were walking down the street tonight and passed a younger couple.

As they approached the front steps of her apartment building, she turned and faced him, several feet from the door. She squared her shoulders, kept her hands in her pocket and said:

“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “No, really.”

“Yeah, it was fun… mmm… ok.”

Then she jutted her chin out to the left, opened her arms and lightly hugged the guy.

First date, last date.


Right after my divorce was final, every one of my parents’ friends declared they had found the perfect woman for me. I’d never been on a blind date in my life and it sounded like fun. So many of my parents’ friends had known me for decades, they surely knew what they were doing.

The most interesting of the offers was Woman X. She had been described to me as gorgeous, smart, funny and successful.

Holy crap. That’s the perfect woman. What on earth could go wrong?!

I picked up her up at her office and we went to a quiet restaurant in the city. Perhaps the quiet atmosphere was contagious, because she didn’t talk much. And that’s ok. There is nothing wrong with quiet. I asked a lot of questions, got a lot of one or two word answers, but I figured she was just shy.

As the silence continued we both drank more. And as I drank more through the silence, I guess I started talking more.

I was only aware of my alleged conversation domination when she brought it up over desert. Slurringly she declared, “you sure do talk a lot.”

“I’m sorry. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Yeah… yeah there is.” She was beginning to sound like the angry drunk at a saloon in a western, right before he tries unsuccessfully to pull a gun on our hero.

“Great… what is it?”

“Let’s talk about masturbation!”

Just a note about me. I am very WASPy. We don’t talk about those things.

I don’t think I answered, but if I did it sounded like the noise Scooby-Do would make when he was surprised.

“You’re a guy. How often do you do it?”

That time I did answer. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Well let me ask you this,” she challenged. “Do you ever do it in your car on the way home from work?”

This was a question I could answer quickly and truthfully. “No. No, I never have.”

“Really? It’s a great way to let off steam. Of course, it’s embarrassing when the truckers drive by.”

I drank more wine. Much more. I don’t remember any more of the dinner conversation. How could I? A woman I’d known for 2 hours wanted to know my masturbation habits and told me hers. What else could there be to remember?

Oh… this. I do remember this. We shared a taxi that dropped her off first.

I gave her a light hug.

“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”

AFHV with TB is RFG

I never thought I’d say this out loud. In fact, I never thought it would be true. It goes against every bit of cultural snobbery in my blood.

But here goes. I will say it.

Really...

3...
2...
1

I love America’s Funniest Home Videos.

There, it’s out there.


I know, I know. I can hardly believe it myself.

Let me try to explain.

First of all, if the last time you watched the show was back in the Bob Saget days, you don’t know what you’re missing. I have nothing against Bob Saget, especially after his foulest of foul versions of the joke in The Aristocrats. Who knew the dad in Full House could think those things let alone say them on film? Still, when Saget hosted the show, it was corny, trashy, and I just couldn't find humor in fat people breaking park benches.

Bob Saget is gone from AFHV (that’s what those of us who are fans call it). Instead, there’s a new host in town.

His name is Tom Bergeron.

Somehow, he has made pictures of little kids driving their trikes into the swimming pool, skateboarders impaling themselves on parking meters and dads getting whacked in the balls breathtakingly funny.

Tonight was a Halloween rerun, but can you really see people wearing grim-reaper costumes scare the holy crap out of their grandmothers too often? Tom (he’s first name worthy) broke down several of the videos using a football-like telestrater and slo-motion. If you think Skeletor jumping out of the closet is funny in real time, just wait until you see the replay. Tom didn’t let even the most subtle nuance escape unnoticed.

Tonight I was talking on the phone to a reporter about her piece for our 11pm newscast. She heard the commotion in the background and could tell I was a bit short of breath myself. I told her I’d have to call her back.

“Breaking news?”

“No, no... It’s the guy shocking himself with the dog collar again!”

And I wonder why the field crews think they work harder than the rest of us.

It's Not True!

Yesterday I heaped praise upon my friend who writes the blog Lemon Gloria. She doesn’t know that because I haven’t actually told anyone about this blog.

Still, she wrote about me in her Wednesday entry and told her readers (she has readers) that I am a “very good writer.”

It made my heart sink.

First of all, I never really react well to praise. I am convinced that I will only let the person down the next time.

Now I'm afraid to write her even the simplest email.

What if it doesn’t measure up?

Let’s say I want to give her a heads up that I’m going to be in her city. If I don’t state it elegantly, then I’m eating alone.

Next time she asks me to tell her about my day, I’ll have to pen a new Ulysses.

Second, what does it mean to be a “very good writer?”

I use proper grammar and punctuation (most of the time, I have problems with too many commas). I think I do a good job of picking the write words and conveying emotion.

But I really don’t have a good imagination. Let’s just pretend for a moment that my technical skills were as good as Capote’s. Is that even half of the art?

He still thought up Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Other Voices, Other Rooms and Music For Chameleons.

My best attempts at fiction apparently aren’t all that clever.

A few years ago I started to work on a novel. It was about a super-cool, smart, heroic television producer who saved his big city from the reign of crime.

The one similarity with me was the television producer part. “Fictional-producer” was the most popular man in town, the women followed him home. Lots of women followed him home. He always let them in.

At the same time, “nonfictional-producer,” me, was dating a woman who went a little crazy. One day while I was at work, she decided to read everything on my computer. No email, Excel spreadsheet, Quicken account or Word document escaped her scrutiny.

The Quicken data should have been enough, but it seems the tales of my hero producer are what sent her over the edge.

She was outraged that I had been running around on her and waking up next to strange models morning after morning. Somehow, the part where I captured a serial killer didn’t set off any truth alarms.

When I told her it was my attempt at writing a book, she laughed, and threw wine in my face. Then she laughed some more.

There was no way I could have made up all that stuff.

I’ve never been sure whether that was a compliment or not.

Why Write?

I write everyday for work.

Most of what I put into words takes less than 30 seconds to read… some even less.

Nothing is going to go down in history as great prose.

So sometimes at home, I write. Sometimes it’s journal-like, sometimes it’s a weak attempt at fiction. Always, it’s something never meant to be seen by someone else’s eyes.

I like to imagine that when I have finally moved on to the next world, my offspring, friends and professional admirers (so far I only have 1 out of 3) will dig through my old computer disks and find the amazing Lost Writings of John. They will be published posthumously and people will talk about the tragedy that I never knew how popular my words were.

Like I said, it’s my imagination.

And then a couple of months ago a friend of mine told me about a friend of hers, and the blog she’s been writing. It’s called Lemon Gloria and I’ve been in awe ever since.

She is a delightful writer. She writes the way I believe she speaks, and I believe she speaks beautifully. She’s funny too. But perhaps what I am truly in awe of is what she writes about.

Herself.

She has put out there, for all to see, her life. She writes about her ups and downs, the funny things that happen every day, her observations.

She writes the way I want to write. And often, she feels the way I have felt.

And that has inspired me to turn those personal writings that have been taking up disk space into a blog of my own. Someone could actually read this. I know there are a lot of blogs out here, and I don’t expect to be a daily destination for anyone.

But, maybe one or two people will think: “Hmm, he’s a decent writer, I want to write some more too.”

And that’s what it really comes down to for me. I love seeing words on paper, I love the process, and in Lemon Gloria’s case, I love the honesty, the fun and the hurt that well placed words can convey.

I don’t think I can put out there, out here I guess I mean, all of the things that I write for myself.

Maybe in the coming weeks and months I will, maybe not. Maybe I’ll be funny, sad, deep, shallow, all while protecting myself. I don’t know.

What I do know is this. Check out Lemon Gloria.

Happy 2007.

I spent the first day of the new year at work. And I am quite happy with that.

I work in a big city television newsroom. We run around a lot, yell a lot, act poorly a lot. It can be a high stress environment, and we let that stress be a lame excuse for poor behavior.

More than 10 years ago, I was at work on a holiday. At the time, my desk adjoined the desk of a slightly older coworker. She was a woman I admired greatly, and on whom I may have had a little crush.

Trying to act all cool and hard-assed, I leaned over to her and said how much it sucked to have to work a holiday… sheesh, we have so many better things to do than work. I was young, and I believed that you were supposed to complain. That’s what people do, especially about work. Nothing draws coworkers together better than a mutual complaint session.

She looked up from a novel she was reading with a look of disapproval.

“Look around this place,” she said. “Everyone is in a good mood, everyone is laid back, you will never have less stress in this place than you do on a holiday. Enjoy these days, enjoy your coworkers on days like these, have fun on these days. There aren’t many other days when you can be so relaxed while doing your job.”

She left the station a few months later.

I think of her fondly every holiday as I go to work wearing jeans, take a little more time to read the newspaper and check out the internet, wander back to parts of the newsroom and sit and chat with people I don’t normally get to see.

I also think of her when I start to launch into an ill-thought complaint, a complaint for the sake of complaining.

It’s a cheap easy way to start conversation. And as my old friend showed me, sometimes the best intended complaints can just be dead wrong.