Just when you think you know a woman...

The other night I was looking through one of those kinds of books that is chock full of questions like, "If you had to lose one of your five senses, which would you choose?'' and "If you could have dinner with anyone in history, who would it be?''
I turned to Susan and read this question: "If you had to spend the rest of your life in a cell, with one other person, who would that person be?''
Without missing a beat or looking up from her book, she said, "Kathy,'' a friend of ours.
I cleared my throat loudly.
"Don't you mean me?'' I asked.
"In a cell? For the rest of my life? I don't think so,'' she said.
"Why not?'' I asked.
"Well, for one thing I wouldn't look forward to you asking me all these kinds of questions when I can't get away,'' she said.
I told her that I didn't think she'd thought this through. What if there were no conjugal visits?
She just shrugged.
I'll tell you one thing. If Sue ever gets sent up the river, I'm not putting a file in her birthday cake.

Things may be looking up...

It's been a hellacious couple of weeks. Normally, of course, I wouldn't dream of using this blog to talk about my personal life, but it's been bad. First, there was my car accident, the details of which can be found at http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070323/LIFE/703230320/1054.
Then came the sudden loss of hearing in my right ear that necessitated a trip to the doctor and a procedure that is as ugly-looking as it is uncomfortable.
Next, with one car and two good ears I was headed to work yesterday, tooling down the Garden State Parkway, when my tire blew up.
And despite my generally cheery outlook on this, the best of all possible worlds, I have to admit I was feeling a little down in the dumps by the time I got home. But then, I checked the mail, and things changed. I received a hand-addressed envelope from Donald Trump himself.
OK, it wasn't exactly hand-addressed, but it was made to look as if it were hand-addressed, and that's the kind of generous, classy, saint-like actions I've come to associate with The Donald. But what was inside the envelope was truly shocking. Donald himself invited me to attend a seminar led by his classy daughter.
I assume that once Ms. Trump gets a look at me, I'll have to be very firm and explain that I'm a happily married man. If she can muster the strength to go on after that sort of heartbreak, I understand that after a few short hours, I'll learn the secret of becoming a billionaire.
I sure hope that the secret isn't "Have a rich daddy,'' because then I'm dead. But if it in any way involves bad hair, I'm golden.
Did anybody else get their invitation to this soiree?

The inevitablity of dark humor

I'm a fairly enlightened guy, conversant in all manner of P.C. conventions. There are certain words you don't use, certain jokes you simply don't tell. That's not a bad thing. There's no good reason to hurt people unnecessarily.
Sometimes though, your own mind plays tricks on you, and you know your mind is, if not down in the gutter, then, it's no higher than the curb.
I admire Heather Mills, the one-legged former wife of Beatle Paul McCartney. I respect her grit and moxie and wish her well in her stint on "Dancing With The Stars'' a show I don't watch.
But when I heard about her appearing on the show, I couldn't help bu theink about that old Dudley Moore/Peter Cook sketch "One Leg Too Few'' This can be found all over the Internet. It goes something like this:

Peter : Miss Rigby! Stella, my love! Would you please send in the next auditioner, please. Mr. Spiggott, I believe it is. (enter Dudley, hopping on one leg)
Peter: Mr. Spiggott, I believe?

Dudley:Yes, Spiggott by name, Spiggott by nature. (keeps hopping)

Peter: Yes...if you'd like to remain motionless for a moment, Mr. Spiggott. Please be stood. Now, Mr. Spiggott you are, I believe, auditioning for the part of Tarzan?

Dudley: Right.

Peter: Now, Mr. Spiggott, I couldn't help noticing almost at once that you are a one-legged person.

Dudley:You noticed that?

Peter: I noticed that, Mr. Spiggott. When you have been in the business as long as I have you come to notice these things almost instinctively. Now, Mr. Spiggott, you, a one-legged man, are applying for the role of Tarzan - a role which, traditionally, involves the use of a two-legged artiste.

Dudley: Correct.

Peter: And yet you, a unidexter, are applying for the role.

Dudley:Right.

Peter: A role for which two legs would seem to be the minimum requirement.

Dudley: Very true.

Peter : Well, Mr. Spiggott, need I point out to you where your deficiency lies as regards landing the role?

Dudley:Yes, I think you ought to.

Peter: Need I say without overmuch emphasis that it is in the leg division that you are deficient.

Dudley:The leg division?

Peter :Yes, the leg division, Mr. Spiggott. You are deficient in it to the tune of one. Your right leg I like. I like your right leg. A lovely leg for the role. That's what I said when I saw you come in. I said "A lovely leg for the role." I've got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is - neither have you. You fall down on your left.

Dudley:You mean it's inadequate?

Peter:Yes, it's inadequate, Mr. Spiggott. And, to my mind, the British public is not ready for the sight of a one-legged apeman swinging through the jungly tendrils.

Dudley:I see.

Peter :However, don't despair. After all, you score over a man with no legs at all. Should a legless man come in here demanding the role, I should have no hesitation in saying "Get out. Hop off."

Dudley: So there's still a chance?

Peter :There is still a very good chance. If we get no two-legged actors in here within the next two months, there is still a very good chance that you'll land this vital role. Failing two-legged actors, you, a unidexter, are just the sort of person we shall be attempting to contact telephonically.

Dudley: Well...thank you very much.

Peter: So my advice is, to hop on a bus, go home, and sit by your telephone in the hope that we will be getting in touch with you. (shows Dudley out) I'm sorry I can't be more definite, but as you realise, it's really a two-legged man we're after. Good morning Mr. Spiggott.

I guess the question is, does the fact that unbidden, my mind made the connection between Heather Mills latest act of courage and the silliness of the above sketch make me insensitive?

Lost in the Wild?

I was thrilled to hear that 12-year-old Boy Scout Michael Auberry was found safe and nearly sound after his ordeal of being lost in the wilds of North Carolina.
When I was a teenager, I was Boy Scout and one summer a group of us from Troop 7 in Woodbury went to Philmont, N.M., for a couple of weeks.
On the first or second day on the trail, my tentmate and I promptly got lost. We got separated from our group after we made camp and hiked up a hill into the woods, and got all turned around.
The sun began to set and our crack survival skills came into play. My tentmate Jack seemed focused on the idea that bears were everywhere ready to pounce on us, so he began to growl constantly as a way to keep them at bay.
The only thing I could remember is that when you are lost, you're supposed to fire three shots in the air, or make three smoky fires. We had no gun, and I must have been absent the day that they taught us how to make fire without, say, a gallon of gasoline and a book of matches.
So what we finally did was start yelling "Help! Help! Help! We're lost! We're lost! We're lost!'' (See, in threes...)
After a couple of hours in the dark we bumbled our way back to the campsite where exactly nobody was looking for us.
"We weren't going to look for you idiots until the morning,'' one of the leaders explained.
So it's a good thing our training in survival kicked in.

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus'' Redux

It turns out that some conservative groups are actually supporting the ACLU in its defense of the kid who unfurled the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus'' banner in Alaska a few years ago. It has occurred to them that once you censor a nonsequitur like that, the next thing to go may be banners that read "Gays Are Going 2 Burn in Hell'' or "Save the Fetus'' and then where will we be?
Politics can make strange bedfellows, but as long as disparate groups agree that off school property the government can't abridge free speech, then the First Amendment is still alive and kicking in America. Unless the Suprme Court futzes around with it....

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus!"?

The first thing to remember is that this happened in Alaska, for goodness sake. What the heck else is there for high school students to do but to unfurl a 14-foot banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus'' when the Olympic torch passes through town?
Joseph Frederick got into a lot of trouble when he did just that. He got suspended for 10 days back when he was in high school in Juneau in 2002.
But now it seems he's going to have his day in the U.S. Supreme Court. And I hope he wins.
I'm pretty much an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. But I do understand that high school students' free speech rights have to be balanced with the need of school officials to maintain order.
But the kid wasn't in class. And his message is goofy, practically a nonsequitur.
He meant the banner to be provocative, he says.
Sounds like good parenting to me. I've always tried to teach my kids to be provocative, to use humor to challenge authority or just to carve out a little freedom in their lives.
I want to raise iconoclasts and by and large I think I've succeeded.
One thing I find interesting about this case is that Kenneth Starr, Bill Clinton's bete noir, is arguing the case for the school district. How the prudish have fallen!
"It was the wrong message, at the wrong time and in the wrong place," Starr has been quoted as saying, as if the First Amendment isn't precisely about protecting "wrong messages.''

Taking it easy in the heat

Tropical climes have such a variety of brightly colored flora and fauna that for a long time scientists figured that evolution and speciation were in overdrive there. But now comes an article in today's issue of the journal "Science" that says that may not be true.
It turns out that speciation happens more often in the moderate zones. Seems like down along the equator, biology puts its feet up on the veranda railing, sips fancy drinks with umbrellas in them and generally takes it easy rather getting down to the hard work of actually randomly mutating into separate species. Apparently it's a regular Tennesee Williams' play down there in Margaritaville.
One of the researchers quoted in the AP story, Jason T. Weir of the zoology department at the University of British Columbia, said, "It would take one species in the tropics 3 to 4 million years to evolve into two distinct species, whereas at 60 degrees latitude (two-thirds of the way toward either pole), it could take as little as 1 million years.''
Lollygaggers, if you ask me.
So up here in the northern hemisphere, we're churning out species at a pretty rapid clip. The reason the tropics still have greater species diversity is that it's cold and nasty around these parts. Our species die out more quickly. Even goofy species can find their niche in the equator.
In places like, oh, I don't know, New Jersey, you got to be hairy and have a real attitude to make it. Find the AP article at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2007-03-15-species-diversity_N.htm

America is a mean high school girl

Back in high school, my best friend was the only guy lower than me on the Darwinian food chain that is secondary education.
Richard was always the brunt of jokes and pranks, including one in which a girl pretended to like him, gave him a kiss and then laughed in his face.
Which brings me to Sanjaya Malakar and "American Idol.'' This poor kid is in over his head and way out of his league.
And he knows it.
Every week, when he is sent back to sit with the other finalists, he doesn't smile. He has the gait and the demeanor of a man on his way to the gallows. You can practically hear him thinking: "Oh, God. Not again. Please, please put me out of my misery. If you send me home, I promise never to sing again.''
The kid is only 17. He doesn't need America to give him a big sloppy kiss and then laugh in his face.

Conspiracies, right and left...

Hillary Clinton has trotted out the phrase "vast, right-wing conspiracy'' again in reference to certain Election Day shenanigans.
There could be such a thing as a vast, left-wing conspiracy too, except that liberals never shut up, and are so ego-ridden they can't keep quiet.
Actually, the very nature of conspiracy generally prohibits a "vastness.'' You need to keep a conspiracy small and mum if it's to be effective. And even then, as in the case of an extramarital affair, a conspiracy of precisely two, the odds are that it ain't gonna be kept in the dark for long.
But I think we can all agree on this: Conservatives sometimes try to keep people of color from voting.
Liberals try to make sure that dead people exercise their franchise.

Indecent even in exile

Jim McGreevey is not a nice man. There is some solace, I suppose, in the realization that sexual orientation does not immunize someone from being mean-spirited and despicable.
The former governor, who, many believe, came out of the closet in order to stay out of the hoosegow, is now fighting for sole custody of his daughter and demanding child support from the child's mother -- a woman not so much scorned as lied to and used as a prop.
There's something petty about all of this, something small and cold.
I think of Joseph's Welch's response to Joe McCarthy's outrages back in the fifties: "Have you, at long last, no decency sir?''

"Virgin Territory''

This could be a hoax, but there is a casting call today in New York City for contestants of an upcoming reality TV show called "Virgin Territory.'' The producers are looking for 10 male virgins who are willing to compete for the chance to have sex with a porn star.
What leads me to believe that is all hooey is that according to a Web site affiliated with the show, the producers are looking for "medically verified'' virgins.
Now, it's been a long time since I took high school sex ed classes, but I'm pretty sure you can't medically verify anybody's virginity. Plus which, I suppose that these days the definition of virginity has changed, allowing any number of loopholes, the sort of loopholes that many teens who have signed "I'll wait until marriage'' vows have exploited.
If there is indeed a show and it somehow finds it way to the airwaves, I suspect it will be painful to watch and so very sad.

Newt cheated, prayed and moved on

The big surprise is not that Newt Gingrich was in the middle of an extramarital affair while spearheading the effort to get Clinton impeached for lying about an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky: you've always got to watch out for the moral watchdog types, who seem to have a harder time than most people when it comes to tamping down the sexual hellfire.
It's also no surprise that Newt came clean just the other day to James Dobson, the Colorado Springs fundamentalist maven and would-be Republican kingmaker. Gingrich probably figures that if you're going to admit specific sins, you'd better tell it to a member of the clergy because there's nothing like a patina of grace to cover yourself. But you've got to feel for Dobson. He must have his knickers in a twist. The Republicans who are rising to the top of the GOP milk jug are not what he had in mind.

Mitt Romney's Mormonism has got to be a problem for Dobson, and even if it wasn't, Romney's still got the flip-flop tag dogging him. Rudy Giuliani is pro-abortion and anti-gun, and has been known to commit adultery, wear a dress and live with a gay couple. John McCain has been quoted saying nasty things about conservative evangelicals.

The fact of the matter is that most Americans - heck, most Christians - are just not as conservative as people like Dobson and his Pharisaical followers wish we were.
But I digress: the real surprise in Gingrich's mea culpa is that, apparently, more than one woman wanted to sleep with the guy.

I'm a fan of matrimony

I don't know where people get the idea that I'm all loosey-goosey when it comes to the idea and practice of marriage.
I'm a big fan of marriage. I got myself one 25 years ago and it's purring along like it's brand new. I happen to think that, in many cases, shacking up is the coward's way out. (Although, there are exceptions: senior citizens who simply can't afford the financial hit that tying the knot would occasion, for example)
It is true that many of the couples I married in my years as pastor were enjoying milk without actually buying the cow.
I've known ministers who ask couples who are living together to separate until the wedding. I'm not sure if they insisted on this if the less-than-sacramental union had resulted in children. Either way, it seems an undue burden to put on folks who are getting with the program.
As people of faith, don't we want to make it easy for people to do the right thing? If getting married is the right thing, is it necessary to excoriate folks or penalize those who may have been a little slow in coming around to the joys of sanctified union?

Weightless passion

So, it turns out that women really like the high-flying-so-light-weight-that-they-don't-have any-weight-at-all-guys.
Witness this excerpt from an e-mail sent by astronaut on the ground Colleen Shipman to her orbiting beau, Bill Ofelein, back before his other romantic interest, astronaut Lisa Nowack, went all "Fatal Attraction'' and attacked Ms. Shipman: "Will have to control myself when I see you. First urge will be to rip your clothes off... but honestly, love, I want you to totally and thoroughly enjoy your hero's homecoming."
At first I thought, ""Man, Tang must be like catnip to these babes.''
But then I looked at my own love life. Here in the Mission Control Center at the Asbury Park Press, I myself receive some pretty steamy e-mails from lonely Russian women who are just dying to meet me.
I delete these e-mails because they can't hold a candle to the ones my wife sends me:
"Mike: Bring home milk. Love, me.''
And I don't have to take a rocket ship.

First comes love, then comes ???

At the same time that gays and lesbians are practically begging for the right to get married, the census reports that heterosexuals are avoiding marriage like the plague. Fewer than one in every four households has a married couple with children in it.
Folks are just shacking up these days. And those that do get married tend to be wealthier and better educated than those that don't. (Maybe not both at the same time. See Britney Spears.)
One senior fellow at the Brookings Institute says that marriage has almost become a luxury item for the elites. Like a Hummer? Frankly, if the family values crowd is concerned about the state of marriage, it should come out in favor of gay marriage, if only to goose the bottom line.

Navel gazing

Maybe it was the undulations of the comely belly dancer nearby, or the dullness of satiations, particularly when you've been satiated by dishes you can't even pronounce, or, more likely, the sort of Diamond Jim Brady machismo that afflicts men dining out with wives and friends.
Sue and I had a dinner date with another couple Saturday night.
On our way to John and Kathy's house, Sue told me, "We're going to a Turkish restaurant.''
I'd been looking forward to a steak dinner, but hey, you know, I'm an adventurous kind of eater so that was find with me, with one proviso.
"I' m not eating mutton,'' I said.
"I'm sure you won't have to,'' Sue replied.
The food was good, the company better. And the belly dancer was a true artist, although it is a little discomfiting to see people stick dollar bills in the waistband of a dancer who works without a pole.
Anyway, the check comes. I look at the total and prepare to pay half plus 20 percent. Sue, with the merest of glances, noticed that we were charged twice for a couple of dishes, and saved the four of us 50 smackers.
"Good call, dear,'' I said. "Guys don't want to look like green-eyeshade types when they're out.''
"You would think that they wouldn't want to look like they can't add even more,'' she said. "But that's just me."

We woke up and things went downhill from there

This is one of the Friday mornings where Sue gets up at sunrise to do some on-line banking. And she would have if her directly deposited paycheck had, in fact, been directly deposited. But to her surprise, it hadn't been. Computer glitch, oversight, or whatever, this is a pretty catastrophic event as we head into the weekend.
But we can't dwell on that because life goes on even in the absence of Mammon. There's work to get ready for, and children to prepare.
Sue hits another snag when her hair spray goes missing. It turns up in the possession of our 10-year-old son, Sam, who has taken an interest in hair care products that I never ever had.
There also were permission slips to sign, including one allowing Sam to participate in a school lip sync contest. He's apparently going with "When I'm Sixty-Four.''
On the plus side, the big hole in my 18-year-old son's thumb (don't ask) seems to be healing nicely. Then it's out into the world where the monsoon has left my car in a big puddle. The upside there is that wading to the car allowed me to find a previously undiscovered hole in the bottom of my shoe.
So how are you doing?

Carded at the heist?

By now, many of you have seen the video of the two teenage girls robbing a bank in Georgia. I was watching "Good Morning America'' this morning when it ran the story. And yeah, it's shocking, another sign of the hell-in-a-handbasket times in which we live. But the striking thing was the comment from an outraged citizen at the nail salon next door to the bank:
"You two girls are too young to do what you did,'' she said, raising the very real question of how old you have to be to rob a bank. I wasn't aware that ID was needed. In fact, presenting ID would thwart the whole enterprise, don't you think?
"You need to take that money back,'' the citizen continued, as if the girls were 5 and it was a candy bar from the corner store they took. You bring it back and it's "No harm, no foul.'' There's an element of American jurisprudence I was not aware of.
Here's the "Good Morning America" link to the story:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2914582