Too Many Mornings

Archive for July, 2009

The list of petty problems that take the fun out of my life has been growing rather quickly lately. They include:

– Working

– Not taking lavish European vacations

– Spending most of my free time and life’s savings fixing the car, the dishwasher, my home’s main sewer pipe, the toilet, the shower door and pretty much everything else in and around the house that’s capable of breaking

Now I know some of you peppy glass-half-full types are going to say, “Mike, don’t be such a gloomy Gus. Try to accentuate the positive. Take a walk on the sunny side of the street for a while.”

Golly, thanks for the advice, Mr. Osteen! I really, really appreciate it!

Now Ta Gueule, pardon my French.

Little Orphan Annie makes me nauseous what with all her singing about the sun coming up tomorrow crap.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree there’s a sunny side of the street. In fact, I had to take a walk on it just the other day, when it was about 110 degrees outside and my piece-o-crap 1999 Dodge Grand Caravan decided to break down on the way to work. Again.

After leaving it with the mechanic, who’s starting to look at me with the same misty-eyed appreciation automobile repairmen normally reserve for supermodels and Lamborghinis, I started strolling down the sunny side of West Colfax Avenue, cursing Fate and sweating like a pig as I attempted to make my way to work using public transportation. Actually, to be honest, pigs can’t sweat much, that’s why they cool off by rolling in mud. It’s just another false aphorism people use, like this gem from Oprah: “Failure is a steppingstone to success.”

Tell you what Oprah. To test this failure theory you developed, fork over your billions (preferably to me), then sell off all six of your luxury homes and move to a tenement apartment on Chicago’s south side. Get a minimum-wage job stocking shelves at Wal-Mart, live on government cheese and food stamps for a few years, and then call me. I’ll be yachting in the Greek Isles, thank you very much, but if you honestly still feel like joining the cast of Up With People, I promise to return what’s left of your fortune (minus a 10 percent handling fee) and start paying more attention to your feel-good advice.

Until then, Casse-toi, pardon my French once again.

Now, where was I?

Oh, sure, I remember now.

So there I was chugging down Colfax, seething with hatred for Lee Iaccoca’s legacy and about to drop dead of heat stroke, when the city bus pulled up to give me a lift. It was about 15 minutes late, of course, and that’s why I was walking instead of patiently waiting for it on a shaded bus bench. But, to be fair, it was cooler inside the bus, even if I did have to sit on a dirty seat next to a dirty guy who smelled like my dirty toilet—which also broke, by the way.

As Toilet Man and I sped—or lurched—off, I began to feel my adventure was starting to turn for the better.

Why?

Because I’m stupid, that’s why. Because hope springs infernal, that’s why. Because just when you think you’ve finally hit bottom, you remember that you can’t go to the ball game with the guys on Saturday because you’re obligated to attend your wife’s mother’s aunt’s 98^th birthday party over at the Sunny Acres Retirement Villa, that’s why.

And so, Fate dictated I miss my connection with the regional bus that takes me to work by about 30 seconds. I forlornly watched the driver of that bus pull away from the stop just as the bus Toilet Man and I were riding in pulled up.

How do I describe my emotional state at that moment?

It’s like going to Dairy Queen even though you’re lactose intolerant. Or arriving 30 minutes late to the movie. Or driving a Chrysler mini-van when everybody else was wise enough to buy a more reliable Toyota or Honda. Or sitting next to Toilet Man on the bus instead of, say, Charlize Theron.

I was upset, but what was I supposed to do about it?

I couldn’t cry or scream, because I didn’t want Toilet Man to the get the wrong idea and give me a supportive hug. So I just shrugged and finally gave up on getting to work. Who needs work in this economy anyway? Nobody’s making any money. Work is just depressing. On this point, Toilet Man and I agree.

Out of options, I proceeded to waste another hour of my increasingly short life studying bus schedules and sharing bus rides with other pungent, crazy passengers so I could get near enough to home to allow me to walk the rest of the way without passing out in the Saharan heat.

Which I did successfully, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

Shouldn’t, but will.

Look, I don’t buy into the increasingly popular notion that we should feel guilty about negative thinking, as if thinking negatively magically creates negativity in some New Agey create-your-own reality sort of way. That’s crap. Negativity happens. Much of life sucks. It’s almost always frustrating, tiresome and depressing, and at times it’s extremely difficult.

Don’t think so?

Try being President Obama for a day. All you want to talk about is the national health care crisis and the faltering economy. All everybody else wants to talk about is whether you’ve got a valid American birth certificate or are an African national masquerading as a U.S. citizen, and why you seem to hate, hate, hate overzealous white Irish cops who harass overly sensitive black professors in their homes.

Slainte!

Being president for a day will make you want to send Little Orphan Annie on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney.

Bam!

Try singing The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow with a load of buckshot in your teeth, you perky redheaded beeatch!

Folks, I’m here to tell you that there’s a sunny side of life, but there’s a dark side, too, and, lately, I’ve been forced to walk on it way too much of the time, okay? That’s my reality. If yours is different, well then, God Bless You. I guess it’s really true that the rain falls on the just and unjust. Enjoy the moisture while it lasts, and don’t come whining to me when it dries out, because I warned you.

Listen, I know there are far worse things that can happen to a person than being forced to spend $2,000 to repair a creaky mini-van with 115,000 miles on its odometer and a resale value of about $2,000. Or, kneeling on the floor with your head stuck inside a dirty dishwasher for two hours vainly attempting to figure out why it refuses to do its duty. Or, hugging the cold porcelain toilet bowel to your face and scraping your knuckles while you bolt the rocking toilet to the floor so it won’t shirk its doo-ty anywhere but in the sewer. Or, not being able to open the shower door to wash the toilet bowl smell off your chin because a doohickey the size of my little toe chose to break on that particular afternoon out of all the mornings in its 30-year existence.

But these irritations are irritating, and, together, they add up to one big headache, especially in combination with the real problems I’m required to deal with day-in and day-out.

So enough already, Fate!

Take me to Italy instead.

Just don’t book me on the same flight with Toilet Man, OK? Because I just don’t need that merde, pardon the French.

Dee de dede dee de dede dee de dede dee….

“We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogcast to bring you this late-breaking news story!”

If you read this blog regularly, then:

– First, I’m shocked and honored because you almost certainly have something better to do with your time but you’re choosing to waste it here instead;

– Second, I humbly apologize for its dismal lack of meaningful content;

– Third, you’re probably aware I’ve made it my life’s goal to get an article published in the Shouts & Murmur humor section of The New Yorker. Although, frankly, any section of the magazine would probably do. The New Yorker is the world’s leading literary publication for aspiring (and established) writers, despite the overwhelming success of websites like The Huffington Post and YouTube on the Internet, that new-fangled communication gizmo some of you might have heard about.

My journalistic romance with The New Yorker may be starting to pay off.

Well, I’m extremely happy to report there’s been a dramatic, almost shocking development in what I can only describe as my budding relationship with The New Yorker!

But first, a little background.

As you might recall, when I started submitting articles to the editors of the Shouts & Murmurs department way back in the olden days—roughly mid-April—I was instructed in cold-blooded legal terms not to expect a response of any kind. And for weeks that’s exactly what I got. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Not one word from anybody, be it positive, negative or neutral. I didn’t even know if my carefully crafted articles were getting to New York City, let alone being read by some 21-year-old hack intern before they were heartlessly crumpled into a ball and tossed in the trash can like so much flotsam and jetsam.

Emotionally, my utter lack of interaction with this distant journalistic icon reminded me of high school and my sad inability to connect with a truly beautiful girl named Karen West. Karen lived almost exactly one block away from me, but she might as well have lived in another country, because I suffered from a debilitating school-boy crush on her that never bloomed.

At the time, I was an insecure, goofy-looking nerd without any particular talent, unless you count being able to stumble through a simple version of Maleguena on the Spanish guitar. Karen, on the other hand, was a supremely confident gymnast/honor student/hot babe. In my eyes, she was so smart, charming and heartbreakingly good looking that I was afraid to approach her with my pimply self, and to my recollection we never spoke, except, perhaps, for the occasional  awkward wave and smile while passing through the hallways between classes. In Victor Hugo’s world, she was Esmeralda and I was Quasimodo, except I was never given the handy plot contrivance of being able to swoop down from the church parapet to rescue her from an angry mob.

As a result, I barely existed in Karen’s big, brown eyes. But not because she was stuck up or too good for me. I knew she wasn’t that kind of girl. You know the type: The popular, good-looking cheerleaders who wear too much makeup, flaunt their cleavage and hang on every word uttered by Toby Terhune, the high school’s square-jawed star quarterback, while instinctively averting their eyes in the presence of geeks. Karen wasn’t like those girls. She was sweet and kind, the sort of girl a boy can happily make sacrifices for, even worship. And for a long time I walked by her house almost daily hoping against all hope she’d be outside just so I could say hello and bask in the nuclear radiance of her beauty for a brief moment.

Yep, my crush was that bad.

Sadly, and perhaps not surprisingly, stalking Karen never paid off. I don’t know how her life turned out, but I like to imagine she married a handsome billionaire and now lives in a huge house in Aspen with their two kids and an Anatolian Shepherd Dog (if you don’t know what one is, then you don’t live on the same side of the tracks as Karen). I hope she’s very happy.

But I was much more open and persistent with The New Yorker than I was with Karen, and finally heard from the magazine in late May, when I received a short, anonymous and totally impersonal e-mail from an unnamed editor in the Shouts & Murmurs department politely rejecting my work. It was soon followed by two similar e-mails.

Some people might have taken the e-mails as bad news, but I considered them a good sign. So did a friend of mine who used to work at The New Yorker. We reasoned that whereas I’d once been ignored, now I was being noticed. Still unwanted, yes. But I had their attention, and I figured that must be worth something at a time when tens of thousands of competent, out-of-work  journalists are training to become dishwasher repairmen.

And then yesterday, like manna dropping from heaven, I received this breathtaking e-mail from The New Yorker:

Dear Mike,

We’re sorry to say your piece, “My Dinner With Andre,” wasn’t right for us, despite its good humor. Shouts pieces are normally between 800 and 1500 words in length. Thank you for allowing us to consider your work.

Best regards,
The Shouts Dept.

I’ve read this e-mail a dozen times. If it was written on paper, it would be badly smudged and rumpled by now, perhaps even a little tear-stained. It’s wonderfully short, a mere 45 words, but, as I see it, the e-mail is laden with meaning. For starters, somebody—I’ve no idea who, of course—at The New Yorker actually knows my name. I’m not just another faceless writer west of the Mississippi, I’m “Dear Mike.” Even more  encouraging, this person—perhaps an entire department!—apparently believes I exhibit “good humor.” That’s nice to hear when you’re trying to be funny, as I often am. Furthermore, the author of this e-mail is giving me subtle instructions on how to prepare a piece for publication in the magazine (“Andre” was too short). Not only that, they’re thanking me for allowing them to consider my work, as if I’m doing them a favor instead of the other way around.

With my spirit renewed, I now plan to inundate the magazine with an endless stream of 800- to 1,500-word articles, any one of which is certain to be worthy of publication in The New Yorker.

And you can be sure I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Also, Karen, if you’re out there somewhere, I hope you subscribe to The New Yorker and remember my name when you see it in print in their fine pages. Because while you might be happy, I guarantee that you missed at least one excellent opportunity in life.

Dear Dr. Teen Advisor,

My baby boy, who is only 14, says he wants to start dating girls. But we feel he’s still too young. There’s been a lot of arguing at our house as a result. Can you help?

Abject in Arvada

—————————————————————————–

Mrs. Cleaver thinks it's inappropriate for 14 year old boys to date. Unfortunately for Mrs. Cleaver, it's a new millenium.

Dear Abject,

Gee, there’s something about your “baby boy” language that makes Dr. Teen wonder if he’s dealing with a mother who’s smothering, a mother who’s grossly overprotective, or a mother who’s merely overbearing.

Listen, Mrs. Cleaver, I don’t know how things are out there in the backwoods of Colorado where men still roam the streets with six-guns on their hips and women spend their days baking fresh bread for dinner. But in most parts of the country, kids mature faster these days than you’d obviously like to admit. You ought to be aware of this, of course, but perhaps you were raised by the Amish, where the closest thing you got to a frank discussion about teen sex was a lesson on churning butter. How would Dr. Teen know?

Anyway, in the real world, where the rest of us live, most girls get their ears pierced when they’re infants, start wearing belly shirts at 8 and get their first tattoos by the time they’re 10. Boys, meanwhile, start ogling Hannah Montana when they’re about 9, wearing their pants at mid-thigh at the age of 10 and practicing rolling condoms onto bananas when they hit 11.

By the time most kids reach 12 to 14 years old, they start “going out,” which is teen code for making out in the back row of the movie theater while their oblivious parents share an appetizer and sip cocktails across the street at Chili’s. (As an aside–and I don’t want to go into too much detail here–but if you do go the movies, I strongly advise against sitting in the back row even if it’s the only row open in the entire theater; you never know what you might accidentally sit in.)

Anyway, it’s widely accepted in our society that pre-teens—or “tweeners” as they’re now called because it’s cuter–should be allowed to start dating, mostly because they’ve been exposed to so much crazy donkey sex on television and the Internet by then, it’s a pointless waste of time to argue over silly, meaningless, outdated words like “morals” and “chastity.” The cat’s been let out of the bag, it’s got claws and a bad attitude, and it’s hornier than hell.

The good news is that this means large swaths of the nation are finally catching up to a progressive way of life popularized long ago in the Deep South, certain parts of Utah and remote wooded areas of the Pacific Northwest. In those regions, many young’uns enter into wedded bliss by the time they’re 13 years old and immediately start thinking about raising kids of their own so their cousins will have somebody to “go out” with at the picture shows.

So let your baby boy go, mom! He’s already gone anyway, I guarantee it. Put an end to pointless arguments and start enjoying some much-needed peace and quiet in your home. Heck, who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy being a young grandmother more than you’d expected!

God Bless,

Dr. Teen Advisor

If you have a question for Dr. Teen Advisor, please contact him at Dr.T@TooManyMornings.com

Many experts believe it’s important for blog posts to be short.

I agree.

Let’s talk about potatoes—not because they’re particularly important, but because they’re not particularly important.

It’s Friday, after all, and I’d hate to burden anybody with something complicated and depressing, like the tiresome debate over national health care or rising unemployment rates. Besides, many of you are probably dying or getting laid off today and won’t have the time or energy to read a complicated news story while you’re signing bankruptcy forms or packing your coffee mug and photos of the kids into a cardboard box.

You might take potatoes for granted, but in Idaho they're practically worshipped as gods. (Photo courtesy of the Idaho Potato Commission.)

There are about 5,000 varieties of potatoes. They range from the buttery Yukon Gold and thin-skinned Jersey Royal, to the drought-resistant Désirée and the Purple Peruvian, which sounds like a star of the World Wrestling Federation or a second-rate comic book hero, but actually is a succulent fingerling potato many chefs consider the “Gem of the Andes.”

About 99 percent of all cultivated potatoes are descendants of a subspecies indigenous to south-central Chile, but they’re eaten worldwide.

According to the International Potato Center—I know, I can’t believe there’s an International Potato Center, either—Europeans consume the most potatoes on the planet, more than 189 pounds per person a year. To be perfectly fair, though, Europeans sound much less piggy if you use their goofy metric system, because then the number drops to 86 kilograms per person a year. Maybe it’s Europe’s reliance on the metric system that enables it to afford universal health care. Regardless, Americans lag far behind Continental potato eaters, downing only about 139 pounds of potatoes per person a year, even though the vast majority of U.S. citizens actually look like large sacks of potatoes wearing polo shirts and sneakers.

Still, about 26 percent of Americans consider the potato their favorite vegetable, right behind corn at 19 percent and, almost unbelievably, broccoli at 17 percent, according to a recent survey by the Idaho Potato Commission (IPC).

And what did the IPC find out about how we prefer our potatoes to be prepared?

I would’ve guessed French fried, but it turns out 28 percent of us prefer them mashed, 25 percent baked, 20 percent as French fries, 10 percent as home fries or hash browns, 5 percent as potato chips and 12 percent as “other.”

That “other” category is a little mysterious to me.

Missionary Henry Spalding not only looked like an early prototype for Mr. Potato Head, in 1837 he planted the first potatoes in Idaho, America's leading grower of spuds. (Photo courtesy of the Idaho Potato Commission.)

I’ve wasted a considerable amount of time thinking about “other” ways to prepare potatoes, and the only things that leap to mind are potato latkes and potatoes au gratin. It’s hard to believe that on any given night of the week 12 percent of Americans sit down to enjoy potato latkes or potatoes au gratin, both of which are kind of a pain in the ass to make. But, hey, it’s also hard to believe most Americans think national health care will lead to certain suffering and death at the hands of baby-killing, gun-banning socialist freedom haters, even though we’re the only industrialized nation on the entire earth that doesn’t guarantee basic health care for its residents, even to people who can’t get jobs.

But I digress.

We were talking about potatoes, and potatoes are mostly fun-loving vegetables that don’t seem to give a shit about special-interest politics or rampant corporate greed in the health-care industry.

No, potatoes enjoy a solid reputation for being carefree party animals. You’ve probably seen them at parties yourself—that social butterfly Chips ‘N Dip parading around on the arm of the notorious drinker Loaded Baked Potato, or slap-happy German Potato Salad hangin’ with good ol’ goes-along-to-get-along Mashed Potatoes and Gravy. And who could ever forget the life of the party, Mr. Potato Head, who was pretty much my best friend growing up? Me and Mr. H had hours of fun together, talking and making funny faces, or trying on silly hats.

But when it comes to serious potato leadership, America looks to the great state of Idaho.

A Presbyterian missionary named Henry Harmon Spalding first planted potatoes in Idaho’s fertile volcanic soil in 1837 as part of a project to teach the Nez Perce Indians how to grow enough food to provide for themselves. Apparently, the hapless Nez Perce had lived off the land there for hundreds of years and were starting to get really hungry when the white man finally arrived to save them from starvation. Today, either because of, or despite Spalding’s curious resemblance to a potato and success at growing them, Idaho’s farmers proudly harvest about 11 billion pounds of potatoes a year, or enough fill 500 NFL football fields with spuds.

It’s a good thing, too, because without potatoes, Idaho would be more overlooked than Delaware, which hasn’t done anything newsworthy since the American Revolution, and is hardly even considered a state anymore.

Even with potatoes, most people never give Idaho a second thought unless they’re forced to drive through it on their way to have fun in interesting states like Washington, Oregon, Nevada or California. And then they’re miserably unhappy, because driving through Idaho is a bitch.

Idaho is huge, large enough to fill thousands upon thousands of NFL football stadiums, and it takes a long, long time to get across it. Even at 95 mph, you feel like you’re moving at the speed of, well, a potato. Not that I ever drive that fast in Idaho, mind you. I have too much respect for their state troopers, who are probably the nation’s friendliest and most-skilled law-enforcement officers, a statement I hope they remember if I’m ever caught absentmindedly flying down I-84 just outside of Boise with a half-eaten bag of French fries in one hand and an open packet of ketchup in the other.

Thanks to the Idaho potato, though, many high school students can still recall Idaho’s name, even if they have some trouble identifying it on a map.

Mr. Kotter, pointing at U.S. map: “Name that state, Vinnie.”

Vinnie: “Uh, Delaware?”

Kotter: “No, Vinnie, that’s Idaho.”

Vinnie: “You da ho? Hah!”

Kotter: Heavy sigh.

Vinnie: “No, I’m jus’ playin’ youse, Mr. Kotter. Idaho’s da tater state.”

Potatoes saved Idaho from being completely ignored like Delaware, which hasn't done anything newsworthy since the American revolution. (Logo courtesy of the Idaho Potato Commission.)

Students are very familiar with Idaho’s leading export, the Russet Burbank potato, because it’s the king of all potatoes–large, brown skinned, and with a relatively high sugar content that makes it ideal for slicing and turning into French fries.

If you haven’t tried French fries, by the way, I highly recommend them. French fries are perhaps the most delicious way to eat potatoes, and they’re available at many fine restaurants.

If you can’t afford to eat at fine restaurants because you lost your job today, however, you can still get terrific fries at fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Just don’t eat them too quickly. I wouldn’t want you choke on one and end up taking an unexpected ride to the emergency room, especially not if you have go through Idaho to get there. That would take forever, even with sirens and lights. Besides, now that you don’t have a job, you probably don’t have health insurance, either, and a just one trip to the hospital could drain what’s left of your savings, forcing you to live on the streets or simply die to avoid creditors.

I mean, hey, potatoes are terrific, but they’re not that important.