I love driving, always have. I don’t know what it is about it that gives me such a thrill but it does. Actually, I don’t know if thrill is the right word for it. I just enjoy it. It’s a relaxor, if there is such a word, running spell check tells me that it’s not but it’s the word that comes to mind.
I used to watch my Dad drive when I was very young and he’d hum his little out of tune song and just be lost in his thoughts. Sad to say but I kind of aspired to that. I find that I can get lost in my thoughts so easily in the car whether I’m driving or even as a passenger. Pretty sad when I’m the passenger and all I can think is that I wish the driver would be quiet so I can just do my own thing. I guess I shouldn’t say that but it’s the way I feel sometimes.
When I first started driving I would make sure I had a couple cassettes to listen to and I’d just drive around town listening to whatever I had chosen. As I gained confidence I started going out on the freeway and exploring more and more of the metro Detroit area. All the while I’d be listening to either the local rock station or a tape that I’d made. There would be many times that a friend or two would come along for the ride and, looking back on it, I have to believe that they would be incredibly bored but I was completely content.
As a child our family would travel to Pennsylvania or Virginia for summer vacations and the highlight of the entire trip, for me, would be the ride. The anticipation of the drive would get me so excited about the trip I’d barely be able to sleep. On the day of the trip Mom would wake us at 4:00 in the morning and the six of us would pack ourselves into the car and off we’d go.
We’d hit the turnpikes along the way and I don’t know why but I just loved it. Stopping at these little toll booths and getting our little ticket out of the booth either by hand or machine was something that, I don’t know, just seemed so cool. We’d have to go through tunnels when going through the mountains and, again, I just loved it.
After I started driving I would try to drive to Chicago on as many weekends as I could. The stated reason would be to see Dad but I truly just wanted to drive. I would start to feel a little bummed whenever I’d get close to whatever the destination was that I was getting to. I could literally turn right around and drive back right away. Actually I’ve done that a few times while living out west. When I lived in Las Vegas I would sometimes drive to Mom’s just to pick up something that I thought I needed and grab it, put it in the car and head home all in the same afternoon. It’d be a total of about nine hours of driving for a 20-minute stop over. I don’t know, nothing to it.
Nowadays I listen to either talk radio or a book on tape during my drives. Just this past weekend, when I went to Chicago, I stopped at the local audio book rental place and picked up the latest book by David Sedaris. After picking it out I went home, grabbed my bag and the dog and off we went. Lucky slept on the floor of the back seat and I listened to David Sedaris for four hours. A perfect trip. Lucky only bothered me once and that was to open the window when we got to the toll booth when we entered Indiana.
The problem I have with these trips is that there’s always a destination. I don’t really care if I ever stop when I’m driving. I’d really like to just drive around the country and stay in hotels. I’d listen to whatever book I felt like “reading” and life would be just about as perfect as I can imagine. Of course that’s how I feel today. Hell, tomorrow I may wake up and just hate the whole idea. But right now it sounds wonderful.
I’ve always felt let down whenever I would get close to whatever destination I would be heading to. It happens in cars, planes and even cruise ships. I always just want to keep going. I really think I could get on a train and not get off for a month. Just let me watch the world go by from the old Amtrak and I’d be happy as a clam. I do need decent weather but that’s pretty much my only requirement. Bad weather doesn’t give me the sights I enjoy. When it’s grey and ugly I just get bummed out.
Of course nowadays it’s not too easy to drive all over the place. With gas prices going through the roof I can’t go nearly as far as I would like. With my current job giving me weekends off though I constantly feel the need to hit the road every Friday night. It really doesn’t matter where I go. That’s probably why I have gone down to Trenton and Oak Park over the last couple months. I do enjoy seeing the old haunts but the true highlight for me is the drive. There’s an old line about whether something is worth the effort. It goes: is the juice worth the squeeze? To me the squeeze is what it’s all about. The juice is just an afterthought.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
It's The Dying Part That Hurts
I’ve come to Chicago to surprise Dad for his birthday tomorrow. Lucky and I got here last night and I’m not sure whether I’ll see Dad or not until tomorrow. His girlfriend is throwing him a B-day party and he doesn’t know about the party or me. I’ll call her in a bit to see how she wants to work the surprise part.
Dad, David and Laverne, Dad’s girlfriend, went to see the Dr. yesterday to run through whatever kind of treatment program they’re going to use on him. I was driving here when Dad called and told me about the things that would be happening to him. It seems they’ve got a decent enough plan and Dad seems pretty comfortable with it.
I guess they’re going to put a stint in his arm that somehow dries up his testosterone. From what I can gather, the cancer feeds off testosterone and the less there is in his system the easier it is to fight the cancer. After they get that under control they’ll start radiation and whatever else they feel needs to be done. The Dr’s. have told him that the odds are great that he will outlive the cancer.
Dad and I were talking about the whole thing and he seems pretty ok with the whole thing. He keeps saying he’s 76 years old so what can he expect? He figures he’s only got five or 10 years left anyway so this isn’t really any big thing.
On my way to Chicago he called me and while we talked he said that he wasn’t worried because he wasn’t afraid of dying. We talked about that for a minute and I told him I felt a little like that myself with only one difference. I told him that I thought what he really meant was that he wasn’t afraid of being dead. It’s the dying part that can be so difficult on so many levels. I mean there’s the obvious physical pain that you feel but there is also, I would think, an incredible amount of emotional pain that goes along with it. We talked a bit about that and he seemed to understand what I was trying to say.
I think he’ll be alright with this whole thing. David will do what he can to keep those of us that don’t live here informed of any developments and I talk to Dad on quite a regular basis. I know he doesn’t want to go through the treatment, not because of any associated pain that goes with it, I think it’s mainly because it’ll make him do things. He’s never really been one to want to have to do anything and with this he sort of has to.
Laverne will make sure he takes whatever medication he needs to take and that, I can attest to, is not an easy task. He gets handed his little packet of pills and he’ll start to open the package and start talking to someone and he’ll just plain forget what he’s doing and set them down. It happened last night at dinner. He had the packet in his hand and he started telling me some stories of when he was in the army. He totally forgot about the pills. It truly does just slip his mind. I noticed it and told him to stop and take his pills. Laverne made a comment about how this is what happens all the time. He agreed. I totally get it.
I’ll be going over there for his Birthday BBQ and I’m sure he’ll be incredibly uncomfortable and want nothing more than for everyone to leave so I’ll just sit there by him and let him tell his stories. I kind of turn off the brain when listening but I realize that these times won’t last so I can make the effort. He’ll never know the difference.
Dad, David and Laverne, Dad’s girlfriend, went to see the Dr. yesterday to run through whatever kind of treatment program they’re going to use on him. I was driving here when Dad called and told me about the things that would be happening to him. It seems they’ve got a decent enough plan and Dad seems pretty comfortable with it.
I guess they’re going to put a stint in his arm that somehow dries up his testosterone. From what I can gather, the cancer feeds off testosterone and the less there is in his system the easier it is to fight the cancer. After they get that under control they’ll start radiation and whatever else they feel needs to be done. The Dr’s. have told him that the odds are great that he will outlive the cancer.
Dad and I were talking about the whole thing and he seems pretty ok with the whole thing. He keeps saying he’s 76 years old so what can he expect? He figures he’s only got five or 10 years left anyway so this isn’t really any big thing.
On my way to Chicago he called me and while we talked he said that he wasn’t worried because he wasn’t afraid of dying. We talked about that for a minute and I told him I felt a little like that myself with only one difference. I told him that I thought what he really meant was that he wasn’t afraid of being dead. It’s the dying part that can be so difficult on so many levels. I mean there’s the obvious physical pain that you feel but there is also, I would think, an incredible amount of emotional pain that goes along with it. We talked a bit about that and he seemed to understand what I was trying to say.
I think he’ll be alright with this whole thing. David will do what he can to keep those of us that don’t live here informed of any developments and I talk to Dad on quite a regular basis. I know he doesn’t want to go through the treatment, not because of any associated pain that goes with it, I think it’s mainly because it’ll make him do things. He’s never really been one to want to have to do anything and with this he sort of has to.
Laverne will make sure he takes whatever medication he needs to take and that, I can attest to, is not an easy task. He gets handed his little packet of pills and he’ll start to open the package and start talking to someone and he’ll just plain forget what he’s doing and set them down. It happened last night at dinner. He had the packet in his hand and he started telling me some stories of when he was in the army. He totally forgot about the pills. It truly does just slip his mind. I noticed it and told him to stop and take his pills. Laverne made a comment about how this is what happens all the time. He agreed. I totally get it.
I’ll be going over there for his Birthday BBQ and I’m sure he’ll be incredibly uncomfortable and want nothing more than for everyone to leave so I’ll just sit there by him and let him tell his stories. I kind of turn off the brain when listening but I realize that these times won’t last so I can make the effort. He’ll never know the difference.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
How Did They Breathe?
When I was very young, living in Trenton, there was a family down the block that everyone knew. I think everybody had this type of family in their town. This was the type of family that had a Mother that would walk around the neighborhood, in her bathrobe, knocking on doors and asking for cigarettes. The Father, on the other hand, was a raging alcoholic who found it necessary to beat his children at the end of a long day.
There were three kids in the house. Two boys, one was two years older than I and one was one year younger, and a girl, who was probably three or four years younger. I would often play with both of the boys doing things that I would kill my kids for if they were caught doing the same things.
I’m going to call the kids A, B and C with A being the oldest and C being the youngest. I’m not using their real names because I recently met with B and was asked not to.
There was a time when we all went outside and saw an ambulance at their house. As we got down there we saw that A was lying in the street next to the family car. It seems that somehow A’s Mother had run him over. Fortunately the tire had only run over his leg but it was quite scary. The word was that A had somehow fallen out of the car and when he told his Mother to back up she had accidentally moved forward and drove over his leg. A was taken to the hospital and came home the next day with a cast on his leg.
While A was recuperating I would often be down at his house playing board games and listening to music. I remember playing Monopoly with A on the front porch and listening to the “Hey Jude” album. While we were playing, A and I were talking about the accident and he told me something that, to this day, still blows my mind. He said he had actually told his Mother to drive forward knowing that he would be run over. He was 10 years old. Think about that. He was 10 years old and wanted his Mother to run him over. How incredibly sad.
I was also friends with B even though he was a year younger than I we would often steal cigarettes from his Mother, Salem’s if my memory serves, and go out into the woods and smoke our little lungs out. I was eight and he was seven. B was a much quieter kind of guy than A. Middle child and all. The thing I most remember about him was his walks home from school. We would get out of school at 3:30 and it was maybe a 15 minute walk. The average kid would be home and out playing by 3:50 in the afternoon. As we’d all be playing in the street and it would start getting dark we’d notice B just getting home from school. This was a daily thing. He wouldn’t get home until around 5:30 or 6:00 every night. He always said he hadn’t gone anywhere, just strolled home.
At the time neither he nor any of us could figure out why it took him so long to get home. Looking back at it one can easily see that he simply wasn’t in any kind of hurry to get there. Why would he want to?
Karen, my sister, used to baby sit for them sometimes and recalls that they never had anything there for her to make for dinner. She would either bring them down to our house or come down herself to get some food to take back to their house and cook it there. Again, while this was going on, nobody thought anything about it. It was just the way it was. I don’t recall any kids on the block making fun of them or anything like that. They were just a family that lived on our block.
I remember going to the Detroit Zoo with the entire family and having a wonderful time. There were also numerous times that I’d be at the house and we’d listen to albums and play with our baseball cards. There was, however, one night that I spent the night and when the Father came home he proceeded to call each kid out into the living room. After getting them out there he started yelling at each and when that didn’t satisfy him, he started hitting them. I can still hear A yelling out for his Dad to stop. I was no more than nine years old. I remember opening the bedroom window, hopping out and running home. The next day it was if nothing had happened. Life just went on and this was their life.
I’ve thought about this family a number of times since I left Trenton and wondered what had happened to them. I happened to see A’s name on the classmates.com website and sent him a note just saying hi. He responded and we started an email relationship. I asked about his siblings and he gave me contact info for each. A is preparing to retire from the air force after 30 years. He’s widowed with a couple kids. I spoke to him on the phone the other day and we talked about our childhood. He remembers it pretty much as I do. We would remember times and events of things that would happen in his house and all I could think was, “how did you breathe?”
I got in touch with B just last week and found that he is a Pastor in the Detroit area. He remembered me and agreed to have lunch with me so I could ask him about our childhoods. B was 10 years old when I left the area and he, understandably, doesn’t remember a great many of the things I brought up to him regarding his childhood. He does remember the night I left through the window though. He also remembers us never talking about the incident after it happened. B remembers smoking in the woods but not where we got our supplies. He also remembers the day the “For Sale” sign went up on our house. He and I both thought there could be a shrink’s field day on these memories.
I told him my feelings on the whole god thing and we talked about how odd I thought it was that he would become a man of god after all he had been through. He said he could totally understand my questioning him about it. I said I compare his believing to the Jews of the Holocaust. I can’t understand how they could believe in God yet also can’t understand how they wouldn’t. He understood what I meant. We talked some more about things I remembered about our youths and said goodbye after a couple hours. I watched him walk away and was expecting that little kid shuffling his feet and kicking the rocks like he did 40 years ago. What I saw was a man who wasn’t given a chance as a child but beat all odds and is living a life of joy in his family and his beliefs. Again, all I could think was, “how did you breathe?”
I am astonished at the strength of these kids to have survived what they went through. They weren’t incredibly bright or anything, they just saw life as having no choice but to move on. I think B said it best when talking about how he could possibly believe in any kind of higher power. He said that he reached a point in his late teens where he was either going to give up or had to believe in something. He chose to believe. It occurred to me then that that was what allowed him to breathe.
There were three kids in the house. Two boys, one was two years older than I and one was one year younger, and a girl, who was probably three or four years younger. I would often play with both of the boys doing things that I would kill my kids for if they were caught doing the same things.
I’m going to call the kids A, B and C with A being the oldest and C being the youngest. I’m not using their real names because I recently met with B and was asked not to.
There was a time when we all went outside and saw an ambulance at their house. As we got down there we saw that A was lying in the street next to the family car. It seems that somehow A’s Mother had run him over. Fortunately the tire had only run over his leg but it was quite scary. The word was that A had somehow fallen out of the car and when he told his Mother to back up she had accidentally moved forward and drove over his leg. A was taken to the hospital and came home the next day with a cast on his leg.
While A was recuperating I would often be down at his house playing board games and listening to music. I remember playing Monopoly with A on the front porch and listening to the “Hey Jude” album. While we were playing, A and I were talking about the accident and he told me something that, to this day, still blows my mind. He said he had actually told his Mother to drive forward knowing that he would be run over. He was 10 years old. Think about that. He was 10 years old and wanted his Mother to run him over. How incredibly sad.
I was also friends with B even though he was a year younger than I we would often steal cigarettes from his Mother, Salem’s if my memory serves, and go out into the woods and smoke our little lungs out. I was eight and he was seven. B was a much quieter kind of guy than A. Middle child and all. The thing I most remember about him was his walks home from school. We would get out of school at 3:30 and it was maybe a 15 minute walk. The average kid would be home and out playing by 3:50 in the afternoon. As we’d all be playing in the street and it would start getting dark we’d notice B just getting home from school. This was a daily thing. He wouldn’t get home until around 5:30 or 6:00 every night. He always said he hadn’t gone anywhere, just strolled home.
At the time neither he nor any of us could figure out why it took him so long to get home. Looking back at it one can easily see that he simply wasn’t in any kind of hurry to get there. Why would he want to?
Karen, my sister, used to baby sit for them sometimes and recalls that they never had anything there for her to make for dinner. She would either bring them down to our house or come down herself to get some food to take back to their house and cook it there. Again, while this was going on, nobody thought anything about it. It was just the way it was. I don’t recall any kids on the block making fun of them or anything like that. They were just a family that lived on our block.
I remember going to the Detroit Zoo with the entire family and having a wonderful time. There were also numerous times that I’d be at the house and we’d listen to albums and play with our baseball cards. There was, however, one night that I spent the night and when the Father came home he proceeded to call each kid out into the living room. After getting them out there he started yelling at each and when that didn’t satisfy him, he started hitting them. I can still hear A yelling out for his Dad to stop. I was no more than nine years old. I remember opening the bedroom window, hopping out and running home. The next day it was if nothing had happened. Life just went on and this was their life.
I’ve thought about this family a number of times since I left Trenton and wondered what had happened to them. I happened to see A’s name on the classmates.com website and sent him a note just saying hi. He responded and we started an email relationship. I asked about his siblings and he gave me contact info for each. A is preparing to retire from the air force after 30 years. He’s widowed with a couple kids. I spoke to him on the phone the other day and we talked about our childhood. He remembers it pretty much as I do. We would remember times and events of things that would happen in his house and all I could think was, “how did you breathe?”
I got in touch with B just last week and found that he is a Pastor in the Detroit area. He remembered me and agreed to have lunch with me so I could ask him about our childhoods. B was 10 years old when I left the area and he, understandably, doesn’t remember a great many of the things I brought up to him regarding his childhood. He does remember the night I left through the window though. He also remembers us never talking about the incident after it happened. B remembers smoking in the woods but not where we got our supplies. He also remembers the day the “For Sale” sign went up on our house. He and I both thought there could be a shrink’s field day on these memories.
I told him my feelings on the whole god thing and we talked about how odd I thought it was that he would become a man of god after all he had been through. He said he could totally understand my questioning him about it. I said I compare his believing to the Jews of the Holocaust. I can’t understand how they could believe in God yet also can’t understand how they wouldn’t. He understood what I meant. We talked some more about things I remembered about our youths and said goodbye after a couple hours. I watched him walk away and was expecting that little kid shuffling his feet and kicking the rocks like he did 40 years ago. What I saw was a man who wasn’t given a chance as a child but beat all odds and is living a life of joy in his family and his beliefs. Again, all I could think was, “how did you breathe?”
I am astonished at the strength of these kids to have survived what they went through. They weren’t incredibly bright or anything, they just saw life as having no choice but to move on. I think B said it best when talking about how he could possibly believe in any kind of higher power. He said that he reached a point in his late teens where he was either going to give up or had to believe in something. He chose to believe. It occurred to me then that that was what allowed him to breathe.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Question After Question
David called tonight and told me that Dad was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. Dad called about twenty minutes later and we talked for a while about what was going on and I tried to get some answers to the obvious questions. The problem with Dad though is that it’s near impossible to get any of those questions answered.
Earlier today I had made arrangements with his girlfriend to go to Chicago over the weekend to surprise him for his birthday. Kind of adds a little to the concept now though doesn’t it.
My brother Steve was diagnosed with Hepatitis C a number of years ago and he was just recently dropped from a clinical trial program because it wasn’t working for him.
I’ve got the same type of questions about Steve that I do with Dad and they don’t seem to be able to be answered either but that’s because nobody has the answers for him.
I’ve always had a real hard time wrapping my head around Steve’s issues and he and I have a good enough relationship that we can joke about his disease. Not too sure about my relationship with Dad though. That’s a whole different type of thing to grasp.
Boy, I’ve got some thinking to do. I’ve got a million things rolling around upstairs and my adrenalin is soaring. I hope I can shut it down some so I can think about it clearly tomorrow.
Earlier today I had made arrangements with his girlfriend to go to Chicago over the weekend to surprise him for his birthday. Kind of adds a little to the concept now though doesn’t it.
My brother Steve was diagnosed with Hepatitis C a number of years ago and he was just recently dropped from a clinical trial program because it wasn’t working for him.
I’ve got the same type of questions about Steve that I do with Dad and they don’t seem to be able to be answered either but that’s because nobody has the answers for him.
I’ve always had a real hard time wrapping my head around Steve’s issues and he and I have a good enough relationship that we can joke about his disease. Not too sure about my relationship with Dad though. That’s a whole different type of thing to grasp.
Boy, I’ve got some thinking to do. I’ve got a million things rolling around upstairs and my adrenalin is soaring. I hope I can shut it down some so I can think about it clearly tomorrow.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Bet You didn't Think I'd Do This!
I’ve always been told how funny I am and have often been told that I should be a comedian. Personally I know I look at things a bit differently than most but I’ve never seen myself as one who can “tell jokes”. I do much better telling stories and “working off” other people. I add things to conversations. Kind of like a counter puncher in boxing. I see what’s thrown out there and react to it. Fortunately most people find the things I say funny. I’ve always enjoyed that.
Stand up comedy has always fascinated me. The balls it takes to get up in front of a crowd of strangers is something that I’ve always thought very highly of. I used to stay up watching Johnny Carson until 1:00 am when I was young just because he used to have the comedian on last. I could never count the amount of times I’ve gone to local comedy clubs and concerts featuring comics. Suffice it to say its well into three digits. Hell, I used to be a local at The Comedy Store in La Jolla.
With all that being said, I went and did something that, I’m sure, none of you out there thought I ever would. I went down to the Detroit area and found a comedy club that was having an amateur night and I got my nerves under control and actually did it.
I had been thinking about this for ages. As I stated earlier, I’m not into the telling jokes with setups and punch lines and that’s all you ever see at an amateur night. I wanted to find a couple subjects and then try to just talk about them and give my somewhat odd take on that subject. I did practice some. I have found a couple places where people do readings and things like that, you know, coffee shops and things out in Ann Arbor. I would go and read an essay or two that I wrote and I found that I would throw in a couple comments about what I was reading about and people would laugh. It was really cool because I wasn’t even trying, it would just be something that would pop into my head about the subject I was reading about.
So, I got myself all dressed up, suit, tie and all that stuff and drove down to the club. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going because I know I couldn’t have done it if anyone I knew was there. I did tell Karen and Bobbie, one of the girls here at the office, what I was doing, just not where. It was about an hour and a half drive and the entire way down I kept running the essays I’ve written in my head. I was trying to figure out which ones I felt I could play off of without stumbling. I settled on a few I thought would work and felt pretty good about what I was about to do.
Of course, when I got there I was as nervous as could be. I sat in the car for quite a while trying to find the right excuse to not go through with it. After convincing myself to go ahead and just do it I went inside and signed up. The guy at the sign up desk asked me what music I wanted. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about and he explained that there was a list of songs that I could go through and choose from to play me on and off the stage. Cool. I looked through the list and saw “Born To Run” by Springsteen and figured, what the hell, I love the song, it’s an up tempo kind of thing and I thought it would be a kind of motivating factor in getting me up for what I was about to do.
Well, of course the dreaded time came and they announced my name. It was different from the time I did Karaoke. I felt totally prepared with how I wanted to do this and wasn’t nearly as scared as I was when I did the singing thing. As I went up and the song was playing the crowd cheered and that was nice. As the music ended the crowd kept cheering and yelling “Bruce” real loud. There were only about 25 to 30 people there and at least half were yelling. I mentioned something like “You gotta love Bruce” and they cheered louder.
It was at that very moment that everything changed. The plan I had went out the window and I decided right then and there that I was going to talk about Bruce and see where it went. I mentioned that a number of years ago some state representative from New Jersey had submitted a bill to make “Born To Run” the state song of New Jersey. Again, the crowd cheered and started yelling his name. I asked if they really thought it was a good idea and again, they cheered.
I then took the next three or four minutes and recited the lyrics to the song pausing numerous times along the way to talk about what I had just said and how ridiculous it was that this could be a state song. With lyrics like:
“Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run”
and:
“Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back”
It was quite easy.
I think they actually had fun with the whole thing. The further along I got the more comfortable I was. About mid way through I took the mike off the stand and had one hand in my pocket and was just strolling around the stage. Then something really cool happened.
I’ve spoken before about how there are moments that happen where everything just fits. Well, this was one of them. I had forgotten to turn my phone off and, needless to say, it started ringing. This was how I knew things were going my way. My ring tone is “Born to run”. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and put it up to the mike and that got a few laughs. I then asked if they minded if I took the call and they laughed some more. Of course I didn’t, I just turned it off and put it away and asked where we were in the song. A couple up front told me exactly where I was and I just continued. I finished the song with the line in the last verse that goes:
“Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide”.
And I said something like Resolved: Born To Run should not be the state song of New Jersey. I got a nice hand and I told them thanks for making a dream come true and that was it.
I went out to my car and just sat and brought myself back to reality for well over an hour. I didn’t get home until 2:30 in the morning. I was and am very proud of myself with the way I changed my plan with no warning and was able to go ahead and talk about something off the cuff. Of course it seemed like I was up there for hours but I’m sure it couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes. I’ve been asked by the gang around here if I’d do it again. The answer right now is absolutely not. But, who knows. That could change someday. I did like the feeling of being up there but it was the two or three weeks I spent convincing myself to do it that was pure torture.
Anyway, another item off the list.
Stand up comedy has always fascinated me. The balls it takes to get up in front of a crowd of strangers is something that I’ve always thought very highly of. I used to stay up watching Johnny Carson until 1:00 am when I was young just because he used to have the comedian on last. I could never count the amount of times I’ve gone to local comedy clubs and concerts featuring comics. Suffice it to say its well into three digits. Hell, I used to be a local at The Comedy Store in La Jolla.
With all that being said, I went and did something that, I’m sure, none of you out there thought I ever would. I went down to the Detroit area and found a comedy club that was having an amateur night and I got my nerves under control and actually did it.
I had been thinking about this for ages. As I stated earlier, I’m not into the telling jokes with setups and punch lines and that’s all you ever see at an amateur night. I wanted to find a couple subjects and then try to just talk about them and give my somewhat odd take on that subject. I did practice some. I have found a couple places where people do readings and things like that, you know, coffee shops and things out in Ann Arbor. I would go and read an essay or two that I wrote and I found that I would throw in a couple comments about what I was reading about and people would laugh. It was really cool because I wasn’t even trying, it would just be something that would pop into my head about the subject I was reading about.
So, I got myself all dressed up, suit, tie and all that stuff and drove down to the club. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going because I know I couldn’t have done it if anyone I knew was there. I did tell Karen and Bobbie, one of the girls here at the office, what I was doing, just not where. It was about an hour and a half drive and the entire way down I kept running the essays I’ve written in my head. I was trying to figure out which ones I felt I could play off of without stumbling. I settled on a few I thought would work and felt pretty good about what I was about to do.
Of course, when I got there I was as nervous as could be. I sat in the car for quite a while trying to find the right excuse to not go through with it. After convincing myself to go ahead and just do it I went inside and signed up. The guy at the sign up desk asked me what music I wanted. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about and he explained that there was a list of songs that I could go through and choose from to play me on and off the stage. Cool. I looked through the list and saw “Born To Run” by Springsteen and figured, what the hell, I love the song, it’s an up tempo kind of thing and I thought it would be a kind of motivating factor in getting me up for what I was about to do.
Well, of course the dreaded time came and they announced my name. It was different from the time I did Karaoke. I felt totally prepared with how I wanted to do this and wasn’t nearly as scared as I was when I did the singing thing. As I went up and the song was playing the crowd cheered and that was nice. As the music ended the crowd kept cheering and yelling “Bruce” real loud. There were only about 25 to 30 people there and at least half were yelling. I mentioned something like “You gotta love Bruce” and they cheered louder.
It was at that very moment that everything changed. The plan I had went out the window and I decided right then and there that I was going to talk about Bruce and see where it went. I mentioned that a number of years ago some state representative from New Jersey had submitted a bill to make “Born To Run” the state song of New Jersey. Again, the crowd cheered and started yelling his name. I asked if they really thought it was a good idea and again, they cheered.
I then took the next three or four minutes and recited the lyrics to the song pausing numerous times along the way to talk about what I had just said and how ridiculous it was that this could be a state song. With lyrics like:
“Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run”
and:
“Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back”
It was quite easy.
I think they actually had fun with the whole thing. The further along I got the more comfortable I was. About mid way through I took the mike off the stand and had one hand in my pocket and was just strolling around the stage. Then something really cool happened.
I’ve spoken before about how there are moments that happen where everything just fits. Well, this was one of them. I had forgotten to turn my phone off and, needless to say, it started ringing. This was how I knew things were going my way. My ring tone is “Born to run”. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and put it up to the mike and that got a few laughs. I then asked if they minded if I took the call and they laughed some more. Of course I didn’t, I just turned it off and put it away and asked where we were in the song. A couple up front told me exactly where I was and I just continued. I finished the song with the line in the last verse that goes:
“Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide”.
And I said something like Resolved: Born To Run should not be the state song of New Jersey. I got a nice hand and I told them thanks for making a dream come true and that was it.
I went out to my car and just sat and brought myself back to reality for well over an hour. I didn’t get home until 2:30 in the morning. I was and am very proud of myself with the way I changed my plan with no warning and was able to go ahead and talk about something off the cuff. Of course it seemed like I was up there for hours but I’m sure it couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes. I’ve been asked by the gang around here if I’d do it again. The answer right now is absolutely not. But, who knows. That could change someday. I did like the feeling of being up there but it was the two or three weeks I spent convincing myself to do it that was pure torture.
Anyway, another item off the list.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A Few Things That Caught My Eye.
I heard Barack Obama make a speech today where he said that if he gets elected anyone who devoted their studies and careers to teaching would get their education paid for by the Government. I’m not sure where the money would come from but I like the idea.
All over the news last night about Cindy McCain submitting a second recipe to a magazine as her own that was directly from Hershey’s website, Bill Clinton’s was from Betty Crocker’s. Seriously, it was on the news. Who cares?
There are a number of stories of people that were staunch Hillary supporters that, because she lost, are now going to support McCain. How do you go from liberal thought to conservative thought for a reason like that and expect people to take you seriously?
Al Gore has come out and endorsed Barack Obama. Way to lay it all on the line their Captain Courageous.
Fox News had a story the other morning about an Obama speech that, they said, sounded like plagiarism. They went on to show Obama talking about how hard it was for someone to even afford the gas to drive around and look for a job. They then compared it to a speech by Mario Cuomo back in the eighties speaking of why the U.S. subsidizes foreign steel. Jon Stewart put both quotes side by side and highlighted the words that were the same. Turns out that the words, “of, “to” and “we” were the only words the two speeches had in common. And people say Fox News is biased, go figure.
Gay marriage is now legal in California. Wait and see how the religious right blames that fact for the next natural disaster that happens out there.
All over the news last night about Cindy McCain submitting a second recipe to a magazine as her own that was directly from Hershey’s website, Bill Clinton’s was from Betty Crocker’s. Seriously, it was on the news. Who cares?
There are a number of stories of people that were staunch Hillary supporters that, because she lost, are now going to support McCain. How do you go from liberal thought to conservative thought for a reason like that and expect people to take you seriously?
Al Gore has come out and endorsed Barack Obama. Way to lay it all on the line their Captain Courageous.
Fox News had a story the other morning about an Obama speech that, they said, sounded like plagiarism. They went on to show Obama talking about how hard it was for someone to even afford the gas to drive around and look for a job. They then compared it to a speech by Mario Cuomo back in the eighties speaking of why the U.S. subsidizes foreign steel. Jon Stewart put both quotes side by side and highlighted the words that were the same. Turns out that the words, “of, “to” and “we” were the only words the two speeches had in common. And people say Fox News is biased, go figure.
Gay marriage is now legal in California. Wait and see how the religious right blames that fact for the next natural disaster that happens out there.
Monday, June 9, 2008
So Long My Friend
My friend died today. No, not really my friend, my brother died today. Well, see, he wasn’t really my brother either. What is true is there was a time in my life when I thought there would never be time when he wouldn’t be a major part of my life. I do not remember ever not knowing him.
Ronnie and his brother Buzzie, real name Brian, lived next door to me from my first memories until I was either three or four. They and their Mother lived with their Grandmother. Ronnie was David’s age and Buzzie, mine.
After they moved away we would see them most weekends, as they would come to visit their Grandparents. As we got older and my family moved away I may have seen them another two or three times and that was it.
I was relatively well informed about their lives over the years because Karen is still very good friends with their Aunt and they would stay in touch on a regular basis. I was told things like when Ronnie joined the Navy and when he got out and things like that. I heard, a number of years ago, that Ronnie had cancer. I then heard, later, that he was alright and things were going much better for him.
I last saw Ronnie at my sisters wedding. He came as the guest of his Aunt. He sat at our table and we talked a bit. I feel pretty bad about it now because I don’t really remember what we talked about. I think he was divorced and he may have had kids. It was nice to see him. Though we hardly knew each other we still had that memory of childhood. That memory of thinking we’d be around each other forever. The feeling that we’d also be alive forever.
We all know that last statement is the biggest misconception we have as kids. The cancer came back and the poor guy had been fighting it and fighting it until he just couldn’t fight any more. I don’t know what type of cancer Ronnie had or any idea what he went through these last few years and I’m not proud of that. I know that as a child of three or four he was the toughest guy I knew. I have the feeling he was just as tough in this final battle he went through.
This is the first death, for me, that’s in my peer group. One of “my gang” I guess you could say. I suppose these things will become more and more common as I get older. I find it kind of strange that the first to die was also the first I knew.
I don’t know if I can really call Ronnie a friend but I will. I’m also not sure about calling him my brother, but I will. Of course my thoughts are with his Mother, Father and the rest of the family. I’ll definitely be going to the Funeral and I’m sure it’ll be really strange but I think all of us are going to go so that’ll help.
Of course I now have the regrets of not talking to him more than I did at the wedding and not calling when I heard he was sick again. I hope he understood. I miss him already and I hardly even knew him. I know there’s guilt about that too.
So Ronnie, rest easy my brother. You don’t have to fight anymore. You deserve the break. I’m sorry I didn’t know you better but life does that to people. I did know you well enough to call you my friend and I’m all the poorer for it today because I’ve lost my friend today.
Ronnie and his brother Buzzie, real name Brian, lived next door to me from my first memories until I was either three or four. They and their Mother lived with their Grandmother. Ronnie was David’s age and Buzzie, mine.
After they moved away we would see them most weekends, as they would come to visit their Grandparents. As we got older and my family moved away I may have seen them another two or three times and that was it.
I was relatively well informed about their lives over the years because Karen is still very good friends with their Aunt and they would stay in touch on a regular basis. I was told things like when Ronnie joined the Navy and when he got out and things like that. I heard, a number of years ago, that Ronnie had cancer. I then heard, later, that he was alright and things were going much better for him.
I last saw Ronnie at my sisters wedding. He came as the guest of his Aunt. He sat at our table and we talked a bit. I feel pretty bad about it now because I don’t really remember what we talked about. I think he was divorced and he may have had kids. It was nice to see him. Though we hardly knew each other we still had that memory of childhood. That memory of thinking we’d be around each other forever. The feeling that we’d also be alive forever.
We all know that last statement is the biggest misconception we have as kids. The cancer came back and the poor guy had been fighting it and fighting it until he just couldn’t fight any more. I don’t know what type of cancer Ronnie had or any idea what he went through these last few years and I’m not proud of that. I know that as a child of three or four he was the toughest guy I knew. I have the feeling he was just as tough in this final battle he went through.
This is the first death, for me, that’s in my peer group. One of “my gang” I guess you could say. I suppose these things will become more and more common as I get older. I find it kind of strange that the first to die was also the first I knew.
I don’t know if I can really call Ronnie a friend but I will. I’m also not sure about calling him my brother, but I will. Of course my thoughts are with his Mother, Father and the rest of the family. I’ll definitely be going to the Funeral and I’m sure it’ll be really strange but I think all of us are going to go so that’ll help.
Of course I now have the regrets of not talking to him more than I did at the wedding and not calling when I heard he was sick again. I hope he understood. I miss him already and I hardly even knew him. I know there’s guilt about that too.
So Ronnie, rest easy my brother. You don’t have to fight anymore. You deserve the break. I’m sorry I didn’t know you better but life does that to people. I did know you well enough to call you my friend and I’m all the poorer for it today because I’ve lost my friend today.
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