Sick of Us Yet?

There it was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, another way point in the Boomer generation's seemingly never ending journey through the culture of America.  In a story by Serena Ng about Proctor & Gamble's disposable diaper business some fairly significant numbers begged me to read more.    Because of our nation's dropping fertility rate, baby diaper sales have been in decline for several years.  In fact sales has dropped off so dramatically P&G had exited the diaper dodge more than a decade ago.

The flip side of this trend is the increasing need for ADULT diapers.

Enter the aging baby boomers!  My generation, now retiring and aging like a truckload of ripe cantaloupes parked in the sun,  is sending the adult diaper industry into lunar sales orbit.  In the last fifteen years sales of incontinence products have just about tripled.  International sales are coming in at around $7 billion and are increasing at over 8% per year.  That sets up P&G for an approximate haul of about a half a billion bucks in sales for the next year or two alone.

Naturally this means all non boomers will be required to subject themselves to a carpet bombing of advertising for yet one more geezer targeted commodity.  Isn't it bad enough already??!!  How many more 50's and 60's rock n' roll hits can Madison Avenue possibly turn into commercials?  It has become so awful that I find it nearly impossible to recall the original lyrics to the songs that have lately been lifted to peddle everything from diet plans and cold remedies to laxatives and boner pills.  It's downright  embarrassing.  

"Hi, it's Eddie for Preparation H."

By 2050 almost 84 million Americans will be age 65 and older.  That's more than 20% of the population.  We baby boomers will have gone from the Pepsi generation to the "Hey you kids get off my lawn!" grumps while the rest of the country counts the seconds until we've all shuffled off the planet.  I don't know how other generations put up with us.  Just think of all the forty and fifty year-old music, clothing and cultural icons that permeate the zeitgeist simply because there are so damn many boomers. If, like me, you came of age in the 50's and 60's, think of what it would have been like to have a bunch of tunes from the 1920's, not to mention "roaring 20's" expressions and clothing permeating the media and life in general.   That's how it is today for generations X, Y and whoever the heck comes later.   We probably really need to apologize.

Shelley Fabares for "Johnny Angel" toilet bowl cleaner

In the meantime, until those of us born from 1946-64 check in to our reserved suites at the Horizontal Hilton, get ready for a lot more products and advertising pitches designed to take our money and make us feel special.

And now a word from The Beaver….for Depends.

Beav?? Is that you?  

Angela Cartwright for "Make Room for Daddy" relaxed fit jeans

Is It Over Yet?

I hear that Germany won the World Cup of "football".  Well, whoop de damn do!  Now the rest of the world can start paying as much attention to soccer as REAL Americans do, which is to say NOT AT ALL  For forty years I have been hearing that soccer is going to "catch fire" in the U.S. and put other professional sports on the back burner.  Uh….still waiting.

How UN-American!  A game played in short pants.

Angela Merkel pretending that this makes up for losing TWO World Wars.

It's a damn boring game!  I tried to work up a little interest in the title game by imagining how many of the players may have been the great grandchildren of Hitler's goons and decided that Argentina may have been the winner there. It's not that difficult to find good wiener schnitzel , a foamy stein and a VW plant or two in the southern hemisphere.  After a coma inducing nil/nil back and forth, the boys from Berlin pulled off a 1-nil victory and took the cup home to Angela Merkel and her goose stepping relatives. 

That whole NIL thing is part of the problem.  We Americans don't say nil.  We say: zip, na da, nothing, zero,  anything but nil.  What this sport needs is new terminology and better play-by-play announcers.  A couple of whining Limeys saying things like "good show", "splendid", "fancy that" and--worst of all--"whilst" just doesn't get it done for American audiences.  We need a couple of good ol' boys with some down home antidotes and moronic hillbilly expressions to get us in the mood.  (Some actual scoring wouldn't hurt either.)  What soccer needs is a modern day Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese to call the games.  For those too young to remember, Dizzy and Pee Wee were baseball Hall of Famers who were teamed to broadcast baseball's Game of the Week every Saturday back in the 1960's.

The broadcast, sponsored by Falstaff Beer, was the bane of English teachers and moms all over the country.  Dizzy was nearly incapable of stringing together a sentence that didn't contain at least five or six grammatical errors (he had a real flare for double negatives) and often, by the late innings, demonstrated the relaxing effect of his sponsor's product.  His penchant for head scratching aphorisms and maxims such as, "you can't give soup to a harelip horse" were also part of the magic.  Ol' Diz and Pee Wee were appointment television for adolescent boys and true fans of the game.

Dizzy Dean

Alan Mayer

I don't know if there are any retired veterans of the old NASL or MISL who could become the soccer equivalent of the ebullient Dizzy and Pee Wee but certainly, if they exist, that could help boost interest in the game.   Alan Mayer might be a candidate.  Mayer is a native American who had a sterling career with the San Diego Sockers, the Las Vegas Americans and the Kansas City Comets of the MISL.  He is now a coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has a terrific personality and a well oiled gift of gab.  He often was a guest on my morning radio show in Las Vegas and never failed to be entertaining.  (How much the always available and ample vodka supply had to do with it I'm not certain.)  The guy was funny and showed no fear of a jolt or two from the old juice bar.

So, in my opinion, that's what soccer needs to really make it in America.  Some FUN and excitement!  It's supposed to be entertainment not algebra.  Soccer needs it's own Dizzy Dean to add some flavor to the game.

"And there goes Fox!  Nellie Fox has just slud into second base with a stand-up double."

"Mr. Rickey must think I went to the Massachusetts Constitution of Technology."

"Lot's of folks who say isn't instead of ain't,  ain't eatin'."

Pee Wee Reese

"Hey Pee Wee, toss me another sack of them goobers and crack me a big ol' tall, cold Falstaff."

  

Authentic frontier hillbilly gibberish on tap from old Diz

Happy Trails

Some were because of the itinerant nature of the radio business and others simply for a change of scenery, but the sum so far is 22.  Twenty-two times in 66 years I've packed and moved to a new location and my wife and I are ready to do it again.  She has been aboard for (also organized and bossed) sixteen of these adventures and could probably teach the folks at Bekins, Allied, United and Mayflower a thing or two about the finer points of moving.   This time, as she recovers her health, lots of the planning and execution falls to me.  I don't know how she ever managed when the kids were little and I had gone ahead to start a new job.  Now retired,  I sort, toss and pack for what I hope is the last time.   I have a new appreciation for all she accomplished.  I also have taken note of the obvious fact that it's a hell of a lot easier to pull up stakes when you're in your twenties or thirties than it is when you're rounding the bend toward seventy.  It's a BIG job!   

The garage begins to fill with packed boxes.  It's only a start.

After two stays totaling 34 years,  it is time to leave California and head north to our soon to be completed new home on the shores of Lake Coeur d' Alene, Idaho.   The state I once considered truly Golden no longer has much appeal.  Taxes and pretty much everything else we can't control has us both weary of the place.  Our disenchantment has been building for several years thus making a fresh water lake in a conservative low tax locale more than a little appealing.  We should be settled by September and ready to enjoy a real autumn for the first time in years though winter is something neither of us has experienced or pined for since 1973.  It's a fair bet that after the first real cold season it may become our habit to travel to warmer climes in January, February and March.

Idaho will be the eleventh home state for me and the eighth for Linda; we look forward to getting to know its people and the landscape.  The lakes and the pine forests remind me a little of my Michigan boyhood but the snow capped mountains will be something new.  We're both excited to explore the miles of bike trails and, though it may take a while to find the right one, a boat will complete the "living on a lake" experience.  Also, fishing with my one and only grandson is already a much talked about future calendar event for the two of us.

Like most moves there will be things to miss from the old home and welcome surprises at the new place.  Old friends are never lost and will always be welcome at the soon to be completed digs just as we look forward to meeting new people with interesting stories in Idaho.  One of the pluses of living in the West is that most everybody is from someplace else and has a fascinating tale of how they came to be where they are.

As we put our current house up for sale and make lists of all the things we need to do for the move, I am reminded of a line from the Alan Jay Lerner classic production of "Paint Your Wagon".  Ben Rumson, a longtime prospector and grizzled denizen of the West, is asked where he's headed as he makes his way out of the town of No Name City.  His reply: "I'm an ex-citizen of nowhere and every now and then I get a little homesick."  Sounds about right Ben.

A Starburst Cluster of Idiocy

I can't do it.  On this Fourth of July I resolve to henceforth never again watch one of those cringe inducing man on the street quizzes the networks insist on trotting out with too much regularity.  Leno did it, so does Kimmel, O'Reilly and several others.  They send out a staff gofer to ask the clueless minions questions such as:  "Who bombed Pearl Harbor?" and "What president is on the $100 bill?"  The idiots on the streets of New York and L.A. almost always hock up laughably preposterous answers that can only make anyone who didn't sleep through ninth grade history break out in a sweat as they attempt to recall how many years it took for the wheels to come off the Roman Empire. 

Time to light a firecracker under some Americans

In high school I was fortunate to have had at least two great teachers who demanded excellence from their often indifferent charges.  I was a daydreaming reluctant student who tried to skate through school with as little effort as possible.  In Clayton Liggett's English class that didn't fly.  Mr. Liggett held daily races to the blackboard where we students were required to diagram complex sentences he had assigned as as homework.  He sat in the back of the classroom and flung erasers at anyone who got the diagram wrong.  There was no talking back and no break in the action.  An hour flew by as the exercise actually became an adventure. Diagraming went on for an entire semester.  The second semester of ninth grade year had all of us filing into Liggett's class to write a daily essay.  He didn't tolerate laziness and expected you to come prepared with new material to inform and entertain him.  He read every one.  Clayton Liggett was a hard grader and superb teacher.

Barb Avery was another teacher who brought her "A" game everyday and expected her students to do the same.  She loved American history and political science and wanted to make it come alive for the kids in her classes.  She poked, prodded and quizzed us with material she knew backward and forward and liked nothing better than to joust with anyone who disagreed with her point of view.  She wanted her students to be informed enough to have their own opinions and was willing to concede a point if you made your case.  A's did not come easy in her history class.

We may have teachers like Liggett and Avery today but I fear they no longer are given the tools to do their job.  Today, with student suspensions and corporal punishment nearly nonexistent, kids know they can usually do as little as possible without threat of reprisal.  They have been raised by often indifferent or absent parents and have been rewarded with blue ribbons for merely showing up.  A couple of generations of "We're all special" and "everyone is a winner" has, for many, removed winning and excellence as something to which a student might aspire.  

The great American Louie Zamporini died yesterday.  His story of survival from the horrors of a World War II Japanese POW camp as told in the wonderful book, Unbroken, should be an inspiration to all of us, especially students,  but I fear that a TV reporter sent to the streets in search of peoples'  thoughts  about him would come back with disappointing results.  We are becoming a nation of dolts.  

It occurs to me that, like my father and his father before him, maybe I am just becoming a grumpy old guy.  (Okay, grumpier.)  However,  I worry about a country that seems to revel in ignorance and is indifferent to or maybe even contemptuous of exceptionalism.  If you doubt me all you need do is look at who we've  elected.  We seem determined to be "cool" and always look for the easy way.  Of course the "easy" way is what makes rivers and men crooked.

In the words of Dean Wormer, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life."  It's also no way to keep a republic. 

Senator Bluto Blutarsky

"It's A Bird, It's A Plane, Nope…Jafflechutes!"

I love the Aussies.  They have a delightfully upside down sense of humor and are never too busy to drink you under the table ANY hour of the day or night.  So, it came as no surprise to find them gleefully behind the launch of something they call parachuting "jaffie" sammies.  Translation:  these clowns are dropping toasted cheese sandwiches equipped with miniature parachutes from the balconies and rooftops of apartments in downtown Melbourne.  

Catching the "jaffies" in Melbourne

 Jafflechutes, the creation of Adam Grant, Huw Parkinson and David McDonald, is being called Melbourne's first "pop up, float down eatery".  Through an arrangement with Pay Pal,  cheese sandwich loving Aussies can pre-pay for their airborne "sammies" and simply show up at a specified time and location to watch their "Jaffie" float down from above.  The young cheesy entrepreneurs now have plans to introduce this heavenly cheese concept to North America with Montreal and New York City lined-up as inaugural cities.

I can't wait!  Like most Americans I was raised on toasted cheese sandwiches and Campbell's tomato soup.  I used to hurry through the soup (soup is a complete waste of time that only women seem to appreciate) and then plow into the cheesy goodness like the product of rural and small town America that I am.  You see, cheese is an addiction.  It's loaded with feel good chemicals from casein, a milk protein that is enhanced by the cheesemaking.  As we digest and break down the casein morphine-like chemicals called casomorphins are created.  Also, there are trace amounts of morphine in milk produced by a cow's liver.  Who knew those wacky bovines were getting high off farmer Brown's alfalfa?

So bring it on.  My Pay Pal account is ready and I await notification of nearby locations where cheese will soon fall from the heavens into my waiting maw.  God bless the Aussies for embracing their inner party gene.  Genius ideas like this stay in our fun bank forever and are the stuff that keeps life from being just one long dental appointment.

Bombs away!!

Ripe Bananas? Hardly

"Every hour 200 Americans learn that they have cancer."  The PSA caught me by surprise as I was listening to satellite radio in the car.  I wondered how many times I had heard this without noticing.  I checked the Internet when I got home.  It's true.

In the past cancer was of little concern to me.  My family was largely untouched by cancer.  Frankly, I'm embarrassed to say,  I considered it primarily a natural malady of old age.  Sure some kids and younger adults were in its sights but weren't they the exception?  Like ripe bananas, I actually thought of cancer as the bruising and mushiness of human decomposition.  Then my mom died of breast cancer.  She was old--nearly 90--but she was MOM and that hits close to home.   Suddenly cancer wasn't just for other people.  I began to notice more people, boomers around my age, in the Irish sports section (obituaries) of the newspaper.  How could somebody from my generation die of a "lengthy illness"?  Celebrities and sports heroes like Tony Gywnn were  fighting this cancer thing.  (Tony died this past Monday.) How could this be?

Last winter  Non Hodgkin's large B cell lymphoma had the nerve to enter our lives.  The lump my wife had found on her neck was cancer.   Her father and two siblings had gone several rounds with the Big C and lost.  Was Linda to be KO ed too?  We walked around the house in a fog for a few days and slowly began to realize that with good doctors, a positive attitude and the prayers of friends and relatives we would fight this intruder and win.

After nearly six months of chemo and everything awful that comes with it the lymphoma is in full retreat.  Today is Linda's last chemo session and in a couple of weeks she should begin to feel healthy again.  Her hair, unlike mine, will begin to return in a few months and be thick and normal in about a year.  Maybe the two wigs she has been using to hide her hairless dome can be modified to help out this  unfortunate victim of male pattern baldness.  Hey, I'm a veteran and nothing looks sexier than a man in his late 60's with a ponytail.  Perhaps I should check with the VA?

As I sit beside her and watch the last of the "good" poison drain into her body it's impossible not to think of how all of this has changed our lives and, most certainly, my perception of the disease that is cancer.  Two-hundred people an hour should not have to hear the words "you have cancer".  Cancer is a bastard.  I look forward to reading its obituary.

Father's Day Reflections

"You can have fun with a son, but you've got to be a father to a girl."
Oscar Hammerstein blew that line of lyric when he penned the hit musical Carousel.  For me raising daughters was easy and fun.  Or, maybe  I didn't do it.  Maybe I was just the guy who showed up at the end of the day to goof around with the girls and the real work fell to their mother.   I sure as hell told them to "go ask mom" often enough when it came to the tough stuff.

The truth is I'm probably like most fathers of the fair sex: LUCKY.  It's a cinch that I came to the job with zero experience and less than a minuscule understanding of females.  I grew up with no sisters and, until I got married, possessed a head full  of crackbrained information supplied by my equally uninformed guttersnipe buddies.  My own father was of little help when it came to women.  He too grew up sans sisters.  The extent of his "facts of life" talk was condensed to an admonition given to me one Saturday night as I backed my old Buick out of the driveway on my way to pick up a date.  It was still light and he was pulling weeds from the flower bed in front of our house in Spencer, Iowa.    Dad motioned for me to roll down the window as he rose and ambled to the car.  I had been going out for awhile with a particular girl and I guess he felt it was time he gave me a "heads up" about "the ladies".  "There is more than ONE kind of trouble, boy," he said to me sternly.  I looked and nodded my head as I continued to back my car away from this sound advice.  I had NO idea what he was talking about.  I'd already been up to my ass in trouble with booze, smokes, and the occasional outhouse tipping rural vandalism so popular in the Midwest, but was clueless to the meaning of his words.  All I knew was I was now late for a major make out session with a hot more experienced woman.  (She was a senior soon to dump my junior ass when she headed for college.)

Dad has been gone nearly twenty years now and I don't think a day goes by where I don't feel remorse for all the stupid things my brother and I did to let him down.  A veteran of World War II who worked hard all his life to provide for us was rewarded with an almost daily recitation of our misdeeds and insubordination.  I sometimes wonder why he ever came home.  The temptation to just keep on driving toward the horizon must have been constant.  All he wanted to do was to maybe have a drink and read the paper but we--especially me--made that almost impossible.  I can still see him shaking his head at the colossally stupid jams we were always getting into.  I'm sure he thought at least one of us was headed for prison which is probably why he didn't seem to mind that I wound up in the broadcast business and my brother the newspaper game, businesses loaded with reprobates and re-treads but at least legitimate.  He should have just killed us.  I thank him everyday for exercising some discretion.

My daughters were a breeze.  Outside of a few high school years where heavy sighs were expelled at my every utterance and doors were slammed in disgust, they were mostly respectful to me and their mother.  A speeding ticket or two and a couple of minor fender benders were about all we had to contend with when it came to their relations with the law.   I have since discovered that there was slightly more smoking and drinking going on than I realized at the time but I wasn't exactly the perfect role model in those days.

Both kids have done well.  Each is successful professionally and in their personal lives.  I like their husbands very much and am crazy about my new best buddy, grandson Dan.  I wish my dad were here to see how well it has all turned out.

Someone once said, "A father is someone who carries pictures in his wallet where his money used to be."  Fine by me.  Somewhere I hope my dad agrees.