Vote

 When I turned eighteen, I did not rush right out and register to vote. That was the summer of 1980, and I had talked myself into a place where my vote wasn't going to matter. My youthful idealism had only lasted as long as what I look back on now as my youth. I had become disillusioned by the seventies and watching a horrible president resign from office only to spend his waning years staring out on the beaches of San Clemente and obfuscating with David Frost. The battle may have been won, but the ascension of Ronald Reagan suggested that the war was far from over. 

I surrendered. 

At least I did when it came to the national scene. Instead, I turned my gaze outward. I joined Amnesty International, mostly because of my own conscience, but Bruce Springsteen's involvement made it much cooler. The eighties were a bit of a blur. College and all the distractions that it held for me kept me from recognizing my adult responsibilities. 

It was 1988 when my conscience came calling in the form of a very good friend who would eventually get her degree in political science. She poked me with a question about political prisoners in other countries, and asked how I could reconcile my involvement on their behalf if I wasn't willing to participate in the very act that so many of those souls in foreign prisons had fought, and in some cases, died for. 

It turned out that the very thing that I thought made me deep was actually making me shallow. My first ballot was cast for Michael Dukakis. If you don't remember him, don't feel bad. Keeping track of the also-rans in politics is a little like tracking the shipments of those T-shirts and hats that they print up in advance for the losing team for the Super Bowl. 

You may have guessed that tasting defeat on my first trip to the ballot box might leave me bitter and resigned. It had the opposite effect. When I finally backed a winner in William Jefferson Clinton, I knew that this would be no walk in the park. Patton Oswalt has said that no matter how great you feel about the person for whom you vote, they will always eventually find a way to disappoint you. 

But that's the game we're all in. Together. 

On this Election Day, celebrate while we still can. Flex that muscle. Be a part of the future. 

Catching Up

 I miss my mom. 

I miss Maddie. 

I miss Darren. 

This is a crowded month when it comes to remembering those passed. My mother went away in the middle of October, 2022. Our best and forever dog shuffled off her mortal coil back in October of 2013. Darren started this preoccupation with autumn back on October 24, 1985. 

If you're keeping score, that's more than forty years of flinching every time the page on the calendar features pumpkins and falling leaves. 

I know. There are so many other folks out there who have lived lives affected by so much more loss. This is only exacerbated by my habit of writing celebrity obituaries here on my memories vault. The departure of the funniest person I ever knew left a hold in my comedy firmament that remains to this day. Not that my mother and our dog weren't hysterical in their own particular idiom. My world requires a good sense of humor. 

Which is odd that all these years later I still find my metaphorical tongue searching for that metaphorical missing tooth. My mother had lost both her parents by the time she was a young mother of one son, with two more waiting in the wings. I never knew my mother's parents. My mother did get a chance to meet both Darren and Maddie. 

That bit of cosmic tag gives me some pleasure. My mom also got to spend some quality time with my son as well. This gives me some sense of completion, though I don't know if we ever finished our marathon gin rummy game. Our last hand played together did not include a settling of points from the previous sixty years. 

I expect this is part of how I will spend my own time in eternity. 

Not that eternity has any time.

Which is fine, since there seems to be a lot of catching up for me to do. With Maddie, Darren and Mom. 

Danny

 When I showed up to my freshman dorm, I had a number of DEVO albums in my record collection along with an Elvis Costello record and a couple by the Cars. Little did I know that I was on my way to earning my sobriquet, New Wave Dave. 

The year was 1982, and the world was just beginning to embrace punk's nerdy cousin, which they referred to as New Wave. It was into this world that I found myself plunged via a hallway full of nerdy young men whose own music tastes spurred my own record renaissance. Across the hall I heard Talking Heads. Four doors down someone else was playing The Pretenders. Most of us laughed at the idea of Flock of Seagulls, whom we referred to as "that haircut band," but that didn't keep us from listening to "I Ran" over and over again. I found myself in a time and place where I could find the new Thomas Dolby album being played right after Def Leppard. It was magic. 

Somewhere in there, I encountered the kid at the end of the hall brandishing an album whose cover art was enough to pique my interest: Only A Lad. It was the first full-length release from a band called Oingo Boingo. Listening to it was its own special treat for me. It was fast, and dark, and witty, and you could dance to it. My fascination with this new entry into sounds I needed to hear was confirmed when I purchased my own copy of the album and proceeded to wear it out. Imagine my excitement when that summer rolled around and their second release, Nothing To Fear, appeared in my local record shop. If you can't imagine it, just substitute your appreciation of a musical birthday cake that you could play over and over. 

Thus began a love affair that would continue through the 1980s, highlighted by the release of Dead Man's Party in 1985. I have written before of the eerie confluence of events that surrounded the appearance of this record in my life. The songs from this record will forever be linked to my personal introduction to tragedy, and that connection continues to this day. 

This past Friday, my wife and I went out to San Francisco to see the lead singer and composer of all those songs from the eighties: Danny Elfman. Some forty years after the events I have described here I was sitting in a crowd, listening to the seventy-three year incarnation of this man who continues to go by the possibly diminutive "Danny." I was pleased at how well he and his music had aged, and glad that there were some new tunes to round out the evening. It wasn't just an "oldies" show. 

Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed that. I'm a bit of an oldie myself, these days. 

It was fast, and it was loud, and I felt like dancing and singing along. I did more of the latter than the former, and for me it was over far too quickly. Would I have to wait another forty years?

New Wave Dave hopes not. 

Lessons Learned

 My mother kept a Tootsie Roll bank in her dresser. She put quarters into it whenever she found a few laying around. This was her stake. On the relatively few occasions that she found herself in Las Vegas, this was the money she used. Exclusively on slot machines. She expected to lose her little nest egg twenty-five cents at a time. 

I understood that every game of "chance" that the kid down the street from me ran would end up in his favor. I learned not to bet on anything ever with my older brother as well. If there was a wager being made with either one of these two, I figured that the best choice was to keep my money in my pocket. 

Even if it was just a quarter. 

Much later in my youth, I was part of a crew that was sent to Las Vegas to install office furniture at Nellis Air Force Base. The fellows I travelled with decided to try and get to Sin City a day early so we could have some time to do the things that one does in Sin City. I wasn't interested in the casinos, given my predilection toward keeping my money in my pocket, but I did stroll down the strip to take in the sights. One of the sights I took in was, at high noon, every single light was on. No need to conserve here. No need for sales tax either. 

It was all paid for. And then some. 

Which is why I am currently kicking myself, metaphorically, for spending thirty dollars on an NFL "Survivor Pool" being run by a friend. I have participated in a number of seasons of Fantasy Football, but never for money. It was always for that odd sense of vicarious community that it invites. All of the vagaries of the current professional football season left me bewildered not only in our friendly no-money league, but abruptly out of thirty dollars when I chose the Green Bay Packers to beat the Atlanta Falcons this week. 

It seemed like a sure thing. 

It wasn't. 

I forgot the lessons I learned all those years ago. Chief among them, never bet on anything that is not in your personal control. Not suiting up for Green Bay myself left me out of control. Which brings me to the other reminder from my mother's Tootsie Roll bank: Don't bet money you don't have. All of those ads that surround any and all sporting events on television inviting you to put up that pittance that you might have left over after buying a tankful of gas on the outcome of a game being played by a bunch of strangers, many of whom are millionaires already, and all of whom are prohibited by their employer from betting on sports. Which is essentially the case for NBA players. And then there's the strange tale of Pete Rose and Major League Baseball. 

I'll bet he never gets into the Hall of Fame. 

Through The Haze

 It's a little tough reckoning on things that are fifty years old. 

I know them. 

And what's more, I remember them. 

The pop culture in which I cut my trivia teeth was pervasive. Movies were not released in waves. New music appeared in the record store with regularity but not without warning. I will say this: It was easier to be the Beatles back then. They were the face of rock music, and therefore popular music lined up to mirror their presence. Television had a number of channels that might best be described as limited. The firehose we now experience as "streaming" did not exist. Summer reruns meant that you could comfortably go outside and do things other than stare at your cathode ray tube for a few months while networks crafted their New Fall Lineups. 

Cable TV and home video were initially repositories for "adult entertainment." My older brother and I shared a habit for reading the new issue of TV Guide from cover to cover in hopes of memorizing the schedule, anticipating those opportunities to stay up late to see that Universal horror movie that we had missed the last time it made the rotation on our local station. 

Back to the top forty. There was one. Just one. Fifty years ago was fertile ground for the beast known as The One Hit Wonder. If you were going to put out an album, chances were that you might be asked to put more than one song on it. This meant that the one song that was totally worth our attention would get played on the radio while the rest of that slab of vinyl would go unscratched. The world wide capacity to spread media these days allows even the trifles to have a longer lifespan than "Afternoon Delight." 

Though I should point out that it was during those dark times some fifty years ago that allowed the Starland Vocal Band not only to have a number one hit, but opened the door for the members of that group to host their own summer replacement variety show. 

It was a simpler time. 

I didn't say it was a better time. 

Wishing

 You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. 

I want Three Wishes Toy Store. The crowded aisles stuffed and overflowing with things that I could only imagine having in my toy box. GI Joes. Hot Wheels. Models of tanks and planes and warships. This was the destination my brothers and I patiently awaited when it was time to head down to Crossroads Mall to buy school clothes. This was the scene of my ugly reality check when, as a child, I was taken there by my grandmother and told I could get "anything I wanted." I was alternatively admonished by my mother before I went that my grandmother was "not made of money." 

Alas, those Three Wishes were of limited duration, and it was bulldozed along with the rest of Crossroads Mall so that they could erect a very similar structure with a number of different chain stores with the inspired name of 29th Street. Only this new mall would allow you to walk outside from store to store. 

Pretty ingenious. 

Do that dream died. It was eventually replaced by Toys R Us, a warehouse-sized compendium of all things toy. It was at one time a litmus test for friends of ours. If you could hang for an hour or two walking the aisles of Toys R Us with us, you were worthy. As my son grew to relative maturity, we would often take a side trip to what had become "his" toy store just to look. "Need it. Got it. Need it. Got it." 

Then, about a decade ago, Toys R Us closed all of its retail stores and filed for bankruptcy. They could not compete with online sales. But that meant there was no place to go to test drive, to fondle, to covet. It wasn't the same thing. 

But now, the clouds are parting. With a new partner Toys R Us is opening one hundred twenty stores again, just in time for the holidays. 

Wait. "Just in time for the holidays?"

That means that these are essentially "pop-up" stores, with the focus on milking as many dollars from a toy-starved populace as possible before returning to its prior existence as a Bev-Mo. 

It's really hard to keep your inner child nourished in this world. 

Don't Worry About The Government

 I have written here before about how I used to get spooked by newspaper accounts of cattle mutilations. These fears sprang not so much from concern over the cows, since even back then my carnivorous predilection was already well-known, but rather for what might happen when these aliens or devil worshipers or alien devil worshipers ran out of cattle to mutilate. 

Would I be next?

Much in the same way I worried about being harassed by Big Foot. The humanoid beast who wandered the woods of the Pacific Northwest, not the monster truck. I was somewhat frequently found in the woods, but not in the Pacific Northwest. Still. What would happen when Big Foot's wandering grounds expanded because of some ecological malfeasance  and I would end up face to face with an unhappy Sasquatch because of some corporation's pollution distribution problem?

What if? 

Happily, it never occurred to me to worry that these two fears might merge and become great tall alien devil worshiping cattle mutilators skulking around the forests just outside my door. 

But since we're already talking about the devil, what ever happened to that other favorite seventies terror, The Devil's Triangle. This one bothered me greatly not because of my proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, but then again, I was not particularly concerned with geography when it came to arbitrary fears. 

I used to read accounts of airplanes and pleasure cruises that simply disappeared in a region off the coast of Bermuda that became synonymous with disappearing pleasure cruises and airplanes. GPS did not become available for civilian use until the 1980s, so that meant that once you drifted into this triangular region with just your wits and a compass that became instantly useless, you were very much on your own. Left to be devoured by great tall alien devil worshiping cattle mutilators patrolling the area in unidentified floating objects. 

As late as 2023, a French sailboat went missing in that bit of Caribbean geometry. Then again, the number of pilots, passengers, sailors and potential castaways that have travelled through this potentially hazardous zone of terror might suggest that we didn't have anything to worry about.

But that's just what those great tall alien devil worshiping cattle mutilators patrolling the area in unidentified floating objects would like you to think. 

Now, A Word

 If you know anything about me, you know how important television is to me. 

Not the appliance, necessarily, but rather the opportunity to sit in front of a torrent of sound and vision that seemingly has not beginning and no apparent end. 

A lot has changed since I started staring at cathode ray tubes back in the early sixties. My earliest recollection is the funeral procession of John F. Kennedy on the TV in that basement of my parent's house and the reflections it made on the tile floor. I am certain that I did not comprehend the gravity or social implications of what was taking place, but image was burned into my brain at a year and change of age. 

I have friends and acquaintances who will announce their conscious choice to go for periods of their lives without television. I know that one of the biggest challenges for my burgeoning brain was being deprived of video input for those long summers my family spent living in the mountains. Each trip down to our suburban base camp allowed me a brief fix of just about anything that was on when our chores were done and before the car was loaded for our retreat back up those winding roads. 

I cannot remember a time when my parents set any kind of limit on the hours I spent staring at our television. To the contrary: We were that family that had a set on wheels that could be rolled into the kitchen to be plugged in so as to distract us from any and all healthy unemotional conversations that might take place. This was not a concern, since there was plenty of conversation about just about everything all the time at my house. 

A lot of it was about what we had seen on television. 

All of this history is an introduction to the news that came to me last week via a forwarded email, initially received by my wife. "Beginning November 2, 2026, the current version of SkipMode, using the Skip Button on your TiVo remote, will no longer be available." In less than two months, I will no longer be able to avoid commercials with a mere flick of my thumb. We have been reassured that Tivo users will still be able to manually fast forward in that inexact way that harkens back to those days of VHS recordings of NBC's Must See TV lineup. Once upon a time, in a previous century, it was my wife's cleverness that brought Tivo into our lives based in large part for the capacity to skip those annoying ads. 

Much in the same way that I felt personally attacked by paying for Prime Video to load up commercials in and around the content I have already paid to stream into my home, I am curious as to just exactly how this is a consumer-driven decision, and how much is it a simple hostage situation?

So, my wife and I will shift our consciousness to becoming more appreciative of the art of television advertising. If we truly have no choice but to embrace the disruption we will do just that. Soon we will be cataloging favorite commercial breaks between shows that are merely getting in the way of our ads. Home Shopping Network and Infomercials will fill up our hard drives. 

And eventually they will have to carry us away to a quiet home in the mountains. Without a TV. 

A Look Into The Past

 I miss my mom.

This is true just about every day, but it was felt acutely by me last Saturday night. 

While flipping about the channel lineup on our television box, I landed as I often do on Turner Classic Movies. I did this as part of a routine that has me patrolling the hundreds of possible stations by leapfrogging over the flotsam and Hallmark to land on the islands of movie outlets that will still offer us commercial-free watching. TCM is an oasis of sorts since their internal promotions are generally for their own extensive library of films without spending too much time promoting Bill Maher or a bunch of dragons. It is also where my mother spent a great deal of time in her golden years, watching the movies of her youth.

On this particular evening, my wife was feeling just a tad out of sorts, and so as we finished up dinner I rolled on down the dial to that spot where I figured we might find some quiet satisfaction. 

We did. 

Cover Girl, starring Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth had just begun. The all-singing, all-dancing feature from 1944 was just the ticket for pushing the current event malaise away, returning us to those days of yesteryear when movies were escape. Showbiz was a hard-luck chance that every boy and girl was willing to endure for that one chance at stardom. And love. Rita and Gene danced and sang in glorious Technicolor to songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. It was, as the name of the channel suggested, a classic. 

I longed for the opportunity to share our experience with my mother, who would have been able to supplement the TCM host's rapturous memories of the production. She would have been so happy to have shared her own account of that bygone era, and remind us all of "the good old days." 

When it was over, after a quick break, Fred Astaire joined Ms. Hayworth in another musical romp called You'll Never Get Rich. By this time, my wife was transfixed. Her mood had escaped the cellar from which it had been dwelling, and she went to bed with a goofy smile. 

I could thank the folks at TCM, but I would also like to appreciate the tutelage of my mom, who opened that door for me so very long ago. 

I miss her. 

Gravity Isn't Just A Good Idea, It's The Law

 Forty years give or take a month ago, I experienced what has become over time a defining moment for me as a human being. 

I jumped out of a swing. 

Many of you have heard this story before. It is significant in the annals of "Why Doesn't Dave Drink?" Because I did. 

A lot. 

And on that one particular July night in the year of our lord 1986, I polluted my brain chemistry enough that the relatively simple act of jumping out of a swing, which I had been doing since I was a small child in a variety of settings, caused me to question not just my place in the universe but also my participation in the prevailing culture. 

Whew. 

That was the first week, anyway. It would still be another few years of bacchanalia for yours truly as the laws of physics seemed to need my attention as did the status quo. Jumping out of that swing meant that I would spend another semester in college to complete the fringes of what would become my Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing. It would still be those few more years figuring out that knee surgery was probably the least intrusive way that I could have received the message: Slow down. 

I wasn't listening then. 

I'm listening now. Each time I have to manage my hop down from a set of stairs or the dull ache that comes when the weather changes I think back to that night and wonder why I needed to live so close to the edge for so long. Nothing that I couldn't bounce back from. Not back in the day. The payback, as it turns out, came much later. 

George Bernard Shaw once suggested that youth was wasted on the young. I'm guessing there was a swingset somewhere in George's past. 

Just Listen

There was not a lot of rock and roll to listen to on the radio when I was a mere slip of a lad.  I have very vivid memories of calling the request line at KIMN to beg them, at my older brother's insistence, to play "Yellow Submarine" one more time. KIMN was 950 on your AM dial, because what else was there? If you lived in the Denver Metro Area in the sixties, and I did, if you wanted to hear pop music, you listened to KIMN. 

Back then, the only people listening to FM radio were beatniks and hooligans of some sort. It wasn't until the mid 1970s that real rock and roll came to airwaves that I could access. There was a lot of fuzz out there on the dial, but if you twisted it all the way to the right, you would run into KBPI, and then KAZY, 105.9 and 106.7 respectively. 

If you were the safe, commercial type, you could feel comfortable listening to KBPI, who claimed to "rock the Rockies." You would get a steady diet of Bob Seger, REO Speedwagon and the occasional throwback to the Beatles and Stones. KAZY didn't have a lot of use for TV ads. They were out there on the edge of the dial, playing Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Rush. For my money, KAZY rocked a little harder than their neighbor. I liked to imagine the DJs at KBPI were probably tossing back a few beers while they were playing music for the masses. The jocks at KAZY were probably toking up during those Album Side Weekends.

No matter, for my purposes when one went to commercial, I would flip on over to the other until my needs for background music for my teenage ambitions were no longer being met. And every so often, when I was feeling the need for something more melodic or heaven help me romantic, I might spin all the way down to 103.5 for a little bit of the softer sounds of Q103. This is also where I might on occasion find Doctor Demento's show on Sunday nights, only to return to my home base of KAZY to start my week. 

And somewhere in there around the turn of the decade, my music tastes changed, or rather they expanded. I was listening to DEVO and Elvis Costello and Jimmy Buffett and Queen and all sorts of things in between. There was no format that fit my palate, so I began programming my own playlists with the aid of cassette tapes. I used this machinery to inculcate my friends and even my mother, imagining that I was providing a service that FM and AM could not. My car radio was supplanted by my cassette player. 

Somewhere in there, I got old. I started listening to a station out of Boulder, 97.3 KBCO. Their free-form programming eventually became packaged and sold across the country as "World Class Rock." When I landed in Oakland, I was surprised to discover that just across the Bay a station called KFOG had bought that package and was spreading it across Northern California. A hop skip and a jump up the dial from them was the "Modern Rock" of Live 105, KITS. Now I had my comfort music like Barenaked Ladies on one channel and scarier stuff like Jane's Addiction on the other. 

Eventually, I stopped listening to the radio. Because it was predictable. Because of commercials. Because I didn't know what I wanted anymore. 

Now, every so often, I find myself seeking out a station that I can stand for that trip across town. The one that won't make me sad. There are a lot of those. 

What We Hold Dear

 The focus this summer has been unburdening. Thirty-plus years of living in the same spot has allowed us to acquire and maintain an extraordinary amount of stuff. We were able to offload a great deal of our more useful appearing material that had become detritus without actually breaking down. It just sat in boxes and plastic tubs, on shelves and in drawers, in the garage and in the basement. 

The actual debris was simple enough. We are fortunate to live in an area that excels in reusing and recycling. We loaded up the back of the car and took our mess to someone who knew exactly what to do with it. With a good conscience, we left it with the experts. Creating empty spaces only encouraged us to make more. The garage in particular became a favorite destination for those asking the musical question, "Why are we holding on to this?" There were some faint responses along the lines of, "Well I was going to..." but that was not enough to slow the gale force of our cleaning storm. 

Then, at last, there was calm. I became aware of just how full our shelves and cupboards continue to be. In particular, I was stuck staring at the two pharmacy cabinets that stand on either side of our living room TV. The drawers of those cabinets are stuffed full of my CD collection. 

You remember CDs, right? Just after LPs and cassettes, slightly before MP3s? 

I love music. I always have, ever since my older brother handed me his used 45 of Elvis singing "In The Ghetto." 45s were little records with one song on either side. Elvis was a really cool guy until he suddenly wasn't. 

After Elvis, I kept collecting music. First on vinyl, then a brief flirtation with 8 tracks, and a lengthy love affair with cassettes created from those albums I kept filed carefully in my room. Then in crates that I hauled from my parents' house, to college, to a variety of apartments, then across country to my new home in California. 

It was long about this time that the standard began to shift from those bulky records to the compact disc. This also coincided with my getting sober, and suddenly I found that I had plenty of extra cash to spend at expanding my music collection. At one point, it became necessary to jettison all those plastic jewel cases to conserve space, and all those discs were slipped carefully along with their covers and liner notes into clear sleeves. 

Alphabetically, of course. 

Then music began to stream into my house, and all those relics called "physical media" became relics. Ironically, this changeover occurred right about the time that we acquired our first car with a CD player. 

We sold or gave away a ton of stuff in the past three weeks. But those twin towers of CD music remain, partly out of stubbornness, and partly out of a tribute to the purchasing power of sobriety. 

And somewhere in there is a disc with Elvis singing "In The Ghetto." 

Shazbot!

 What fresh outrage will the news bring me today?

How about the headline that threatens to blow the lid off "Why ABC Canceled Mork & Mindy After Just Four Seasons?"

If you have no memory of the spinoff series created by the appearance of the late Robin Williams on an episode of Happy Days, I wonder if you would call the era in which we are currently living as the Golden Age" of television. This might be especially true if you were to know that it was Happy Days, which ran for eleven seasons and was the progenitor of the phrase "Jumped The Shark." That particular episode was aired in the beginning of Happy Day's fifth season, making it all the more curious how that show hung on for another six years, in spite of having The Fonz literally jump a shark on water skis. 

To be clear, the shark was not on water skis. The Fonz was. 

But I digress. 

Mork, who had travelled to Earth previously and landed in Milwaukee where he battled tohis same "Fonz" character to a standstill, returned it our planet in what was then present day Boulder, Colorado. 

Yes, dear reader, you read that right: Boulder, Colorado. My home town. Each episode of Mork and Mindy began with a shot of Boulder Canyon and the University of Colorado, with Robin Williams cavorting with Pam Dawber in the city where I lived. What followed those credits was an explosion of comedic genius limited only by the format in which it was bound: prime time commercial sitcom. 

And here, I believe, I have answered the question posed by the headline. The rapid fire wit that was on display each Thursday night could not be contained in that half hour between commercials for Bufferin and Sanyo electronics. It was even more difficult when network executroids decided to shuffle the show around, moving it to Sunday nights. Is it any wonder that Robin Williams felt compelled to flee to Hollywood not long after those Milwaukee brewery gals Laverne and Shirley took their show there in an effort to shore up lagging ratings. Laverne and Shirley managed to run for eight seasons. Twice as many as Mork got. 

In the end, I was left with my memories and my rainbow suspenders. Yes, I really had rainbow suspenders. I watched as Mister Williams went on to bigger and better things, but I still missed those anarchic Thursday half hours where he stretched the bounds of TV comedy, and frightened network censors and executroids. 

I miss him today. 

Monuments

 Fifteen years ago, my family made a trip to Washington DC. It was kind of a make good on the trip that my son didn't go on when he was in middle school. We spent a few days getting to know our nation's capital, seeing the sights and soaking up the patriotism. We took public transit into the city from our friends' house where we were staying and when we came up into the Union Station stop, I took in the view that Jefferson Smith beheld upon his arrival in the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. My wife and I sometimes talk about my "Jimmy Stewart moments," those times when I am feeling especially earnest. This was one of those times. 

We were there ostensibly to fill in the void in my son's patriotism, but we ended up filling my red, white and blue bucket as well. Standing outside the gates of the White House, with the mild certainty that across that lawn inside was the man to whom I gave my vote twice to be President of the United States, gave me a satisfaction that I can barely describe. It felt right. 

As we meandered around the museums and monuments, I took full measure of the sights I was witnessing. I had made a similar trip when I was much younger with my brothers and parents, but my post-Watergate cynicism kept me from fully appreciating the grandeur I was seeing. After two terms of hope and change, I was ready to pay tribute. 

The following day, we set ourselves the task of the Smithsonian Institute, but first I declared that we needed to stop by the National Archives to see what all the fuss was about this Declaration of Independence. My wife and son and I spent the early afternoon of July 4 that year standing in line for just a quick glimpse. As the day wore on, we found ourselves walking out onto the National Mall just about dusk. We sat down on the grass and proceeded to watch a fireworks display like I can't recall ever seeing before or since, with the Washington Monument in the background. 

Which made me feel all the worse for those tourists who found themselves in a similar place this past weekend but came away with a much different experience. The magic that swept up Jimmy Stewart and yours truly wasn't available this Fourth of July, partly because of climate change and perhaps the gods anger with the way things are these days. 

I hope for all of our sakes that it is not gone forever. 

Bad Reputation

 I am not what you might call a "joiner." I tend to assiduously follow the assertion made by Groucho Marx who said, "I would never be a member of a club that would have me as a member." Groucho made this case when he turned down a membership to the storied entertainers' group, The Friars Club. This did not keep him from attending the occasional party, especially the celebrity roasts held frequently by this showbiz consortium. 

I joined my high school marching band for essentially the same reason Groucho hung around the Friars Club: for the laughs. 

When I started playing tuba, it was with the intent of being part of its somewhat legendary offshoot, the Pep Band. This required that I be part of the marching band, since membership to the Pep Band was limited to those who played a brass or percussion instrument and were a part, in good standing, of that larger ensemble. Having charted my older brother's path on a similar trajectory I understood that there was a faction of that bigger group that existed, known at that time as "the band baddies." These were individuals who took up a position just outside the emotional center, known as "the band goodies." This worked well in my mind as the acronym "BG" made it easy back in the late seventies to create a distance between myself and anyone called Bee Gees. 

Showing up in early rehearsals with the same last name as my brother who served as drum major in his senior year but never bothered to cowtow to that inner circle, preferring instead to lead from a distance that kept him from joining what he rightly felt was a bit of a cult, with the band director at its center. I traced much of that same trajectory when it was my turn to put on the uniform and walk in step, always with the intent that this was my way of being in the Pep Band. 

I have written here on occasion about the experience of being in the "cool part" of a group that was not considered cool. There was a level of acceptance that I enjoyed by being part of that bigger group that allowed me to have that team feeling that others get from playing varsity sports. I gave my all to the paramilitary program that our band director was laying out, but I kept my distance from the sycophants who spent their free periods in the director's office. 

Instead I kept my distance, hanging out in the practice rooms down the hall. I realize now that this distance seemed like a safe one, but it only kept me mildly insulated. I can see that I was not the daring rebel that I presumed myself to be. I was there to play in a band. On occasion I marched in step with those next to me in straight lines, just for the chance to dress up in costume and play music much faster and louder than we might and for just a while, we weren't inside the lines. 

As noted previously, I didn't make it to the end of my senior year as pep band president. As it turns out, the faculty and staff of my high school had a pretty effective way of shutting me down. I wasn't really in charge. I just got to spread my band id around for a while until things got uncomfortable. In my later years I wonder if I couldn't have just gone along and stuck with the program. I don't mind when a Bee Gees song gets played in my presence anymore. I'm proud of the years I spent in band, in and out of line. 

I guess I wasn't that bad after all. 

Comfortable

 Let's start with an easy one: Just about any sandwich someone makes for you. 

That's comfort food. 

Another seemingly universal component of this corner of the world's diet is the plate of crackers and ginger ale brought to you when you were sick in bed by your mother. 

A great deal of the food I was served by my mother qualified as comfort food. I grew up in a household where mom spent an hour or two each day in the kitchen, preparing a meal for my father, my brothers and me. It was a casserole-based menu that kept us boys running to the kitchen most nights, and I wish now that I had paid more attention to the recipes that passed by in front of us. 

I know that they were written down. I remember the tin box that served as her guide. Filled with three by five cards penned with her cramped but impeccably neat handwriting, the exact details of which were known primarily to herself and the occasional family friend who wanted to swap meal ideas for their hungry brood. 

I have never eaten a bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Not all by itself, but I know that the magic my mother performed in the kitchen on a regular basis had me ingesting gallons of the stuff through combinations of chicken and tuna and noodles and rice that made us come back for more. 

Most nights.

There were those dinners that turned out to be favored by one of my brothers, and I would patiently wade through those because I could expect with a solid degree of certainty that tomorrow night would be one of my favorites. 

Add to this steady stream of dinners the very unique and simple pleasure of buttery cinnamon toast on the occasional chilly morning. And the cakes. And the cookies. The output from my mother's kitchen would have had you believe that she was chained to the stove all day every day, but she managed to find time to escape to the living room on regular occasions to play piano and read books and magazines like they were the fire stoking the furnace of her mind. 

And occasionally, she might run across a recipe. 

And her legend grew. 

She also made a pretty amazing tuna fish sandwich. 

Wheels

 I am glad my son got to ride a Big Wheel at his preschool. As a matter of fact, Big Wheels were such a big deal at my son's preschool that eventually the T-shirts they sold for fundraising came with a picture of one emblazoned on the back. Anyone who spent any amount of time there knew the routine: all the various cycles and scooters would be rolled out to the top of the hill behind the school, where kids would take turns rolling at what seemed like incredible speeds for the toddlers and the parents charged with watching them via the co-op management program. But the bottom line, literally, was that if you rode a Big Wheel all the way down the hill, you would of course roll it back up to the top. 

This was the world into which my son grew. A co-op preschool that honored both speed and personal responsibility. It is where I first gathered in the expression, "Use your words." This admonition has served me well in my elementary education career, as well as a great many of my adult relationships. It was okay to be mad. It was okay to be sad. It was okay to share those feelings. It was not okay to take those feelings out on others. 

Our son, an only child, was gifted with an immediate sea of friends, some of whom remain close to him even as they approach middle age. 

Imagining a world where the philosophy of those formative years could be shared with every child in the city of Oakland, the state of California, the United States. A world full of humans who learned to share, to cope with disappointment, to belong to a community. It gives me pause and it makes me happy to remember that we gave this to our son all those years ago. 

Life got so much more complicated once he landed in kindergarten. He missed those rides down the hill on a Big Wheel. It's probably what brought him eventually to the purchase of a motorcycle of his own. He knows that if he gets all the way to the bottom of the hill it's his job to get it back to the top again. 

And to be properly insured. 

What Happens When Non-Stop Flights Stop?

 “We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased global operations. All Spirit flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available.” This is how travelers were greeted at the Spirit Airlines counter in Terminal A at LaGuardia Airport. A cardboard sign in front of vacant terminals, just below a list of cancelled flights. 

This past Saturday, one of America's pioneers in budget air travel closed up shop, leaving thousands of travelers stranded across the country in various locales with pending refunds for trips they never quite finished. 

I felt a great deal of empathy for these folks as I was once on the receiving end of an airline going under, not the sort of thing you hope to hear about a company that is supposed to fly over things. My family was on an elaborate vacation to Mexico City and eventually Acapulco with our choice of carrier being Braniff, the airline with the whimsically painted planes. We were jet setters, with my older brother's junior high Spanish as our key to travel south of the border. 

Except Braniff chose this moment in time to have a little financial hiccup. Once we landed in Mexico City, it became apparent that due to circumstance beyond their control, they would be unable to bring us back. A corporate restructuring was taking place somewhere in Texas, and we were told that we would have to find our own way from there. 

Keeping in mind this was a long time before things like cell phones and Al Gore's Internet, so all of the communications needed to make these transactions were done with pay phones and garbled interactions at ticket counters with employees who may or may not have just lost their jobs. Suddenly the appeal of flying around in a great purple 727 had lost all its appeal, and all we really wanted was a way home. 

Eventually it was Mexicana Airlines that jumped into the breach in which we found ourselves. They picked us up and got the five of us where we were headed, and eventually safely back to Estados Unidos. It pains me to tell you that Mexicana stopped flying in 2010, no doubt leaving some other families in the middle of their dream vacations, so they won't be there to pick up the pieces for the stranded travelers left in Spirit's wake. 

If man were meant to fly, he'd been given better customer service. 

Drawing On Experience

 I was in the fifth grade when I drew my first political cartoon. Okay, I did not draw it on my own, I had a collaborator. It was a mildly vicious caricature of Richard Nixon standing atop a pile of rocks over a pile of voters who had been crushed under the Landslide Victory of 1972. Two things strike me about that time: first the hollow eyes my associate drew on our cartoon president were something that would stick with me forever. Second, we had no idea at that moment just how much scarier things would get over the next two years, leading up to the resignation of that Landslide Winner. 

Before that time, I had been an observer of politics, spurred on by my parents' liberal bias and my own skeptical vision of the world that featured a war in Vietnam and a two-term Republican president who had promised to deliver safety to those he referred to as "the silent majority." My family was not part of that group, nor was most of the city in which I lived back then, Boulder, Colorado. I waded in the headwaters of the tie-dye river that flowed through Chicago to New York City and west to the shores of that mystical oasis known as The Bay Area. 

Fifty-plus years later I find myself picking up signs that I have drawn myself to participate in yet another No Kings Day march. I realized as I picked up my marker to try and capture the essence of the convicted felon who has usurped King Richard the Crook as The Worst President Ever that I had never attempted to capture the visage of The Orange Worst. 

And those hollow eyes came to mind. Lifeless eyes. And I remembered how hard it was for me to comprehend that Nixon had been elected to a second term. With those hollow eyes. And how we had re-elected another crook fifty years later. Then I thought of all the life that had been strained from the eyes of all those crushed voters by both these "presidents." 

My avocation as an editorial cartoonist and op-ed creator began back in those dark days, and somehow I have found something to write and draw about ever since. Something is always out there, waiting to rear its ugly head. I suppose I should be grateful that currently evil is so easy to spot. 

And to draw. 

Refrain

 I'm definitely getting old. I yet to fully embrace my father's weepiness. He used to cry every time he heard Stars and Stripes Forever. Or Amazing Grace. Or a car horn. 

Okay, that last one might be stretching it a bit, but as I grew up in that shadow, I was sometimes embarrassed by those displays of emotion and later I found that I could relate to them quite well. John Philip Sousa doesn't do it for me, but I do get a lump in my throat when I hear The Dropkick Muphys' version of Amazing Grace, and whenever I sing along with Mister Springsteen's Badlands I've got tears in my eyes at the end. 

"It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive."

My wife made a little framed bit of calligraphy that hangs over my desk reminding me of this sentiment. 

Because that's what all of that compressed joy is about. Feeling all the feels and holding on until it bubbles up to the surface. The wife that made me that nice memento will cry at just about any wedding. Reruns of Friends or The Big Bang Theory, it doesn't matter if she's seen them dozens of times before. Have a tissue ready for her. And you'll need a whole box if she goes to the nuptials of a friend or family in person. 

I will also admit that as I fill up with my own memories of fatherhood and domestic bliss, I feel that dam behind my own eyes tested. Looking back and remembering the way we were, or imagining how things might turn our for my son and his posse. They've started to marry off. And have kids of their own. 

In just a few weeks I will be going to see Bruce Springsteen in concert for the (checks notes) kerjillionth time. I will make a point of standing between my wife and my son who will be there with me. In my heart I know that my father will be getting all misty as he watches me sing along with the Boss. 

It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.