Let's Don't!

Chub the Tub, twistin' like he did 52 summers ago.

"Chubby Checker wants to help set at twist record", reads the story header in my local San Diego daily.  Geezus, please, NO!  Is my initial reaction.  You're 71 years old, Chub.  You've been twisting every last freaking ounce of fame and scratch out of that stupid gyration for more than FIFTY years!  LET'S DON'T TWIST AGAIN LIKE WE DID LAST SUMMER!  I'm begging you!

It's that time of year.  State and county fairs are ready to welcome lovers of cotton candy, deep fried Snickers bars, corndogs and folks who dig burned out rock n' roll acts.

  

Actually, I'm sure that Chubby (aka Ernest Evans) is plenty tired of doing the "dance sensation that is no longer sweeping the nation" but, like all of us, there are bills to pay, ex-wives and children to do right by and probably a bartender and bookie or two to take care of.  It's a job that pays well and involves no heavy lifting. The toughest part is pretending to have fun as you crank out the same song year after year  while balancing your checkbook and planning your vacation. 

Spending more than ten years of my erstwhile radio career on three different oldies stations, I had the chance to observe more than a few of these rock n' roll dinosaurs perform.  Local disc jockeys are often required to show up for these shows to introduce acts that are staples of the station's playlist.  It's not bad enough that you have to listen to the mostly insipid lyrics from your own teenage years--and maybe even break out in zits again-- you must also witness the sad demise of these entertainers as they grow old and tired.  Some, with lots of hits under their belt, have plenty of songs to break up the monotony but others-- "one hit wonders',  if you will-- are doomed to pad a thin artistic portfolio with songs no one ever cared  about.  When they finish with their one and only big hit it's time to hit the exit and take the act down the road to the next county fair gig or oldies blowout.   I was actually happy for Bill Haley when he died.  Never again would he have to give a downbeat to some re-tread Comets as they kicked off "Rock Around the Clock" for the bazillionth time.  The man had suffered enough.  

When Rick Nelson dared to stray from his string of 50's and 60's hits during a show at Madison Square Garden in the 1970's, he got booed off the stage.  He did manage to get one more hit record out of the humiliation when "Garden Party" sold a million copies.  

"I went to a garden party, reminisced with my old friends

A chance to share old memories and play our songs again

When I got to the garden party they all knew my name

But no one recognized me I didn't look the same"

Singers have a hard time understanding that people who pay money to see them perform want to hear the hits.  Artists, naturally become bored with songs they have already made popular and want to introduce new material.  The most talented understand that it is a delicate tap dance to expose unfamiliar music to an audience.  It can be done only when the hunger for the hits has been sated.  Then it may be safe to slip a new tune into the performance. 

So, old Chub the Tub will have to set the Twist record without me.  I'm afraid that I have oldies poisoning and am unable to participate.  

"If you gotta play at garden parties I wish you a lot a' luck

But if memories were all I sang I'd rather drive a truck"

Couldn't have said it better myself, Rick.  I'm fairly certain he is only doing new material at that big sock hop in the sky.

Rick Nelson: May 8,1940-December 31, 1985

Don't Worry It's NOT Your Fault!

Thank God!  It's not my fault.  That adipose tissue orbiting my equator is the product of a DISEASE according to the nation's largest physician organization.  Obesity is now officially NOT YOUR FAULT!  See your doctor and let the American Medical Association assume the guilt, but save some for your parents.  As we all know, parents are responsible for just about every problem life tosses our way. 

Looks like it needs mayo.

I couldn't help noticing the curiously juxtaposed story about doctors declaring yet one more modern problem as a "disease" as I opened the paper a couple of mornings ago.  There was the report of actor James Gandolfini, TV's Tony Soprano, dying of heart failure after eating a whopping big meal  of fried foods and copious amounts of booze while vacationing in Italy.  It was just above the story of the AMA's declaration of gluttony as an illness.

REALLY?!  There is nothing to prevent us from picking up that double-decker ham sandwich?  No way to make us simply drop that fork, pass on the pie, and put the ice cream back in the refrigerator?  It must be that damn disease talking!

How did we get from a society that took on the responsibility of saving the world from Hitler, Tojo, and a variety of nutjobs in the Kremlin to one that can't wait to point the finger toward any vice, foible or offense as long as it is away from us.  Everybody is a victim.  We are no longer in control of our own destiny.

Maybe I'm being judgemental.  I can't help it.  I was raised that way.  It's my parents' fault, dammit!

I'm no doctor, but I play one on this blog and it is my considered opinion that a disease is an illness you are born with or contract by accident and cannot control.  Drinking too much and eating too much are physical and psychological addictions that can be overcome through something we used to call willpower.  When we want to look and feel our best it is within our abilities to simply put down the glass or knife and fork and get "well".  

In the words of Dean Wormer:  "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son."  If our doctors are no longer willing to call us "Tubby" who is going to stand between us and that plate of fries?

Oh….who cares.

Is the crash cart on stand-by?  I'm goin' in!

Help yourself…it's a disease.

Sunday On The Deck With Dad

(My brother, Steve, now retired from the newspaper business, wrote this 23 years ago.  Our dad has been gone for more than 18 years but he speaks to me nearly every day.  These days, for a change,  I listen.  I think Steve does too.)


     "There's a deranged duck in the pond," my dad informs me matter-of-factly.
It's Sunday afternoon.  Father's Day.  We are standing one story above the ground on the narrow deck of my parents' condo squinting out into the glary light.  It is hot and breezy, the sky a dizzying whirl of blue and cirrus clouds.
   
     My dad, who is retired and has time on his hands, keeps a close watch on the ducks these days as they come and go in the small lake out beyond the manicured lawn behind the condo complex.  He counts the ducklings ("Snapping turtles got most of them this year.") and enjoys what, to his admittedly inexpert eye, seem to be the vagaries of duck social life.
   
     If there's a weird duck out there, I'm sure my dad knows about it.  When he points out the wayward fowl in question--a lone duck, diver, he says--I observe him for a while too.  He (or is it a she?) swims erratically around the lake avoiding the other ducks.  My dad thinks maybe it has lost its mate and is grief-stricken.  Through binoculars, the duck looks to me to be young and scrawny and glassy-eyed, maybe a little disheveled (a tuft of feathers is is askew on its head).  Dangerous, I think.  A loner, a rebel.  The John Hinckley or the Travis Bickle of the duck world.
 
      Hinckley Duck goes away eventually, paddling with a sudden purpose (off to buy a handgun?) toward a distant corner of the lake and out of sight.  Our thoughts and conversation drift to other things.
 
      I have been thinking a lot about the old man lately, and about the inexorability of genes.
   
     There was a rebellious time when I thought I had little in common with my dad, and I don't think he knew quite what to make of me.  If there's one thing he can't stand in the world it's a smark-aleck.  "Stay away from that guy.  He's a smart-aleck," was a warning I heard repeatedly as a kid.

     Dad is your basic solid-citizen---a patient, portly Ward Cleaver type interested in insurance, real estate, the crops, golf, washing the car, moderation and fairness.  He is cursed, however, with two kids who are Eddie Haskells.  Classic smart-alecks.  My brother is a big city DJ, and I'm a small town newspaper drone--jobs for un-solid citizens--two businesses fraught with cynics, burn-outs, booze-hounds and other unsavory characters.

     At one point, I think my dad dreamed that I could be a golf pro.  He bought me golf clubs and got me started playing when I was little.  I was pretty good and he kept encouraging me.  Of course I gave it up in high school.

     I was a brooding, solitary, wiseacre kid and I've become a brooding, semi-solitary, wiseacre adult.  Lately though, in the mornings before I have had time to activate my arsenal of self-delusions, I am often startled by the slightly puffy countenance returning my myopic gaze in the mirror, "Dad." I think. Time and circumstances ( and booze) work their magic on a face, but genes will out.  I notice, too, I am taking new pleasure in things like washing the car and mowing the yard.  Perhaps moderation and a resumption of my golf career are next.

     Dad has gotten jolly in retirement, though, to be honest, the last few years have not been especially kind to him.   A man who, as I recall, was never sick a day in his life had barely said goodbye to the everyday work grind when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, then diabetes.  He developed an ulcer, needed back surgery, spent the better part of a winter in the hospital or flat on his back at home.

     My family is small but not what I imagine most people would consider particularly close-knit.  Much is left unsaid between us.  We share, rightly or wrongly, a distrust of anybody who talks too openly about his feelings, and sense that life's important stuff, its essential truths, are ineffable.  Maybe it's this Midwestern reticence,  but I never heard my dad complain through any of his troubles.  (He will be embarrassed, of course, that I'm committing any of this to paper.)

     I thin he's having a good year this year, I'm happy to say.  He's able to golf again.  His White Sox are winning (he's a lifelong fan; naturally, to be contrary, I became a Cubs fan).  Most of all, he seems comfortable with himself--untortured by regret--which, I imagine, must be the best part of growing old. He's done OK.

     When it's time to leave, my dad walks out to the parking lot to see me off.  Night has begun to crouch down around the lake and the white brick condos.  My folks decided to move to this place when the house got to be too much for them to care for,  and I sense they are just now starting to feel at home here.  It still seems foreign to me.  We stand by the car for a moment as the insects whir incessantly from the shimmering trees.  He notes with some pride that I am keeping my car clean.

     "Happy Father's Day.  And thanks," I say for the final time, and we shake hands this Sunday.  Father's Day.

     " Another day long gone," he says to me cheerfully.  And in my head on the quiet drive home my father's voice echoes back to me as my own.

Steve Copper, June 26, 1990

   

Feeling Lucky

I'm lucky.  If you're honest you most likely realize that you are too.  Of course there are times when things don't seem to be going as planned, but it's all relative and we accept it.  Most of life's important stuff has a way of working out.

This week my wife and I had a chance to tour Rady Children's Hospital here in San Diego.  It is nationally recognized as a fine facility and we're fortunate to have it.  For several years I had broadcast my radio show from the hospital during annual fund raising events and ever since we have been donors.  It was wonderful to see some of the fantastic new additions that have been made during the past few years.  Both of us came away from the tour feeling exceedingly glad to have helped in a small way and lucky that neither of our kids had ever needed the the hospital.   Also,  we were hopeful that our grandson would advance to adulthood without ever seeing Rady's interior.

Naturally,  as we walked the wards we saw many kids and their families who have not been blessed with good health.  The cancer patients, accident victims, and kids awaiting transplants are heartbreaking to see.  Nobody, especially a kid, deserves to be dealt such a hand.  Their families deserve better too, not that they are inclined to complain.  The strength of character and the optimism of most all of them is inspiring to see.  They don't want pity, they simply want to be "normal" again.

As I mentioned, I'm feeling lucky.  I just spent the day at Legoland with my grandson Dan and had a terrific time but couldn't help thinking about the kids and families I saw earlier this week.  All I can do is enjoy my good fortune and donate whenever I can.

No doubt there is a children's hospital somewhere near you.  See if you can share your luck.  Write 'em a check and help a kid.  You'll feel good about it.  Come on, you're feeling lucky.

The Nose Knows

"I smell a gun," my three year-old grandson says to me as he heads for the spare room where we keep his toys.  Lately I've noticed that he uses "smell" interchangeably with "want".  Kids do stuff like that.  He'll figure out soon enough that his ping pong ball weapon of choice has only the slight patina of cheap plastic and not much smell at all. This got me thinking about noses and how we mostly fail to appreciate the gift that is our olfactory lobe.  

If you want to truly understand a place or thing you need to smell it.  How many times have you found yourself someplace from which you have long been absent yet it is instantly recognizable to you because it smells the same as you remember it. Your eyes and ears may not register recognition but your nose has an unfailing memory.  Smell, I think, is predominantly an emotional sense.  Think about it.  Just a whiff of perfume on a letter tucked away for many years or a particular blooming flower can transport you back to a significant event in your life.  I remember being in fourth or fifth grade when one of the girls in our class was helping the teacher pass out tests or papers of some kind.  As she walked by my desk I detected a hint of perfume that had me instantly "in love" with her.  It was probably Radio Girl or some other dime store fragrance but to me it was instant swoon.  I would recognize it anywhere.  (Call me, Joan!)   Carter Hall pipe tobacco has the smell that will always recall "Dad" just as Lilly of the Valley is an instant hit of "Mom".    Babies and old folks have an aroma all their own.  Burning bacon and diesel fumes never fail to put me back in the Army,  as does the smell of wet canvas and dirt.

This new appreciation of the nose was inspired by a recent trip to northern Idaho.  The pine and smell of brand new leaves on soft wood trees like maple took me back to my grade school years in Michigan and the springtime smell of lilac bushes transported me to the backyard of a house I haven't seen in more than fifty years.  My head was reeling with each inhalation of that beautiful fragrance and I was a kid again for just a few minutes.  

Kipling said it in his poem  Lichtenberg, about an Australian trooper who smells the blossoms of a tree and is reminded of his home in New South Wales:

"Smells are surer than sounds or sights

To make your heart-strings crack-

They start those awful voices o'nights

That whisper, "Old man, come back!"

Old Rudyard knew the power of a good nose.

Happy 40th Baby Girl!

There were times,  mainly the high school years, when I wanted to send her to reform school.  She has always been a firecracker and yesterday, she turned 40.  FORTY!!  How the hell did that happen?  My youngest daughter, Katie, now has four decades in her rear view mirror and that officially makes me, uh…OLD. 

I still remember seeing her freshly hatched and screaming her head off at me and everyone else within range of Irwin Army Hospital.  Soon she was dragging a blanket around and saying pretty amusing things for just a little squirt; then she was off to college.  It really did seem to go that fast.  Now she is a successful lawyer, wife and mom to her own little knothead, Dan.  

Weirdo parents that we are, my wife and I raised both Katie and her sister Kelly on Three Stooges, W.C. Fields and Mel Brooks movies.  However, Kate was the only one who memorized every line of "Blazing Saddles".  Multiple family moves required by the itinerant broadcast business contributed even more insanity to her less than traditional upbringing.  In spite of it all, or maybe because of it, at  40 Katie is a pretty doggone wonderful daughter.

Enjoy it while you can kid!  Soon Dan will be bringing home notes from the teacher, breaking stuff and eventually wrecking your car as Grandpa and Grandma watch through the prism of "been there, done that".

So. happy birthday Katie Dee!  You give me outright prolonged laughter and I in turn give you fatherly advice.  My gift to you on your fortieth is as follows:

Forget attempting to get into the movies with a student I.D.  Nobody will buy it.

Love, 

Dad

Katie laughs as Dan digs for brains.

Katie and Dan

Katie, Dan and Goofy husband Doug. (Sorry Doug I can't help myself.)

Alma? Betty? What the…??

"Dreamland" Where the men are men and the women are after 'em

"I Like Dreamin" was an exceptionally awful hit record for Kenny Nolan in the late 1970's.  Maybe it was dreadful but, at least to my mind, old Kenny espoused a great philosophy.  I really DO like dreaming and indulge myself as the star of nightly double and triple features nearly every time I close my eyes.  Ever since childhood my dreams have been vivid, memorable and in color.  I'm told that this is rare--the color and memorable part.

Statistically most folks don't remember their dreams and the majority of sleepers claim to only have black & white dreamland receivers.  I find that hard to believe.

Dream analysis is entertaining if you have the ability to recall your nightly sojourns.  My experience is that almost all of my dreams reflect ambivalence about whatever wakeful problems or personal dilemmas I'm currently having.  An elevator that keeps opening and closing as I search for someone, also the inability to speak or make myself heard is almost always prevalent in dreams regarding my personal relationships.  Dreams involving a return to booze and smokes usually are prompted by rage about something or someone.  (Having employed the services of Dr. Jack Daniels as my primary physician for more than thirty years probably explains this.)  Sleep with recurring episodes of running and being naked most always pertains to impending changes and job uncertainty.  

I've noticed a tendency toward running and fearful dreams when I'm staying in a strange new place.  No PHD is needed to get the drift of that one.  As a further indication of my slide into geezerdom, whipped cream and deserts visit my dreams more frequently than whoopee.  I presume that is par for the grandpa course.

The most common dream for all of us is the one where you are about to graduate from high school or college and have just discovered you forgot to attend or do the course work for a required class.  I still have that one in spite of not having darkened a classroom door in more than forty years.

Often when swapping radio lies with other broadcast veterans I find that a dream common to all of us is the recurring nightmare of being on the air and locked out of the studio as a record or commercial is ending.  You beat on the door and try to break the studio window glass but to no avail.  A cold sweat wake up follows that one.

The reason for this demented blog on dreamland is as follows:  Two nights ago,  for the first time EVER, I had a dream so BORING it woke me up!  This was so bad I actually had to get up for awhile and shake this incredibly mundane dream.  The worst part of it is I can think of absolutely nothing that would have instigated this nighttime ticket to dullsville.  Here is the gist of the episode:  Several years ago in Seattle and San Diego I worked with two different radio traffic directors.  Radio traffic directors are the people charged with scheduling commercials that run on the various shows a station broadcasts.  It is a rather dull job usually held by older matrons who treat the air personalities like their own children.  "Ken, you were supposed to play that American Airlines spot at 6:51 am, not 6:53!"  "The client wants a "make good" because he said that someone--YOU--made a farting sound when he claimed to have the lowest prices in town."  Etc etc etc.  In Seattle the traffic director was a black woman named Alma and in San Diego a white older lady, an Arkansas native, was the boss of traffic.  Her name was Betty.  Neither disliked me and, for the most part, I avoided getting into trouble with them.  That is what makes having this dream so peculiar.   It went like this:   I dreamed I was on the air and, for some reason, both of them called me on the station hot line to ask me to move some commercials around on the program log. Zzzzzzzzzz…oops, sorry.  I told you it was boring. The dream was interminable!  It kept going on and on with me moving commercials and them telling me to hang on they had more changes for me.  I finally bored myself into consciousness.  I have often wakened screaming, sweating, breathing hard, thirsty, hungry and YES horny but NEVER BORED.  What the hell is that about?!  I get tired just thinking about it and never ever want a repeat.

Tonight Alma and Betty had better not call me because I WON'T ANSWER.  Perhaps a big piece of cheesecake and a gander at some of the babes in my old high school yearbook will plow some fun furrows in my cerebellum.  I remember the time at the drive in movie when my pals and I spiked the girls Cokes with….ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Yeah, that's better.  Goodnight!