Category Archives: Mele’s Musings

The World According to My Dad

For Father’s Day, I thought I would share some of my father’s sayings and pearls of wisdom.

As the oldest child, I have been exposed to these the longest of my siblings and thus they are part of my DNA.

What follows is a blend of Borscht Belt kitsch and Old World philosophy.

Think of it as the World According to My Dad.

About his mental health:

I’m not well you know.

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Bad jokes:

You know why electricity is cheaper in Lower Manhattan? It’s near the Battery.

When I die, there will be a sign outside our building and do you know what that sign will say? Apartment for rent!

I got called for a Charles Atlas ad. They want me to be the model for the “before” look.

You heard about the couple that planned to elope? The girl called it off at the last minute. You know how the guy knew? She threw a cantaloupe out the window.

If I go bald, I’ll just comb my eyebrows back.

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How can you tell the bride is pregnant at a wedding? The guests throw puffed rice.

(My mom emigrated from Germany in the 1960s): Winnie was sent here by her government to marry the smartest man in America. She failed in her mission.

I’m going bald because my brains are making my head grow.

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You look good. Who’s your undertaker?

How tall are you? Wow, I didn’t know they piled shit that high!

Italian 

Con la rosa arriva le spine. (With the rose comes the thorns.)

Basta! (Enough!)

Don’t be a scooch! (Pest/pain in the butt.)

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Ah, bah-fungoo!

It was really skeevatz. (Disgusting)

Stop being a gavone! (A pig/someone who is greedy about food.)

About food:

Are you going to eat that?

Are you going to finish that?

Let me just have a little taste.

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If you go home hungry, it’s your own fault. (Said after hosting a big holiday spread of food.)

Let me taste it first to make sure it’s not poison.

It would be a sin to let that go to waste.

What did you have to eat?

Just a touch…Whoa! That’s good.

Discipline:

(After giving me a smack in the head): That was for nothing. Imagine if you did something!

Reliving his Navy days:

Attention on deck!

All hands on deck.

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Philosophy:

I want you to have a clean living: No cigarettes, no booze and no women: It’s clean, but is it living?

The older I get, the less use I have for people.

You know what they say about marriage: The first 30 years are the roughest.

Tomorrow is another day.

Rome was not built in a day.

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You’re my favorite horse even if you’ve never won a race.

I like to keep a low-profile — by remaining horizontal.

What sins did you commit that you have to work here?

Remember, always shoot for 200 percent, this way if you fall 100 short, you will still have a hundred.

Getting old sucks. I don’t recommend it.

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My all-time favorite Christmas morning photo of my old man and one of my sisters, Lorraine.

Working in a job you don’t like is like taking sandpaper to your soul.

You know if I were not this crazy, your life would be boring.

And finally…

I’m proud of you buddy. Keep up the good work. Love you.

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Men Who Are Miserable, Join the Fight Against Shopping!

An Instagram account called “miserable_men” documents the silent suffering that is the scourge of all men: Shadowing their wives or girlfriends as they go shopping.

You know the scene I am talking about, or perhaps you have lived this nightmare yourself.

Your significant other wants you to go shopping at the mall, which means you sit at the edge of a raised display stand, sharing what little space you have with a mannequin, as she peruses the racks of clothes.

If you are really, really lucky, there is a bench somewhere you can park yourself and people-watch to kill time.

But to complete the humiliation, you are asked to hold the purse or handbag of your wife/girlfriend/partner while she ducks into a dressing room to “just try on a few things.”

Time passes as slowly as a turtle on Quaaludes. All the while you are trying not to make eye contact with your fellow man.

But members of our tribe will not judge you harshly. They will look at you and silently say a prayer of thanksgiving: “Dude, better you than me.”

I am relieved to say that my wife has not once ever asked me to go shopping with her for clothes. She is content to make a marathon solo bid for what she is looking for. She will make a strategic strike at a particular department store, scoop up dozens of outfits to try in one swoop and then get out.

And in further proof that she is a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Patience, she has gone shopping for clothes not only with me but with my two sons as well.

My late fiancée, on the other hand, was a shopper extraordinaire. A visit to the mall was like a hobby to her. She would eye the latest styles, check the feel of fabrics, look for sales and then bring an envelope full of coupons to the register.

I recall one time we were at the mall for eight straight hours. Yes, eight hours. Elephant pregnancies take less time.

Too many men are afflicted with SAD, Shopping Adjustment Disorder, as captured in the miserable_men Instagram account.

A report in The New York Daily News summed it up: “The feed features miserable men of all shapes and sizes — despondent dads, bummed-out boyfriends and even a couple of gloomy granddads — painstakingly waiting to escape from the insufferable purgatory that is the mall.”

This is why today I am founding an organization called CRITICAL MASS: Coalition of Responsible Individuals Taking Into Consideration Always Leading Men Against Superfluous Shopping.

We need to demand that outlet malls truly have outlets for men: Wet bars. Big TVs. Arcade games. Nap rooms.

Think of it as a daddy daycare where men could be dropped off for hours at a time.

Join with me and together we can raise our voices to ask the question that is burning on the lips of all men who are made to endure trips to the mall:

“Does this handbag I have to hold make me look fat?”

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Got Passion?

A scene in the movie “London Has Fallen” features the president and his trusted Secret Service agent, whose wife is pregnant with their first child.

The agent asks the president for advice about fatherhood and parenting.

You just need to keep two things in mind, the president replies: Teach your kid the Golden Rule and encourage them to pursue their passions in life.

That latter part really resonated with me.

When I was growing up, if I heard from my dad once, I heard a thousand times:

Follow your passions in life. Don’t be like your old man. A man who loves his job never works a day in his life.

And my favorite: “If you are happy diapering piss clams, diaper piss clams.” Forty years later I still have NO IDEA what he was talking about but I got his drift.

From about the time that I was 8 or 9, I wanted to be a newsman.

I had an avid interest in current affairs, a love for writing and a curiosity about the world.

I routinely would race down three flights of stairs from our apartment in the Bronx if I heard the fire trucks turning onto our street.

I’d write mock scripts, relying on accounts from the newspapers, and then tape myself on my cassette recorder pretending to be a television newscaster.

And when I got my very own camera — well! That opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. I took photos of crashes, blizzards and crime scenes.

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On one memorable occasion when I was about 11, my buddy told me there had been a shooting the night before about 20 minutes from where we lived.

We furiously biked to the scene, where we learned the car had been towed to our local police station.

We got to the station, and there it was in the garage: A blue car with bullet holes in the windshield and bloody bandages still on its hood.

I snapped a bunch of photos, which I still have.

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I never gave up on my pursuit of news as a career. Every opportunity I had to write, to learn or to network, I seized with both hands.

I earned a degree in journalism at New York University, and got an internship at what was then New York Newsday, working with some of the sharpest reporting minds of the time.

I mention all of this because of a 9-year-old girl in Selinsgrove, Pa., named Hilde Kate Lysiak. She publishes and reports for her own homegrown neighborhood newspaper and website, The Orange Street News.

She became a media sensation when she broke the news of a murder in her neighborhood and then responded to critics who questioned what a 9-year-old girl was doing covering killings.

In her video rebuttal, Hilde pointedly spoke back at those who suggested she should be playing with dolls or having tea parties instead.

What came across so strongly was that Hilde was passionately dedicated to her work.

She reminded me of myself at her age.

And 30 years into my career, I can say that passion has paid off.

I’ve come full circle in a way because I was able to write a story about Hilde as a staff reporter at The New York Times.

So you go, Hilde! Take it from me, whatever your passion is, never give up on it.

Microwaved Coffee and Other Food Fails

A sign in our kitchen reads: “If it walks out of the refrigerator, let it go.”

I cannot for the life of me imagine why that sign is there.

Ahem.

Ever since my wife and I first got together, my cooking and eating habits (lack thereof and abundance of, in that order) have been the source of rich commentary.

For instance, my wife was horrified — absolutely horrified — when she discovered that I would brew a pot of coffee and then each subsequent morning pour myself a mug of Joe and microwave it.

Within days, she had gotten a plastic coffee filter holder and filters to fit so that I could brew a fresh cup of coffee each morning.

See, the thing with me is that when it comes to food I want to avoid fuss — a four-letter word that begins with F-U and is just as profane.

For quite a while I lived by a recipe book — a term I will use generously — called “A Can, a Man, a Plan.”

It was put out by the same publishers as Men’s Health magazine and offered to simplify healthy meals.

For example, boil up some pasta, open a can of tuna fish, pour onto the pasta, sprinkle it with tomato sauce and shredded cheese and nuke in the microwave.

Presto!

Instructions so simple that even I could follow them. Plus, the meal hardly required much preparation and it was relatively nutritious.

I admire people who are adept in the kitchen and can follow recipes and cook up a storm.

Me?

I will bring into work 3-day-old salad that is seriously past its prime. When my wife Meg protests, I will usually just say with a dismissive wave of the hand, “Oh, it’s fine.”

Leftovers.

Food with freezer burn.

Food that is beyond its expiration (except for meat).

It’s all pretty much fair game for me.

If it passes the sniff test, I’m good.

So you can imagine how grateful and blessed I am to have Meg in my life. Among her abundance of fine qualities, she is an amazingly adept and adventurous cook. My dinners are flavorful and complex and never boring.

Of course, when she is away and I am left to my own devices, I will revert to my sorry ways and fix a bowl of oatmeal for dinner.

I recently bought a low-grade of turkey from the supermarket deli and when I tried to defend it as being equal to a brand name, such as Boar’s Head, Meg said to me: “I love you, but you are no judge.”

She’s right of course.

Well, now if you will excuse me, I have a cup of coffee to microwave.

A Visit to the Penis Museum

There has not been this much news coverage and public conversation about penises since Anthony Weiner’s campaign for New York City mayor flamed out over some too-revealing selfies.

Donald Trump’s allusion to his manhood — in no less a setting than a Republican presidential debate — and Hulk Hogan’s recently concluded trial against Gawker (“Hulk Hogan lied about his penis size”) propelled penises into people’s living rooms and into water cooler chatter.

So I feel it is my current-events duty to tell you about our visit to what is billed as the world’s only penis museum.

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I say “our” because my wife and I visited.

During our honeymoon.

Yeah, I know, I’m just a hopeless romantic.

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My wife Meg checking out the goods.

Here’s the background:

About 30 miles from the Arctic Circle in the fishing village of Húsavik (population 2,200) is the Icelandic Phallological Museum.

It is housed in a non-descript two-story building. There is no hint about what is inside except for perhaps the giant wooden phallus standing sentry outside.

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The museum has a collection of more than 200 penises and “penile parts” (ouch!) that belonged to almost all of the land and sea mammals found on Iceland.

Among those on display are ones from a polar bear, seals, walrus and 17 different kinds of whales.

I’ve got to say that I’ve never given much thought to the male anatomy of mammals but this was truly eye-opening.

And let’s just say that some mammals are quite, um, gifted.

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Sure, the museum is a bit of gimmick (I’ll leave it to your imagination about the souvenirs on sale) but still, it was genuinely informative and certainly unique.

Years after our visit there in 2010, I heard of a documentary called “The Final Member” about the museum curator’s quest for a donation from a homo sapien.

The movie took some peculiar turns.

For instance, there were two donors vying for bragging rights to be the first to have their member enshrined in the museum, including an American who named his “Elmo.”

The other donor was a 90-plus-year-old Icelandic man who went so far as to have a mold made of his privates.

Let’s just say that was painful to watch.

The museum’s curator, a guy named Sigurour “Siggi” Hjartarson, had two requirements for the donation of a human specimen: A legal document (letter of donation) signed by three witnesses, and proof that the penis was of “legal length” — at least 5 inches.

He based the minimum length requirement on an Icelandic folk tale called “A Legal Length,” in which a woman requested a divorce from her husband because his penis was less than 5 inches long.

The documentary does, unfortunately, perpetuate a myth of masculinity that links the length of a guy’s member with his character and standing in society.

To which I say, don’t confuse the measure of a man with the size of his penis: A leading presidential candidate is proof of that.

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The Verizon Strike, Men and Job Insecurity

Seeing Verizon workers on strike picketing outside company offices made me think about 1971.

My dad was working for what was then New York Telephone Company (this was years before the breakup of AT&T into the “Baby Bells”) and the union he belonged to, the Communications Workers of America, went on strike.

It ended up dragging on for seven months.

I was 7 at the time but I can recall well the feeling of stress in the household over making ends meet. Dad collected picket duty pay from the union, and after nine weeks, he got unemployment benefits and qualified for food stamps, but even then, things were financially squeaky.

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Me with a picket sign.

Dad hustled whatever odd jobs he could — cleaning windows, for instance — and Mom was already babysitting kids in our Bronx building.

It’s bad enough to face job insecurity when you are young and have a family. What I have discovered though is that it’s even worse to face that kind of unpredictable future when guys hit middle age.

I recall in the mid-1990s reading news accounts of layoffs at IBM in New York and stories quoting guys who had been with the company for 25 years who wondered where they were going to get a job now that they were in their 50s.

I was not quite yet 30 and I remember thinking: What could possibly be so bad? How tough could this be?

Now that I am 51, I have a deeper appreciation and understanding for the stresses and worries of job insecurity. I work in news, an industry that is undergoing titanic changes and is shedding jobs faster than cat hair.

Like many men, I have equated my career with my life. But beyond that is the overwhelmingly sense of responsibility imbued in us to be the breadwinner. (Yeah, I know it’s an antiquated term but it’s one I grew up with.)

So many guys my age that I personally know have either lost jobs, faced the prospect of losing their job, been demoted or lived in the fear of any one of those things happening.

I asked a friend, Joe McNulty, who is a Verizon worker now on strike, to share his thoughts on job insecurity. This is what he wrote:

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Joe McNulty on the picket line.

Today I walked approximately six miles around a tight picket line in front of a Verizon Wireless store in Portchester, N.Y. At 51 years of age and 20 years on the job, I am not the senior man or close to it. I am better off than most in that my wife has a good-paying job, we live in a modest apartment in the Bronx and have no children. Still, I am anxious.

During the Great Recession, the stories on the nightly news that always tugged at my heart strings were the middle-aged workers who ended up out of work after years at one job and not a clue what to do next. There was no way I could find a job with the same pay and benefits, not to mention the thought of leaving my dear co-workers.

Working for the phone company gave me an identity. I was the phone guy. Whenever family or friends need something phone-related, they call me. Now I’m thinking those poor middle-aged workers on the nightly news were also victims of a kind of identity theft. How awful to be asked 10 years before retirement, “So, what do you do?” and have to start your reply with “I was….”

This strike will end and I will continue to be a phone man. Everyone walking the line knows that technology can make us obsolete at any moment. We just want to be the last dinosaurs to die a natural death before the mass extinction.

(For a related post about the tension and frustration of searching for a job after you’ve been downsized in middle age, check out http://aboutmenshow.com/is-it-worth-finding-and-keeping-a-job/)

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Escape Room Escapades

I recently tried one of those newly popular “escape room” attractions and let’s just say Houdini I am not.

If you enjoy puzzles, thinking on your feet and working with others under pressure, you will have a thrilling time.

With its hidden clues and riddles to solve, being in an escape room is like playing a real-life version of “Scooby-Doo,” except at the end you are not unmasking the caretaker as the villain who dressed up as a ghost to scare those damn meddling kids away.

For those unfamiliar with escape rooms, here’s the  concept: You are locked in a room with your teammates (in my case, three friends) filled with props, decorations and furniture.

You scour the room for clues, which can take the form of scraps of paper with numbers or words, which in turn send you to other clues, and so on.

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I don’t want to give too much away about the specifics since it would spoil some of the fun, but the room where we played in Orlando, Fla., featured several locked cabinets and trunks.

Finding the key (or the combinations for the locks) required using math, looking at messages that could only be seen under a black light, and relying on our smarts to solve problems.

You have to think creatively – and fast.

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There are different themes for each room. In my case, my friends and I played “Classified.” The room had a Middle Eastern feel to the décor.

(My wife and younger son and I recently played at a different escape room in the Poconos and in that one the premise was we awoke to find ourselves locked in a cabin in the woods. That room featured a bearskin rug and deer’s head on the wall.)

In the “Classified” room, the orientation video described our team as being covertly inserted into hostile territory. We had 60 minutes to deduce the time, date and place of a terrorist attack.

Failure on our part meant the terrorist would win.

We had three “free” clues, that is, clues that would be given to us and not count against our time. For every additional clue given, we would have minutes added to our time.

If you ever played the highly addictive computer game “Myst” from years ago, you will have an idea of how immersed you can get into an escape room. Secret passageways, enticing clues and cryptic messages were all there.

And much like the hit TV series “24,” there was a monitor with a countdown clock showing how much time we had left.

As we progressed and the time ticked away, we grew more frenetic.

“Go over there!”

“Where is the flashlight?!”

“What was that clue again?!”

We had three of the four elements solved: The date, the place and the hour of the attack but we could not determine the minutes after the hour.

My heart was pounding. The mission was at stake!

In the end, we came really, really close but we failed.

Jack Bauer would have disowned us, but we had a helluva good time!

 

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On Being a Dad and Facing an Empty Nest

There is a memorable story told about my late fiancée and her son that goes like this:

Garth was in his 20s and headed out for a night on the town.

He was primping himself in front of a mirror.

His mother, (my late fiancée), Carla said something to him and he cracked wise or sarcastic.

She came up behind him and smacked him in the back of the head — even though he had about five inches on her.

Garth wheeled around and angrily asked: “Whatdidja do that for?!”

Her reply?

“You will never be too old or too big that I’m not your mother!”

It remains a memorable story because it speaks to Carla’s spirit (let’s just say she did not take guff from anyone) but it also embodies an important lesson I am learning as a dad who will soon face an empty nest.

Our younger son is a high school senior and will be in college by the late summer.

He has his own car, a wide circle of friends and is active in numerous extracurricular activities.

Translation: My wife and I don’t see too much of him. When we do, we try to make the most of the time together.

Our older son graduated from college in the spring, landed a job 10 days before graduation and has been on his own and out of state since last July.

The days of us having to hand-hold or ferry “the boys” around to different school events or social engagements are over.

And in many ways, at least right now, I miss that.

As a dad, being there for them and being the one who looked out for them day-to-day was my raison d’être.

The core missions of looking out for the lads’ well-being, care, feeding and upbringing defined my role as a parent for two decades.

Now, suddenly — poof!

It feels as if I am wearing a pair of those “beer goggles” they give kids in driver’s education to mimic the feel of drunken driving: My view of reality has been twisted and distorted.

So it came as something of a relief (and a sense of still being needed) when No. 1 son recently called and emailed about a low-level emergency after being locked out of his first apartment.

Much to his credit, he was collected and clear-headed and was merely looking for some advice about navigating the situation with his landlord. (It turned out that the lock was installed incorrectly and malfunctioned.)

I recall once when I was standing on line at a supermarket with the boys when they were about 12 and 7.

A veteran parent ahead of me struck up a conversation.

I recall well what she said: “The older kids get, the more complicated and more expensive the problems become.”

Yes, that is certainly true.

But what I’m also learning is that they’ll never get too old or too big that I’ll ever stop being their dad.

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“I Am Dead”

Arleen’s finger was aimed straight out.

She held it somewhere around her cheek to emphasize her point.

“You know if you don’t do this, she will come back and haunt you every day of your life.”

We were in a waiting room at Horton Hospital in Middletown, N.Y., and my fiancée Carla had fallen into what doctors were telling us was an irreversible coma related to complications from Hepatitis C.

Arleen was talking to me and Carla’s son, Garth.

Arleen was Carla’s best friend.

And she was speaking the truth.

And Garth and I both knew it.

She was warning us to make the right choice about a decision that no one should have to confront: Should we sign a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order, directing doctors NOT to take any extraordinary measures to keep Carla alive?

The decision legally fell to Garth as Carla’s next of kin, but we had teamed up and convinced ourselves that Carla would pull through and therefore we would not sign the DNR. We felt there was still hope.

Done with our little caucus, Garth and I returned to the waiting room and told Arleen of our decision.

And that’s when she warned us about keeping in mind Carla’s wishes. We knew in our bones that Carla would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially.

But here was the problem: Carla never filed any medical directives with explicit instructions about what to do in a circumstance like this.

Had such a document existed, it would have relieved Garth and me of the enormous burden of making that decision.

We ultimately told the doctors not to take any extraordinary measures, and Carla died a few days later.

As if grieving her loss was not overwhelming enough, I then discovered that Carla had no will! In the aftermath of her death, I tried the best I could to tie up the loose ends of her estate.

It was a heavy, heavy lift.

The experience left an indelible impression on me, and I set about right away to get my own medical directive organized as well as a will.

When I got married in 2010, my wife Meg and I talked often of the need to get our will done. We finally did and it was a HUGE relief.

I’ve gone even further and organized detailed information about all of my finances, my wishes for my funeral and a prewritten obituary and collected it all in a huge file labeled “I Am Dead.”

Meg and I recently reviewed it in detail, right down to the music I want to have played at my funeral. (“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” cover by the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole.)

We sat on the couch going over the file, playing that song and crying. The experience “drove a truck through the heart of my soul,” Meg said.

Yes it did, but I would not want my loved ones to go through what I did.

No one gets out of here alive. If you haven’t organized your will and/or your medical directives, do it now.

Do it for yourself.

Do it for your family.

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What Is Wrong With This Picture?

What is wrong with this picture?

As far as I can tell, nothing.

But try telling that to some of the trolls who came out and criticized the photo — specifically how actor Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler were posed.

According to mic.com, the photo, which appeared in Vanity Fair, prompted comments like these:

“What kind of pose is this?”

“I was wondering about his hand on dudes head…what’s that  about?”

“The demasculation continues. I hate this pic!!”

In this podcast, we discuss how we are mystified at comments like these and talk about the odd reactions people seem to have when men display any kind of affection for each other.

Also, in what we’re billing as a “Current Events” show, Pedro rants about the darkness of Twitter.

Lastly, because the presidential campaign season is in full schwing, we naturally talk about penises.

Give the show a listen.

It might not change your life, but it will certainly give you something to think about.

Or it will scar you.

But how will you know if you don’t listen?

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A New Me

A refrain in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz” has Judy Garland singing wistfully: “Why, oh why can’t I?”

It is something that I hear in my own head (minus the singing) when I confront self-image issues related to my workouts.

For the past 14 years, I have been a dedicated exerciser, working out an average of four to five times a week.

It has taken all forms: Cardio, running, weight-lifting, circuit training, and for the past seven years, a devotion to the various P90X workouts led by Tony Horton.

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But it seems no matter how much dedication and drive I invest in my exercise, I cannot get the body I’m looking for.

So, why oh why can’t I have a broad chest?

Ripped abs?

Biceps the size of my thighs?

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When I look at celebrities like Hugh Jackman, who plays Wolverine in the X-Men series, or Daniel Craig, who is currently playing James Bond, or Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper,” I am immediately plunged into a vat of molten envy that, when it cools, hardens around my brain.

I mean, look at those guys!

They are in incredible shape.

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It’s not like I have not put in the time and commitment to getting fit, so why oh why can’t I look like them?

Well, there might be the fact that they have professional trainers who put these actors through their paces for grueling hours a day whereas my exercise routine is a DIY system at home for 30 to 45 minutes.

And they likely have gourmet-cooked, high-protein, nutrient-rich meals prepared for them around the clock, with snacks properly proportioned served to them by personal chefs.

Me? I eat as cleanly as I can but I am a slave to cookies and prone to indulging in sugary snacks when I’m anxious.

Nonetheless, I fight the nagging internal voice that says I am not pushing myself hard enough.

See that woman in the exercise video? She’s doing more push-ups than you, you panty-waist wuss!

As a working stiff who has a family and a job, there is only so much time and energy I can dedicate to exercising before I overtrain and risk getting hurt or burning myself out.

It was not until I heard Tony Horton’s first law of fitness that I started to gain some acceptance for my limitations.

“Do your best and forget the rest,” he says.

In other words, show up and do what you can on any given day.

That could be four push-ups or 40, or a multiple of that if you’ve really got something in the tank that day.

But you’ve got to chase away those mental couldas and shouldas that get in the way.

This is the time of year when we’re all looking to start the slate clean: A new year, a new you, right?

Before you start worrying about fixing your body, think about getting your mind right first.

So in 2016, I’m going to change my tune and find a new anthem.

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The AMR Posse Reunites in Florida!

The About Men Radio posse recently got together for the first time as a group since 1985.

Thankfully, the intervening decades have not changed us: Stupid jokes, endless ball-busting and side-splitting laughing were all the rage for our get-together.

Here then is an array of the photos from our get-together, with my snarky captions.

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Rich is like: “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Willis?!”
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Manly men in Silvio’s backyard.
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Do these headphones make my head look fat?
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Be the Buddha!
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Do not mess with these Sith Lord Dads.
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Is that a pink drink Pedro has? Why yes. Yes, I think it is.
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Just pucker your lips and whistle.
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Before we set out on a Florida fan boat ride through an alligator-infested lake.
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And if you don’t survive, tip your captain overboard.
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Our ride.
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Holy crap. They were not kidding about the gators.
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The ear protection is so I cannot hear myself screaming.
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Pedro evidently had something in his eye.
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Good friends and good times!

Do You See a Pattern…Zzzzzzz

We love About Men Radio posse member John O’Connell, aka Father John.

For the 40-plus years that I’ve known John, he has always been a night owl, not a morning lark.

As kids, he would be getting to bed at a time that I would be into my fifth hour of sleep.

As an adult, John likes to catch catnaps.

And we, loving, ball-busting friends that we are, like to catch him catching catnaps.

Behold, at a barbecue at my house in August 2014. (Note a guest in the background who was probably talking when John nodded off.)

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More recently, during our get-together as a group in Florida, John was hardly off the plane 30 minutes before he had nodded out in Silvio’s car.

Note the look of disgust on Silvio’s face. *sad trombone*

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But the one that absolutely is John’s crowing achievement came when we went on an airboat ride on a Florida lake.

Do you have any idea of how loud an airboat ride is? We’re talking 80 to 90-plus decibels loud.

It is the equivalent of standing on a subway platform and falling asleep above all that din.

Well, you guessed it:

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And no, he was not just *resting his eyes.*

Now I’ve gotta take a nap!

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How Lord Grantham Is a Guy’s Guy

Say what you want about Robert Crawley (aka Lord Grantham on “Downton Abbey”), but for all of his formal wear and and fussy lifestyle, he’s at heart a guy’s guy.

I can hear a collective “Say what!?” But hear me out.

For so long, the concept of a “guy’s guy” has been seen as someone whose sole interests are guzzling beer and spending time in a man cave watching sports on TV or porn online.

I think there is nothing wrong with any of those activities, but it misses the larger — more complex — makeup of what men are about.

For that reason, if you look beyond Robert’s dinner jacket, you will be surprised to see how much of his character aligns with being a guy’s guy.

He is prideful and has a frail ego: A veteran of the Boer War, Robert has hurt feelings when he is not called up to active duty on the front lines in World War I. He is instead relegated to wearing a uniform to serve merely as “a mascot,” he says, back at home.

He is loyal: Robert demonstrates his loyalty any number of times and ways: In hiring Bates and in finding it in his heart to keep Barrows on staff after his suicide attempt. When William Mason, a footman, is confronted by protesters who give him a white feather for allegedly being a coward for not serving in WW I, Robert throws them out of the house.

He knows how to keep confidences: He gets wise to the connection between Edith and Marigold but he knows how to acknowledge it with his wife and daughter but at the same time keep it within the family. Among men, exercising discretion and keeping  information under wraps is a trait that is highly valued.

He has foibles: Robert dabbled in a dalliance with a lady’s maid. Robert is not without his shortcomings but he demonstrates that over the long haul, his set point is to be someone with a good heart.

He likes his drink: Hey, who does not like to have a good adult beverage once in a while?

He is crappy about taking care of his health: Not saying necessarily that this is an admirable trait. It is just one that a lot of guys share in common. (Bonus points: Robert  is also a lousy patient. I can relate to that.)

He loves his family: Through any number of trials and tribulations, he has gone to lengths to help his daughters. Look at the way he softened his heart to welcome Tom into the family after first bristling at the idea of him as his son-in-law.

He’s willing to throw down when the moment calls for it: Robert got white-hot jealous (though turns out with justification) over the undue interest that an art collector showed in Cora. When Robert finds the collector, Robert Bricker, and his wife in their boudoir, he proceeded to sock it to the guy.

He is a good boss: While a clear hierarchy exists between servants and those served, Robert does not treat the staff as merely the hired help. He’s reserved around them perhaps but he does treat them well and with compassion. Look at what he did for Miss Patmore for her nephew, who was a deserter in World War I. While Robert did not include the nephew in the main war memorial, he did commission a separate plaque honoring his service and sacrifice. It was a touching and moving gesture.

He loves his dogs: Look at the way he mourned the death of Isis and then melted when his mother left him with a new puppy that Robert named Tiaa.

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Taking Fear to New Heights

For me, fear is an invisible emotional or mental “weakness” that I have historically refused myself permission to give in to.

My attitude has long been that it’s an effort of will: You can push through fear and pretend it’s not really there.

But I learned something recently that turned that line of thinking on its head.

Here is my story:

I have had a lifetime fear of heights, with many a social engagement marred by my acrophobia

It’s one reason why, for instance, I can barely watch a trailer for “The Walk” about Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974, much less think about seeing the entire movie.

The very first Broadway play I saw was “Deathtrap” at the Music Box Theater in the late ’70s with my mom. I was very excited until we got there and I realized we had mezzanine seats.

I was OK when the lights went out and we could focus on the play but when the lights were back on and I could see where we were, well, to borrow a phrase from my younger son: I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

Same thing when I bought tickets for a Cirque du Soleil show at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. When we got there, I discovered the seats were so high and on such a steep pitch that I could not stay.

My wife and son watched the show as I climbed the stairs — almost on all fours — and waited in the hallway for the performance to finish.

So when my wife was planning a visit to Big Sur in California along the Pacific Coast Highway, she emphasized that she wanted me to be OK with the heights and narrow, curving roads.

I watched a YouTube video of a drive along the road and thought: “Yeah, I can handle this. I don’t want to be a party pooper on our trip and she is excited to show this to me.”

You can figure out the rest.

About an hour into the drive, we reached the serpentine cliffs. I was white-knuckled, my palms sweaty.

The low point came when we crossed the narrow Bixby Bridge, which seems to levitate over this canyon. I wanted to kiss the pavement when we made it to the other side.

I never relinquish the wheel because I am a lousy passenger — I get car sick easily.

So when we headed out for another two hours on these steep, cliffside roads, my wife knew I was in trouble when I abruptly pulled over and asked her to drive.

I could not go on. And here’s the thing: I did not stop being afraid just because I stopped driving.

I was curled up in the back seat, my face buried into my shoulder, one hand gripping the door handle until I had no feeling in my fingers and rhythmically praying.

I’ve long resisted limitations – either of my own doing or outside forces — being placed on my ability to get things done.

You’re talking about a guy whose signature phrase is “It’s fine” or “I’ll be fine” when confronted with an illness, a physical injury, lack of sleep or some kind of emotional hurt.

My act of bravery here was having the confidence to give into my fear instead of trying to pretend I could persevere.

What I learned was that it’s sometimes OK not to “man up” but to instead ask for help.

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Life After “Downton Abbey” For Its Characters

The series finale of “Downton Abbey” is Sunday night but that does not mean the characters do not carry on with their lives.

Here is a glimpse of what happened with some of the major players post-DA:

Mrs. Patmore: Moved to Nevada where brothels are legal, and opened her own house of ill repute, Patmore’s Playpen.

Mr. Carson: Became an eyebrow transplant donor.

Mrs. Hughes: Was acquitted of assault after beating Carson within an inch of his life with a spatula after he complained one too many times about her cooking.

Anna and Mr. Bates: They lived happily ever after. No, seriously. Really.

Mary: Underwent heart transplant surgery to install the one she did not have.

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Cora: Successfully underwent surgery to have more than one facial expression.

Mr. Barrows: Joined a punk goth band. (Tell me you can’t see it…)

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Edith: Founded an app dating service called Losr that connects people who are destined to be in ruined relationships.

Lord Grantham: Known for his financial acumen, Robert became homeless after investing with Bernie Madoff.

Mr. Molesly: Became a rugby player after deciding it was less of a contact sport than teaching the children from the village.

Marigold: Pressed stalking charges against her mother.

Tom: Presidential campaign manager for socialist candidate Bernie Sanders.

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Spratt: Moved to the United States where he started a successful advice column under the nom de plume “Ann Landers.”

Denker: Joined Darth Vader’s Imperial forces as a stormtrooper and was killed in her first battle. No one misses her.

The Dowager: Became chief ruthlessness officer in the Nixon White House.

Dr. Clarkson: Exasperated and frustrated, he decided humans were way too much of a pain to deal with and became a veterinarian.

Daisy: Became a double O agent for MI6, with 34 confirmed kills.

Lady Rosamund: Runs a home for wayward single mothers.

Isobel: Created a line of bobble head dolls that say “I told you so.”

Baxter: Is still sewing.

Getting by With a Little Help From Our Friends

It is not every day that the entire About Men Radio posse gets together.

In fact, it took a bit of carbon-dating to determine that the last time Silvio, Rich,  Pedro, John and I were all in the same room together was 1985!

It is almost hard to believe that it has been that long and that so much time has gone by in what feels like an instant.

To celebrate the occasion, we got together and memorialized our thoughts about our enduring friendship and its origins in a free-wheeling but sincere conversation presented to you here in this podcast.

The talk was revealing in how much Silvio can remember from yesteryear, how tenderly we feel about each other (please read that carefully as I did NOT say we felt each other tenderly) and what these connections mean to us as middle-aged men looking down the long barrel of families, careers and other pressures.

What the conversation underscores is the importance of having and maintaining these kinds of connections into male adulthood.

What are your friendships like and what do you do to nurture them? Tell us your story in our comments section on our website, on our Facebook page or write us at amr@aboutmenshow.com

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Friends Fill a 14-Year Void in My Life

Men, how many of you have male friends?

I mean close friends — not just co-workers, a brother-in-law or virtual friends on Facebook. And I don’t mean your “bros” with whom you might watch a game once in a while.

I mean flesh-and-blood friends whose numbers you have programmed on your phone and who you could call and rely on to help you out of a jam at 2:30 in the morning?

I bet that most of you can count on one hand – or less — the number of friends who truly qualify.

A recent story in The Telegraph from the UK reported that 11 percent of single men said they had no friends to turn to in a “serious situation” and that figure rose to 15 percent among married men.

Those numbers came from research conducted by the Movember Foundation, which is raising awareness of mental health issues among men.

It’s a stunning statistic but one that I can readily attest to.

I had about a 14-year stretch where my friends from my childhood — truly my only friends — were out of my life.

It was, to borrow a cliché, “just one of those things.”

I had gotten married and moved 300 miles away, and then when I moved closer to my friends, so much time had passed that it felt difficult to pick up their trail. Plus, I was busy raising a family, advancing my career, etc.

You get the picture.

I would pick up morsels of news from my mother, who was still living in my old neighborhood and remained plugged in about whose parents had died, who was working where, etc.

I pined to reconnect but somehow just could not get out of my own way to make it happen.

Then a crazy thing happened: Unbeknownst to me, my then-fiancée connected with Pedro and John by email and arranged for them to make a surprise visit at home.

The night of their arrival, she was acting all kinds of peculiar. I wanted to go to bed early and, she was like: “Don’t you dare! Stay up!”

Meanwhile, she would leave the room and have these furtive phone conversations with the guys, who in keeping with a time-honored tradition, were lost and late.

If memory serves, I think they were supposed to arrive at around 8:30 p.m. and instead showed up at 10:30 p.m.

It could have been 2:30 in the morning and I would have been just as thrilled.

In the years since, my circle of friends and I have made it a point to be in contact and to get together regularly. One of the side benefits of the About Men Radio podcast and website is that it bonds us and allows us to share our feelings for one another in a way that is funny and genuine.

A photo that Carla took of me the night of their surprise visit captured the absolute shock and joy I felt at seeing them as they came up the stairs.

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Doing my best to be an impromptu host, I got out the grill and whipped up barbecue hamburgers and hot dogs, all the while Pedro busted my stones: “What? We come to your house at 10:30 at night and there’s no lobster and filet mignon?”

It was as if nothing had changed and I knew then that a great hole in my life had been filled.

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Busting Balls as an Art Form

Among my buddies busting chops is an art.

While these exchanges are teasing in nature, they do not take the form of malicious putdowns or “snaps” such as  “Your mother is so dumb, she takes an hour to make minute rice.”

No, our repartee has roots in the expression: “Do a good job and you won’t hear a thing, but screw up once and you will never hear the end of it!”

Such are the ways with us. It’s a harmless method for us to bond and show affection but to also have fun — at each other’s expense, of course.

There is the chop-buster and the bustee, the person who is on the receiving end of getting his shoes squeezed.

For instance, my friend John has a home in the Poconos where we have crashed many weekends and engaged in our customary goofy antics.

On one of our very first visits, the house was sparsely furnished but a kitchen cabinet was brimming with boxes and boxes of Gevalia gourmet coffee.

At some point, I asked for a cup of coffee, and John busted out a jar of some cruddy freeze-dried instant grinds.

Well, not one to let a fertile moment go by, the No. 1 horn-breaker in our group, Pedro, seized it. He mockingly berated John for making us feel unworthy of his quality stash.

The whole weekend, the leitmotif became: “Gee, I really could use a cup up of coffee.” Or: “Wow, I would love some Gevalia. Do you know John where I might get some?”

bust bakks

There are a bounty of moments like these that get dusted off and replayed. We are equal-opportunity in our teasing. There are no sacred cows.

And all it takes is one event – just one – for a chop-busting theme to take hold. There is no statute of limitations.

Just ask my dad.

Sixty years ago when he was in the Navy, he was put in charge of showing a movie to the crew one night and installed the reels in the incorrect order, forever earning him the moniker “Wrong Reel.”

For John, it might be about the coffee, or his lead foot driving, which has earned him the title of “Mannix,” or his many DIY talents with a soldering gun and duct tape, leading to his “MacGyver” nickname.

For Pedro, there is fodder in his Casanova-like ways of flirting with waitresses. Rich and Silvio find way too much pleasure in horror and gore movies – Rich especially, who, disturbingly to us, has been known to laugh through most slasher flicks.

And me?

Well, let’s just say I have a well-earned reputation for being a fraidy-cat of horror movies and scary haunted Halloween attractions.

So naturally, to show they love me, horror meisters Rich and Silvio want to lock me in a room for three days, strap me in a chair, pry open my eyeballs “A Clockwork Orange”-style and subject me to the worst horror films imaginable.

After all, what are friends for?

giphy clock

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“Remember, Thou Art Mortal”

My wife and I talk often about life and how, in an instant, it can be randomly snuffed out.

A driver blows through a red light and runs into another car.

An undiagnosed medical condition takes the life of a young man.

A freak accident at home kills an infant.

Maybe it’s because Meg and I have decades-long backgrounds in news that our exposure to the unpredictability of death ranks above average. We also have both experienced the loss of someone close to us.

It certainly makes for grim dinnertime conversation, but it also serves as a reminder to appreciate what we have in our lives.

No matter how much wealth, material possessions or professional success we amass, it’s all immaterial in the end.

It is said that during Roman times, a slave stood behind a triumphant returning general or emperor and whispered in his ear: “Remember, thou art mortal.”

This comes to mind because tomorrow marks three years since Meg and I and my son Daniel were driving back from visiting Skytop Lodge in the Poconos.

As we got on Route 390, it began to snow. The road was covered quickly and there was not yet a chance for the plows to get out.

I was driving about 35 mph when I saw a car coming around a curve in the opposite direction way too fast – fishtailing like mad – and making a beeline right for us.

To avoid a head-on crash, I pulled over to the side of the road as far as I could.

It wasn’t enough.

I found myself screaming: “Brace for impact!” (Yes, for real.)

With that, the other car slammed into our driver’s side with a teeth-rattling, body-jolting impact. I can still hear the noise.

Both driver’s-side doors were pushed forcefully shut and we could not escape from the passenger side because the car was now wedged tightly against a rock.

Thankfully, passers-by and rescuers got a door open and we escaped – unharmed.

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It was scary how close that came to being a head-on collision.

There it was: We randomly happened to be there when this knucklehead (who was ticketed BTW) was driving way too fast for the road conditions.

Any one of us could have been killed or seriously injured.

More recently, Meg emailed me while she was running errands in Middletown, N.Y.:

“I was driving on 211 — just left the mall and passed a giant collection of cop cars and ambulance, etc, just at the turn I would make to go into the strip mall where Starbucks is.

A minute or two earlier and I would have been one of those vehicles. I thought ‘Thank God’ and then of how many near misses there are in our lives that we don’t even know about.

Then I knew that I wanted to tell you that I love you — and I want you to save this one if ever there’s a time when I can’t say it — know that it’s in my heart always.”

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Action Figures of the 60s and 70s: Where Are They Now?

With the news today that Mattel is updating its line of Barbie dolls to be more diverse and realistically representative of the population at large, I bring you these updates on popular boys’ action figures from yesteryear:

* Action Jackson: Now in his late 60s, AJ ain’t getting any action without the help of a little blue pill. But he still makes the ladies swoon in his one-piece jump suit.

* Big Jim: The epitome of a hunk, Jim was muscle-bound, ripped and had a full head of hair. Today, Jim is divorced, beer-bellied and balding. He still answers fan mail, however.

* Six Million Dollar Man: His bionic eye developed cataracts and his bionic leg short-circuited, giving him cramps. The special effects sounds you heard and saw of Steve Austin moving in slow motion when he was doing superhuman feats is the way he is now all the time: In slow motion.

* Planet of the Apes: Cornelius left Zira for an ape 20 years his junior and went on to have offspring who refer to Cornelius as “gramps.” Zira became a millionaire marketing frozen bananas on a stick.

*GI Joe With Kung Fu Grip: Sidelined with arthritis, GIJWKFG opened a pottery shop.

*Stretch Armstrong: Became homeless and an alcoholic after being repeatedly mistaken and abused as a substitution for Silly Putty.

* Major Matt Mason the Man in Space: Following budget cutbacks at NASA, he retired and is now working as a guest services representative at Disney’s World of Tomorrow.

* Evel Knievel: Went on to write his autobiography, “Bag of Bones.”

* Ben Kenobi: After watching the “Star Wars” prequels, was arrested after threatening to “go all Death Star on George Lucas’s ass.”

* GI Joe: After valiantly serving his country, still trying to collect proper veterans’ benefits for the government.

* Ken doll: Lacking any male genitalia, was divorced by Barbie and later underwent reconstructive surgery and now goes by “Kenya.”

Why ‘The Revenant’ Is Not Worthy of an Oscar

Maybe by now you’ve heard of this movie called “The Revenant.”

It’s gained a fair amount of notice after being nominated for 12 Oscars (including best picture, best actor and best director) and after it won three awards at the Golden Globes.

“The Revenant” – a reference to a person who has returned, especially from the dead – depicts Leonardo DiCaprio as a top-notch frontiersman leading a troupe of trappers.

They confront Indian attacks, ferocious weather and each other in a tale of survival, greed and revenge.

Think “Death Wish” meets “Dances With Wolves.”

DiCaprio’s character, after being viciously mauled in a grizzly bear attack, is left for dead by his fellow travelers, particularly one who is expertly depicted by Tom Hardy.

(Hardy, in my opinion, was the best performance of the movie and justifiably got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.)

Given the considerable buzz about “The Revenant,” I was looking forward to being swept off my feet the way I was in watching “Spotlight” or “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

Alas, what I was treated to was two-plus hours of pretty scenery, a computer-generated bear attack and a depiction of brutal living conditions in the woods.

I thought the movie was solid but just not worthy of Oscar contention.

Much has been made about how the cast, DiCaprio in particular, subjected themselves to extremes for the sake of the film: Wading into icy rivers and coping with temperatures well below zero.

Well bully for them, I say.

But the movie felt like one giant stunt after another meant to call attention to how difficult it was to shoot. For that reason, I found it rather self-indulgent.

How did what the “The Revenant” cast and crew put up with in the Canadian Rockies and in Argentina any different than the extremes the cast and crew of “Mad Max” endured in the south African desert?

Don’t misunderstand me: From a technical point of view, the natural beauty and visuals in “The Revenant” are stunning. But I could get those in a calendar. And stunning visuals do not an Oscar contender make.

My real gripe about the movie is that I was not emotionally invested in the story or DiCaprio’s character. I found myself not caring what happened to him.

I was a big fan of “The Revenant” director A.G. Iñárritu, whose “Birdman” last year was, I thought, masterful and original.

Yes, “The Revenant” had some memorable scenes, such as the well-publicized bear attack, which I had hard time believing DiCaprio’s character would truly be able to survive.

For an idea of how detached I felt from the movie consider this: The very final scene is of DiCaprio, bearded, bedraggled and bloodied. He looks right into the camera and all I could think of was how it reminded me of Michael Palin’s bearded man delivering the opening of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

Bottom line: “The Revenant” struck me as the product of extraordinary movie-making simply for the sake of extraordinary movie-making.

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An Open Letter of Apology to Carrie Fisher

Dear Ms. Fisher:

I feel I owe you an apology. And while I say this speaking strictly for myself, I suspect there is a wider swath of men who might feel the way I do.

You recently came under attack by social media trolls who criticized you for — gasp! — having the temerity to look older since the last time you appeared in a “Star Wars” movie.

The shaming you were subjected to came after your appearances as General Leia Organa in “The Force Awakens.”

Some of the comments, which I read on Twitter, were vitriolic. I was stunned at how base some people were.

But then again, I should have known better: That’s because I’m guilty of contributing to this kind of mentality.

There’s a generation of us men who grew up unenlightened about women. In our childhood and adolescence, we knew Hollywood actresses only to be young and pretty.

I’m thinking here of an age of “Charlie’s Angels” or “Wonder Woman,” for example.

I suppose Hollywood has always placed a premium on youth and good looks, with the scales unfairly tilted against actresses.

My wife and I have had this discussion numerous times, with her pointing out that beyond a certain age, the opportunities for an actress shrink as her perceived value (read good looks) fades.

For a long time I argued – in a Pollyannaish way – that was not the case. I realize, of course, that is very much the reality and that guys like me have contributed to that ethos.

It is a culture that the comedian Amy Schumer so perfectly skewed in a sketch on her show that parodied “Twelve Angry Men.” The all-male jury’s deliberations focused on whether Schumer was “hot enough” to have her own show.

While the sketch was brilliantly subversive and spot-on hilarious, it also exposed an uncomfortable truth:

Terms like “objectify” are not part of the cultural vocabulary of many men when it comes to women. Instead, we use descriptions like “hot,” “cute,” “babe” or worse.

I’ve been a fan of yours since “Star Wars” came out in 1977 and, yes, as an 18-year-old when “Return of the Jedi” was released, lusted after you when you appeared in that bikini outfit.

But that’s a long time ago and it’s belatedly clear to me that women in general and particularly in Hollywood are held to a different set of standards that are linked almost exclusively to their appearances.

Your response to the social media trolls struck a nerve with me:

“Please stop debating about whether or not [I] aged well. Unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings. My body hasn’t aged as well as I have. Blow us.”

Those comments were an epiphany.

I sensed a genuine hurt beneath the layer of sarcasm. Also, there’s something about the fact that I grew up with you, my admiration for your forthright public battle with mental illness and addictions and the head-on way you addressed the trolls that spoke to me.

On screen, you’ve played a princess and a general and in real life you are a mother, daughter, author and actress.

To me, though, you’re smart and brave.

Thank you for that.

Sincerely yours,

Christopher Mele

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No Moose, No Peace

Captain Ahab had Moby Dick.

Wile E. Coyote had the Road Runner.

And Elmer Fudd had that wascally wabbit.

My quarry for 25 years has been a moose.

Not one in particular, just ANY moose. And for the record, not to spear, eat or shoot, but to merely glimpse one of these magnificent creatures in the wild.

It is an obsession that took root when I was a reporter in the Adirondacks in 1990 and participated in a search with wildlife biologists for a moose nicknamed Big Richard (more on that in a minute).

Since then I have been to Maine (three times, including to Moosehead Lake twice, most recently this summer), gone on a moose-spotting adventure tour and traveled to Vermont and New Hampshire (including to a section of roadway known as “Moose Alley”).

Do you think that in all of those trips to places heavily populated by members of the deer family that I have spotted a single one?

Nope. Every time, they have flipped me the hoof.

IMG_0185
In Moose Alley and yes, I am wearing a moose T-shirt.

My enthusiasm for moose started when I was a reporter at the Press-Republican, a newspaper based in Plattsburgh, N.Y.

I was invited by a wildlife biologist from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to tag along with a contingent of researchers who were tracking a moose to change the battery on its radio collar.

As a kid who grew up in the Bronx, my experiences with wildlife were limited to squirrels and pigeons, animals I saw at the Bronx Zoo and whatever I encountered on the subway.

IMG_2595
My collection of moose friends at home.

So when the chance arose to observe a moose in the woods, I seized it.

I felt like Marlin Perkins minus the safari jacket.

My first revelation was about the name of our quarry.

When I asked the researchers why he was called Big Richard, they gave me a look that conveyed “Are you that naive?”

And in that moment I had an Edith Bunker epiphany and went “Oooooohhhhh! OH! OH! NOW I get it!”

IMG_2594
Yes, this is a bona fide moose antler that I bought at a taxidermy shop in the Adirondacks.
FullSizeRender
Yeah, right. Didn’t see a single moose, much less crash into one.

A contingent of researchers trailed by reporters tromped through the thick woods in a tropical downpour. We were soaked, having taken on more water than the Titanic.

Nonetheless, we trudged on as radio signals indicated we were getting closer to Richard.

But at that point I had to break off from the search since my wife at the time needed to get to her graduate class in Plattsburgh, and we only had one car.

Of course, after I left, the search party spotted Richard. The researcher raised his tranquilizer rifle, aimed and fired. The shot went wide. Richard, spooked by the noise, took off.

A second search for him that I joined weeks later was equally fruitless. Alas, his remains were found about a year later, apparently having succumbed to natural causes.

Despite my absolute dismal record for finding moose, I remain fascinated by these creatures and as interested as ever in seeing one in the wild.

When the rut is on, they are quite active and can travel vast distances in search of a mate.

My no-fail plan?

Hitting the woods during the mating season, bathed in Eau de Mrs. Bullwinkle.

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Confessions of the Directionally Challenged

My wife and I have a simple rule when we travel by car: I drive and she navigates.

The reason for this is twofold: I am a lousy passenger who turns green riding shotgun and I have a sense of direction worthy of Christopher Columbus. (Dude was headed to the East Indies and landed in the Bahamas. Truly a man I can relate to.)

I am, to be charitable, directionally challenged.

That might play into the male stereotype of guys who get lost and never ask for directions.

That is not me.

I am unafraid to ask for directions. Where I run afoul is in following them.

My internal compass is like a pinwheel in a hurricane.

I recall having to earn a badge as a Cub Scout and one of the assignments was to give directions to various landmarks, including a hospital. I recall telling my mother that the patient would be dead by the time I would be done giving directions.

“I am pretty sure you make a right at the dry cleaners. Or is it a left? You will see the Carvel on the corner. Oh. You know what? That’s now a burger joint. Say, have you thought about maybe just calling an ambulance?”

Before the introduction of GPS devices, I would get even more lost than I do now.

I would print out the directions from MapQuest, confident in my route.

But one of two things would happen:

1. I would be driving at night and unable to properly read the directions without turning on the overhead lamp and blinding myself.

2. I would have to peer over my glasses (which I need for driving) in order to properly read the text and I would be unable to do more than just take a glimpse because I was driving, which, in turn, would mean I would miss my turn or exit.

On more than one occasion I have called Meg and asked her to consult directions online and help me untangle the travel knot I had tied myself into.

It was not uncommon for 60-minute trips to last 90.

I fare better on mass transit, particularly New York City’s subway system, but once I emerge above ground, it’s like I have been blindfolded and spun around.

My dad, who knew the city like his own name, would give directions like: “You want to proceed west on 44th Street and then we will meet at the southeast corner of…”

I lost him as soon as he said “proceed west.”

I am much more a visual learner.

Tell me that if I suddenly get to the East River that I have gone the wrong way, and I will understand. But directions? Utterly meaningless to me.

Thanks to the introduction of smartphones, and improvements in the way apps deliver real-time traffic information and directions, I am slowly better about getting from here to there.

Certainly without a GPS or smartphone, I’d be lost.

Come to think of it, I AM lost.

I am somewhere in Columbus, the city named after the patron saint of the directionally challenged.

Can someone tell me how to get home?

 

We Need Your Opinon: Which “Star Wars” Movie Is the Best of the Seven?

The debate is on and we need your input!

All of the members of the About Men Radio posse have now seen the latest installment in the “Star Wars” franchise, “The Force Awakens,” but there are shades of disagreement about how TFA ranks compared to the previous six installments.

As you will hear in in this episode of the podcast, Pedro and I rank TFA as No. 1 among the seven episodes.

I’ve now seen it four times and I am more in love with it with each viewing.

Rich and Silvio, while deeply impressed with the new movie, rank it as No. 3 in the pecking order of all things “Star Wars” and John merely thought it was good but not mind-blowing.

How do you rank TFA?

For hardcore fans who were around in the 70s and 80s, “The Empire Strikes Back” holds a special place in the No. 1 slot.

But recently having viewed “Empire” (as well as the rest of the preceding movies), I just don’t think they hold up as well TFA.

What do you think? Share your thoughts and reasoning on our Facebook page or write us at amr@aboutmenshow.com.

We’ll publish a roundup of opinions. Who knows? Maybe you will change some minds — but no Jedi mind tricks allowed!

collection

 

Are You Ready to Take Our “The Force Awakens” Quiz?

How hardcore a “Star Wars” fan are you?

Well, if – and only IF – you have seen the newest SW Episode VII movie, “The Force Awakens,” should you take this quiz. (There are spoilers ahead…)

Let’s see if you are a Jedi master or merely a scruffy nerf heder.

For answers, scroll all the way to the bottom.

  1. Rey is the daughter of …?
  1. Who was Max Von Syndow’s character?
  1. Why did Luke Skywalker going into hiding?
  1. Finn’s parents are…?
  1. How did Kylo Ren get Darth Vader’s mask?

 

 

 

 

ANSWERS

  1. Damned if we know!
  1. You mean the Obi-Wan-wannbe? Shrug.
  1. Unpaid landspeeder tickets?
  1. Hell, we thought YOU knew the answer!
  1. We got answer “D.” What did you get?

I guess we have to wait for Episode VIII to find out the true answers! May the Force be with you!

“The Force Awakens” Is a Source of Great Comfort

I wish I could say I was blown away by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Instead I was — and this is going to sound odd — delighted with it.

You know that feeling you get putting on a favorite pair of broken-in jeans or when you look forward to a favorite cousin or uncle coming over a visit? Or maybe the sensation you get when you catch the scent of your mom’s cooking or baking?

That’s what my experience was like watching TFA in a Times Square theater in the wee hours of Friday morning with about 20 other fans.

It was that feeling of excitement and comfort to see the shimmering Lucasfilm logo appear and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” and to hear the familiar chords of the “Star Wars” overtures we have come to know and love.

TFA did better than blow me away the way “Mad Max: Fury Road” did.

It instead stirred deep inside me the emotions and memories of a 12-year-old boy turned middle-age man.

In many, many ways, TFA represents a passage of time and of the torch (or should I say light saber?) to a new generation of actors and fans.

Seeing Harrison Ford (73!) and Carrie Fisher (59!) with their wrinkles and hearing their throaty not-so-young voices was a reminder that I am not a kid myself anymore.

But God! There was such a great joy in seeing them!

(Having just watched “Return of the Jedi” and Fisher’s infamous slave girl bikini scene, it is hard to believe it’s the same person! Carrie’s has had a hard go of it but I’m still carrying a torch for her.)

So, yeah. I cried at some parts.

And laughed out loud at others.

And jumped in my seat at yet others.

J.J. Abrams delivered the anti-prequels. TFA is, to borrow a phrase from a one-time leading “Star Wars” character: “Impressive. Most impressive.”

Without giving anything away, I must say that Harrison Ford is flawless and I think turns in his best Han Solo performance ever. And the lead actors — largely unknowns — were enthralling. The movie’s sense of humor was a wonderful, unexpected touch.

TFA is filled throughout with nods to its predecessors (prequels excluded). For “Star Wars” cognoscenti, there are ample callbacks to the first three movies that my generation grew up with.

And that is not a criticism. Abrams did not do that as cheat or a crutch. Instead he expertly renews past known relationships and builds new ones.

“The Force Awakens” is a stirring movie-going experience that harkens to familiar themes while introducing a host of new characters.

And for this 12-year-old boy in a 51-year-old man’s body, I could not ask for anything better.

“Star Wars” Destroyed My Childhood Bed

Since it debuted not quite 40 years ago, “Star Wars” has held a special place in my childhood-stunted heart.

I can remember my mother, who was not exactly what you would call an avid fan of pop culture much less science fiction, telling me that she heard of this movie that I might like to go see.

I was 12.

I had grown up watching TV shows like “Thunderbirds,” “U.F.O.” and “Lost in Space.”

For a kid of the ‘60s and ‘70s, these shows represented the best that Hollywood had to offer in the way of production values and special effects.

So when I saw a clip of “Star Wars” on the morning news in 1977, I was gobsmacked.

The blasters! The droids! The Millennium Falcon!

My mom took me to the Loews movie theater on East 86th Street in Manhattan to see it.

I was mesmerized.

As childhood milestones go, seeing “Star Wars” for the first time ranked up there with getting a G.I. Joe Mobile Support Unit when I was 8.

In other words, this was a really, really big deal.

Overnight, I became a “Star Wars” geek.

Original movie program?

Got it.

Trading cards from both Topps AND Wonder Bread?

Yeah, got those too.

And posters?

About those posters…

I had many, many posters and I was hellbent to display all of them except that I quickly ran out of wall space on my side of the room, which I shared with my two sisters. And there was no convincing my sisters to part with some of their precious wall space.

But then inspiration struck.

My bed had a headboard. It was attached to the bed frame by two wooden uprights and the headboard itself was large, white and padded.

This headboard took up valuable real estate, aka wall space. So obviously, it had to go to make way for my “Star Wars” posters.

One night – I think my parents were out – I did what any enterprising 12-year-old would do: I got out a hand saw and cut the headboard off.

Voila! More wall space! Problem solved!

Except, of course, what I did not anticipate was that the headboard was, in fact, keeping the entire bed frame together.

Without it, the mattress rested on the equivalent of two stilts.

(I “solved” this problem by taking reams of rope and tying what remained of the two uprights together to keep the bed from rattling like a scene from “The Exorcist.”)

All of this comes to mind as “The Force Awakens” – the much-anticipated seventh installment in the “Star Wars” franchise – opens this week.

I am so stoked.

I’ve already bought my tickets in advance. I’ve got my “Star Wars” tie ready to wear and I’m looking to buy movie memorabilia and merchandise.

Pretty soon the house will be overrun with all kinds of “Star Wars” goodness.

Hmmm…

You know, the bedroom set I have now has a wooden headboard.

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A “Star Wars” Fan’s Dream Comes True!

When I read that a former colleague of mine, Germain Lussier, had interviewed Harrison Ford – among other leading lights from the new “Star Wars” movie – I could not think of a more worthy person to celebrate such a professional milestone.

Germain Lussier and Harrison Ford
Germain Lussier and Harrison Ford (Used with permission)

I knew Germain from my time as an editor at The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. I was a news editor and he was an entertainment/features reporter.

He was quiet, diligent and dedicated. And above all, he was passionate about his craft and the beat he covered.

He pulled up stakes from his native New York to California for what he thought would be a career at a national magazine.

As you will read below, things took a different turn.

Germain graciously agreed to this Q/A for About Men Radio.

Apart from sharing in his reflective glory of rubbing elbows with Harrison friggin’ Ford (!), I wanted to tell his story because it is an excellent reminder to us all to pursue our passions with all our might.

There’s no telling the places you’ll go or the people you will meet.

Work does not have to be drudgery.

It can be a labor of love – something that Germain exemplifies here.

— Chris Mele

Tell readers a little about yourself: Where you grew up and a little
about your career path.

I grew up in Monroe, N.Y.

And from as early as I can remember, I wanted to be a movie critic. I thought getting paid to watch movies would be the best job in the world.

As I got older, I realized that there were other ways to do that too. So I went to New York University and majored in Cinema Studies, where I just studied, analyzed and wrote about film and film history.

That led me to internships with magazines such as Premiere, Us Weekly and Entertainment Weekly.

Eventually, I got a job as an entertainment reporter at my local newspaper, The Times Herald-Record. I worked there for six years before deciding I wanted to move away from where I grew up.

So I moved to Los Angeles and found a niche working on movie blogs.

For five years I worked on a site called Slashfilm and was able to write about movie news every single day, visit the sets of films like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Anchorman 2,” “Ender’s Game” and so many more.

It was a dream come true.

After a few years though, I got an offer to move to a bigger site, io9.com, and that’s where I am now.

GLussier
Germain Lussier

Tell us about your passion for films: What are its roots and what is it about movies that fascinates you?

Honestly, I don’t know where my love for film comes from.

Neither of my parents love movies that much, but somehow by the age of 8 or so I already knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now though, the passion comes from so many places.

First, the ability to go into a dark theater and be transported somewhere else emotionally never ever gets old.

Also, when you write about movies you have something new and exciting to look forward to every single week.

There are always new movies. Of course some are more highly anticipated than others but there’s always something exciting on the horizon.

Tell us about your current position at io9.com: How long have you been there, your title and duties.

I moved to California in June of 2009.

I started working at Slashfilm in September of 2010 and I started at io9 in June of 2015.

On the site, I’m the primary entertainment reporter, meaning if there’s news or an assignment having to do with movies or TV, I usually get first crack at it.

On a daily basis, I’m expected to write however many news stories are necessary and develop longer feature stories, which can be about almost anything.

Tell us about what led up to securing one-on-one interviews with the leading players connected to “The Force Awakens,” including Harrison Ford: How did that come about?

Everything lead up to it. Seriously.

I’ve been a “Star Wars” freak for as long as I can remember.

It was anticipation of Episode I that led me into the depths of the Internet and familiarized me with the websites that would become my livelihood a decade later.

It was those “Star Wars” websites that gave me my first opportunities as a college student to get a glimpse of the life of a Hollywood journalist.

As a college student, I interviewed the cast of the first two “Harry Potter” movies, as well as John Travolta, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle and Hugh Jackman for “Swordfish.”

My college graduation was in May 2002, the day Episode II was released in theaters and on that day, I set a goal for myself to be working somewhere I’d be able to write about the next movie, Episode III.

That happened in 2005 at The Times Herald-Record.

And ever since 2012, when Disney bought Lucasfilm and Star Wars, I had been developing relationships with people at that studio and in the industry not ONLY to prime myself for this event, but it was always on my mind.

So, as we got close to the release of the movie and I was invited to cover the press junket, I requested interviews with every single actor and filmmaker available.

I expected to maybe get one or two and I knew Harrison Ford was a long shot.

But, those relationships and my unrelenting passion for the franchise got me not just one interview, but five (four on the day as one got cancelled), including Ford.

And talking to Ford was a dream come true.

As long as I’ve been a “Star Wars” fan, I’ve been a bigger Han Solo fan. I also love Indiana Jones, so he’s always been my favorite actor and kind of an idol.

Plus, I collect Han Solo stuff so Harrison Ford is never too far from my face.

So actually getting to sit down with him was kind of a culmination of everything both in my personal and professional life, stuffed into eight short minutes.

Describe the interviews themselves. You openly expressed a certain disbelief that they were happening/did happen. What were those moments like for you?

These interviews are always extremely weird.

They take place in very sterile environments (hotels, offices, etc.) and are kind of an assembly line as a star sits in a room and then a string of journalists just walk in, talk to them, and leave.

For “Star Wars,” it was even odder as we were at a massive convention center and the interview rooms were bigger than most houses.

So you’d wait outside, walk in, sit on a white couch and talk for 8-10 minutes. And even more odd, with “Star Wars,” it’s the first press junket I’ve ever done without seeing the movie.

Sometimes there are “long lead” days where a company will show you a few minutes of a movie and then you do interviews but a week away from release, you always see the movie so you have something to talk to the actors about.

With “Star Wars,” you hadn’t seen anything and they were unable to talk about anything directly related to the movie.

It made for an interesting challenge.

Thankfully, I’ve been following this film since the second it was announced — literally — and I had plenty of questions for the likes of J.J. Abrams, Oscar Isaac, Gwendoline Christie and Mr. Ford.

Things only got weird on a few occasions with Isaac and Christie when they told me they weren’t allowed to answer a few questions.

I think my disbelief at being there was just kind of the resonance of feeling that so much of my life had led to this.

I’d finally arrived.

You have posted video of how you turned over your apartment to just about every piece of “Star Wars” memorabilia you own. As such a diehard fan and as a film critic, what are your expectations and hopes for the new movie?

My hopes are for something that makes me feel the way I do when I still watch the originals.

Those are my expectations too. I just want it to be something that’s worthy of “Star Wars,” that spawns conversation and answers questions I’ve had for decades about what happens next.

I mean I was ULTRA excited for the prequels.

I saw “The Phantom Menace” nine times in the theater I was so hyped for it. But with those movies, ultimately, you knew how they had to end.

Anakin becomes Darth Vader and his kids get separated.

But now, finally, after 32 years, we finally are going to find out what happens after “Return of the Jedi.”

We don’t know how it’s going to end, who the characters are, etc.

It’s all a mystery.

And that infinite possibility just gives me goosebumps.

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Remembering the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shootings in Newtown

Note: Today marks the fourth anniversary of the mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., which took 27 lives. 

I wrote this column when I was executive editor at the Pocono Record in Stroudsburg, Pa. It appeared in the paper on Dec. 27, 2012.

Weeks before the mass murders made Newtown, Conn., a household name, we had planned to spend Christmas Day with a friend there.

She had recently finished months of chemotherapy and radiation and we thought it a good idea to visit. Then the shootings happened and suddenly our plans to go to Connecticut took on a different meaning.

The visit became more of a mission trip: I had a calling to do something since we would be within five minutes of Sandy Hook.

My wife, son Daniel and I brought the makings of a hearty kale soup, dessert and pick-ons and spent a relaxing, affable afternoon with our friend and her cat, Joey.

I had packed a small tin of homemade cookies that I had decided I would give to whatever poor flatfoot had to work sentry duty on Christmas Day in downtown Sandy Hook.

Against the enormity of what had happened there, this would be the merest of gestures. But it felt like a tangible offering that might say something to a stranger for a moment.

After we left our friend’s, we stopped at a makeshift shrine/memorial housed in a large white tent off I-84’s Exit 10.

Just across from the Newtown Diner, the memorial was unmistakably marked by a huge American flag hanging from a bucket truck.

Meg opted to stay in the car with Dan.

I went in. I was tentative.

A friendly young man wearing an ID tag around his neck assured me it was OK to go in, that it was a place to meditate, to pray or just observe.

Inside, piled high were collections of flowers and stuffed animals. Large white posters were available to sign. A wave of grief struck me with such ferocity, it literally left me breathless.

I signed a card and scanned the displays, my eyes looking but not really seeing.

We then drove into downtown Sandy Hook. There were few Christmas lights in Newtown, but only a mile down the road, we came on an oasis of light.

Candles, notes, stuffed animals, cards and flowers over-filled the width and length of sidewalks of Sandy Hook’s downtown.

I had not seen anything like it or felt anything as powerful since a visit to Ground Zero on Sept. 25, 2001.

Live Christmas music filled the quiet street. A young man, oblivious to the cold, played a piano perched outside a storefront.

It was a scene both surreal and comforting.

And there they were: Two cops bundled against the cold wearing reflective vests, keeping an eye on traffic and visitors.

Overwhelmed, Meg opted again to stay in the car. To my admiration, my 14-year-old son flanked me, carrying the tin of cookies, as we approached the cops.

I tried to talk but, overcome by emotion, my voice cracked like a boy going through puberty.

They at first demurred when we offered the cookies, but when we said we had come from Pennsylvania, one of their faces lit up.

Where in Pennsylvania, one asked. The Poconos. Oh, he said, beautiful country. I ran a marathon there this summer and golfed there.

They graciously accepted our humble offerings, his partner taking the tin to a nearby patrol car.

Taking off his glove, the Pocono marathoner offered a warm handshake and wished us a Merry Christmas.

Maybe those cops were not exactly the shepherds tending their flock, and we were not exactly the three kings bringing gifts, but in the overwhelming darkness that had befallen us all, Sandy Hook on Christmas night offered me a glimmer of light and the promise of hope.

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A-Hunting I Will Go…

I am invisible.

You cannot see me.

You cannot smell me.

And, apart from my growling stomach, you cannot hear me.

I am dressed in camouflage, covered in scent-killing spray, perched about 17 feet off the ground in a tree stand near the Delaware State Forest in the Poconos woods of Pennsylvania.

It’s late October and my guide to all things deer hunting is Mike Kuhns, sports editor for the Pocono Record in Stroudsburg, Pa., and a lifelong sportsman.

image

I am an urban urchin who grew up in New York City. My outdoors experiences were limited to visits to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, a few overnight campouts with the Boy Scouts and one memorable camping trip 30 years ago with my About Men Radio crewmates.

I am a mere Padawan to Mike, a Master Jedi of the outdoors.

image

On this day, Mike is hunting deer with a compound bow. Me? I am armed with a smartphone and a recorder.

This time of year is the beginning of the “chase” season. It’s the prequel to the full-on, raging-hormone-fueled rut in which male deer will range for miles seeking a one-night stand.

Before we set out, Mike inventories various noise-making devices, including a bundle of sticks in a bag that he rubs between his palms. The noise, which mimics the sound of two bucks banging antlers for territory, is designed to arouse their curiosity and draw them closer.

As Mike outfits me in a camo jacket, he explains that he washes his hunting gear in special fragrant-free detergent. He sprays us, including the bottom of our boots, with a scent-killing spray.

“The key to deer hunting is beating their nose,” he says.

The sounds of our feet kicking through fallen leaves and the sight of our breath, illuminated by our headlamps, are the only things disturbing the predawn stillness of the forest.

We stop and Mike takes out a long cord called a drag rope. At its end are thick strands that he dips into a small bottle of pungent deer estrus.

I drag the rope behind me to mask our scent and leave an inviting, c’mere-big-boy smell for bucks. The aroma of doe pheromone faintly clings to my clothes.

I learn a lot about deer habits from Mike. It’s all very “Wildlife: CSI.”

He points to telltale signs of deer activity that I walked right past: a clearing where bucks scraped away leaves and dirt and urinated to mark their territory or where one rubbed his antlers against a tree, stripping away some of the bark.

image

We’re in our perches by 6:22 a.m., a solid hour before sunrise. Although we are above the sight and scent lines of the deer, “it doesn’t mean you can sing and dance up there,” Mike says.

So I try to remain as still as possible. Hunting is not for the fidgety.

I hear the thrum of traffic from nearby Route 402. I also swear that several times I hear the heavy movement of leaves, as if something was approaching, but nothing ever appears in my line of sight.

Mike tells me later that with the way sound travels in the stillness of the woods, a deer or bear a distance away could have been passing through and it would have sounded like it was over my shoulder.

After about three hours of sighting nothing but chipmunks and squirrels, we head back.

But Mike is brimming with enthusiasm about the morning’s outing.

Hunting is not always about the kill, he says. (What he does successfully hunt goes to the butcher. Some he keeps and some he donates to Hunters Sharing the Harvest.)

Hunting is about being out in nature, he says. It’s about the chance to hear owls talking to one another, or seeing a bear or watching a fawn get milk from its mother.

Indeed, the experience is extraordinary.

The stars fade to pinpricks of light as the black sky gives way to a bluish hue and the outlines of the trees become more pronounced.

As I take it all in, I have a deeper appreciation for the grandeur of nature and the wonders of the universe.

Yes, I am invisible as I sit in the tree stand. But watching the changing sky, I am also infinitesimal.

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Man in Mourning: Where Do You Put the Pepsi and the Pain?

It was nine years ago today that my fiancée Carla died.

The weeks immediately after her death were a blend of profound sorrow and emptiness.

Carla, who led a colorful and sometimes pain-filled life, used to joke: “Growth experiences are a bitch.”

Yeah, that about described it.

Looking back on those early months after her death opens a window unto my state of mind and how I was coping. Below is an excerpt from an email I wrote a little less than four months after she died.

I think of it as a meditation on a man in mourning.

March 18, 2007

Mom and Dad came up to help me go through Carla’s footwear (Imelda Marcos was such a rank amateur), coats, jackets, pants, sweaters, tops and her bling.

Mom also ably went through what we used to refer to as the “foofoo bathroom,” the one upstairs that I ceded to Carla and that she promptly turned into a “girlie” bathroom with all the perfumes, sprays, lotions and other female-y stuff to match.

Mom was able to fill something like nine black garbage bags with clothes and shoes to donate to charity. Wow, did Carla have good taste – albeit a bit weird at times — in clothes and accessories. Of course, that would match her taste in men! LOL

I came back to the house today after dropping Mom and Dad off at my sister’s and went into the foofoo bathroom. Sure, it’s the same but it is something less now.

Carla’s crazy, chaotic style of stocking the shelves has been replaced with organized groupings of stuff that’s worth keeping.

Her dresser, once a hodge-podge of décor is now a bunch of jewelry boxes, stacked.

And the closet? Devoid of her nutty, weirdly stylish array of clothes.

IMG_3010

The sense of loss came back as if you were at the beach and had your back turned to the ocean and a wave crashes over you and knocks you down. You suddenly are below water, and then break through, cursing and wondering what the hell just happened.

And then it came back again: How dare she leave me and the boys? Who the hell did she think she was, not taking care of herself like that? Why didn’t she get to the doctor sooner?

So much for forward momentum.

And then came this: Come home from grocery shopping with the boys. Stowing the food and came across an open bag of her beloved Sun Chips. And with audible apologies to her, I took it and tossed it in the trash.

But then came time for Mike to help me put away cans of my soda.

And there they were: Two 12 packs of her goddamned Pepsi, squirreled away in a narrow little cabinet by the stove. The Pepsi that I was in charge of stocking in the fridge, the Pepsi that she would start the day off with a “pffffft” as she pulled back the can’s tab, the Pepsis she carried EVERY-friggin’-WHERE with her – doctor’s offices, fairs, shopping, you name it.

And so Mike asked such a simple, but profound question at that moment: What are we going to do with the Pepsi?

Damned Mike if I know.

Much in the same way I still have the cooler that was packed with her Pepsi on Nov. 6 – the day we headed to the doc’s and then the hospital – still sitting in the truck, untouched, unopened.

So, yeah, where do you put the Pepsi and the pain?

The answer I think lies in not mourning Carla’s death but continuing to celebrate her life.

She had no use for the pity pot and would probably kick my ass from here to next Tuesday if she thought I was wallowing in self-pity.

Doesn’t necessarily make it any easier, but there it is.

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No One Gets Out of Here Alive

The older you get, the closer your mortality appears to be gaining on you in your rear-view mirror.

Once you cross the threshold of 50, you’ve lived enough of life to have experienced some losses personally, seen others who have suffered them or just simply are more aware that no one gets out of here alive.

I recall as a kid my dad watching old movies, and when certain actors and actresses would appear on screen, he would run through a check list aloud:

“Oh, he’s dead.” “Yeah, she’s dead.” “Oh, wow, he’s gone, too.”

(As an aside, for those concerned about the actor Abe Vigoda, who has been prematurely declared dead, there’s a website dedicated to keeping tabs on his breathing: http://www.abevigoda.com/)

Hollywood stars aside, I’ve mulled over the question of how long I want to live in a previous blog post.

And in a recent conversation, my mom lamented aging as being a pointless process of biding your time. There again, my folks live in a retirement community that they not-so-euphemistically call “God’s Waiting Room.”

In this latest podcast of About Men Radio, Pedro and I explore the question of death, dying, facing our mortality and what, as grown-ups, we should do about preparing for it in terms of wills, medical directives and other cheery stuff like that.

Don’t shuffle off this mortal coil without giving it a listen.

I Worship at the Church of Dunkin’ Donuts

Having spent a week in May in the San Francisco Bay area, I have these observations to report:

* The weather is consistently cool and comfortable.
* The locals are unfailingly polite and helpful.
* Colorful flowers grow easily and in abundance.
* The restaurants are diverse and the food is fresh and flavorful.
* It has accessible, far-reaching mass transit.

There is not a Dunkin’ Donuts in sight.

I’ve never visited a place so inhospitable.

For me, DD is the purveyor of chalices of liquid gold.

Even my wife knows to refer to the familiar pink-and-orange logo as “the holy of holies.”

Indeed, coffee for me is not merely a hot, caffeinated beverage, it is a religion.

I worship at the Church of DD where the first commandment is “Thou shalt have no other coffee before DD; thou shall not brew for yourself any false coffee.”

My wife is dedicated to drinking Starbucks, which I find pretentious and foo-foo. (The coffee, not her.)

She even goes as far as to ascribe certain qualities to Starbucks patrons.

On a recent afternoon, for instance, she was driving and was waiting to make a turn when a considerate motorist yielded so that she could turn.

“Oh,” my wife said. “You are such a nice person. You must be going to Starbucks.”

Sure enough, that is exactly where this driver was headed.

I love my wife but we have a real divergence of opinions when it comes to DD vs. Starbucks.

For me, I do not want any artisanal, free-range coffee beans collected by white-gloved hipsters wearing skinny jeans who put the beans into a satin-line burlap bag and then grind them by hand.

I also do not want my coffee orders to sound like some form of pig Latin: “I’ll have a veni, vidi, vici grande soy latte with a half gainer and a twist.”

Yes, I do in fact own — and proudly wear — a T-shirt that reads “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Starbucks.”

DD shirt

I tend to be pretty proletariat about coffee.

It is a commodity for the masses and rightly ought to be treated and marketed as such.

Coffee is too important to the public well-being to be treated as some upscale elixir that only coffee cognisanti can order.

Recent news coverage affirming once and for all that coffee is not harmful to your health and can actually be beneficial was cause for rejoicing.

So for the sake of your health, and to demonstrate you have good taste, raise a cup of DD coffee to your lips.

If you really must drink Starbucks, treat it as you would a wine tasting: Sip. Swish. Spit.

And then keep on spitting until you’ve reached a Dunkin’ Donuts.

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I Crack Myself Up

I remember the date well because I still have the hospital discharge paperwork.

My first wife and I were living in Saranac Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. She was a teacher and we became good friends with her school principal and his girlfriend (later to be wife).

Christine was an artist who lived in a small upstairs apartment on the village’s Main Street. She had a pair of saw horses and resting atop them was a large rectangular piece of glass that had come from a New York City bus shelter.

(How she came into possession of New York City Transit Authority property, I am still not sure.)

The glass on the saw horses served as a flat space for Christine, who would paint and draw. She was moving in with Dan and he asked if I could help carry the glass to a van.

Sure, I said. What could possibly go wrong?

It was summer, and even though we were in the mountains, it was sweltering hot. I sized up the glass and swallowed hard but was confident we could do the job.

Leading to Christine’s walk-up was a very narrow, serpentine staircase.

Dan and I grunted and carefully maneuvered the big pane (that should more appropriately read “big pain”) down the stairs, sweating bullets the whole time.

We got out the downstairs doorway — home free! — and made our way to the van. Dan was closer to the van’s rear doors.

Nearly done!

First I heard the noise. It sounded something less than a gunshot but more than a firecracker.

And then my eyes fixed on what caused it: thousands of bits of glass, like flecks of Styrofoam, blanketed the van, the street and the sidewalk.

Somehow we must’ve just tapped the edge of the glass against the van with the right amount of harmonic convergence to cause it to explode.

The noise and the mess were so great that people literally stopped in their tracks.

My forearms were pockmarked with blood as tiny glass meteorites shot into my flesh. But Christine’s arm was a full rivulet of blood as the glass had cut her more deeply.

Dan, who incredibly escaped largely unscathed, took one look at us and whisked us to his car and headed pedal-to-the-metal to the hospital ER.

My problem was not that I was bleeding out but was almost PASSING out from the sight of my own blood.

My face looked like it had been bleached.

Yes, truly.

In the end, the doctor elevated my feet, got me some Band-Aids for my boo-boos and gauzed up Christine like the second coming of the Mummy.

This all came to mind recently when my wife and I had to take a large broken mirror to our garbage center and the attendant there saw what I was doing and said to me: “Don’t cut yourself.”

Don’t worry, pal.

Been there, done that and have the mental scars to prove it!

cracked mirror

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Why I Won’t Miss the Photos of Naked Women in Playboy

Playboy without nude women? It’s like peanut butter without jelly.

As a subscriber to Playboy for more than a dozen years, I can say, though, I will not miss the naked pictorials, which the magazine announced it will discontinue in March.

There is the old joke that men get the magazine to read the articles. Well, the older I’ve gotten, the more truth there is to that!

But let’s start with the pictorials.

For one thing, the models are so glammed up, so exquisitely photographed in exotic locales and so airbrushed, they’re like the shiny red apples sold in supermarkets: unnatural.

In the photos, there is nary a hair out of place, a stretch mark, a blemish or a make-up smudge to be found.

Gimme a break!

They are what saccharin is to sugar: a poor artificial substitute for the real thing.

Sexy is a real woman whose hair is tousled from rolling out of bed in the morning, eyes poufy from sleep and padding around in her PJs and her body warm from the covers, not some naked young lady on the beach, with the sun setting in the background, the wind in her hair — and her mascara perfectly in place.

Oh please.

Here’s the other thing: As I have gotten older, these models have gotten younger.

A LOT younger.

This is totally true: I look at the centerfold’s dates of birth and almost always I think: Holy crap! My career is older than they are!

In some cases I graduated college long before they were born or I’m old enough to be their dad.

Ewwwwww……

I also can barely contain my laughter at the descriptions of their turn-ons and turn-offs and the introductory text leading up to their layouts.

I am not saying these women are not smart, but the magazine writers take ridiculous liberties in overstuffing the quotes attributed to these models with navel-gazing hyperbole — a point underscored in a hilarious stand-up routine by the late comedian Charlie Callas.

While I have never been a fan of Playboy’s fiction, (being a hardcore addict of news and nonfiction), I do spend a lot of time reading its columnists, interviews, 20 Qs and libertarian views on privacy, government, laws and sex.

Those pieces are thought-provoking, engaging and often well written.

Yeah, sure, with its ads and some articles, the magazine still promotes some kind of throwback frozen-in-time bachelor lifestyle that features fancy cars, cigars, drinks and travel. It’s a mindset worthy of the “Mad Men” era.

That’s fine. I have always taken Playboy’s sense of itself with a grain of salt anyway, knowing full well I would never live that life of leisure and wealth.

For its part, Playboy said the decision to end the nude pictorials reflects a business decision in an era when thousands of photos and videos of naked women are a mouse click away on the Internet.

I get it. I’m cool with that.

I wonder now if my mailman will finally stop dog-earing the pages.

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My Haunted Scarehouse Visit: Screaming, and Lots of It

When it comes to visiting Halloween haunted houses, let’s just say that I sprout feathers and Frank Perdue is sizing me up.

My earliest recollection of visiting a spooky attraction came when I was about four years old. My dad and I went with a neighbor to the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey.

We went on Casper the Friendly Ghost’s Ghostland ride and I recall being positively petrified, clinging to my dad and screaming my brains out.

It was Casper the FRIENDLY Ghost, for crying out loud.

Fast-forward almost 50 years, and little has changed.

For example, my friend Silvio posted on Facebook a story about a California attraction that is so scary that you need to sign a waiver and it has a safe word, “mercy,” to let you exit.

He asked when we could go. I replied: “Does ‘never’ work for you?”

So you have to wonder what I was thinking when I suggested to my About Men Radio brethren that we visit a Halloween attraction in Wharton, N.J., called the Haunted Scarehouse.

(They called my bluff since I never thought anyone would actually take me up on the idea!)

So it was that John and Rich, accompanied by one of Rich’s daughters and two of her friends, plus my brother-in-law Ed gathered at a warehouse transformed into what Scarehouse described as “two terrifying attractions…spread over two floors of fear.”

Pffffttt. Mere Halloween hyperbole, I thought. This will be as spooky as Disney World’s Haunted Mansion, right?

My first mistake was somehow ending up at the head of our group as we made our way through darkened mazes, creepy sets and blind turns.

So I did what any full-blooded, macho manly man would do: I pushed the three 14-year-old girls to the head of our group.

Haha! Just kidding: No, instead, I pushed John to the front and then held onto his jacket like a security blanket.

John was fearless, moving through the corridors like a linebacker. But my admiration wore off when he began cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz” and making all kinds of spooky noises in an effort to freak me out further.

This, in turn, prompted me to frequently threaten to kill him.

(Sorry about that, John.)

The sets had high production values, with moving walls and floors, huge hydraulic-powered monsters jumping forward at you, strobe lights and loud sound effects that left you disoriented and breathing heavy.

I was sweating and my heart felt like I had just gotten off a treadmill.

As we pushed onward, more and more costumed characters jumped out at us, from behind, from the sides and from hiding places.

body bags
Photo courtesy of The Haunted Scarehouse

While some of them scared you silly by screaming or revving up a chainsaw, others just silently got in your face, like this one actress with a crooked Joker-like smile caressing a headless doll.

What. The. Hell?!

The real trick came when you saw what you thought was a mannequin – was it a mannequin or was it a costumed character staying real still? I made a several wrong calls and the damned fright they gave me had me doing plyometric cardio.

It also prompted me to swear. Colorfully. Often. And loudly. Very, very loudly.

(Sorry about that, girls.)

When we got to the second floor, the attraction operators split up our group, so that it was now just Ed, John and I. Yeah, just like in the horror movies, the group gets split up and you know what happens next!

hauned scare 2
Photo courtesy of The Haunted Scarehouse

I tried at this point to keep a sense of humor, such as when a character with a stump of a wrist waved it in my face and I told him I could not lend a hand.

But in the end, I did a lot more screaming (OK, shrieking) than I did laughing.

What I discovered was that yes, things really DO go bump in the night — though actually that was me stomping on my brother-in-law’s foot when I jumped back in fright.

(Sorry about that, Ed.)

Haunted House_[0004D5AC72B23480]_2015-10-16_18-58-41 (2)

 

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Celebrating 14 Years of My ‘Exercise Sobriety’

Today marks my birthday but more important than that, it is year 14 of my “exercise sobriety.”

At About Men Radio, we’ve touched on health, fitness, exercise and eating right in any number of podcasts and blog posts.

Pedro and I talked about our exercise routines and eating right in podcasts here and here.

And I discussed my training for the Warrior Dash extreme race. (Unfortunately my work schedule kept me from competing but there is always next year!)

I also recounted my excitement about meeting and working out with exercise guru and man crush Tony Horton and explained how it’s never too late to burn off the goo.

Getting the right amount of rest, eating as close to healthy as you can and exercising take on a whole new level of importance when you reach, ahem, a certain age.

I know I’ve told this story before, but I want to repeat here today, partly to reinforce the lesson to myself after 14 years, but also to tell my brethren (and sistren) that it is NEVER too late to get started.

I was 37, woefully out of shape, stressed to the max and eating like a maniac.

My routine was a doughnut and coffee at 3 p.m., which would send my sugar levels spiking and then crashing, taking my energy levels with it.

Late nights featured chocolate dipped in peanut butter with a Kahlua-and-milk chaser, topped off with maybe five or six hours of sleep each night.

Rinse and repeat.

My fiancée at the time bought me a pair of push-up bars, a VHS exercise tape and a sit-up bar. They sat off in the corner for many, many months.

She never nagged me or even said a word about the equipment but I knew they were there.

My epiphany came after a dinner of three (or was it four?) slices of pizza followed by truly yummy Italian pastries from one of the local bakeries.

I am still not sure what happened, but something clicked (or snapped) and on my 37th birthday, I popped in the boot camp exercise VHS tape.

IMG_2788

I had to quit after about 15 minutes.

I was winded and frustrated that I could not keep up. But I tried it the next day. And the next and the next and the next.

By the end of the week, I was getting through the entire 30-minute video.

Over time, I began biking, lifting weights, running and doing other forms of cardio. I dropped 40 pounds, about half of which, over time, I’ve put back on.

But that does not discourage me.

For about the last seven years, I’ve been doing P90x workouts with my man Tony Horton. He’s a good coach and I find him inspiring.

IMG_2790

Do I fall short of my goals? Hell yes. Am I ready to grace the cover of “Men’s Health” magazine? Hell no!

But I’m averaging four to five days a week of exercise, and I keep just showing up and that’s more than half the battle.

If you’re looking to make changes in your life, start with small steps.

You will be amazed at the strides you will make.

Take it from someone who’s been there.

If I can do it, so can you.

Drop me a line at amr@aboutmenradio.com and tell me about how you’re coping. We can swap ideas and give a little support to each other.

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Pedal Power Fuels Friendships

If you want to gauge who your true friends are, come up with a ridiculous idea for an adventure that requires five hours of driving (one way) to visit an attraction for 90 minutes and then see how many of your buddies raise their hands.

In my case, it was a perfect score: Three out of three.

That says three things about my friends: They are committed to maintaining and keeping alive connections among us that date back 40 years. They are giving of themselves. And they’re completely nuts.

Last fall, I convinced two of my buds to come with me to Minnesota to drive a tank at a place cleverly called Drive A Tank.

This fall, it was the (railroad) ties that bind.

I read a story in The New York Times about this rail biking adventure in my former stomping grounds in Saranac Lake and Lake Clear, N.Y.

Rail Explorers puts you on open-air cars the deep red color of Radio Flyers that are equipped with seats, safety belts and pedals. The cars can accommodate from one to four passengers.

The premise is simple: You pedal six miles along a section of an old rail line through the Adirondack wilderness, passing lakes, ponds and woodlands during the fall foliage.

Now picture four middle-aged guys on one of these contraptions. We were not exactly the “Fast and Furious.” More like the “Evenly Paced and Moderately Angry.”

That said, we did reach downhill speeds of about 20 mph (nowhere near the sound-barrier-smashing speed of 516.7 mph Pedro and I achieved in our feat of derring-do on the Olympic bobsled run in Lake Placid).

Rail bikes like the ones we rode have been operating in South Korea for about 10 years, according to Alex Catchpoole, the owner/managing director of Rail Explorers.

The ones in the Adirondacks mark the first operation to bring these specially engineered and designed vehicles outside of South Korea, he said.

Since its start in July, the company has hosted 10,000 riders.

It’s easy to see why: The scenery is magnificent and you get to easily access parts of the woodlands that ordinarily would require you to hike.

The big question we faced before we got to Rail Explorers was whether two of the About Men Radio crew – Rich and John – were going to make it on time.

Pedro and I drove up the night before and stayed at a hotel. But Rich and John were going to have to get up at zero-dark-thirty to drive five hours to make our 11:30 a.m. start time.

Not only were they on time, but John – aka “Mannix” – got them there early! (Talk about pedal power! He applied it to both his car AND the rail bike!)

The outing was a chance to enjoy a glorious day in the breathtaking outdoors of the Adirondacks. We also enjoyed a delicious homemade lunch overlooking the lake at the Lake Clear Lodge and Retreat courtesy of Ernest and Cathy Hohmeyer.

But more important, it was a day punctuated by ceaseless chop-busting, laughter bordering on tears and great company.

I got a chance to spend five hours in a car with Pedro heading north and got caught up on things in his life, and then five hours back with Rich catching up on things in his life.

For busy career guys/dads/husbands, this was important time we had together.

Much the same way we enjoyed the rail biking from Lake Clear to Saranac Lake, this trip was not about reaching our destination, but very much about the journey.

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A Bank Job: My Work as a Teller in the Bronx

A recent story in The New York Times made the case for why all young people should at least work one summer as a bank teller.

It stirred memories of my years working as a part-time bank teller while going to college.

While I didn’t get those money-management skills that the article suggested would result, I do have a wealth of stories to tell!

I worked at the Independence Savings Bank branch in Parkchester in the Bronx for about four years.

image
Photo courtesy of Fern Felman

The testosterone-fueled tellers (there were several college-age male tellers, present company included), would spy a pretty woman on line and try to time our transactions so that we would be the one to call “Next!” and have the fair maiden at our window.

Those strategies sometimes called for speeding up the work you were doing with your current customer or walking away briefly from your station to get the timing just right.

We got to know our customers well, many of whom were cops, firefighters, senior citizens and blue-collar working stiffs. One account holder routinely would bring us candy and slip it into the metal coin tray.

The place was populated with a lovable cast of co-workers: There was our Saturday head teller, Mike, an engineer by profession who was a huge “Star Trek” fan.

On Saturdays, he would disconnect the Muzak and pipe in a classic rock station from a radio for those working behind the thick glass windows to enjoy.

Among my colleagues was a guy named Charlie. Charlie was, um, crazy.

At night, when we were the only two tellers working, he would be in a tearing hurry to “prove” — reconcile our cash and the deposits and withdrawals and other transactions — so he could get out and spend time with his girlfriend.

Charlie was short in stature but a wiry guy with a kinetic energy. When he was counting bills, it was a blur of fingers and paper.

Since I was newbie, I was slower and more prone to errors, which would delay Charlie’s exit. (He was my senior, so he had to make sure I was reconciled. In addition, both tellers had to leave at the same time.)

This was a frequent scene:

Charlie hectoring me “Did you prove?! Did you prove?!” And I would get more flustered and prone to making mistakes, which would mean he would yell at me more and I would get more flustered.

Well, one night, not only did I prove, but I did so in record time.

I can still see and hear Charlie going excitedly: “You proved?! You proved?!”

And in a gesture of celebration (or insanity) he picked up one of the cushioned bar stools for tellers and heaved it, legs first, into a wall. The stool’s feet left four distinct puncture marks in the plaster wall.

I was aghast and convinced we would be fired.

Thankfully the next day was a Saturday, and the bank manager on duty was a mellow Irishman named Bob who spied the holes and when I told him what had happened, just chuckled, shook his head and said: “Crazy Charlie.”

The lesson?

Money might not buy you everything, but working with it sure generates some good stories!

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Battle of the Bulge: The Struggle to Eat Right and Exercise

Every man has had a battle of the bulge.

No, not THAT bulge, you perv! Get your mind outta the gutter!

I’m talking about the bulge ABOVE your belt.

The spare tire.

The love handles.

The beer gut.

Whatever you call it, by the time a guy reaches middle age, his metabolism isn’t what it used to be.

Take me, for instance.

I watch what my teenage son eats at home and I am positively aghast at what he inhales. And when his older brother was home, his butt was constantly sticking out of the fridge, his muffled voice crying out that there was nothing to eat.

But then I recall what I used to eat and drink when I was a teenager.

Back in the day, it was nothing for me to chug almost an entire 64-ounce bottle of Coke.

My food pyramid looked more like a pie chart, with the emphasis on “pie.”

Pizza. McDonald’s. Hot dogs. Fudge brownies.

And Friendly’s ice cream. Those Reese’s peanut butter cup sundaes that come in a goblet big enough to fit both of your fists? Oh yeah, that was my go-to dessert when I was in college.

Through my early to mid-20s, I was able to keep my weight fairly under control. But then came kids, long hours at a stressful job, home ownership and more stress.

Doughnuts and coffee at 3 p.m. followed by peanut butter and chocolate with a Kahlúa-and-milk chaser at midnight did little for my health or waistline.

And here’s the thing: Deep down, I knew I was doing destructive things to my body. I felt it in my bones (literally), my clothes and my energy.

By 2001, I was around 220 pounds and feeling every last ounce of it. I was getting winded going up the stairs.

I buckled down and on my 37th birthday, I put on a 30-minute exercise video. I got through 10 minutes of it and – as Roseanne-Roseannadanna used to say on “Saturday Night Live” – “I thought I was gonna die!”

Fast-forward, and next month I’ll mark my 14th year of my “exercise sobriety.”

I work out an average of four to five times a week. I’m doing P90X and Tony Horton workouts, lifting weights and doing a variety of cardio and other exercises.

Pedro is a similar success story. He’s literally half the man he once was, having lost about 130 pounds. He looks great and dresses like a boss!

In this episode of About Men Radio, Pedro and I discuss our struggles with our weight, what our stress eating habits are like and how we modified our lifestyle to live better.

None of this is easy but it’s to point out that Pedro and I are just like you — dads, husbands and worker-bees with a thousand different push-me-pull-me stresses in our lives.

Share with us stories of your struggles, setbacks and successes at amr@aboutmenshow.com

If we can do it, so can you.

Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AboutMenRadio and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aboutmenradio

Have a question or a comment? Write us at amr@aboutmenshow.com

My Crisis of Faith

You’ve heard the expression “Cafeteria Catholic” to describe someone who picks and chooses the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church they want to believe in or adhere to.

Me? I’m a Drive-Thru Catholic.

Here are my (lapsed) credentials: Attended and graduated Catholic elementary school and a Catholic all-boys high school; altar boy for five years; and briefly flirted with the priesthood.

Somewhere around my senior year of high school was the first parting of ways I had with the Church.

That schism did not happen because of Church doctrines on issues such as abortion, divorce, women being excluded from the priesthood, etc.

I think it grew out of a natural restlessness of being a teenager and of being ready to move on.

That time of young adulthood left me believing in some of the principles of the Church — think of the Beatitudes as a good road map — but I was indifferent toward the Church teachings about the existence of God, Jesus Christ and the ceremonial trappings of the Church.

(Truth be told, I was a doubting Thomas from even a young age. I drove my mother nuts when, at the age of five or so, I declared that I did not believe in God because I could not see him.)

The last straw came about seven years ago when our oldest son came out as being gay. He was a sophomore in high school and active in a youth group in our local church.

We got complaints from parish officials about him talking about his homosexuality with other kids. I took it as disapproval of his sexual orientation and I was plenty angry about it.

But what frosted my rage cake came just a few weeks later.

A young, popular parish priest was arrested for having child pornography on his computer. A church leader interviewed on the local cable TV news downplayed the significance of it.

I’m paraphrasing, but he defended the priest as being a good guy and said, after all, it was not like this priest was touching kids or that any kids got hurt.

In that moment, I lost my mind. We stopped attending church. We pulled our youngest son out of CCD.

I haven’t looked back.

But why do I feel as though I am missing out somehow?

On Facebook I see friends, particularly classmates from my Catholic elementary school, who live a life filled with a deep abiding faith.

There’s some part of me that’s envious and wonders how they do it.

And now Pope Francis’ visit to the United States is stirring up more confusion for me.

He seems to have a more welcoming and less judgmental view of the world. It’s heartening to see the example he’s set to literally embrace the poor, the imprisoned and the disenfranchised.

But in the end, I’m left with questions:

Can I practice what the Church preaches about charity toward all without the obligation of faith in its theological teachings?

Can I be a good person without believing in God?

Can you pursue a path of goodness without religion?

If I believe that the answer to all three is a hearty yes — what is it then that I’m looking for?

 

Our Breakfast Club Therapy

It started out as a single get-together about three years ago.

My buddy Rich, who lives about an hour away, was going through a challenging time, so we got together for a breakfast to talk.

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That might not seem so monumental on its face but consider that for us to meet, we each have to travel about 40 minutes to reach a place somewhere convenient for both of us in rural New Jersey.

But the travel was worth it since the purpose was to talk — about our jobs, our families and our anxieties.

That meeting turned out to be just as important for me as it was for him.

One of the things that I’ve come to realize as a guy north of 50 is the almost impossible challenge of cultivating new friendships and the importance of maintaining existing ones.

At this age, there is so much history and so little time to get involved with others, thanks to the commitments of work and family.

By contrast, with Rich, who I’ve known for close to 40 years, there is a built-in intimacy and understanding of our shared experiences.

That breakfast meeting has led to many more since then.

The one-on-one conversations have a different dynamic than when the larger group of my buddies – the About Men Radio posse — gets together.

In a group of three or more, the conversations will inevitably devolve into hilarity of penis jokes, double entendres or a marathon of chop-busting but seldom anything heavy.

But when there is time and space for just two of us to talk, a stillness pervades, the kinetic energy subsides and a focus on more serious topics takes over.

Rich and I do not solve all of our problems over omelets and toast, but we do engage in connected conversations about our families, jobs, aspirations, limitations, etc.

How the hell are we paying for our kids’ college?

What roles are we playing as dads? As breadwinners?

What do our futures look like? What keeps us up at night?

The meetings were an epiphany that it’s O.K. to ask for help or simply just vent.

During our last get-together, Rich replied to a note I sent:

“Good to see you too. …It’ll be interesting 20 years from now when we walk into a place with our canes or walkers to have toast and coffee together. Need to keep taking pics so we’ll have a chronicle of our meetings.”

Indeed, Rich. I look forward to it.

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A New Feature: ‘Ask Us Men’!

Introducing a new feature at About Men Radio we call “Ask Us Men.”

The concept is simple and is offered especially as a service to our female listeners and readers:

What do you want explained about inexplicable guy behavior? What questions have you always had but were too afraid to ask? What things about what we do and how we do them just leaves you mystified?

We invite you to raise any topic — no matter how far-ranging or embarrassing.

Why we like porn? Bring it.

Why we don’t open up much emotionally? Sure thing.

Why we are genetically incapable of asking for directions? HEY! Wait a minute! Now that’s crossing a line…!

Anyway, send us your questions, comments and unwanted Halloween candy to amr@aboutmenshow.com or post your questions on our Facebook page.

Enlightenment is only a few keystrokes away!

Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AboutMenRadio and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aboutmenradio

Have a question or a comment? Write us at amr@aboutmenshow.com

 

Misadventures at Great Adventure

As a kid growing up in the Bronx, amusement park rides were a foreign concept.

The tram or the skyline ride at the Bronx Zoo or maybe the carousel at Central Park were the rides I was most familiar with.

Later, I was introduced to Rye Playland in Westchester County, N.Y. For me at the time, it was a wide-eyed wonderland of rides, attractions and carnival games.

The park, operated by the county, was relatively small and tame compared to its bigger competitors — the biggest of which for New Yorkers was Great Adventure in Jackson, N.J.

I recall well GA advertising on television to lure city residents to make the roughly three-hour trip.

The big attraction at the time was its animal safari, in which you drove through a large enclosed route and wild animals would come right up to your car, and in some cases, sit on it. (The attraction, by the way, has been completely revamped.)

I’ve gone to this amusement park several times, mostly with OK experiences but the height of my misadventures at Great Adventure came in 2002. I was with my mother and sons, then 9 and 4.

We were driving through the safari, having a fine old time. The animals were close and fun to watch.

At the very end of the attraction, you had a choice to take a detour that would go around a section filled with baboons and lead you to the exit, or you could drive through the crowd of baboons.

Why the detour?

Because these cute adorable creatures could strip your car faster than a NASCAR pit crew. The open area they occupied was littered with car parts – hubcaps, windshield wipers, mirrors, etc.

They were nimble, intelligent and curious. And oh, yeah: strong.

Naturally, I was undeterred by all the warning signs about proceeding. My car then was a 10-year-old Ford Escort station wagon.

As the result of someone who had hit my parked car, one of my headlights and signal lamps was loose.

It was still operable but it was not installed correctly because, me being a guy, I had just hot-glued-gunned the piece into place and called it a day.

You can guess the rest.

Sure enough, the baboons swarmed my car. And at first it was cute.

But then one of them yanked that headlight out and held it like a trophy.

My kids’ laughing turned to stark terror crying because they feared what the baboons might do to the rest of the car. It was not quite as terrifying as the baboon scene from “The Omen” but close.

I was laughing because the outcome was so predictable and inevitable.

Best of all was my mother who took a photo of a baboon sucking on the light bulb it had plucked from the headlight.

When she sent me the photo, it included this modern-art-like caption in her handwriting on the back: “Baboon with car light bulb.”

Epic.

 

 

 

 

 

An Interview With Terence Michos, Vermin From “The Warriors”

Terence Michos walks from the parking lot wearing an aqua blue V-neck shirt, khaki pants and sunglasses.

From a distance, it’s hard to reconcile that the man headed toward you is, in fact, the actor who played Vermin in the hit 1979 movie “The Warriors.”

Gone is the baby fat in the face. The curly locks are missing. The shoulders are not quite as broad.

But when he gets closer, and he smiles, the disarming and mischievous face of the lothario that Michos once played is unmistakable.

At 61, Michos would be the envy of men half his age.

He’s fit and trim. His midriff is even more flat now than when he bared it while wearing the leather vest of the Warriors. And even with crow’s feet at play around his eyes, his face exudes a youthful vitality.

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Michos is going to need some of that energy on Sunday when he and other cast members gather for what promises to be a blowout reunion in Coney Island.

Expect to see a huge turnout of fans, many replicating the costumes of some of the colorful gangs featured in the movie.

Think of it as cosplay for hardcore junkies of “The Warriors.”

But what’s not to like about this gritty, of-its-era depiction of New York City at its nadir in the 1970s?

The movie, with its haunting nighttime footage set against a foot-tapping syntho soundtrack, was a safe way for non-New Yorkers to view the stew of the city’s graffiti-covered subways, runaway crime and the specter of street violence.

And for those who grew up in the city in that decade, it was a chance to glimpse real-life neighborhoods and subway stations on film while rooting for underdogs.

(The Warriors are falsely accused of fatally shooting a charismatic leader who, at a summit in the Bronx, seeks to unite all the city’s gangs. The Warriors then have to make their way from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island, all the while crossing through rival gang territory and being pursued by the cops.)

For Michos, the all-day appearance at “The Warriors: Back to Coney,” signing autographs and interacting with fans will be a throwback to the intense experience of what it was like to make the movie.

“It was a wild, wild grueling time,” he recalled of the filming, which took place at numerous New York City locales.

The crew filmed in the middle of the night and the physical demands on the actors were not for the faint of heart.

Those scenes of Michos and other members of the Warriors being chased by other gang members and running at a full-out sprint?

Scenes like those were shot over and over again, 20 or 30 times a night, to get it just right.

And the scene at the Lizzies’ hangout where a night of amorous adventure turns to gunfire and mayhem?

Michos was hurling himself over that couch 15 or 20 times – without the benefit of padding.

In fact, he said he did all of his own stunts, with the exception of when his character got thrown into the mirror in the subway station men’s room.

He recalled going with some of his co-stars, hat brims pulled low, to theaters where the movie was playing and watching as movie-goers erupted in cheers and excitement at the fisticuffs.

Laughing, Michos remembers seeing real-life gang members sitting in the theater and saying to their girlfriends: “I can fight, but I can’t fight like those guys do!”

Michos was relieved not to be recognized, lest real life imitate fiction and he and his co-stars be challenged to a brawl.

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Michos was 25 when the movie was shot. His co-stars were also young.

It was a time of heavy partying, Studio 54 and cocaine, he said.

But not for him.

“I was probably more boring than all the other guys on the set,” he said.

He would tell his movie mates: “‘I’m going home. You guys hold it together.’ I would be telling them about my relationship with God. They loved me. They wouldn’t bring me to their parties, but they loved me.”

But lest you think he was all a goody two-shoes, Michos was quick to note that he shared with his character a weakness for the ladies.

“That was always there,” he said with a grin.

For Michos, the role of Vermin was almost not to be. He’s got the hit TV show “Taxi” to thank with propelling him to “Warriors” fame.

Here’s what happened: The movie auditioned thousands and originally did not pick Michos.

The actor Tony Danza also tried out, and those doing the casting liked him, so he got the part.

Michos went home, had dinner with his girlfriend and cried.

While coming to terms with the rejection, he said he prayed. “I said, ‘Lord, I’m yours.’”

Danza got a starring role in “Taxi,” which pulled him out of “Warriors” and Michos was called back for a second audition.

The movie-makers settled on him for Vermin, who, while a lover, was also a fighter.

“I think it was a good role for me because I think the film was enhanced by that little comedic twist, those little jokes that lightened things up a little.”

He said it’s not unusual six times a day to hear fans recite their favorite pieces of his dialogue back to him:

“Those cats were some desperate dudes.”

“I got the big one.”

“I’m sick of waiting for trains.”

His sense of comedic timing was nowhere better on display than in the tense moments leading up to the brawl in the men’s room.

Mercy, played by Deborah Van Valkenburgh, objects to being led into the restroom by the Warriors’ warlord, Swan.

“Wait a minute,” she says. “I can’t go in there. It’s a men’s room.”

Vermin’s retort is “Are you kidding?” but Michos said the line lacked punch.

So he delivered the line but also improvised.

“I just reached out and grabbed her and she went flying and the house came down.”

He grew up in what was then a much more rural Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

He was interviewed at a playground and recreational field in the Town of Poughkeepsie in his old neighborhood.

He pointed to the field and recalled how he and his friends would play ball and use a beer can as first base, an empty beer case as second base “and, if we found one, a dead skunk for third base.”

It was a community of IBM and Central Hudson workers, professors and doctors. Growing up, he had no ambition to be a member of a gang much less exposure to one.

Still, Michos described himself as a punk.

“I had a chip on my shoulder. If people talked to me wrong, I hit them in the nose, hit them in the face. I hit teachers.”

He was raised Catholic but was less than observant. (He recalled being an altar boy and pilfering the sacramental wine to try to get a buzz.)

He said he had a spiritual awakening in the year that “The Exorcist” was released. Michos said he was fearful — “don’t ask me why or how” — of becoming demonically possessed.

“One night the presence of God came into my room and totally transformed me in a way I could never, ever imagine.”

He said he became a whole new person.

“I committed my life to Christ,” said Michos, who is a pastor at an evangelical church. “I tripped and fell a number of times but I picked myself up and I press on towards the mark.”

Michos, who enjoyed a career on stage and in TV, turned his attention from acting to being a husband and father. He and his wife have four children, including one who is developmentally disabled.

For 16 years, he served as a news director and anchor for a cable TV station that covered the Hudson Valley and then was communications director for former U.S. Rep. Nan Hayworth in her Washington, D.C., and district offices.

Now, among other things, he does political consulting.

But for better or for worse, Michos will long be remembered as Vermin.

He said he remains close to his castmates and has appeared at numerous reunion events but none that have caught on like the one taking place on Sunday.

He described the first time they got together in more than 20 years: “The minute we saw each other, it was like nothing had passed, not a beat had passed. We get together and we just care about each other.”

And as for the movie’s appealing legacy?

“We were likeable bad guys,” he said, citing a comparison of “The Warriors” to “The Wizard of Oz”: It’s all about trying to get home.

Yeah, we can dig it.

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Why the WDBJ Shootings Touched Me So Personally

I am at home, sitting in front of my computer, weeping.

I had seen a news alert about the shooting deaths of two news people from a Virginia TV station that occurred during a live broadcast.

Like so many others, I turned to the web, and more specifically, Twitter, to get the latest.

And then I watched a 12-minute video of the news team at WBDJ-TV report about the deaths of their colleagues.

The footage led with remarks by the station’s general manager, Jeffrey Marks, who looked straight into the camera and delivered the news to viewers.

Clearly, Marks and the three anchors were distraught.

Their voices cracked with emotion. One anchor alluded to studio workers crying in the background. But they were composed and set about their jobs with the utmost professionalism.

The shootings touched me profoundly, and not just because of the loss of such young lives in such a public, abrupt and senseless way, but because, I realized, it touched close to home.

A little over two years ago, I was the executive editor of the Pocono Record in Stroudsburg, Pa.

On the night of Aug. 5, 2013, reporter Chris Reber was covering a township meeting when 23 shots strafed the small municipal building.

Reber had been at the Pocono Record a little less than three months in his first full-time staff reporting job.

His beat: The “West End,” a collection of mostly rural communities sprawled across Monroe County’s countryside that included Ross, a square-shaped locality of about 6,400 residents that historically had been a low generator of news.

“Nothing ever happens there,” Marta Gouger, at the time my top lieutenant, warned him.

But Reber, being new and desiring to be thorough, wanted to develop sources and get acquainted with his community.

It was the first Ross Township meeting he had ever covered.

Nineteen minutes into the meeting, gunfire erupted.

Reber would later report in a firsthand account that plaster was blowing out from the walls as gunshots ripped into the building.

He crawled to safety, exited the building and called the newsroom with dispatches from the scene.

I was at home when I got the phone call. I bolted and arrived in the newsroom in a T-shirt, sweatpants and slippers. I alerted our publisher, who made it to the newsroom in 45 minutes for a trip that ordinarily takes 90.

For a brief time, we did not know whether Chris had survived and I was beside myself. Chris was only a few years older than my oldest son and I was overwhelmed with a sense of responsibility and paternal, protective feelings.

In the chaos, I did get this email from one of my editors: “Reber is (at) the meeting. … Reber is OK, but dead guy on the floor in the meeting. Reber is shook, but said he can work.”

(Three people were killed and one seriously injured by a crazed resident who had had a 20-year feud with the township over his debris-cluttered property.)

In a note later to the staff, I told them that their journalism that night represented a high-water mark for breaking news coverage. I went so far as to nominate it for a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking Local News.

We had a therapist come in to debrief the news staff.

We had a “thanksgiving” luncheon “to give thanks for Chris’ safety and a way of giving thanks for the professionalism and personal support in a time of crisis that you’ve all demonstrated in a big way,” I wrote.

Chris has since left the Pocono Record but remains in journalism.

Newsrooms are like other workplaces but perhaps a bit more tight-knit. In them, we laugh, bicker and celebrate like other families.

And when there is an inexplicable loss like this in one newsroom, it’s felt in others elsewhere.

Today I ordered a basket of cookies to be delivered to WDBJ. It is a small gesture to express condolences but, more importantly, to show support.

In the days after the Ross shooting, I was deeply touched by the outpouring of support that flowed to our newsroom by colleagues and strangers alike.

For those who wish to pay their respects, the station’s address is:

Digital Broadcast Center
WDBJ Television
2807 Hershberger Road
Roanoke, VA 24017

Rest in peace,  Alison Parker and Adam Ward.

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X-Files Reboot? I Want to Believe But Can’t

A recent issue of “Entertainment Weekly” featured a cover story about a reboot of “The X-Files” with the series’ original stars, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

The news fills me with a mix of excitement and dread.

I was a late-comer to “The X-Files” in the 1990s, but once I was introduced to the series, I plunged into it like a scalpel in an alien autopsy.

As a kid, pre-“X-Files,” I had a particular fascination for all things unexplained.

I devoured books on UFOs and articles on Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, alien abductions, etc.

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I was a big fan of the late Leonard Nimoy’s series “In Search of…” that explored the mysteries of the world.

“The X-Files,” with its combination of creepy, paranoid, funny and inventive plot twists, coupled with the witty repartee between Mulder and Scully, made for a great escape for one hour a week on Sunday nights.

I hesitate though to think about a reboot.

In many ways, “The X-Files” was a product of its time:

There were deepening divisions and a growing distrust about Washington, an uncertainty about the world as the school shootings in Columbine and the stand-off in Waco, Texas, dominated headlines and as the U.S. sought to redefine itself in the world after the end of the Cold War.

Somehow the show tapped into those uncertainties by presenting story lines that challenged your beliefs about the “known world” and your confidence in institutions like the government and schools.

Viewers could take a perverse pleasure in “The X-Files” as a safe outlet for these anxieties.

“The X-Files” was also just good, fun television.

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The young Mulder as the believer in things mysterious and Scully as his skeptical science-grounded partner made for a terrific contrast and interplay of ideas.

Add a dose of simmering sexual tension (when will they ever get it on?!), conspiracy-laden plot lines (hello Cigarette-Smoking Man!) and some loveable but smart goofballs (The Lone Gunmen), and you had the equivalent of television potato chips: You kept coming back for more.

Part of the fun for me was getting on the phone with a friend immediately after an episode and trying to unravel what had just happened.

So, yes count me as a big fan.

But…the movies were an affront to all that the TV series had built. And, not to engage in ageism, but part of the appeal of the original was having the baby-faced (bordering on naïve), Scully and Mulder teaming up to uncover the truth.

I think Duchovny and Anderson have only matured in their acting chops, but will a series about mid-to-late career FBI agents investigating the paranormal in a modern age of Google, smartphones and social media be as engaging as the original, which was technologically in the Stone Age?

At a time of NSA spying and a pervasive cynicism about government, the kinds of bogeymen that were the signature of “The X-Files” would likely be overshadowed by real-life world events.

As excited as I would be by a reboot, and as much as I want to believe in it, it might just be best to X-out a reprise of this excellent TV series.

Amy Schumer and Other Viewing

Watching Amy Schumer’s brand of comedy is a bit like my visits to the chiropractor: She drives her fingers into your most tender pressure points.

In the case of Schumer, she hits those spots to bring about comedic relief to topics that are fundamentally damn serious.

Misogyny. Gender inequality. Misperceptions about women perpetuated in our culture.

I have only been recently exposed to Schumer’s work in the summer movie “Trainwreck,” written by Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow.

(A disarming, delightful movie that felt a bit too much like listening to a Schumer stand-up act but nonetheless charmingly romantic in the end. And spoiler: LeBron James, playing himself, utterly steals the movie.)

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I have not watched Schumer’s hit show “Inside Amy Schumer,” but watched a couple of her sketches, including “Last F**kable Day” and the parody black-and-white sketch of “Twelve Angry Men,” where the premise is a jury has to decide whether she is “hot enough” to merit her own TV show.

My take based on what I have seen of her work so far?

Not since Bea Arthur appeared in the Norman Lear sitcom “Maude” in the 1979s and stoked debates about abortion, women’s rights and gender roles has there been a comedian as hilariously provocative on these topics as Schumer.

In this latest podcast of About Men Radio, Pedro and I discuss Schumer’s profile in the world of entertainment, her messages and how and if they are effectively delivered.

Is it the height of irony that two guys on a show called About Men Radio discuss someone like Schumer, who consistently does such a great job skewering how men view the world?

But wait! There’s more!

We also veer off into a conversation about what else we’re watching in the world of TV and streaming video.

We discuss “Deadwood,” “Game of Thrones,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Transparent,” “Justified,” “The Shield” and Janet Jackson’ boob flying out at the Super Bowl.

What?!

If that’s not enough, we introduce the concept of the “pussycat list,” – those actresses and actors who are favorites because of their acting chops or simply because they are easy on the eyes.

And listen in vain as I try to recall the name of an actor and utterly suffer from mental vapor lock.

It’s not pretty but it’s fun listening.

Mission: Impossible — My Love Letter to Tom Cruise

If you are looking for a movie review of the fifth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” blockbuster movie series, “Rogue Nation,” this isn’t it.

No, instead this will be me delivering a sloppy wet kiss to Tom Cruise for what he demonstrated in MI5.

The dude just crushed it in this movie and yet, to borrow a phrase from my father, “He’s showing his age.”

And therein lies my admiration.

To watch Cruise at age 53 – 53! – carry out the stunts he did was jaw-dropping.

(Only a mild spoiler since it’s already revealed in the trailers and on the movie poster, but he hangs off the friggin’ side of an Airbus 400 as it takes off! And yeah, so what if he was harnessed in and had all kinds of other safety precautions in place? The guy still hangs off the friggin’ side of an airplane!)

I won’t give away some of the other breathtaking (literally) set pieces in MI5 that Cruise also performed. You will have to see – and appreciate – them for yourself.

But consider that Jon Voight, who starred in the first “Mission: Impossible” movie in 1996, was only five years older than Cruise is now.

And let’s be honest: Jon Voight even at Cruise’s current age did not exactly look athletic.

(I am two years younger than Cruise and get winded pulling on the refrigerator door handle.)

In the current movie, there is the obligatory shot of Cruise shirtless and he’s in stunning shape.

There’s an escape scene that demonstrates his incredible physical prowess. The guy runs, leaps, fights and performs all kinds of other daredevilry that absolutely earned my admiration.

All of that said, though, here’s the thing I think I appreciated the most about the movie: The movie doesn’t try to portray him as the aw-shucks heartthrob of Cruise movies past, such as “All the Right Moves” or “Top Gun” or even some of his more recent starring roles.

Nope, for the first time ever, I found myself going: Yep, he’s showing his age.

Close-ups of his face (to my eyes anyway) revealed some of the wrinkles and plain weariness that comes with being a guy in his 50s.

No Botox here.

What I also appreciated was how in some situations in the movie he either needed to be rescued or his best effort to get a job done (as in a perilous motorcycle chase) does not work out exactly as planned.

In other words, real life happens.

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Cruise came across as vulnerable and susceptible to the kind of overreach that guys are known for: “Oh, I can do this” or “I can fix this” and suddenly you are Chevy Chase in a scene from a “National Lampoon” movie, falling off a ladder or recovering from some other act of first-degree knuckle-headedness.

If I had been watching this movie in my 30s, none of these insights would have occurred to me. But being older gave me a different perspective on some of these subtleties.

For what it’s worth, MI5 was a top-notch summer tent pole of a movie but, in my opinion, not as good as the previous one, “Ghost Protocol.”

But if for nothing else gentlemen (and ladies) go watch it to see how Tom Cruise is showing his age but doing it with such style!

 

 

 

The Worst Interview Ever

Marc Maron, host of the podcast WTF, made headlines recently with his interview of President Obama.

In a later interview, Maron described being a nervous wreck leading up to the presidential sitdown but how he sought to engage the president.

All of which reminded me of the worst interview experience of my nearly three-decade career as a newsman.

It happened in the first year of my career.

I worked in the Adirondack Mountains of New York and was assigned to interview the Woodsman of the Year (or maybe it was the grand marshal or Lumberjack of the Year — I cannot recall) for the Woodsmen’s Days event (“Celebrating the Logging Industry and Tupper Lake’s Roots”) that takes place each year in Tupper Lake, N.Y.

These festivities were a big deal involving tractor pulls, ax-throwing contests and other displays of manly skills.

I was a newbie reporter at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, newly relocated from the Bronx, and still adapting to and learning the culture of the North Country.

So when I went to meet with this honoree, I was ill-prepared for his Canadian accent.

It was as thick as maple syrup on a cold day.

I could barely understand a word of what he was saying.

I kept asking him to repeat himself, hoping my ear would become attuned to his speech and I would pick up on what he was saying on the second pass.

Forget it. Nothing doing.

So here I was, with my Bronx accent, trying to interview this guy with his thick Canuck accent.

I recall sitting on his back porch and it was hot outside.

His wife came out with cold drinks and she saw (or heard) me struggling with the interview.

“Here, let me help,” she said, to my great relief.

Yes! I thought. Salvation!

She would translate my questions into French and then translate his answers into English.

Problem solved! Or so I thought.

Instead, what she did was loudly shout my questions at her husband as if he were hard of hearing! (For the record, I don’t think he had any trouble with his hearing.)

It was just like that old “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Garrett Morris during a newscast of “Weekend Update” and Morris is in a circle in a corner of the screen to help “translate” the newscast for viewers who are hard of hearing.

So what does Morris do?

He cups his hands to his mouth and shouts the newscast!

I don’t know how, but somehow I finagled a story.

But in the words of Garrett Morris from that SNL skit: “IT WAS THE WORST INTERVIEW OF MY LIFE!”

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Men and Emotions: Big Boys Don’t Cry…Or Do They?

On paper, the summer movie “Inside Out” is the story of a prepubescent girl from the perspective of the emotions inside her mind as personified by Joy, Anger, Fear, Sadness and Disgust.

And on paper, the movie, by Pixar, is a kids’ flick.

In reality, it is a good excuse for adults to sit in a darkened theater and have a good cry.

I warn you that if you go to see this movie, bring a box of tissues.

Or, if you are prone to snotfests like me, bring a roll of paper towels! It’s a gusher!

Seeing the movie was a reminder of how much more prone — and open to — I am to having a good cry.

It was not always this way.

In my 20s and 30s, I would have turned my emotions inward, even if something was upsetting me or making me sad.

But as I entered my 40s and endured a divorce, the death of a loved one and other life events, I found myself more accepting of crying as a natural part of living and not a sign of weakness.

It’s clear that if you try to deny these emotions, they will come out in other ways anyway.

It’s like squeezing a balloon: The air bubble will shift but does not disappear.

In this podcast of About Men Radio, Pedro and I discuss the culture we grew up in (“Big Boys Don’t Cry”), what kinds of TV shows or movies tug at our heartstrings (one of Pedro’s triggers was a complete surprise) and how, even with our openness and acceptance of crying we still use terms like “wuss” and “man up” to deflect attention from what is a common human experience.

Case in point: We agreed that we have never discussed this topic before in 40 years of friendship and that even if we were sitting together in a movie and crying, we would never speak of it!

We also discuss what science and research has discovered about the differences between how men and women process their emotions.

So, get out your hankies, put in your earbuds and give a listen!

Summer Movies and Memorable Flicks With Friends

It is summertime, which means it’s time for popcorn flicks and blockbuster entertainment.

When I look back, it is amazing how many times my friends and I shared bonding moments built around watching movies.

We can recall not only the movie, but where we watched it, scenes  and how we reacted to it.

The movies we have seen together run the gamut, from comedies to thrillers to horror to adult.

The first R-rated ones I saw were “Animal House” and a double-feature of “Kentucky Fried Movie” and “Groove Tube.”

If I recall correctly, we had Pedro’s older brother come with us as our “guardian” since we were 16 and worried about the Loew’s American in the Bronx enforcing the MPAA age restriction.

There are those movies that endure (“Airplane!” of course being one of them) and there are those dogs of a movie that are best forgotten.

But half the fun of recalling some of those godawful flicks is the chance for my friends to break my chops that it was MY idea to go see them.

Two that come to mind: “Squeeze Play,” a pseudo sex romp brought to you by the high-caliber Troma Films company, and “Vice Squad,” a violent, dark film with few redeeming qualities.

But for memorable movie watching — as in like impossible to erase the imprint for your brain — the first-place trophy goes to AMR crew member Rich Rodriguez who a few years ago brought to the man cave “Requiem for a Dream” and “Human Centipede.”

We were crowded into a small room to watch “Requiem,” of which I knew nothing. It was an incredible movie about addiction but so dark and heavy that I needed a drink when it was over.

It is one of those movies, like “Schindler’s List” or “Saving Private Ryan” that you are glad you have seen but cannot imagine ever watching a second time.

And then, as if that did not harsh our mellow enough, Rich popped in the DVD for “Human Centipede,” which was so vile and disgusting and repulsive that we demanded we watch it on fast-forward! (For an idea of how bad it was, consider that its sequel was banned in Britain!)

On a more uplifting note, there was the time we gathered at Pedro’s to watch “Ted,” the story of the raunchy, foul-mouthed stuffed teddy bear who comes to life.

At points we were laughing so hard and loud that we had to stop the movie and replay scenes because we were missing dialogue. That was a good time!

The crowning glory of movie-going moments, though, belongs to troublemaker Pedro following our viewing of “Return of the Jedi.”

We caught an early showing of the much-anticipated third installment of the “Star Wars” trilogy.

We exited the theater and there was a line literally down the block for movie-goers waiting to get in.

So what does Pedro do?

Like the inmates in the Jimmy Cagney prison cafeteria scene where word is relayed that “Ma’s dead,” Pedro delivers a major spoiler by announcing up and down the line of those waiting for tickets: “Darth Vader dies! Darth Vader dies!”

It was a wonder that Darth Vader was not the only one who died that night!

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Corporal Punishment and Catholic Schools

On a recent visit to see my parents, the conversation turned to stories of how they enforced discipline with their three children.

Being the oldest, naturally, I was subjected to the worst of it.

Spatulas. Belts. Shoes.

They were all weapons of ass destruction.

They were used when I was being mouthy or disrespectful, which as I recall, was often.

But as much as my parents were enforcers of discipline, they were no match for the nuns, Christian brothers and lay teachers who made up the staff of the Catholic schools of my youth.

I recall my second-grade teacher who had “the lightning rod,” a steel ruler that was as thick as it was inflexible.

Another teacher used to grind his school ring into your skull.

I attended an all-boys Catholic high school in the Bronx where faculty members were liberal in doling out punishment and enforcing discipline.

For freshman algebra, I had Brother Tin, a Christian brother who stood about 4-foot nothing.

But his stature belied his speed.

Brother Tin

I don’t recall why, but one day a classmate, Mike Wasilewski,  who stood about 6-foot-2, got in trouble and was called to the front of the classroom.

In his heavily accented English, Brother Tin said: “Wasilewski, take off your glasses.”

I never saw Brother Tin’s hands even leave his sides but I vividly recall Wasilewski’s  head recoiling from the sharp, loud smack he took across his face.

But perhaps the most memorable story came on an afternoon while we waited outside a locked classroom and were gathered in the hallway.

This one student, Mike, was recounting a story to a buddy and it was laced with F bombs.

“F bomb this and F bomb that…”

Unfortunately for him, he did not realize that the office of our assistant principal, Ron Patnosh, was scant feet away.

Patnosh

And his door was open. And he was inside. Listening.

The next thing I knew Patnosh materialized as if he were an apparition.

“Where do you think you are?! Do you think you are out on the streets?! How dare you talk that way!”

As he shouted at the F bomber, each sentence was punctuated with a loud smack across the kid’s kisser.

I just stood there doe-eyed like Buckwheat from the Little Rascals.

All of this reminds me of the story of the incorrigible kid whose dad is going nuts dealing with his son’s misbehavior at school.

At public school, the kid is a disaster academically and routinely gets suspended.

The dad tries to enroll his son in a private school but the results are the same.

In desperation, the dad decides to send his son to Catholic school.

Lo and behold, the kid straightens up, discipline complaints from teachers disappear and his grades soar.

One night the dad sits the son down and asks: “After all of the trouble and anguish you put me through, why now did you decide to behave in school?”

The son replied: “Dad, I walked in the classroom and took one look at that guy nailed on the cross, and I knew they meant business!”

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Manhunt for Escaped Prisoners Echoes Search for Another Killer

It was about 1 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, 2014, and I was driving back from my job in New York City along I-84 in Pike County, Pa., within a few miles of home.

In the coal-mine-at-midnight darkness came a burst of strobe lights atop the roofs of two cars in my rearview mirror.

They were closing in.

Fast.

Damnit, I thought. Was I speeding? Sometimes in these wee hours, I did have a tendency to leadfoot it.

But no, the two vehicles – one a Pike County sheriff’s patrol car and the other from the Pennsylvania State Police – went roaring by and never gave me, the lone motorist on a darkened highway, a second thought.

Hours later I would come to understand why.

***

The shrill ringing of our landline woke me out of a deep sleep. I had finally hit the rack around 1:30 a.m. and now through my blurry vision I could see it was about 8 a.m.

It was my wife, Meg, and she was taking our youngest son to track practice at school.

The words came pouring out of her like coffee beans from a torn burlap bag:

“I know you were sleeping, love, but I wanted to tell you that we were turned around on Route 402 getting to school because there was a shooting at the State Police barracks last night. Apparently two troopers were shot in an ambush. The place is crawling with cops and we had to take a detour.”

The news hit my brain like a jolt of electricity. Here? In the Poconos of Pennsylvania? Ten minutes from our house?

Not a month earlier, I had quit my job as executive editor of the local daily paper, the Pocono Record of Stroudsburg, Pa., to join the Metro desk as a staff editor at The New York Times.

I immediately called my successor at the Pocono Record to tell him the news and then stayed glued to my computer for updates.

For the next 48 days, being glued to the news for updates would be the MO for thousands of residents in the Poconos whose lives were disrupted in the huge dragnet for Eric Frein, the man sought in the sniper shootings that killed one trooper and seriously injured another at the State Police barracks in Blooming Grove, Pa.

image15-e1435347582381-768x1024

I am drawn back to those whirlwind weeks of the search for Frein, a former high school marksman with a reputation as a stellar shot, as I stay equally glued following the developments in the search for the now one remaining  escapee from the Clinton County Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y.

I have a foot in both worlds, being a former resident and reporter in the North Country and a newsman and resident of the Poconos.

Though the searches were sparked by different events — one an ambush shooting involving a single person and the other a breakout by two inmates from a maximum-security prison — the searches share a good deal in common.

Hence, my empathy for what North Country residents are enduring.

Like the Dannemora breakout, the Frein search drew national headlines and launched rounds of speculation on social media about his whereabouts.

And like the search for David Sweat and, up until yesterday,  Richard Matt, there were armchair sleuths who criticized or second-guessed the work of the searchers.

While not as rugged as the Adirondacks, the Pocono woodlands where Frein was hiding posed huge logistical challenges for the army of law enforcement that descended on Pike and Monroe counties.

Swamps, dense vegetation and greenways of no man’s land gave Frein ample places to hide. Plus, he was a practiced survivalist and war games re-enactor, so he was a bit on his home turf.

But for locals, this was anything but a game.

Posters with his face were plastered in stores, bulletin boards and even a huge electronic billboard approaching the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City.

For the first time since we moved into our house, I concerned myself with making sure our car doors were locked and our outdoor lights were left on overnight.

School schedules were disrupted as the search pressed on for a killer on the loose. My son lost an entire week that he had to make up at the end of the school year.

Meanwhile some residents were left shut out of their homes or in them as officers locked down certain roads during the most intensive searches.

Federal, state and county assets were pressed into service, including new-fangled machines, including one called The Rook, to help in the search.

It felt like every day was a game of Whack-a-Mole with new leads popping up, then being squashed and new ones surfacing to replace them.

Out of the highs and lows of the search emerged a sense of community spirit and support for law enforcement.

Blue ribbons were tied to trees as a symbol of community backing. Businesses, local residents and firehouses donated food, water and other needed supplies by the truckload to sustain the searchers.

In the end, it was during a sweep of a search area that a team of U.S. marshals spotted and arrested Frein.

He had been using an abandoned airplane hangar as a base of operations.

He was peacefully taken into custody and the 48-day siege that had consumed the Poconos came to an end.

image

Reforming My City Mouse Ways (Or Life in the North Country)

For those who have been keeping close track of the story of the escaped inmates from a maximum-security prison in Dannemora, N.Y., you have no doubt come across descriptions of the prison’s hometown as “remote,” “way northern New York,” or a “five-hour drive from New York City, if the roads are clear.”

All those descriptions are spot-on accurate. They are indeed facts. But what bugs me is that they belie a certain prejudice of geography.

That is, New York State revolves around New York City and anything outside of the city is viewed dimly as “other.”

The most popular tweet I’ve ever written — as measured by retweets and favorites — stemmed from the expansive search for the escapees, which has stretched from the North Country to the 2,000-resident town of Friendship in southwestern New York.

The tweet I wrote: “If nothing else, #nyprisonbreak is some lesson in the geography of NY for those who think the state ends at the Tappan Zee Bridge.”

I say all of this by way of confession: I was once one of these geographic ethnocentrics who thought the world not only revolved around New York City but that New York City revolved around my beloved Bronx!

I was so ignorant of New York’s geography that I honestly and truly thought there was Albany and then came Canada!

I consider myself reformed of my urban-centric ways, hence my sensitivity to slights I perceive that are aimed at rural counties.

Here’s why: My epiphany came when I got my first break in journalism in 1986 working at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise in Saranac Lake, N.Y., about 11 miles west of Lake Placid, two-time host of the Winter Olympics. (I also later worked for the Press-Republican, which is based in Plattsburgh.)

lp office

The editor at the Enterprise at the time was Bill Doolittle. I responded to an ad for an opening and he offered to fly me from New York City to the Adirondack Regional Airport in Lake Clear, N.Y.

I booked the flight and told him I would be arriving at Gate 1. He laughed and assured me he would find me. (I discovered why when I landed: There was only one gate.)

I got the job that very day. It was on my return flight that I realized just how much this city mouse had to learn about living in the country.

The gentleman behind the counter who took my ticket at the airport was also the rental car sales agent. He also took my bag. And radioed the plane. And went to the runway with the orange-coned flashlights to taxi the plane to the terminal!

I was slack-jawed. Now, this was nearly 30 years ago and I am sure it’s not that way anymore. (Update: I am informed it still is!)

At the time, as a stranger in a strange land (correction: with my Bronx accent I was more like a foreigner in my native state), I could not have been more warmly welcomed by everyone.

People extended themselves in their hospitality and courtesies that was breathtaking for this hardened New Yorker. The small-town culture was infectious and comforting.

I spent five years working in the Adirondacks and loved every moment of it.

So when you read or hear some big-media accounts that describe the North Country as “remote,” “forbidding” or “inaccessible,” remember the folks who live there, and trade those adjectives for “friendly,” “generous” and “good people.”

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On Father’s Day, Recalling a Son Growing Up

Maybe it’s because I’ve been a newsman my entire adult life and I’m a chronicler of life events.

It might explain how I had the presence of mind to write down things my oldest son said and did as he was growing up that were cute, memorable or funny.

The first entry dates to when he was 3 ½ years old and continued until he was about 6 years old.

So for Father’s Day, indulge this old man by letting him share with you a sample of memorable “Michaelisms.”

Happy Father’s Day!

***

December 1996: Michael soaked Daddy while taking a bath. Daddy was not amused and said:

“Michael, I’m not laughing.”

“But I am,” said Michael.

***

December 1996: Michael came home with a Jewish star he made in school. It was hanging on the Christmas tree when Daddy got home from work.

“Oh,” said Daddy, “you made a Star of David.”

“No Daddy, it’s mine,” said Michael.

***

January 1997: Michael for breakfast has taken to eating chocolate-covered granola bars. He calls them “gorilla bars.”

***

January 1997: Michael and Daddy are heading into school. Daddy greets another parent good morning in the lobby. Michael turns to Daddy and says: “You can’t talk to strangers like that.”

***

Summer 1997: Michael says that heaven is in Disney World.

***

November 1997: Michael refers to nostrils as “smeller holes.” And told to put away his toys, he announced: “Let’s take a vote!”

***

January 1998: Michael goes to Daddy’s doctor with Daddy because Daddy is sick. Michael wants to know if grown-ups are good at the doctor’s, do they get stickers?

***

January 1998:  Michael tells Daddy that he has had the same dream two nights in a row. But forgetful Daddy cannot recall what Michael had told him. (Michael had described the dream in Technicolor detail the day before but Daddy did not retain it.)

Michael says: “Daddy, your brain works slow. My brain works fast.”

He then put his hand to his forehead and then put the same hand to Daddy’s head.

With that gesture, Michael says: “Here, Dad, have some of my fast brains.”

***

July 1998: Michaels asks who Dino is. Dino? What do you mean? Michael says: “You know – someone’s in the kitchen with Dino…”

***

October 1998: Michael tells his babysitter that he watched the Fourth of July fireworks (“America’s birthday”) on TV because he couldn’t look out his window to see America because it was too far away.

***

August 1999: Michael spots the club Daddy keeps under the bed in case of intruders. Michael wants to know what it’s for.

Daddy tells him if there is anyone who comes to the house who doesn’t belong there, Daddy will greet them with this.

Wisely, Michael asks: “Why would you greet them if they don’t belong here?!”

***

June 2015: Michael turns 22, and, having just graduated from college, is about to begin his professional career at a job eight hours and five states away from home.

Daddy will miss him.

mike grad

 

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You Wanna Know What Comes Between Me and My Daddy Jeans?

“Dad jeans” are notable for being remarkably unremarkable.

Urbandictionary.com defines “Dad jeans” this way:

“Jeans that are no longer fashionable and are usually characterized by a tapered leg, high waist or brand name that was cool about 10 years ago. Dad jeans are typically worn by aging men with salt and pepper hair who are in denial that they are no longer hip, have children and drive a station wagon or SUV.”

I was blissfully ignorant of this derogatory term until recently, when my wife made reference to it.

It turned out that I was a dad jeans frequent flier. (“Clothes Really Do Make the Man” and “Daddy Jeans Revisited.”)

In my defense, I like to dress for comfort.

I am self-conscious about looking too paunchy in the poochey, which is why I tend to get pants that are a little looser in the waist.

With my height, though, it means they are saggier in the butt.

But when the pants are tighter in the butt, they tend to be tighter in the waist which, I think, accents my gut.

Hence the dad jeans look.

The last time I gave jeans style a thought was when I was a teenager and I owned — I can admit this now — a pair of Jordache jeans.

Hey, don’t judge! It was the ’80s! Everybody was doing it!

My wife, bless her besotted self, tells me I have a comely tush that I keep well hidden in what amounts to balloon clown pants.

Pedro tells me I could rent out the extra space I have in my pants and easily get $1,500 a month rent for it in New York City.

So as a present for Father’s Day, Meg and my youngest son Daniel, took me shopping for pants.

This trip required that I:

  • Try on each pair
  • And model them for approval from the judges.

I HATE clothes shopping. And the only thing I hate more is having to try stuff on in fitting rooms.

I much prefer to go to the rack or the shelves, find my size and proceed to checkout. Easy-peasy!

jeansThe trip to the mall is featured in our latest podcast, which pays tributes to dads, Father’s Day and, of course, dad jeans.

I will say that as a result of the shopping expedition (and Meg’s
abundant patience and encouragement), I am now outfitted with several pairs of good-fitting jeans.

The lesson I learned?

I will take the time to try on clothes and no longer shop for jeans by the seat of my pants.

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Featured photo courtesy of shutupandwearit.com.

Riding the Rails: All Aboard!

Germany summer 2011 143

The  older I get, the more I have come to appreciate the phrase “boys and their toys.”

It is an allusion — not always flattering — to men’s affinity for things mechanical or on wheels.

I never really inhabited that territory.

Cars? Meh.

Boats? Nah.

But short line railroads? Now you’re talking!

I can recall as a kid going to Old McDonald’s Farm in Connecticut and Catskill Game Farm in New York and riding their mini railroads and being enchanted. Or bringing my sons to the Bergen County Zoo in New Jersey and riding the rail it has there.

And as an adult, I’ve enjoyed the trips along the Delaware & Ulster Railroad and the Adirondack Scenic Railroad.

So I was captivated to see in The New York Times a story headlined “Riding the Rails in the Bronx.

The story explored this group that wants to put small open-air cars on tracks that are abandoned or seldom used.

When I posted a link to the story on Facebook, I called out the About Men Radio posse and suggested we should do this.

“Would so get our own car,” I wrote, “drinking, smoking, cussing, cellphones all permitted, and ride the wide open rails!”

My suggestion was met with immediate enthusiasm from the AMR crew.

Why?

Boys and their toys.

I mean, c’mon, the idea of riding in one of these old work rail cars, called a speeder, along the open rails of the Bronx?!

Suh-weeeet!

We could outfit it with a couch, a boom box to play 80s tunes and a wet bar! It would be a man cave on rails!

Before you ask “Does your train of thought have a caboose?” let me tell you why such personalized rail cars like these excite me: Because they do exist and I’ve ridden one!

I have cousins in Germany, some of whom live in Langeness, one of 10 halligs in the world. A hallig is an island without dikes that floods almost completely.

When the floods come, these hills become islands. The roads are impassable and they have to wait for the waters to recede.

One hundred year-round residents populate Langeness, which is made up of 18 big hills where the homes and farm buildings are perched.

You can take a ferry to reach the hallig but the most fascinating form of transit is a motorized rail car called a lorrie.

Think of a lorrie as a shed with bench seats that can seat six and that you can put on railroad tracks.

The lorrie line, which is three miles long, crosses land and sea and each inhabitant on the hallig has their own.

On the lorrie line, there are no radios, no track signals and no control tower.

For a kid who grew up on the No. 6 Lexington Avenue subway line, riding the lorrie was an immense treat.

It reminds me very much of what these rail enthusiasts hope to achieve in the Bronx. To which, all I can say is: Good luck to them and all aboard!

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Arcade Games Get A Second Life at Barcade

Barcade in Manhattan is home to a very special place that combines two of the best pastimes imaginable: Enjoying an adult beverage and playing vintage video arcade games from the days of my youth.

This is a magical place that transported me back more than 30 years to a time before Wii, online gaming, Xbox and all manner of other sophisticated game systems.

The premise of video arcade games was simple: You stood in front of a machine the size of a refrigerator with a screen, a set of buttons and, depending on the game, a joystick.

I try to explain this concept to my sons and they look at me the same way they do when I speak of black-and-white television, rotary dial phones and hard copy encyclopedias.

I was struck by a sense of nostalgia in seeing some of my old (OK, very old) favorites like Donkey Kong, Asteroids and, of course, Pac-Man.

For myself and members of the About Men Radio posse, it was a daily after-school ritual: Go to the five-and-dime store in the Bronx on Castle Hill Avenue called Kress.

Some of us were players and some of us were watchers.

A knot of kids would collect around the machine as if we were metal and it was a gigantic magnet.

Players would wedge a quarter atop the buttons or line them up on the screen, upright, as a way of holding their place in line.

Hard to believe this was the way it was done.  But this was organized on the honor system and each player waited for his turn, which could take a while depending on how advanced the current player was.

Another odd memory: Players would put their lit cigarettes (yes, this was long before indoor smoking bans) either atop the machine’s “roofs” or rest them against the buttons, where they would create small burn streaks on the machine’s dashboard.

The arcade games were in few places, mostly what we would refer to as “candy stores,” which were a combination of newsstand, cigar shop and/or ice cream parlor, complete with counter and swivel stools.

Back in the day, the mother lode of these machines, as measured by quality and diversity, was only to be found in Times Square.

So every once in a while, the fellas and I would trek down on a Saturday morning with rolls of quarters to play games we could not find in our Bronx neighborhood.

Of course, later as we got older, we would trek to the then far-seedier Times Square with quarters for other nefarious purposes in mind, resulting in one particularly memorable and hilarious field trip that I have written about in a previous blog post.

The occasion for the visit to the Barcade was to see old work colleagues, including April Hunt,  who I wrote about in a previous blog post. (She is a die-hard, champion Ms. Pac-Man player.)

I turned my attention to some old-time favorites, such as Asteroids and even a Star Wars game. Sure, the graphics and sound effects were clunky and dated compared with today’s almost-holographic games, but that is part of their charm.

But just like old times, I died inglorious deaths pretty quickly on the first rounds of almost every game l played.

With these old arcade games, it pays to have fast fingers.

Unfortunately, for me, I’m all thumbs.

17 at Heart, Older in Other Places

It first happened about 14 months before I turned 50.

I went to a Dunkin’ Donuts, ordered my customary hot medium coffee and expected to pay about $2. I handed over two singles but when the cashier rang it up, I got back a handful of change.

I was surprised but chalked it up at the moment to the price fluctuations you sometimes see among different franchises and the fact that I was not paying close attention.

And then I looked at the receipt.

And there it was: A 10 percent “senior” discount.

image

I was flummoxed.

How dare they let me pay less! I want to pay full freight, damnit!

To hell with saving money! My ego needed saving!

It is not that I am vain about my looks (mostly, I really am not) it’s just that mentally I have the maturity of a 12-year-old.

The Three Stooges.

Making fart noises with my mouth.

Trying to get your friend to splooge soda through the nose with a well-timed joke as he’s drinking.

These things are the art forms that I adore.

Tony Horton, my exercise hero (think of him as this generation’s version of Jack LaLanne) addresses this often in his various exercise DVDs:

“Aging is for people who do not know better.”
“Aging is for idiots.”
“I’m 55 and hello! I feel like 12.”

This might sound Peter Pan-like (sing it with me: “I Won’t Grow Up!“), but on the occasion of one of my buddies turning 17, we got together at his place and took a semi-solemn vow to remain 17 forever.

Granted, this was *cough cough* 33 years ago and happened amid the imbibing of beer and some very strongly mixed Tom Collins drinks.

That image of us, crowded in the hallway of Silvio’s apartment, drinks raised, has stayed with me.

image

When I asked him about it recently, he wrote back:

“BTW, how did that pledge work out for us <<he asks as both knees pop, his neck creaks and typing this caused a shooting pain from his fingertip to his eyeball>>??? Oh you mean 17 at heart. Owww!”

Well, he has a point.

I guess I prefer to believe that we have no choice about growing older but that growing up is optional.

Read more blog posts at www.aboutmenradio.com and athttp://aboutmenradio.net
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Bear: Another Wildlife Visitor to Our House

I swear to God, I am running at home something of a cross between “Animal House” and an episode of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”

You will recall the freaky intruder we had with a bat invading the house. (“I’m Batman”) And that all unfolded while I was on the way back from work from New York City and could do nothing about it.

That was a walk in the woods compared to what happened while my wife and I were visiting her daughter in the San Francisco area.

My cellphone rings while we are visiting Alacatraz and it’s my oldest son, who just graduated from college.

He opens the conversation with “Hypothetically….”

Let me interrupt the narrative here to say that nothing good ever follows an opening like that. And, of course, there is never anything hypothetical about what is to come next.

“Hypothetically,” he says, “what should we do if we had a visit from a bear?”

He proceeds to tell me that the door to the large shed that houses our garbage cans was open and he could see garbage strewn about.

(Take a close look at the bite marks on that Hershey syrup bottle!)

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He called public safety, which arrived and assured him that the bruin was gone.

But the thing that kills me is that for 10 years I have preached to the boys about the importance of keeping the lids on the cans securely attached and making sure the garbage bags go INTO the cans. What a concept!

So here I am, 3,000 miles away, trying to coach him through the steps of what to do, which led to this exchange:

image

 

My concern is that once a bear is imprinted on a site as a source of food, it will make repeat visits. (Each of the houses adjoining us had been broken into by bears repeatedly.)

Like lamb’s blood marked on thresholds during the first Passover, Michael essentially opened up a fire hose of ammonia (said to repel bears) on the door, the doorway, the footing outside the shed, the doorknob, etc.

That led to this text message:

image

Yeah, agreed. But it beats the smell of bear scat and rotting garbage.

How You Can Show Your Love For About Men Radio

Hi friends and listeners,

We want to kick off the unofficial start of summer by thanking you for your support.

We are truly thankful for the feedback and readership and downloads.

For those who have not yet, we would ask that you rate us on Stitcher and offer your comments — good or bad. We can take it. We are, after all, men!

Rating us is painless and about as simple as putting up a posting on Facebook.

Here is what you do:

Click on http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/pop-tech-jam/about-men-radio?refid=stpr

Scroll all the way to the bottom and you will see a link that says “Write a Review.”

From there you can assign the number of stars you think the show is worth and then there are four simple fields to fill out with your exceptional prose praising the show.

Then all you do is click “post review” and presto! You have done us a solid and performed a service for the podcasting universe.

What else can you do to show your love for About Men Radio?

Funny you should ask!

Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AboutMenRadio and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aboutmenradio.

If you have a question or comment or concern or want to send us paper bags stuffed with cash, you can write us at amr@aboutmenshow.com.

And, of course, you can continue to come back to www.aboutmenradio.com to read more blog posts, see goofy photos of us when we were younger (mostly these images of us are depicted in cave paintings) and download the podcasts.

Thanks, as always, for your support and patronage!

Belching and Wet Spots: The Boys Scouts This Ain’t

AMR contributor Richard Rodriguez offered a pretty good account of what can only be described as an epic camping trip from nearly 30 years ago, but there are some salient details he overlooked that I want to add or clarify based on my hazy memory of this adventure.

As I recall, Rich was in charge of getting the tent.

And as I recall, the manufacturer’s instructions recommended pitching the tent, wetting it down with a hose and letting it dry to help activate some kind of waterproofing.

And as I recall, Rich did not do that.

So when the rains came down, down, down like in “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day,” the tent leaked worse than Edward Snowden.

The result was there were numerous wet spots that rendered parts of the tent inhospitable.

But that was not the end of it:

As I recall, John somehow got his hands on beer and ice cream and proceeded to fumigate the tent with a green fog that damn near gassed us the way an exterminator would if he were trying to rid a house of termites. (Picture the faux extermination scenes from “Breaking Bad.”)

Pedro and I ended up sleeping in Rich’s Dad’s station wagon because the tent was already overcrowded and did I mention that parts of the sleeping area were also now wet?

That Pedro and I were relegated to the car meant the two biggest guys in our group would be in the most confined space.

I do not remember which of us ended up sprawled across the front seats and contending with the steering wheel, but I do clearly recall that we needed chiropractors in the morning!

Of all of us, I think I was the only former Boy Scout and the one with the most experience outdoors and with camping.

But you would have had no idea of that based on the way I was behaving.

I was petrified/obsessed with raccoons that were foraging in a nearby garbage can. Every five minutes, I would poke my head out of the tent with a flashlight like some crazed movie usher to see what they were doing.

As Rich noted, there was a steel-cage belching contest that I recall Gary winning on the strength of a masterful performance, which featured quantity, volume and endurance.

Though I finished that weekend dethroned as a title-holding belcher, I went home with many great memories of this trip!
Read more blog posts at www.aboutmenradio.com and at http://aboutmenradio.net

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My Son Blocks Me on Twitter…The Indignity!

A scene at the end of an episode of “Modern Family” has the character Claire (the mother of three) complaining that the kids unfriended her again on Facebook and how then is she supposed to know what is going on in the kids’ lives?

It crystallized for me something I have experienced with my sons: The oldest used to be pretty active on Facebook but has all but disappeared (he is away at college) and the youngest (soon to be 17), blocks me on Twitter!

Blocked 2

When I asked about this recently, he emailed me to say that “I block with love, padre.”

It makes me awfully split-brained, with the conversation going something like this:

Rational Me: What do you expect? He is almost 17. When you were almost 17, would you have wanted to share your remarks with friends with your dad?

Emotional Me: No, of course not. But I am a cool dad. I understand social media and it’s not like I would stalk every tweet he posted.

Rational Me: Really?! I find that hard to believe…

Emotional Me: OK, well maybe I would look at every other one…Besides, it is another indication of how he is coming into his own and becoming his own person.

Rational Me: Yeah, dummy. You are the one always preaching that parenthood is about giving kids roots and wings.

Emotional Me: Oh yeah. Right.

What is your relationship like with your kids vis a vis social media?

Are you friends with them? Do you follow them on Twitter or Instagram? Or do they block out you in the virtual world as much they do in the real world?

Write us at amr@amrshow.com and share your story…assuming you have not blocked us on social media.

Daddy Jeans Revisited

pants2This is an accounting of what unfolded on Facebook when I thought I had escaped Daddy Jeans Syndrome.

Read on:

Was going to brag that I spurned the Daddy jeans look but then was told that these are Daddy shorts. Sigh. What is your opinion? Do I need to go all Richard Simmons?

Matt Smith unless you’re 83 years old, bag those fuckers.

Abby Duran Let’s not get crazy, now.

Alexa Elderkin The bottoms don’t matter when you’re wearing such an awesome top!

Richard Rodriguez Too bright! Need sunglasses.

Kevin Graiani haters gonna hate

Tom Delgrosso Make a big pile of all your shorts down in those leaves, gas can, volunteer fire department, hose at the ready. 3-2-1…..

Tom Delgrosso's photo.

Pedro Rafael Rosado I’m a fan of baggy shorts plus, no one likes moose knuckles. No one…

Tom Delgrosso Noooo! You just need shorts that taper in at the bottom and don’t look like ringing bells when you walk! lmao

Stacy Brown Nah Christopher Mele the daddy shorts has I’m the Man written all over them…. Of course it depends on who is reading them!!

Karen Prior gotta go shopping with Pedro Rafael Rosado …………skinny leg shorts

Barry Lewis also, looks like you have two different shades of blue. shorter with more color. i’m talking about your legs.

Christopher Mele Getting to be black and blue the way I am getting beaten up here!

Pedro Rafael Rosado Moose. Knuckle.

Christopher Mele We love short shorts! Going to Nair my legs.

 

 

From Boys to Men

On my cellphone, under contacts, is a listing labeled “boys.”

The contact is an artifact of 10 years ago when my sons got a cellphone for emergencies. It was a flip phone that they shared since they both went to the same school.

Then they were ages 12 and 7.

boys

Today, of course, they are each outfitted with their own smartphones, in which they tweet, text, Facebook, Skype and engage in all manner of communications.

I have kept the entry “boys” as my contact for my oldest son even though it is hopelessly out of date.

He is no longer a boy but a young man on the cusp of graduating college and embarking on a career and life that will involve less and less of me and my wife.

Up to about five years ago, I felt that time was accelerating like a sled going down a steep hill but that time for my sons was moving at a languid pace.

Now, the pages in the chapters of their lives are flipping forward furiously like what you see in the opening credits of “Masterpiece Theater.” And the pace of my life suddenly feels like a leisurely thumbing through the pages of the newspaper.

In the second to last episode of this season’s “Downton Abbey,” Mary, the oldest daughter, remarks on the sweeping  changes taking place in the household.

Though Mary was commenting on a fictional setting, she might well have been talking about real life.

In the early years, your role as a dad is defined around the waking hours of your kids: Breakfast, school, after school, dinner, bedtime, leisure time, weekend trips, time spent visiting with family, etc.

And then, one day, you discover that managing those activities has been taken away from you. Your kids have become self-actualized.

For me, the change is marked by the morning ritual of getting them to the school bus stop.

Ten years ago, when we first moved to our house and a new school district, I stood and waited with them for the bus.

Then it became just bringing them to the stop, minus waiting for the bus.

Then it became them piling out of the car, saying so long to me and me driving off.

And now? The oldest is at college and the youngest, a high school junior, is driving himself to school — in his own car.

The transition from needed dad to dad as optional accessory has left me feeling bereft. In the vacuum that has been created, what’s next?

That uncertainty is scary because now I have more time (and psychic space) to find out more about myself and who I am supposed to be in this next phase of my life.

My wife described it as parenting as planned obsolescence.

If you do your job right, you are no longer strictly defined as being a dad, although, of course, you still hold that title no matter how old your kids get. It’s just that how the role is defined is dramatically different.

Perhaps in recognition of this, the first thing I should do is change the entry on my phone contacts from “boys” to “men.”

Cookie Monster Confessions

My son enjoys watching a TLC TV series called “My Strange Addiction.”

I’ve never seen it but a quick look at its website reveals bizarre stories of a woman who drinks air freshner​s​ (yes, you read that correctly) and a guy who is addicted to looking like Justin Bieber.

My addiction is nowhere near as strange or unappetizing.

Nah, my addiction is to these monster cookies the size of a car steering wheel that are on sale the Jefferson Diner in Hopatong, N.J.

This place is right along my commute home from New York City, and with its bright neon-lit signs and gleaming chrome exterior, it calls to me practically every night.

IMG_1723

“Come, stop in, and buy a cookie,” it whispers.

And there, on the counter, are three varieties of cookies: Chocolate chip, sprinkles and my new favorite, M&Ms.

IMG_1725

​​I plunk down my $3.50 (worth every cent), carefully unwrap the cellophane covering, and snap ​one ​piece off at a time on my drive home​ as I happily listen to my podcasts.

cookie 2

It is a guilty pleasure and they are so yummy!

What are your guilty pleasures? What indulgences do you partake in? ​Do you have any strange obsessions?

Share them with us at​ amr@aboutmenshow.com​

 

 

 

 

 

“The Americans”: A Great 80s Throwback

If you think watching “Mad Men” is a time warp, you’ve got to watch the FX TV series “The Americans.”

The show, which just wrapped up its third season, is a delight for those of us who came of age in the 1980s.

For the uninitiated, the series’ plot centers on a husband and wife who were recruited as teens in Mother Russia by the KGB and implanted in the U.S. as deep, deep covert spies.

They blend in with the tapestry of American life in a way that no one would suspect they are masters of espionage.

And don’t be fooled.

The lead characters, husband and wife Philip and Elizabeth, are not some Russian spy knock-offs like Boris Badenov and his sidekick, Natasha Fatale, from the “Rocky & Bullwinkle Show” of my youth.

No, they are truly bad ass.

As a couple, they engage in all kinds of counter-intelligence, blackmail and violence. And did I mention – plot twist! – that they have an FBI agent as a neighbor?

But apart from all of the mind-bending turns, suspense and intrigue, the thing I so absolutely love about the show is the way it nails the look and feel of the 80s.

“The Americans” is set during the height of tensions between the U.S. and USSR when Ronald Reagan was president, an anti-missile defense shield positioned in outer space was considered a real possibility and the threat of nuclear holocaust hardly seemed far-fetched.

The show captures that universal unease and brilliantly reflects the styles in clothing, cars and culture of the 80s.

The women are depicted in oversized glasses, multi-colored sweaters and big hair.

The TVs in the series play news segments and commercials of the era.

And the cars! Oh! The cars! These huge tanks are glorious to behold.

But the thing that might have won me over more than anything is when this third season featured snippets from a duo known as Yaz and music from their debut album “Upstairs at Eric’s.”

Yaz and those songs hold a special place in my heart because I saw those performers live at a club called The Ritz in the Village way back when I was in college.

Bottom line: If you want to enjoy great television AND want to be transported back in time, catch “The Americans.”

How I Dealt with My Depression

“Are you feeling depressed?” the nurse asked.

She was taking my vitals before the doctor came into the examination room and was working her way through a checklist of questions. This one happened to be about a check-up from the neck up.

Well, as a matter of fact, funny you should ask, I told her.

Her simple question was like a key turning in a lock and opening a door.

For a few months leading up to that visit for my annual physical, I had been feeling overwhelmed by work, frightened — nay, panicked — over my future employment and overall just not feeling much happiness.

This was January 2014 and the Christmas holidays that had just concluded were shrouded in a heavy curtain of gray for me.

What followed was a series of questions from the doctor. Now, as part of their routine for check-ups, the office was including a screening for depression.

So glad they did.

The doctor, who wanted me to follow up with her in a few months, was adamant that I go see a professional for help. So I did.

Here’s the thing about depression: It sneaks up on you like the onset of a bad cold but before you know it, you have pneumonia.

You convince yourself you’re just tired. Or stressed. Or not eating right.

And certainly all of those are symptoms of an underlying problem and can contribute to the bigger issue, but at some point, you reach a tipping point where you are trying to climb out of a well, the sides of which are coated with slippery moss.

Much was written about depression following the heart-breaking suicide of one of my beloved comedians and actors, Robin Williams. One of the best pieces I read was by a former colleague at the Pocono Record.

Here is what Howard Frank said in a column:

“The pain from depression is like the grief of first learning you’ve lost someone close to you. There’s shock, horror, confusion, and inconsolable sadness.

Now, imagine waking up with that grief every morning as if it were fresh news. Then imagine reliving the news all day. Go to sleep, and it’s Groundhog Day.”

It’s an apt description. And one that I fear is all too commonly experienced by many, including people close to me.

The problem with men (OK, just ONE of many problems with us guys) is that when it comes to our own care, we think we can just tough it out. (“It’s just a flesh wound!”) 

For issues that are not manifestly physical (such as our mental health), well there’s all kinds of excuses we can make for ignoring them.

In the end, I did see a counselor — for about eight months. Yes, it cost me time and money, but in the long run, it did me good.

And if someone as stubborn and reluctant as me can do it, what about you?

Why Do Guys Exaggerate?

Are the high-profile episodes of exaggerated claims by NBC’s Brian Williams, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and the VA Secretary Robert McDonald unique to guys?

Is the tendency to inflate one’s credentials something that is more common to men? Is it a “guy thing”?

My personal theory is that, while it might not be a behavior exclusively practiced by one gender, it is one I have seen more often displayed by men.

Plenty of ink and air time have been dedicated to their transgressions: Williams (claimed to have been on a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq), O’Reilly (numerous disputed claims about what kind of danger and wartime reporting he experienced in various settings, including the Falklands war) and McDonald (who in a conversation in January with a veteran claimed that he had been in the special forces, when in fact, he had not.)

Williams and McDonald issued abject apologies, Williams though only after years of telling his story and being called out by a serviceman who was on the helicopter that was shot down.

539px-Brian_Williams_2011_Shankbone

Set aside the trouble these incidents have caused and the public relations battles that have ensued.

It just strikes me as so much guy-like behavior.

Each man was looking to see who is the bigger guy on campus or trying to find some slight advantage over others, even if it meant burnishing or unconsciously distorting their records.

There is a big part of me that believes that none of them committed these acts fully knowingly.

That may sound naive, but I think these transgressions spring from a certain part of the male brain:

The same part that is loathe to ask for directions. The same part that does not like to display weakness or lack mastery of a particular topic. Or, God forbid, to acknowledge that someone has achieved more than you or did something to distinguish themselves.

Let’s face it: Most men live lives of quiet humdrum routine that are not going to garner headlines. So war stories (literally, in the case of O’Reilly) are a way to stand out from the rest of the pack, even for just a moment.

I know, for instance, I have been guilty of this.

For years I had made a certain claim to fame because I was confident that was how I recalled it. But when I recently researched it, I found — to my embarrassment and dismay — objective documentation that said otherwise.

I had thought for years that I was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2000. The term “finalist” has a strict definition in the context of the prizes.

In fact, I had made the cut to the top 25 of those entries considered for a Pulitzer or as a finalist. BIG difference!

It was not a claim that I talked much about or one that I relied on to get a job or promotion but it was a construct that I relied on internally to satisfy my own ego.

It underscores just how memory is fallible and malleable.

So while I have read and watched the stories of Williams, O’Reilly and McDonald, I am cautious about being too quick to judge their motives.

It may be objectively that what they said happened, in fact, did not.

But those lapses might just simply prove that they are human.

Or, more specifically, hu-men.

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A Sign of Friendship

In a coming blog post, I will talk about the “Breakfast Club” therapy that About Men Radio contributor Richard Rodriguez and I have created.

For now though, I want to share something that happened at our most recent get-together in Allamuchy (yes, it really is a place) in New Jersey.

When we were done with our meal, Rich said to me, “Come with me to my car. I have something to give you.”

What he brought out from his car was the shape of a loaf of Italian bread and wrapped up.

What you see here is what was inside: A touching tribute to our shared passion for coffee and to an enduring friendship!

Thanks, Rich!

We Are All Our Brothers’ (And Sisters’) Keepers

Inasmuch as Facebook can drive me crazy with its ever-changing features and Swiss cheese-like privacy policies, it has been an amazing platform for reconnecting with former classmates and co-workers.

When I posted a link to a story recently, a former colleague weighed in with a comment about a humorous experience we shared that serves as a reminder that we are all our brothers’ (or sisters’) keepers in this life.

This is what happened:

In the late 1990s, I worked at The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y.

I was there about six years when a new reporter, a blonde, ebullient pixie from Ohio, joined the newsroom. April Hunt occupied the cubicle across from me and we commiserated often about our lives.

Though only co-workers, we ended up sharing a special bond after a night in 1999.

I was home having dinner with my family when the phone rang.

It was a manager from Wal-Mart.

April had passed out in the bathroom and, since she was fairly new to New York, she asked the manager to call me because I was the only one she could think of who might respond.

I am ashamed to say this but can admit it now. My first thought was not: “Oh my God! I hope April is OK!”

No, my first thought was: “Christ! The indignity of it all! Passing out in a bathroom at Wal-Mart!? How gross! Better to pass out in a bathroom at CBGB.”

I headed to Wal-Mart but by the time I got there, an ambulance had already taken her to the hospital.

I sought her out in the ER.

A hospital person led me to a curtained-off examining area where April was sitting upright in bed. We chatted and I tried to keep her mind off things while we waited for a doctor.

I want to be faithful to the details of what happened, so the following passage, which includes frank language about the female anatomy, is intended for mature readers only:

There were “things” “going on” with April’s “lady parts” that caused her to pass out.

OK, you can open your eyes now…

A doctor came in and, as I recall, he was prepared right there to do an examination of “things down under” — and I ain’t talking about Australia either.

At this point in the story, it’s relevant to point out that April is a lesbian. So we both enjoyed a hearty laugh when the doctor turned to me and said: “Mr. Hunt?”

That helped break the tension!

I made it clear that no, I was not Mr. Hunt, and before he moved ahead in the examination, that I best be going!

April recalls it this way:

“You, friend, were the one person who believed me when I said I was really hurting. That’s what I remember most. That, and the fact the ER doc called you Mr. Hunt because you insisted you be able to come in and see me.”

It turned out that April needed emergency surgery the next day and needed six units of blood…!

Thankfully, she made a full recovery, part of which included me taking her to a follow-up visit to her ob-gyn because she could not drive. (Picture me sitting in a waiting room full of expectant mothers with a woman who was not my wife. Awk-ward!)

The “Mr. Hunt” comment is a fun inside joke for us but it also reinforces how small gestures in this world can mean a lot.

But I’m still not using the bathroom at Wal-Mart.

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Training for the Warrior Dash!

I have signed up to race in one of those so-called “extreme races” that feature running and mud pits and obstacles.

One of the better known ones is Tough Mudder. The one I’ve entered is called the Warrior Dash, which helps raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

(If you want to make a donation to help save kids from cancer and other horrible diseases, here’s a link where you can make a donation. I am participating under the Team About Men Radio banner. Whatever you can donate would be greatly appreciated and will validate my efforts!)

I’ve been working out consistently for the past 13-plus years but I’ve also just turned 50.

And will you look at some of these crazy obstacles?

There are things like shallow mud pits that you have to crawl through under rows of barbed wire. And another one called “Warrior Roast” in which participants look to be jumping over a bonfire.

Forget candlesticks, Jack. You better be really nimble jumping over this wienie roast!

bonfire

Clearly, there’s lot of opportunities for things on my body to break, bleed or fall off.

As an adult, I am walking around with a fair amount of Bronx asphalt I absorbed into my knees thanks to various falls I took as a kid, including a memorable one on a scooter coming down “Dead Man’s Curve,” which intersects with “Suicide Hill.”

suicide hill

(You won’t find those designations officially anywhere on a map of the Bronx, but ask anyone from my old neighborhood and they will know instantly where I am talking about.)

On the same day that I registered for the Warrior Dash, I went to our local gym to inquire about training. Well, more accurately, my wife got me a gift certificate about two years ago for 10 training sessions.

Now that I have a particular goal in mind, I know what I’ll be training for.

I’ve been good about keeping up my exercise regime at home, working out an average of four to five days a week, but this is going to introduce a whole new level of challenges and expectations.

So, if it’s going to inflict discomfort, and possibly leave some scars, why do it?

It’s a new goal to meet and a way for me to face my fears of being a physical flop in a public setting.

Plus, I get a really cool, goofy-looking Viking’s hat for entering!

I’ll keep you posted on my progress and training.

Until then, here’s mud in my eye!

Read more blog posts at www.aboutmenradio.com and at http://aboutmenradio.net

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Why “House of Cards” Season 3 Sucked

Francis, Francis, Francis.

I am so disappointed in you. I would tell you to stand in the corner but in the Oval Office that would be pointless – much like this season’s “House of Cards.”

How pointless was it? Let us count the ways… (Spoilers abound here but I assure you, nothing is more spoiled rotten than this season.)

In no special order:

  • People referring to the president as “Frank,” including the former owner of his favorite rib joint? Nah, I don’t think so.

I don’t care that you knew him when. I find it hard to believe childhood friends are going around saying: “Yo! Barack! Dude, how’s it hangin’?”

(Note to Pedro, John, Rich and Silvio: When I am elected to the White House, I won’t expect you to call me “Mr. President,” but you will have to genuflect and kiss my ring.)

  • You’re going to start a small fire in the Oval Office and no smoke alarms are going to go off?
  • The chief of staff disappears for days at a time (stalking and ultimately killing a girl who represents a loose end) and no one bats an eye at his absence. Yeah, I know. He was not officially chief of staff at the time and he was on the cusp of being announced, but c’mon…
  • Nowhere near enough good sex scenes or nudity.
  • Oh yeah, the president is going to – on the spur of the moment – meet another head of state in the middle of some godforsaken battleground. And then they dress him up looking like Michael Dukakis? Yeesh!
  • Remy turns to a total wuss. End of story.
  • You mean to tell me the president of the United States is going to take a leak on his dad’s grave and there is not going to be a photographer with a long lens shooting that or someone who visits the grave site immediately after and notices an odd stain on the tombstone?
  • The first lady passes out giving blood and there’s only a nurse who is immediately there to tend to her but her security detail is apparently nowhere to be seen?
  • Claire Underwood’s departure in the final scene of the season struck me as absurd. She declares she’s leaving Frank but she walks out clutching her handbag looking like Ruth Buzzi from “Laugh-In.”
  • The president really makes a recess appointment, naming his wife as United Nations ambassador?

Yes, some of my beef with the third season revolves around a lack of real-life details. But overall it felt disjointed and riddled with plot holes.

What makes Season 3 so crushingly disappointing is that Season 1, by contrast, was electric with tension and surprises as power-hungry Frank and Claire schemed and manipulated their way forward.

Season 2’s first episode was a WTF moment when Frank pushes the reporter in front of a train (!) and then the rest of the season got mired in trade war dialogue reminiscent of the arcane trade disputes at the center of the “Star Wars” prequels.

So it was that I had high hopes that “HOC” would redeem itself in Season 3. It featured maybe two good episodes and a couple of tense, well-executed scenes.

But overall, I didn’t like the way women were either treated or portrayed in this season (expendable or there merely to do Frank’s bidding) and the inexplicable introduction of characters (the book author is recruited by Frank, who thinks he can control him?!)

At least Douglas was true to his dark character throughout.

Bottom line: I’ve cast my ballot and I’m voting the incumbent out of office.

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CSI: Chocolate Scene Investigations

This is what happens when you come home way after midnight from work, and eat chocolate candy that was given as a gift to your son.

You wake up in the morning to discover he’s made a federal case out of it, right down to roping off the “crime scene” and inventorying the “evidence” with little cards.

Here’s one exhibit of a wadded-up candy wrapper I had left behind.IMG_1561

Then there is the bag that once had contained chocolate.candy 2

Rotten kid.

Clearly next time I have to do a better job of hiding the evidence.

Urp!

 

 

 

 

 

Throwback Thursday at About Men Radio

In keeping with the spirit of Throwback Thursday, About Men Radio’s Richard Rodriguez reached into the archives and pulled out some vintage photos of the AMR crew circa 1987 in Saranac Lake, N.Y.

As you can see, we were mere lads back then.

But we were rocking the ’80s look hard.

Chris and crew-6
Left to right, Pedro, Gary, Rich and Chris (who either was cold or trying to look all gangsta).

Perhaps too hard. (What the hell is with that Hall & Oats look, Rich?!)

Here too are some of the comments the AMR crew made when Rich shared them with us.

Enjoy!

Chris and crew-3
Top left, Gary (doing obscene things to Pedro’s neck), John, rocking that pleather jacket, Pedro and Chris.

* Did we plan on looking like gay hustlers or was that a happy accident?

* Gary looks like he stepped out of a 70’s porno. (Cue up syntho/guitar music track…Boom-cheekie-bow-wow...)

* John, you look like such a hardened soul in this pic.

* I can only imagine what Gary is doing to the back of your head Pedro.

* Chris looks like he just walked of the set of Happy Days.

* That was my favorite pleather jacket….Heyyy

* John looks well hard in that photo. Badass.

* Pedro has an evil Gene Simmons look.

Chris and crew-2
Silvio (fresh off a performance with the Village People), John, Pedro and Rich, who pioneered jazz hands before it was popular.
Chris and crew-4
A camping trip in 1987 of epic proportions — fodder for a blog post in the future. Left to right: Gary, Rich, John (nice legs), Chris (wearing a camo cap AND a plaid shirt! WTF?!) and Pedro.

 

 

 

A Reader Offers Her Own Bat Horror Story

About Men Radio reader Christina Tatu saw my story of dealing with a bat making its way into our house and the mayhem that ensued.

Here she shares her story:

I have my own horror story involving a bat.

This was probably seven years ago (before I moved in, because if I had been living there, I can assure you this wouldn’t have gone on for so long).

Dave mentioned that something smelled kind of gross around the couch.

Every now and then, I’d catch a whiff of something that smelled sort of like roadkill.

We looked all over the living room though and couldn’t find anything. Plus, it wasn’t a constant smell. It was something you’d catch a quick sniff of every few weeks.

I thought maybe one of the houseplants was rotting or some old food had fallen into an area of the couch we couldn’t see.

This had gone on for at least four months, when one night I was staring into space and saw it.

Inside a box fan Dave sometimes put in the back window to get fresh air circulating (ironically) was this dead, mummified bat.

We couldn’t figure out how it got into the fan, nor how to get it out, so we just threw the whole thing away!

Have a comment, idea or story to share? Write us at amr@aboutmenshow.com

Bobsledding in a Bathtub

I have never engaged in a sport or activity that required the use of a helmet.

So it was an unnatural feeling to have this gray sphere snugly nested around my noggin as Pedro and I prepared to hurtle ourselves on the bobsled run at Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Mele in helmet 2
Helmet on? Check! Ready for bobsledding debut!

Thanks to the New York Olympic Regional Development Authority, which runs the venues from the 1932 and 1980 winter Olympics, the public can enjoy the “Bobsled Experience,” an abbreviated 10-turn, half-mile course, compared to the full-length 20-turn course.

Trust me, this was no simulator.

Imagine four people seated — their legs extended around each other in V-formations — in a 500-pound Fiberglas bathtub.

Now imagine taking that bathtub and its passengers and hurtling it at speeds in excess of 60 mph (80-plus mph if you are competing in the Olympics) along a twisty water park slide coated in ice.

The experience is a bit like getting into a cab in New York City at 3 a.m. barreling down First Avenue with all the traffic lights green.

Except bobsledding is less dangerous.

I was relieved when the ride started out gently enough. I thought, “Oh, this isn’t too bad.”

But faster than you can say “Jamaican bobsled team,” the sled started to pick up speed.

Bobsled_LP

Things became a blur of white. I strained to sit forward as the driver had instructed, but one of the forces that works on your body — aerodynamic drag — kept pushing me back.

I would no sooner start to collect my thoughts when …

WHAM!

We’d accelerate through a turn at teeth-rattling speeds. Sledders can experience g-forces from 1g on straightaways up to 4g or 5g on tight, high-speed bends, according to Mark Denny, author of “Gliding for Gold: The Physics of Winter Sports.”

And to top it off, we were sideways to the track, like a spider hanging off a wall.

Jon Lundin, public relations coordinator for the Olympic Regional Development Authority, explained it this way:

“As the sled maneuvers its way down the twisting icy chute and reaches speeds of between 55-60 mph, participants will feel the pull of the sled as it climbs halfway up the curve, with some curves as high as eight to 10 feet.”

The curves have such innocent-sounding names: “Shady.” “The Labyrinth.” “The Heart.”

Really, they should be renamed: “The Vomitron.” “What Was That?!” and “Oh. My. God.”

Just as I was thinking I could not bear another turn, we skidded to a slowdown.

Forty-eight seconds. (Watch a video of our exciting run.)

That was it.

Our wives greeted us like conquering heroes, and Pedro and I enjoyed a celebratory Kodak moment on an Olympic medal podium.

With each chest-thumping retelling of our experience — for the benefit of our wives — we amped up in increments our alleged speed.

So when we started telling our tale, we said we went in excess of 100 mph (big exaggeration), but by the time the weekend was winding down, we were bragging of having gone 512.5 mph (whopper of a lie).

We’re even convinced that we came away from the ride younger since we were going so fast that time reversed itself (pants on fire).

So now when you watch Olympic bobsledders go for the gold, you can recall the efforts of Pedro and I going for the aluminum.

At 516.7 mph.

bobs2
Pedro and I after completing our bobsled run. We were a bit dazed and confused!

 

 

I’m Batman

And lo, at about 11 o’clock at night, a cry was heard throughout the house.

My youngest son, downstairs, shrieking for my wife.

Meg was in a dead sleep when Dan’s blood-curdling screams echoed through the house.

A fire? A burglar? An injury?

Worse: A bat had somehow gotten into the house.

Dan was watching TV when he heard an odd noise that sounded like the heat coming on. But it was a rapid-fire clicking noise, like the baseboard heat was working overtime.

He put the light on and then he saw it:

Swooping and clicking, the bat made its presence known. And then so did Dan.

“Meg!-Meg!-Meg!-Meg!”

I got the call around 11:20 p.m. on my way back from work.

It left me very upset. Here I was, at least another hour away from home, unable to do anything to help as the “man” of the household.

Plus, to be honest, I’m afraid of bats and I did not want to admit that over the phone, fearing it would only make a bad situation worse.

I’ve had experiences with mice in the house. A bit unnerving, but not that big a deal.
mouse

And one time, living in New York, my late fiancée and I had a squirrel infiltrate our house. This led to a lifelong antipathy toward squirrels that fueled many practical jokes.

squirrel

We even had a bear stalk our driveway a few years ago.

Bear sighting 003

Bear sighting 004

But a bat? In the damn house? No, this was new.

Before I got home, Meg had called public safety and not one, but TWO, officers arrived.

And don’t you know that when they got there, there was no sign of the bat, which I had named “Buddy”?

For five full days, there was no sign of Buddy. We figured he had flown the coop, so to speak. (For the record, we are still not entirely sure how he got in.)

We thought we were in the clear, until…

Well, I’ll let Meg’s email take it from here:

Dan spotted a spider, which he was figuring out how to do away with when he looked toward the exercise bicycle and there, hanging on the pleated curtain, was Buddy.

He called me — not the bloodcurdling shriek of a few days ago — but enough to let me know that our friend had returned. I said, “What should we do?”

“Call public safety,” he said.

I did and then crept downstairs, towel in hand.

We waited maybe five minutes for public safety — it was the same guy who had been here before.

But this guy didn’t have the tennis racket. So all three of us waited for the other guy who did.

While we were waiting, I saw movement.

ICK. And then it spread its wings.

DAMN. It was a bigger than I thought. Wing span of maybe 10 inches, tip to tip.

And, of course, it launched. Dan screamed and we both bee-lined for the front door, leaving public safety man to do his thing.

A few moments later, he came out with the very same towel I had brought downstairs, and let the bat go, and the bat, of course, headed straight for us. We moved, pronto, out of its way.

Public safety guy just laughed.

So, Buddy is gone.

Or is he? Dan said that he thought the bat he had seen was much smaller….

So maybe this was Buddy’s mama, and we’re still hosting little Bud.

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“Fifty Shades of Grey”: A Review From A Guy’s Point of View

​As my wife and I sat in the movie theater waiting for “Fifty Shades of Grey” to begin, she squeezed my hand and said:

“Are you excited?”

“I’m going to be open-minded,” I replied.

“Careful,” she teased, “or your brains might fall out.”

If only they had. Then my head would have been as vacuous as this movie.

To be clear, I am no prude when it comes to sex or nudity.

As part of a misspent youth, I visited many theaters worthy of the trench-coat crowd and have seen some pretty far-out stuff, sexually speaking.

What goes on between two consenting adults? Get your freak on, folks.

Clown make-up, scuba suits, dripping candle wax: Whatever curls your toes, have at it.

But this movie did almost the impossible: It made sex scenes that were antiseptic, turgid and utterly lacking in heat.

In sum, it made for boring boning.

Christian Grey makes Anastasia Steele go through what amounts to some kinky “Simon Says” exercises. (The difference being that when she failed to follow the specific instructions, she got spanked.)

But there was zero spark or chemistry between the lead characters. It was like they were acting in two different movies, each shot separately against a blue screen and then spliced together.

My problems with the movie ranged from irritation (ridiculous over-the-top product placements for Apple) to disbelief (Anastasia is a modern-day college senior and she is using a flip-phone, plus she’s a virgin?) to exasperating (she is supposed to be falling in love with this creepy borderline stalker-abuser but she seems mostly uncomfortable in his company).

But most of all, I found “Fifty” demeaning to women to the point that it made my blood boil.

Anastasia is on the cusp of graduating college but she appears not to have a brain cell in her head and is painted as a total dolt, following Christian around like some hapless puppy.

Add to that a paddling scene that looks more like a vicious beating by an abusive spouse or boyfriend and a sex scene bordering on rape.

It felt like two hours and five minutes of “torture porn” masquerading as mainstream movie-making.

At one point, Christian says: “I don’t make love…I fuck. Hard.”

I *get* dirty talk, and I’m all for it, but in the context of this movie, it sounded silly, at best, and like an excuse for engaging in misogyny at worst.

My wife and I debated the attraction of “Fifty” to women, who made up nearly two-thirds of the ticket-buyers in the movie’s opening weekend.

I don’t understand it, though there is no denying that actor Jamie Dornan is a hunka-hunk of burning love.

What I do know is that, as a man who is open-minded about sex and who likes a hot depiction of it as much as the next guy, I found this movie degrading and insulting.

There is a scene in which Christian says: “I’m 50 shades of fucked-up.”

Yep. So is this movie.

Do yourself a favor and just say “Laters, baby” to “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

book

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Fifty Shades of Grey and Your Sexy Movies

OK! We cry uncle! (Or perhaps more appropriately, we cry out: “Oh, Christian!”)

We here at AMR are not immune to the hype about the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

We too are riveted by the billionaire with deep-seated unresolved childhood issues that compels him to act out in ways that society deems unacceptable.

But enough about Donald Trump. Let’s talk about the movie.

Simply put, it is a boffo hit.

It was expected to take in $90 million in ticket sales by this past Monday. And appearing in more than 3,600 theaters, it was the largest release for an R-rated movie in history.

Based on the sizzling best-seller by the same name (one in a trio of books), it explores taboo topics of bondage, domination and punishment as a sexual outlet.

In other words, this is not a kids’ movie, unless, of course, you could picture SpongeBob LeatherPants in thigh-high boots, wielding a riding crop. “Ooooo, Patrick! Spank my KrabbyPatties!”

Though none of us at About Men Radio have yet to see “Fifty,” that did not stop Pedro and I from commenting wildly about it in our latest podcast, due out later this week.

About Men Radio follower Lyndsay Buonforte did the see “Fifty” on Monday.

This is what she wrote:

“Fifty Shades of Grey is raunchy yet tasteful, romantic yet vulnerable, intense yet awkwardly funny, seductive yet sweet. It is not just a chick-flick. The film was brought to life with every sensation. Fifty Shades leaves the audience needing more.”

I do have plans to see it and will weigh in with my own review. In the meantime, the hoopla about “Fifty” did make us wonder what ingredients go into making a movie sexy or steamy or sultry. (Is it getting warm in here or is it just me?)

My thinking is that for a movie to leave a lasting impression as sexy, it has to sort of sneak up on you and surprise you.

It is more about building an atmosphere and tension than simply having characters parading around showing off their naughty bits (though nothing wrong with that, either).

We asked AMR followers to suggest their favorite sexy movies.

Titles ranged from “Unfaithful,” (recommended by About Men Radio contributor Richard Rodriguez and AMR follower Rahadyan Timoteo Sastrowardoyo to “The Big Easy,” which Adrianne Montgomery Reilly cited for the “best sex scene with their clothes on. Ellen Barkin, DennisQuaid.”) That movie also got a thumb up from listener Leslie Jean Thornton.

Other suggestions included “9 1/2 Weeks” (thanks, Erin DeRosa), “Last Tango In Paris” (David DeRosa), “Original Sin,” (Lindsay DiCarlo); “Body Heat,” which Roseanne Bottone cited, and “Against All Odds” (Christine Young).

As you will hear in the podcast, Pedro recommends “Y TuMamá Tambien,” and I am a fan of a flick called “Two Moon Junction,” which I was genuinely surprised to learn is tagged as “soft porn.”

One memorably sexy movie I forgot to mention is “The Fully Monty,” but hey, I am just silly that way.

For this and more shenanigans, download the podcast at our website, aboutmenradio.com or at iTunes or Stitcher.

 

Toy Gun Fun

I am not a gun enthusiast or a gun owner but I do confess to having a lifetime romance with toy guns dating back to when I was a boy and we used to play army or cops and robbers.

I had a machine gun made of hard plastic from Woolworth’s that I bought for $1.99.

When you pulled on the trigger it made a rat-at-tat noise. I also had one or two of those toy revolvers that you loaded with little red caps of gunpowder so that when the gun’s hammer was released, it made a loud pop.

But my crowning toy gun had to come in about sixth grade when I got Tin Can Alley for Christmas. It was a rifle that shot a beam of light.

You aimed at a row of cans on a plastic “fence.” Beneath each can was a light-sensitive receptor that triggered a little pin underneath the can, which popped off the shelf if your aim was true.

I have also been enamored with those carnival shooting games where you have to shoot out the red star entirely in order to win an oversize stuffed animal.

At the Wayne County Fair in 2013, I easily spent about $25 in my (ultimately successful) effort to win.

game shot

I mention all of this by way of introducing the Christmas gift my wife got me, which you will see explained in this photo essay:

Step 1: Admire the box and have your youngest son ask repeatedly if you are going to play it.

IMG_1453

Step 2: Unpack the contents and follow the directions.

FullSizeRender_1

Step 3: Fight to loosen the tiny screws on the battery cover to open it. Unsuccessful, prepare to hack your way into it until your son shows you the wisdom of patience and dexterity using one of those tiny screwdrivers.

IMG_1461

IMG_1459

Step 4: Install batteries and admire the challenge before you.

FullSizeRender

Step 5: Try to fire one of the foam bullets so you can actually hit one of the floating balls. Yeah, good luck with that.

IMG_1473

 

Step 7: Move in closer in a vain attempt to achieve Step 5.

IMG_1474

Step 8: Ultimately turn over the gun to your son, who is a better shot than you are. Quick Draw McGraw, you are not!

quick draw

 

Super Bowl? What Super Bowl?

I have a friend in Phoenix who posted a photo of a huge billboard touting the 2015 Super Bowl.

When I commented on her post, I said I thought “Super Bowl” was a salad-making contest.

I was only half joking.

Some men bond around pro sports teams or NASCAR or outdoor recreational sports. Not me. I am the anti-hero of all things sports.

When I was executive editor at The Pocono Record in Stroudsburg, Pa., I would joke with the staff during high football season: “That’s the sport where they score baskets, right?”

They knew I was kidding (mostly) but they also knew that when it came to sports stories, be it wrestling, basketball, football, tennis, cross-country, swimming, etc., I had a million questions so I could better understand the rules and the significance of what was at stake.

It’s not that I hate sports; it’s just that I am indifferent to them.

I never engaged in a competitive athletic event in my life.

Dodge ball in gym class doesn’t count. And high school speech and debate club contests don’t qualify either. And chess club, though cutthroat, was hardly a contact sport.

(I did one afternoon in high school run in a Freshman Field Days event in which I ran a 200-yard dash, finishing well ahead of the other racers. Problem was that I quit where I thought the finish line was and it turned out it was still ahead of me, so instead of being first, I was dead last.)

I have huge admiration for athletes and their dedication and training and how hard they are willing to push their bodies for the sake of their passions (or a paycheck).

For instance, I can get interested in watching some of the winter Olympics, such as the skating or bobsledding competitions, which go by quickly and have a defined time limit.

Games that can drag on, like baseball, with sometimes little to show for it, tend to bore me. And other games I just don’t *get* in terms of the objectives or the rules.

Take American football, for instance. Downs. Rushing. Quarters. It’s all some foreign language that I don’t speak.

My wife has expressed gratitude more than once that I’m not one of those guys who is all wrapped up in sports. Yeah, it’s likely I will be watching an episode of “Downton Abbey” the night the Super Bowl is on.

That’s not to say that I’m a cultural snob or that I look down on sports fans. It’s just not my bag, which I guess makes me different from a lot of guys.

But just to show you that I’m not all indifferent to the Super Bowl, let me wish my favored team good luck.

Go Yankees!

Super Bowl photo 1

 

Photographs by L.J. Thornton

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Sled. Gloves. Boots. Condoms. …Condoms?!

I discovered a connection between the snow on my rooftop (the white hair, not dandruff, thank you) and the blizzard swirling outside.

Here it is:

Upon learning that school would be closed, our youngest, a high school junior, was soon coming upstairs to announce that he would be spending time playing with friends in the snow.

Good, clean, outdoor fun. Yea! Great!

But when we started to explore what time he would be home and how he would get home in a raging snowstorm, plans suddenly shifted.

He was back upstairs a short time later to announce that he would be staying overnight at the house of his friend, who happens to be a girl.

And who else will be staying there, I asked, my eyebrows arching.

Oh, so-and-so, he says, naming yet another girl.

And what will be the sleeping arrangements, I ask, my eyebrows now arching in a way that would make McDonald’s envious.

Let me pause here to say that my son is an extraordinarily responsible young adult, sociable, outgoing and an excellent student. And the girls he named are likewise.

They are just a tremendous bunch of kids that any parent would be proud of.

It’s just that when it comes to his old man, my son is such a rotten kid.

Presented with the opportunity to bust my stones, he will seize it with a grip worthy of Darth Vader.

So my inquiry about the sleeping arrangements was an engraved invitation to turn my already white hair even more white.

And then, have it fall out completely.

“Oh,” he says, a big grin breaking out, “we’re all going to sleep together. There will be sex. There will be so much sex, the house will be coming apart.”

My ever-so-helpful wife (not one to let a moment like this slip by) chimed in: “They will be humping like rabbits.”

Me: “I hate you both.”

My son: “Oh yeah, no worries. I’ll be coming home with two pregnant girls.”

My wife: “Just don’t come home with herpes.”

At this point, it was hard to hear anything because I had gone face-first, up to my ears, into my bowl of oatmeal.

Then, as he’s preparing to leave and we’re going through the checklist of things that he should make sure he has for his stay, he calls out as he’s walking down the stairs:

“Hey Dad, how many condoms do you think I should bring?!”

That’s when I went bald.

Rotten kid.

I cannot imagine where he gets it from.

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More Than Just A Hat: A Story of Loss

I have never really been much of a hat wearer, even in the most Arctic of weather. It has to get really, really cold for me to want to risk getting “hat hair.”

But when the temperatures really do plunge, I have a special hat I trot out for the occasion.

Maybe once a season, I will wear what looks like a bear’s head.

The black fur sits snugly on my head and the bill features a bear’s eyes, snout and open, teeth-baring mouth.

hat 2

I’ve worn it proudly in public much to the mortification of my boys and to the astonishment of some of my co-workers. It’s a fun conversation piece.

It didn’t start out that way though.

My fiancée got it for me about 14 years ago at the gift shop at Bear Mountain in the Hudson Valley in New York.

I remember at the time being a bit peeved that she was spending so much money on it, given that I hardly wear hats to begin with, much less one that was so silly.

In my Teutonic view, this hat was an impractical indulgence.

But Carla bought it nonetheless. She had an aptitude for whimsy, for seizing the moment and for making the most  of it.

That, in turn, meant she had a way of busting me out of my shell and for helping me take myself less seriously.

This explains how there are photos of me with an owl perched on my shoulder leaning into my cheek (a birds of prey exhibit at a Fourth of July fair), how I got temporary tattoos (another country fair) and how we ended up celebrating Halloween like it was a high holy day, complete with Carla dressing up like a vampire.

Such was her spirit.

At one point, we bought a hat shaped like a birthday cake, complete with upright candles. In our home, whoever was celebrating their birthday had to wear that hat when it came time to blow out the candles on their cake.

Birthday hat

I have many photos of family and friends sporting that goofy hat.

But that bear hat –- that crazy, expensive, silly bear hat — far and away, takes pride of place.

One of my favorite photos of Carla is of her peering over her glasses, standing in front of our Christmas tree wearing that bear hat.

Carla bear hat

About six years after she bought me that hat –- on Nov. 30, 2006, to be precise — Carla died.

Though it’s eight years-plus since she died, and I have since then been extraordinarily blessed to be united with my best beloved, Meg, and to be married, I still grieve for Carla.

Weird, right?

So on the occasions that I bust out that bear hat, it reminds me of Carla.

It makes me smile, it allows me to fondly remember her and it makes me glad that she bought it over my misgivings.

That bear hat warms my head. And my heart.

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How I Got My Very Own Robot from “Lost in Space”

It was with a tinge of sadness and nostalgia that I read of the death of the creator of Robot from TV’s “Lost in Space.”

As a kid, I was a huge fan of the somewhat hokey but for its time, very cool sci-fi series. It had aliens, a pretty set of sisters and, most of all, Robot.

Robot, whose lesser-known name was B-9, was a friend to the Robinson family and a great thorn in the side to the scheming Dr. Zachary Smith.

Robot was authoritative, had personality and all kinds of cool tools hidden inside its hardware. You have to remember that this show aired more than a  decade before George Lucas brought us C-3PO and R2-D2.

So imagine my absolute delight when a few years ago I spied in a Hammacher Schlemmer Christmas catalog a fully operational, 6½-foot-tall remote-controlled replica of Robot!

Here is a partial catalog description:

Every detail of the original robot is faithfully reproduced from original archival molds, patterns and blueprints. It is made from fiberglass, acrylic, aluminum, and steel parts, including its rotating torso and radar head, flashing lights, animated ear sensors, and clawed arms.

The robot has a 240-watt audio system, and speaks 511 pre-recorded phrases performed by Richard Tufeld, the original voice of the robot from the television series (including such familiar phrases as “Danger Will Robinson!”)

As we used to say as kids: This thing was so BOSS!

And it could be mine for only $24,500!!! Yes, you read that right.

Even though I knew it was so beyond my reach, I was in love with the idea of getting this.

Remember the kid from “A Christmas Story” who pines after that air rifle? “You’ll shot your eye out!” Well, that was me about Robot.

I told my wife and my sons (only half-jokingly) that I really, really, really, really wanted this. I had not coveted something so much for Christmas since I was 10 and I wanted (and got) the GI Joe Mobile Support Unit.

So….

One day, I call the house and I hear this ruckus in the background.

Crinkling of plastic. Things banging. Excited voices.

And then laughter. Gales of laughter from my wife, and my sons, who were then about 14 and 9.

I am like, WHAT is going on?

Well, it turns out that Meg, bless her, lit on the idea of BUILDING a  Robot to surprise me.

Inspired? Yes. Well-conceived? Well…

She went to a craft store and bought an easel, some slender pieces of balsa wood, some large sheets of poster board and other materials.

It turned out to be such a lost cause that Meg and the boys could do nothing but dissolve in laughter.

When she told me about it later I could only admire and applaud the thoughtful effort.

But she never did forget about my Robot wish and eventually did get me very own.

It’s a key chain and it stands 3½ inches tall:

key chain

 

This S*** Just Got Real

Under the heading of “Did that just happen?” comes this development:

Our youngest son (Dan, 16) aced his road test and got his driver’s license.

As a dad, I was aware that he was taking the road test but put it on my mental backburner in the hopes it might fall behind the stove.

Yeah. No such luck.

He nailed the road test on the first try.

Not only that, but he’s saved up enough money to buy a decent used car and is actively searching for one.

There’s a part of me that’s like: Wow! That’s great, Dan! We’re so proud of you. This is really a milestone achievement and a mark of your growing young adulthood and independence.

And there’s another part of me that’s going: Whoa! This shit just got real! Are you ker-azy?! You’re 16. And yes, legally you can drive, but is this really a good idea?

Well, that question got tested tonight when he asked (begged) if he could drive to the nearby McDonald’s to meet a friend for dinner.

It’s an 8-minute drive. For me, it might as well have been 800 miles.

Disclosure: Full, 1,000 percent credit goes to my wife Meg for taking Dan out practice driving in rain storms, in snow, when she was tired, etc. She instilled in him the confidence and experience he needed to do as well as he did.

Me? I was busy doing something that my nerves could better handle like clearing out wasps’ nest — while naked.

So yes, tonight Dan took his first solo drive. In the dark. To McDonald’s.

When I posted this development on Facebook, Super Dad aka About Men Radio contributor Richard Rodriguez, whose oldest has his own car, wrote from experience:

I wish I can skip this part of my kids growing up.

Thankfully, I took Dan’s first solo outing all in stride. As proof:

As I was making dinner, I put the microwave on for 2.5 minutes. And left the bowl of oatmeal that it was supposed to be cooking on the kitchen counter.

And at the same time, I turned on the Keurig to make coffee. And when it was done, I realized that I had l left the previous coffee pouch in the machine and forgot to install a new one, which meant I had a mug of pale brownish fluid.

No, not nervous at all. Why do you ask?

Meg and I talk all the time about parenting and how it’s all about giving our children roots and wings:

Roots so that they feel secure where they are planted, and wings to give them the independence they desire and need.

In the case of tonight, Dan’s short trip was a test flight – one of many more to come.

Do I Really Want to Live That Long?

The other day I took one of those absurd Facebook quizzes that bombard my feed. You know the ones like, which Biblical character are you? What color best represents you? And, if you were a tree, what kind would it be? (Apologies, Barbara Walters.)

This quiz asked a series of questions to determine how much longer you would live. It was multiple choice, with questions about my favorite beverage consumption and least favorite holiday, among other things.

Shrug. Sure, why not?

I went through the quiz and answered accurately and honestly, never giving a thought to where this might lead me.

The pop-up box declared that I would live for another 44 years and some-number of months. (The smaller number escapes me because I was so gobsmacked by the first figure.)

Forty-friggin’-four more years!? Are you kidding me?

In essence, this little parlor game was telling me I am essentially only halfway through my life.

My reaction to this finding (which has about as much validity as a Magic 8 ball or the “Zoltar Speaks” fortune-telling machine from the movie “Big”) surprised me.

I don’t want to last until I am 94!

Seriously.

I love my wife and my sons, but not to sound cliché, I don’t want to be a burden on them in my advanced dotage. (Besides, my wife and I have a pact that we are both going out together in a burning bed set ablaze by the embers of our passionate lovemaking.)

I turned 50 in October, and while I am benefiting (finally) from many emotional insights and real-life wisdom, my body seems to have other ideas. Though I work out and eat right, there is more snap, crackle and pop in my joints than a bowl of Rice Krispies.

I have seen the ravages of dementia in relatives and the toll of age on mobility and energy. I think I can stay pretty active and sharp for another 20, 25 years, but beyond that, I have my doubts.

I have witnessed what others have endured in what is euphemistically called “elder care” and I don’t wish that on my sons, who I want to go on living fulfilling, unencumbered lives, free of adult diapers, trips to the doctor and circular conversations.

And for sure, I have not saved nearly enough money to last me into my 90s.

I fear much more the death of my loved ones than I do my own. The question of what is a “good” age to die has been explored recently, with at least one essay concluding that 75 is an appropriate age to go.

That sounds about right for me. I am sure there are those who will disagree with me and think my outlook is all rather selfish.

Perhaps.

But if you will excuse me, I’ve got to get busy living what’s left of the rest of my life.

Baking While Intoxicated

When I was a kid, the weeks leading up to Christmas were literally the sweet spot for my Dad and my sisters and I because Mom would be baking up a storm.

Butter cookies in the shapes of trees and wreaths with colored crystals sprinkled on them, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, linzer tarts, butter cookies with a dollop of melted chocolate in the center…you name it, she was pumping these tasty treats out like crazy in the cramped kitchen of our Bronx apartment.

The sounds of whirring electric beaters and clanging cookie sheets could be heard until well past 10 p.m. as she baked mounds and mounds of cookies for family and friends.

This was also a special time of the year since, as I got older, I could help her in the kitchen to prepare the dough and do KP. I got to spend time at my mother’s elbow learning how to bake, but just as importantly, simply to spend time with her.

Her talents in mass-producing such delectable treats sparked a cat-and-mouse game between Mom and the rest of the family. She would have to hide the many tins brimming with cookies so my sisters and Dad and I would not raid them.

(I recall sneaking cookies from the tins and rearranging the layers so as to hide my tracks and make it appear nothing had been removed. Forget it. I had Dick Tracy for a mother and she could spot the telltale signs of cookie pilfering.)

True story: When in my teens I transcribed many of my mother’s recipes on a typewriter, I included these instructions at the bottom of her butter cookie recipe: “Place into cookie tins and scream at husband and kids for eating them all just before Christmas.”

That notation was but just one example of what a major smart ass I was as a kid. As much as I admired Mom’s baking prowess, it was not beyond the reach of the snarkiness of my young adulthood.

Back then, and even today, Mom liked her cordials and her occasional beer. Well, one night (30 years ago to the month, in fact) she was baking and quaffing her thirst in the hot kitchen with a Michelob beer.

What came next was that she burned a batch of cookies and, separately, realized she forgot to add eggs to one of her cookie doughs!

While it’s more likely that fatigue rather than imbibing contributed to these errors, it was fodder for yours truly to write up a “ticket” for B.W.I: Baking While Intoxicated.

My Mom kept the ticket, lo these many years, and as you can see in the photo I noted under “Course of Action: Lock up all the liquor to prevent nipping. (She has a previous record of making too much merry with Hagen Daz cordial.)”

It was signed by “U.R. Sloshed, Officer in Charge (Kitchen Detail).”

But here’s the thing: No matter how much baking I do, my handiwork still cannot compare to hers – even if she’s been tippling!

 

Don’t Try This at Home

So here’s an important home maintenance tip from yours truly.

I was replacing the propane tank on our home grill in preparation for dinner guests when I decided it would be a good idea to test the pilot lights.

Unbeknownst to me, the knobs were in the “on” position, which meant that as soon as I connected the line, gas was being pumped into the grill.

So at the moment I pressed the ignition…

PWOOOF!

There was a quick blue ball of flame as the gas cloud that had accumulated ignited, Wile E. Coyote-style. (I am told my eyebrows will grow back…)

It came and went in a second but it was loud enough to get the attention of my wife, who was indoors and on the other side of the room when it happened.

It might also have been my loud cursing that got her attention.

So against that backdrop, consider this:

I had bought what I call a “Fisher-Price” version of a chainsaw (it’s a pretty small power tool) to chop up some large logs so they could fit in our fireplace.

I figured I would be all manly and Paul Bunyan-like in tackling this particular chore. But Meg instead insisted on spending a hundred bucks for our local handyman to do the work instead.

Gee…I can’t imagine why…

 

True Friends Help You Drive A Tank

More than a year ago, I had read of a place called Drive A Tank.

At this “tank camp” in Kasota, Minn., (its motto: “History. Power. Tanks.”) you can channel your inner Patton, Rommel, or more likely in my case,  Dukakis.

Powerful rumbling machines that can obliterate whatever’s in their path? A chance to do something completely different? And a memorable way to celebrate my 50th birthday with my childhood chums?

Thus a scheme was born.

For well over a year, I saved and plotted, luring my friends into this indulgence. John and Pedro were daft enough to agree to my Walter Mitty adventure.

To get in the proper tank-driving mood, we visited the mammoth Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., to catch the World War II tank drama “Fury” starring Brad Pitt.

The movie was gritty, violent and realistic, and watching it gave me renewed appreciation for our men and women of the military, and especially those who are so-called “tankers.”

The next morning, we drove an hour south, the flat farmlands of Minnesota punctuated occasionally by a roadside stand or a nature preserve.

Inspired by the movie the night before, we spent part of the trip brainstorming nicknames for ourselves: I was “Bushmeat,” (don’t ask); Pedro was “Gas Can” (really don’t ask) and John was the ever-fear-inspiring “Butter Sauce” because, John, like butter sauce, is addictive and bad for your health!

We got to DAT, which is headquartered at a former quarry, and, unexpectedly, is separated only by railroad tracks from a residential neighborhood.

In keeping with the spirit of the trip, John bought each of us camo shirts. Silly? Yes. Dorky? Yes. In keeping with our fashion sensibilities? 100 percent.

Upon seeing a photo of the three of us in these shirts, Pedro dubbed us the “Menudo of Macho”!

We had an hour-long history and safety orientation that was both alarming — we were told these were not Disney World rides, that these were killing machines and we would die indescribably horrible deaths if we did not follow instructions — and illuminating about the history of tanks.

After the safety session we were divided into two groups: Those who would drive a tank first and those who would fire machine guns first.

As part of my booking of the “4-Star General Package,” I got to fire a Sten machine gun (that was cool); a 1919 belt-fed machine gun (which was crazy) but the mother of them all was the M4, which had such recoil that it damn near put me on my butt!

Then we piled into an enclosed 5-ton Army transport truck, which drove us to a concrete barrier-enclosed pen that served as the starting place for the tank driving.

We waited as other drivers and their passengers went first. Seeing “my ride” — an FV433 Abbot SPG  — was bit of a holy Moses moment.

With its squeaky, rattling treads and stout turret, the Abbot was more compact than I imagined but no less fearsome.

I watched as other drivers climbed a ladder to reach the top of the tank, which drove off in a plume of dust. Then a DAT staffer with a clipboard called out my name. My moment of glory! To drive a tank!

I lowered myself into a narrow hatch into the controls of the Abbot (top speed of 29 mph).

Pedro and John were passengers in the rear. Like gophers, our heads stuck out from just the tops of the hatches.

For the record, the artillery function on the tanks was disabled so there was no chance of blowing things up. Just the same, I was warned not to press any buttons on the control panels.

A tank “commander” (a staffer of DAT) rode atop the tank offering me instructions. Essentially, the controls consisted of a gas pedal and two sticks that you used to steer and to brake.

Want to steer left? Pull the left stick toward you. It effectively caused that side’s tread to brake so the tank would pull in the direction you wanted to go.

And off we went for about 12 minutes on an unpaved path, through a small water obstacle and back to our starting point. It was exhilarating to hear this machine snort and chug under my control!

Next was an FV432 APC (armored personnel carrier) with a top speed of 32 mph. I drove this one in “combat mode,” which meant I lowered myself into a narrow portal, with the hatch closed and my view was through a periscope!

It was hot, noisy and claustrophobic in there.

Pedro and John again were passengers, but they were enclosed in what amounted to a darkened vault in the rear of the vehicle. The guys said I drove this one much more smoothly than the first.

I have to say it was challenging to drive one of these vehicles in peacetime under optimal conditions. I cannot even imagine what it is like operating these machines in chaotic combat situations.

So I learned how to drive a tank. But the more enduring lesson I learned was about the importance of having best friends willing (and crazy enough) to help you fulfill your dreams!

About Exercise: Never Too Old To Bring It

I am no celebrity worshipper, but I have to confess I was nervous about meeting exercise guru Tony Horton.

For my 50th birthday, my bride got me (among other gifts) tickets for this year’s Central PA Health & Fitness Expo at Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center.

The centerpiece of the event was a meet-and-greet with Tony (he of the P90X workout fame), a chance to hear him as a keynote speaker, and, best of all, to participate in a workout he was leading.

So here I am on line with dozens of others, waiting to meet Tony, shake hands, chat and get an autograph and a photo.

Chris_TonyThe closest I’ve ever come to a brush with celebrity was in 1978, when I met then-New York City Mayor Edward Koch and got his autograph. Though Koch was the leader of the greatest city in the world, he did not sell nearly five million pieces of exercise DVDs closing in on nearly $1 billion in sales.

That distinction would belong to Tony Horton, who I was getting closer to meeting as the line progressed.

He could not have been more warm, gracious and funny. A total mensch.

I told him what an inspiration he was (he’s 56 BTW and totally shredded) and at one point I put a hand over his and told him I was sorry about his dad’s recent death.

His composure changed visibly. You could see he was truly touched by the sympathy. He called his dad’s death a “goofy,” unexpected loss and said he should have had 10 more years in him.

He was totally genuine. Not an ounce of phony. He was super generous with his time.

Then came his keynote speech, the highlights of which were: “Do your best and forget the rest.”

My favorite advice? Don’t feel 100 percent? Go and work out anyway.

“Go in there and stink it up” by giving only 20, 30 or 40 percent. But just do it.

He spoke enthusiastically and passionately about exercise, about overcoming his own obstacles in life (a grade C student with a speech impediment who in his early adult years was $60,000 in debt).

And then came the workout. I never smiled so much busting my hump as I did this day. I was joined by 130 others who jumped, grunted, burpeed, ran and push-upped our way through the 40-minute routine.

Tony roamed the room, coaching people, encouraging them and correcting their form.

At one point during the warm-up, he pointed at me and winked as if to say: “Yeah, you got it!”

The capstone came at the end of the workout.

I turned to this guy next to me (in his early 30s, I would guess) and I told him how he had absolutely crushed the exercises.

He looked at me and said: “Can I ask how old you are, sir?”

I told him I turn 50 in a couple of weeks.

He shook my hand firmly and said: “Every move, you just were killing it!”

Yes!!!!! Bring it!

Never Too Late to Feel The Burn or Get Rid of That Goo

Over the years, each generation has had exercise gurus who put their stamp on an era:

Jack LaLanne. Jane Fonda. Richard Simmons.

For me, it’s Tony Horton. He is the face of an intense workout program known as P90X. (I am pretty sure, after having done these rigorous routines myself, that the “P” in P90X stands for “Phuck! This is hard!”)

I was not always a fan of fitness. In fact, up until 13 years ago, I think you would classify me as…what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah: A slug.

As a kid, I was at various times what euphemistically was described as “chunky” and would wear jeans sized “husky.”

Later in my teens and early 20s, I thinned out. But once I hit my late 20s and especially as I got into my 30s, well, it was the Battle of the Bulge, and the bulge won.

Then 9/11 happened. I fell into a deep depression following the attacks and my eating went out of control.

A little more than a month later, I decided that I would begin to work out.

 

What motivated me? The thought of all those first responders who lost their lives and the question of, God forbid I ever found myself in a life-and-death emergency, what kind of shape would I be in? Would I be a help or hindrance to any rescue operation?

So on my 37th birthday, I popped a 30-minute “Boot Camp” workout videotape into the VCR.

Winded and sweaty, I had to stop after 15 minutes.

I tried again the next day, and the day after that, until I was able to get through the whole routine. What came next were biking, running, weight lifting and the overall loss of 40 pounds.

About six years ago, I took up the Tony Horton P90X series and related workouts from Beachbody.com, like P90, P90X3, Insanity and Asylum.

These workouts are never easy and I struggle with many of the moves. And no, I don’t have six-pack abs or rippling muscles. When it comes to getting ripped, I’m just happy to no longer be ripping my pants.

What 13 years of “exercise sobriety” has brought me is a chance to blow off steam and to challenge myself. For instance, in the course of one P90X workout, I’ve been able to do 200 push-ups of various sorts.

It’s not about transforming myself into a cover model for “Men’s Health.” If I were more rigorous about what I eat and spent even more time exercising, I’d be happy to sport such a look.

But that’s not the point. It’s about confronting the struggle to be physically healthy every day for the rest of my life.

In celebration of my commitment and my upcoming 50thbirthday, my wife has treated me to the “Central Pa. Health Fitness Expo,” featuring a meet-and-greet with Horton, who will be the keynote speaker.

And, oh yeah, it includes a one-hour workout with the man himself. The workout promises to be — to quote one of many memorable Horton quips — “like swimming, only wetter.”

I might suck wind compared to some of my fellow participants who are stronger, thinner, younger, etc. But it’s not going to stop me from going all in (and risking making a fool of myself!)

All I can say is: Bring it!

Wild Oats and the Old Times Square

I am reasonably sure that the statute of limitations has passed that this story can now be told. And if it hasn’t, oh well. It’s only going to embarrass me and my best buds — as if we haven’t already made that a lifetime pursuit!

I spent some time recently walking through Times Square on successive late weekday nights and was gobsmacked by what I saw:

Brightly lit storefronts.

Clean sidewalks.

Tourist traps of every assortment.

The horror of it all!

The Times Square I recall as a kid was the seedy one that, when I would be with my dad and we were cutting through it, he would tell me to keep my head down and to walk quickly.

You know the pre-Rudy Giuliani Times Square I’m talking about: Peep shows, porno palaces and panhandlers.

P1130948

 

As a college student, I worked at what was then New York Telephone Company’s HQ on 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue.

Times Square was still, as my father would describe it, “schkeevatz.” (Translation: Dirty and repulsive.)

I’d meet Pedro or Rich (who were each at the time working jobs in Manhattan) for lunch at Bryant Park across the street.

It too at the time was schkeevatz – overrun with drug dealers, homeless and rats.

But, you know, by this time we were older and more adventurous so the rundown, dirty nature of Times Square had some allure for us.

We were young men sowing our wild oats and would make, um, fact-finding missions to some of the venues offering adult entertainment (read: the peep shows).

Like women going to the bathroom at a restaurant, we would go in pairs or sometimes as an entire pack.

Our most memorable visit was to a showroom by four of us: Yours truly, Gary, Rich and Pedro.

The room was circular, each with a private booth and a window that afforded you a view. You put your quarter in, and a slow-moving panel would mechanically lift to give you a view of the performance.

An important detail: The room was set up in such a way that you could look across and see the faces of the patrons framed by the windows as they looked in.

Rich was on the opposite side of the three of us.

We could clearly see him: Rich was getting a front row view of this hot performer whose back was to us.

Then this performer removes whatever excuse for covering she was wearing, and then we see Rich and he’s just dying laughing.

Laughing?

The three of us are trying to figure out why, when the performer turns around to face us.

Let me pause here to ask: Have you ever seen “The Crying Game”? Know of its surprising twist?

Go ahead.
Look it up.
I’ll wait.

Are you back? Yep, well, you guessed it.

The joke was on us because this performer was sporting a package the size of a Sears refrigerator box.

Rich: I can still see the horror on Gary’s face.

Gary: And, yes, I still see it (and Rich’s laughing face across from me) in my nightmares.

We bolted – screaming — out of there. There are some things that cannot be unseen.