We're Number 1!

We did it!

Congratulations to the people of my fine city. Last night we reached an exciting milestone: 100 murders!

And it’s not even April yet.

It took a lot for us to get here, of course.

When I was a young boy, playing on the streets here, there would be the occasional fight. We did it the sissy way, though. There would be punching, wrestling, yelling and then someone would run home in tears.

Then the next day, all would be forgotten. We’d play in the streets again, and the two people who had been slapping each other would most likely be on the same team, no memory of why there were fisticuffs the day before.

And then in school, boy did we drop the ball. Sometimes guys would “challenge” each other to a fight in the playground. The other guys would gather around and watch, take sides, make lunchroom bets on who was going to win.

As we got older, those classroom disagreements would lead to payback in the athletic arenas. There would be a little extra oomph during tackling drills in football, maybe a dirty shot on the ice in hockey, and then, like with the street fights, all would be forgiven later in the locker room.

Nowadays though, people get right to the point.

Forget the fighting. Let’s just kill each other.

What, in my day, would be an animated argument, now turns into a shoot out.

In school, kids don’t resort to more tradition means of anger management, they pop a cap into each others asses.

And then there are the witnesses, the honorable witnesses, the ones who wouldn’t dare damage their own or anyone else’s street cred.

No snitchen’!

Amen, that’s the way to keep our murderous streak alive.

It takes a lot for a city with the 6th largest population in the country to have more murders than any other American city. New York has more than 4 times as many people as this city, but we’re kicking their asses! L.A., Chicago, you call yourselves cities? HAH. I spit on your lack of deadly violence.

We’re so good at it, we share the fun with the uninvolved. Kids, mothers, little old ladies, don’t worry, just because you aren’t packing heat, selling drugs, or giving dirty looks, you still have a good chance of taking part in the killing, of course, by being on the receiving end.

See, we’re generous here. Our shooters aren’t stingy with bullets or aim, they fire enough lead to share.

Fuck you Detroit, our people love the killin’ and we’re making sure we’re the best.

Delicious

Apparently there are some workplace scenes that, while normal here in a television newsroom, aren't so commonplace in the rest of the world.

Last night I was reading the details of Anna Nicole's autopsy out loud.

It included lines like: "The anus is unremarkable," "the vagina is normally wrinkled and contains no foreign matter," and "there is a deep seated abscess on the left buttock with a creamy, yellow-green pus."

This was our dinner break entertainment. I was eating a sandwich, one coworker, P, was standing behind me slurping down a bowl of salty miso soup, and another, W, was chomping on sushi.

"The implants were surrounded by a thick connective tissue with a clear thick yellow fluid."

Slurp.

"The abdominal cavity is lined with glistening serosa."

Chomp.

There was a visitor who watched us from across the room with a look of true disgust on her face.

What do the rest of you talk about when you eat?

Turns Out My Male Friends Can Read

I got an email from a good college friend today. He'd seen my blog, and said he liked it. And that surprised me.

As I thought about why, I realized that it's because I never expected any male friends of mine to read it. Especially this guy, who, and I now know he'll read this, was the man's man of all of my friends in school. He actually carried the title of "Cool Guy" and it wasn't a joke.

Anytime I ever felt an overwhelming wave of political correctness in school, I went to see him.

If I was trying to make decisions between whether to do the responsible thing or the thing that would make my college years more memorable, I'd ask myself, what would BF do?

Years later, when I went running into a bomb shelter in Kuwait because of an incoming missile in the first weeks of the war, I actually thought, BF would think this was cool.


So, now I think I need to throw in some more macho stuff in here for a few days.

Instead of talking about the day I spent in the park with the woman, talk about how hot she is, and what we did when we weren't at the park.

Less about the little boys I supervised at day camp, more about the romping in the pool with the girls counselors during the overnights.

Not so much about how I think I'm fat, more about playing hardball in a men's baseball league, on a team where my nickname is "The White Guy," because I'm the only one, or how the picture in my profile is me serving time in the penalty box after some sort of heinous attack on an opponent in high school hockey.

Ok boys, I'm ready to be a man.

112 Across

A couple of times over the past two weeks I’ve mentioned the woman with whom I’m smitten. Henceforth, I shall refer to her as WWWIS.

I have hesitated to say much about her, because I really seem to like her but I’m afraid that if I put it out there I’ll jinx it. Also because I haven’t really gotten to the point of putting everything “out there.”

But for the love of all things good, I have to write about what could be the perfect dating day.

We slept in a bit (yes, we’re to the point of sleeping in together). Once we got vertical, we went out to brunch and along the way grabbed the Times. WWWIS has never done the Sunday puzzle, so we started it together, while eating at a neighborhood joint.

After filling ourselves with great Sunday brunch food, we went to the park, where we worked on the puzzle a little more.

Then we walked and walked around town before grabbing a movie. We watched Borat together and laughed our asses off. We were hungry, and went to another neighborhood eatery, had pizza and filled in a few more squares.

Finally, we had to go our separate ways for the day.

Look, I know this may seem a little dull on paper. It wasn’t dull to live through. It was just delightful.

And what am I supposed to think when one of the puzzle clues called for a 4-letter word for “Totally Nuts”

Gaga!

Yes, I think I am.

Fun With Scanners

When I was forced to replace my recently deceased iBook last week, I figured, what the hell. I was already dropping a little more money than I had budgeted for the first quarter of the year; why not spend a little more.

So I bought a scanner.

I’ve been thinking about a scanner for a long time. Photography has always been the closest thing to art that I have been interested in. As a result, I have boxes and boxes of photos, going back to the mid 70s, when I was just a little boy with a Polaroid One-Step.

The pictures are slowly fading, so to save the literal snapshots of my life, I want to digitize them. Then, instead of boxes and boxes of fading pictures, I’ll have disks and disks of data that will sit on a shelf. I guess that’s better.

Anyway, won’t it be fun to make this a community project!

So we begin with this photo that I found in the 1986 box. 1986 as in 21 years ago.



I was about to go into my junior year in high school, and I worked as a camp counselor for the group of 4-year-old boys.

As I look at this picture, several significant things pop out.

First, I am having trouble realizing that these 4-year-olds are now in their mid-20s. I work with people in their mid-20s. The woman with whom I am smitten is mid-20s. These guys cannot be mid-20s. It hurts to think that way.

Also, there’s me in the picture. I’m the tall guy in the back. In addition to 21 years ago, this is 35 pounds ago. How did skinny teenage John turn into middle aged John?

Finally, there’s the hot pink shirt I’m wearing. Please remember, the mid 80s were when Miami Vice was popular. If Don Johnson could wear hot pink, I could too. That’s all we’ll say about that.

I remember a few of the names. In the front row on the left was Timmy Woehr. A couple over from him was Zach Carson. In the middle is a kid named Sam something, a down the row a bit is Steven D’Amico and I think the kid at the end was named Andrew. In front of me are Ted Bullock and Eyal Ebel.

I have no idea what happened to any of these kids. I’m pretty sure they’re really still in middle school somewhere. There’s no way they can be any older than that.

I'll have more trips down memory lane soon... if my ego can take it.

Can't We All Just Ride Along?

I swear, I'm going to run one of them over, and when I do, the motorists of this city will erect a statue in my honor.

I love biking, really. I have a bicycle, it's fun, it gets me from point A to point B. Yay. And there are lots of fine bike riders around here who wear their helmets, stay in the biking lane (and there are plenty of biking lanes here), stop at lights, and signal their turns.

Then there are the shitty bikers. Some are the Don't-Give-A-Crap bike messengers, some think they're making a save-the-environment political statement, and some are just assholes.

They're all the ones I'm going to grind into the pavement.

There is one group that makes a bold demonstration of power once a month or so, at midnight. They ride in a massive pack through the biggest streets and they go out of their way to be obstructive. Last week, one of the dirty little pinheads chose to hold onto my bumper for a bit. No way dude, I'm not going to help you be a dick. So I "tapped" my brakes. He didn't fall, but he was outraged by my show of defiance to his show of defiance.

He and some of his pals slowed down in front of me, keeping me at a crawl for the rest of my ride home.

Whatever.

Like I said, they're really bold making this mass street blockage at midnight. It was me and 100 smelly, greasy hippie wannabees. I could have wiped a lot of them out with one quick movement of the gas pedal. I chose not to... that night. I'd like to see them try it when there are more than just two cars on the streets. Let's see their bravery while the union guys here are driving to their jobs.

Today on my way to work, a grungy dirt bike rider was weaving in and out of traffic. The car in front of me came to a red light. In this city, red means stop, and the driver did just that.

The sudden decision to follow, not just the law, but one of society's most basic norms, came as a total shock to Quicksilver (click on the link for the obscure Kevin Bacon biking reference). He slammed into the back of the car, and then went ballistic.

For the next several blocks he went out of his way to slow traffic and to get within yelling range of the driver, all the while, his baggy pants flapping in the wind.

Bikers of the world, what's your problem? You ride, I drive. I give you your space, why won't you give me and the other cars ours?

Anyway, if you find a pile of spokes, gears and chains, surrounding lots of cruddy helmetless bikers, you'll know where to find me, I'll be posing for my statue.

A Substitute Entry

I sort of want to write about this woman with whom I'm completely smitten, but I'm not quite there yet... there being that place where I can write everything about myself here where everyone can read it.

And because I'm not there, I know I have at times been a little boring.

Just wait until you read this one. It's about parking cars!

_____________________________________

There was a scene in the opening montage of a 70s cop drama that showed a dozen or so cruisers pulling out of the police station lot, in perfect unison.

Here at my workplace the parking lot here is divided into two levels. The bottom is covered, and those 12 spots go to the highest level bosses here. The rest of us park up top, in the open. Normally, that's fine, maybe even better, because our spots are actually closer to the door.

But, on a night like this, being outside sucks.

Our city is being pelted by little ice balls. So far there are several inches on the ground, and on our cars. It's just crappy.

At 6:30, when the daysiders left, they all had a good 15 minutes of scraping before they could actually pull out of the lot. From the windows, it sort of looked like the string section of a symphony, as they all moved their scrapers back and forth, back and forth.

We weren't just watching for fun, though. We were waiting for the all clear, and shortly after 7pm, we got it.

There are about 15 of us who work here in the evening. And while there are fewer than 15 official spots under the cover in our lot, we are a resourceful bunch. We also look out for each other.

One by one, like the open of that TV show, we pulled out of the upper lot and filled into the lower area. The lines dividing the spaces are unimportant. What matters is that we make room for as many cars as possible. Since we had only been at work for a few hours so far, we didn't have as much scraping to do, so we spent a few minutes clearing the icy crap, and then our cars got to spend the rest of the evening in executive luxury.

It's a bonding experience.

RIP

My Apple IBook took a tumble off my bed last night.

It was pronounced dead early this afternoon.

The IBook is survived by a 1-month-old backup.

It was 2-and-a-half-years-old.

Autumn

Out in the countryside of New Hampshire, on a cool fall Friday night many years ago, a group of early 20-somethings met for the first time as adults. They were all starting their lives as grown-ups, but they weren't quite ready, not just yet.

It was the eve of a huge Halloween party on a family farm. Hundreds of people were expected to roll in on Saturday for a bonfire costume bash.

But this was the night before. The people who were there that night were the core friends. And at the core of the core were young women who had known each other since their lower school days. They all brought the men in their lives, men they deemed worthy of a weekend trip in the wilderness.

On that night before the party, there would be perhaps 20 people, the girls who had known each other forever, and the boys who might be in their lives forever.

Two by two, the couples arrived, threw on their fleece jackets and grabbed spots around the fire.

The women picked up where they’d left off years before.

The men cautiously made friends with the other men. They drank beer, talked about their jobs, how they met their girlfriends, how they were selected to make the journey.

When the breeze would pick up, the women would snuggle up next to the men, together they would get warm in the glow of the fire, under their blankets.

The hostess gathered up the crowd after a bit and took everyone on a tour of the farm and into the newly built barn.

Someone found a soccer ball and then the children came out to play.

Teams were formed, positions taken, and a newly invented game of barn-broomball began. Some people used brooms like hockey sticks, some people actually found hockey sticks, one person used an old gardening tool, and some just used their feet.

It seemed like the game lasted forever. The music of the Samples played in the background, barely audible over the sounds of grown-ups yelling like kids on the playground.

No one hit their heads on the low hanging beams, no one was hurt when they ran into each other, or barn equipment.

They kind of kept score, but didn’t really.

And then, after a while, in the wee hours of that perfect fall night, the final buzzer rang. It may have been when the CD player stopped playing, it may have been that the players just knew it was time to call it a night.

The game was not one that could ever be replayed, its joy came from its sudden creation and its sudden end. For the core group, as much fun as the costume party would be the next night, Friday night would be the part of the weekend they would remember forever.

In the years since, time and distance have taken their tolls on the friendships, but those friendships remained. There were other great gatherings, although the same men weren’t always there. Still, on that night the men who met for the first time knew they would always remember each other, call each other friends.

That game, the cool New England breeze, the sounds of the Samples echoing through a big wooden barn left them all with a special bond, one of childlike fun, deep love and affection and the memory of the party before the party, the gathering of the core.

One last night when the kids could leave their newly found adulthood behind and play in the barn.

Funky Sh*t Going Down In The City

I haven't been in a bar fight in 16 years. And back then, it always involved pulling a fraternity mate out of a fracas with a guy from the fraternity across the street (those Fiji's were always asking for a beating).

Through my 20s one of my personal beliefs was that there was no good that could come from a bar fight. Drunks like to break bottles, throw chairs and sometimes someone has a knife.

Once, when an old west saloon-style brawl broke out at a local pub, I stood in one corner, drinking my beer and gnawing on popcorn, while my best friend positioned himself behind a couple of young ladies in the opposite corner. We cheared as furniture flew, ducked under flying bottles, and waved goodbye to the brawlers as the cops cleared the place out.

That said, if I or my friends are in peril, I won't hide.

So this weekend, I was with five friends, two men and three women at an upscale bar/restaurant. Let's just call it S&W.

A man walked in off the street and he looked a litle bedraggled. Wearing an old army jacket, his eyes were glassy, he was scary looking.

As he walked by my group, he rubbed up against two of the women and lingered, just a second too long. My friend Mike positioned himself between the ladies and the weirdo and the guy reluctantly walked away, looking back over his shoulder.

It seems Mike's steely glare wasn't appreciated and the crazy man spun around and came back. He got into Mike's face and said "You giving me looks?"

Our friend Bruce wasn't paying any attention, but I will say this about him, when the shit goes down, I want him on my side. I calmly said his name and gave him the non-verbal "check this out."

Next thing I knew, all three of us were up, chests puffed out, fists clenched, telling the eerie stranger to keep on walking.

It turns out we all agreed that this man had a weapon, a knife probably, and the last thing we wanted was to see it. So we put up a strong unified front, but spoke in peaceful terms: "No trouble here... keep on walking... we're all friends..." But, if I do say so myself, I think we were a pretty intimidating trio.

The guy sauntered off and left the bar, and the three of us felt very macho. We'd stood tall and protected our women-folk.

We were also very relieved, it had been a long time since any of our creeky bones had been involved in a brouhaha.

Apparently, I made an extra special impression on the place. A short time later, another man walked over and asked me if I wanted to get a bottle of champagne with him.

I was a little confused by the proposition, until I realized it was a proposition. He wasn't my type, because he was a he, but it was still nice to know that my powerful muscles got someone's attention.

I'm So Smart!

A few weeks ago I was taking a long drive and threw my Violent Femmes greatest hits disk into the CD player. It’s one of those CDs that I’ve had for a while but hadn’t listened to in ages.

The song Gone Daddy Gone came on and I rocked out. It’s a great tune. For the love of Pete… it has a xylophone (or one of those things that sounds and looks like a xylophone but is called something else that I can’t remember from 3rd grade music). Whatever, you can’t go wrong with a punk song with a xylophone solo in it.

So as I listened over and over I thought, “damn… what a shame that a great song like this is long forgotten. Too bad no one has ever remade it.”

Then this week I saw an ad for Chris Rock’s new movie, and immediately recognized the song in it as Gone Daddy Gone.

Ha Ha!

I know good music. I thought it and someone listened to my brain and they did it! I’m a genius.

Tonight I looked it up on ITunes. I didn’t expect to find it, it’s a new release, of course, and I’m so forward thinking, so ahead of the curve, I knew I’d probably have to wait a few weeks.

But, lo and behold, it came up…

And then I realized the truth of my genius. It isn’t really so genius.

Gnarls Barkley did it…

On their St. Elsewhere CD…

That came out last year.

OK, that’s not so dumb.

Except I have that CD.

And I’ve listened to it several times.

And that means I’ve listened to the new version of the song…

Several times.

So, not only has it been redone… but I’ve had the redone version myself for 8 months.

I pretend I know a lot about music. I don’t know sh*t… even about the stuff I have.


That’s alright… I have another big idea… and no one has thought of this: What if Sting got together with his old band mates and did a Police reunion tour?

If only people could read my brilliant musical mind!

The Great Battle of 1984

It started, as so many incidents do, with a piece of bologna.

It was also a perfect storm.

On one front were the students.

It was May of 1984. We were about to move out of 8th grade and middle school. It was the eve of exams and we were 88 13-year-olds who were under a lot of pressure.

On the other front were the teachers, or in this case a lack of them.

There was a scheduling screw-up of mammoth proportions. Somehow, that day, during 8th grade lunch, there was not a single faculty member in the cafeteria.

At my private school, the cafeteria was in its own building, on the opposite side of campus from the main academic buildings. When the fronts collided, adult intervention was a long way away.

In the 23 years since, many have claimed to have fired the first shot (or tossed the bologna in this case).

I was actually at ground zero. While I won’t use full names, I will say that it was MR who first decided to see if he could throw his slice of lunchmeat like a Frisbee.

The next few seconds went by in slow motion.

SP launched a spoonful of green jello.

CJ threw a handful of Shrimpies.

Then came the official call, the one every teenager dreams of, the one that had never been yelled in our school’s lunchroom.

“Foodfiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!”

Immediately the lunch ladies went into a full retreat, pulling down gates and locking themselves in the kitchen. They may have picked up a phone and called for help, but they knew help wasn’t coming soon.

For some food fighters that day, it was a matter of brawn. They threw whatever they could get their hands on. They overturned tables for shelter. They aimed to kill.

For others, it was all about creativity. Shrimpies throw well, but they don't make much of an impact. Dunk those same Shrimpies in cocktail sauce and you have a weapon that leaves a mark.

For still others, stealth attacks were the name of the game. The same MR who first threw the bologna never saw SF creep up behind him with a full bowl of minestrone soup.

TM fell into the brute force category. He was a catcher on the baseball team, and even in 8th grade he could gun a base runner down at 2nd. I don’t remember why I turned when I did… a shouted warning, a spotted movement of shadow, maybe just The Force. What I saw was his arm coming down and a Red Delicious heading for my head. Remember that scene from the Matrix? I invented it to escape a flying fruit.

Mr. A was a math teacher and the varsity football coach. He had no idea what he was walking into. Actually, it could have been a lot worse for everyone, but someone was watching for trouble through the window.

“Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!” It sounded like a siren. Just as fast as it started, it stopped. Those of us lucky enough to be on the east side of the building had an escape route. The fire exit let out on the opposite side of the cafeteria from the door Mr. A was about to walk through. An entire building stood between us and identification.

Some others found the secret tunnel that led to the auditorium. It was a daring choice since there was a risk of entrapment. Had there been a drama class in session, those kids would have been screwed.

And then there were the ones who were left behind. They were the real heroes. While they had to clean and serve detentions, not one pointed fingers, no one named names. But they also got to see Mr. A's expression when he walked in. For years they said it was worth it.

Some of us got away clean. Others didn’t.

MR was one of the first out of the fire exit, but the blazer covered with minestrone was a dead giveaway.

There were a lot of khaki pants with cocktail sauce splatter patterns sitting in the front office.

In the years that followed, we remembered fondly of that spring day, and there were a few attempts to relive the moment.

But you can't remake a classic.

And you can't get into the school cafeteria without a teacher.

Squeeze Me!

In 1987 my parents got their first CD player. I already had lots of cassettes and LP’s, but my first CD purchase had to be something I’d remember.

I ended up buying Squeeze's 45s and Under, their greatest hits disk, and for the next few weeks I played it over and over and over again. If it had been a cassette or an LP, it would have worn out.

Tempted. Black Coffee In Bed. Up The Junction.

I loved every song on the disk.

I never got a chance to see the band live though, until this weekend, when I got to see a close alternative.

Chris Difford was half of the duo that essentially led the band, the other half being Glenn Tilbrook. Once in the 80s I read that they had the potential to be the greatest writing team since Lennon and McCartney. Their relationship was also strained, like Lennon and McCartney’s. And while it sounds like they are on much better terms these days, Difford is still out on a solo tour.

The place where he played was one of those intimate venues not even big enough to be called a hall or a club. And it’s one of the best places to hear music in this city.

Instead of paying $150 and sitting a football field away, I bought the tickets with the cash in my pocket, and sat no father then 10 feet from him.

He chatted with the crowd, we sang along, it was great.

Tempted. Black Coffee In Bed, Up The Junction…

Just like in Squeeze, though, Difford didn’t go at it alone. He had two stage-mates with him.

Melvin Duffy played pedal steel and made it sing. He also looked like he was having a blast.

And then there was Dorie Jackson.

Holy Moly… I have such a crush!

I wish I could say I’d heard her sing before. For the last two days I’ve been trying to think of the best words to describe her voice.

You know how you feel when you’re chilly and you get that mouthful of sweet, hot cocoa at the perfect temperature? First your mouth feels great, then your body is filled with warmth and happiness. Well, that’s what her voice did (except for my ears not my mouth…)

She was also the perfect complement to Difford and his Squeeze songs. Depth, emotion… blah blah blah… it was all there in her voice.

After the set, they mingled with the crowd. I got to shake Difford’s hand, yet it was more exciting to tap Dorie on the shoulder and tell her how beautiful her voice is. She must hear it all the time, yet she was charming and gave me the delightful British response of “Cheers.”

Like I said, total schoolboy crush…

She has a solo CD coming out sometime this year. I don’t know what her solo style is, but with her voice it doesn’t matter.

Was This Weird?

Throughout my high school and college years, I worked at a summer camp. It was just the way working at a summer camp was supposed to be. There were girls, we had parties, swam in the pool after hours, and, oh, I guess we were supposed to take care of little kids too, but that was secondary.

I was never as cool as I was when I worked at summer camp.

1987 was particularly fun. For the first few weeks, one of the older women who worked there was hosting her sister and her sister's kids. The kids also came to camp, one as a young camper, the other as worker-bee, like me.

The worker-bee was a she... and she was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen at that point in my life. I'm not exaggerating. She was tall, blond, from California, a competitive swimmer, and she was so pretty I couldn't think straight when she was around.

She was only going to be in my city for two weeks.

I had to work fast.

I'll spare you the details and fast forward to her departure... She cried, told me she loved me and said she wished she never had to leave.

But leave she did, and as summer high school love goes... out of sight out of mind. We wrote for a bit, talked on the phone from time to time, but she soon forgot me and that was that.


I have recently started a project. All of my life I have loved taking pictures... and I have watched as my poorly protected snapshots from the pre-digital days have deteriorated. So I recently bought a scanner and am going box to box, picking out the pictures I want to save forever, and digitizing them.

Today I got to the summer of 1987 stack. In the pile were a single picture of my summer love and one of her little brother.

I had to "google" her, but there were a gazillion hits. Her name is kind of common. So I "googled" her brother and up came his myspace page.

He doesn't look anything like he did when he was a 4 year old, but he did have a picture of himself with his sister, and she looked exactly the same.

So I sent him an email saying he wouldn't remember me, but I just found old old pictures of him and his sister... that I'd be happy to email them to him if he thought he'd like to see them... and to say hi to her for me. That was it, nothing more.

But here's the thing, and this will lead to another post eventually. When I was in college I had a stalker. It was horrible, and she worms her way into my life from time to time, which is super-creepy.

As a result I'm sensitive to super-creepy, and as soon as I sent the little brother the email I worried that maybe I was super-creepy for taking the 5 minutes to google the little brother of a girl I knew 20 years ago.

So was it weird?

Fact & Fiction

Nice job Melissavina. Lisa, you disappoint me.

1) I have visited 44 states. Many of them were part of a great idea that my mom and her friend devised. It was about seeing the cheesy tourist traps, true cultural sites and eating regional food. Yes we were camping, but we didn’t roast weenies over a fire. Among my favorite meals: fresh shrimp just pulled out of the Gulf of Mexico, an amazing fish with a fluorescent green color caught off of northern California, and lobster in Maine. There was one disaster, the clam chowder from a roadside stand. We were sick in a way you don’t want to be when you’re sleeping in a tent in the middle of the woods.

2) I am a direct descendant of Samuel Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps known best for the beer that now bears his name. In 1975, People did an article on descendants and included a picture of my mother and me taken in front of Independence Hall. The caption was wrong though. It said I was 10, I was four. Peter Sellers is on the cover.

3) I do have a gun.

4) Jazz… I have tried to like it, I really have. I don’t. Music snobs have said it’s because I don’t understand it. Whatever. Maybe I am a moron, but I don’t like it, and I’m never ever going to try to play it on my guitar. What a waste of time, effort, and of the little ability I have.

5) We were at her grandparents after her prom. Both of our bedrooms were in the basement… that’s just an invitation for 16 year olds. But her grandfather walked down to check on us. By the time he made it down the stars, she had disappeared from the bed in record time. He looked at me and said “Oh John, you’re up.” Mmm hmmm.

6) We were trying to find an American air base in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert, right after the war began. Somehow, we thought it was a good idea to leave the road and drive through the desert, on the sand. It was like a scene out of a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby “Road to Kuwait” movie. After a half hour of seeing nothing in any direction, we finally spotted a building off in the distance. By the time we got there, the building was surrounded by Kuwaiti soldiers, bearing machine guns, wondering how we found the place and why we were there. They declined my request for photos.

7) I really am a very good cook!