Spring Backward

I don't think I ever put beans in my ears, and I thought I'd written the book on stupid kid tricks. I did eat pinion nuts dipped in gasoline! "Why" is a wasted query. "Just Cuz" is the only answer. There are just some things that don't make sense, don't follow any meaningful synaptic path that man or nature designed. ( I may have coined the word synaptic. )  Take today. I think it's the last day in April. Seems to me we just set our clock's forward a few weeks ago. "Okay, class, let's all Spring Forward." So our body clocks are still begging for mercy. We are just about there. We're adjusting to the rooster's new crowing hour. The cow's utter is slowly adapting to colder hands. Baseball is well underway, and we are finally starting to get to work on time. And then somebody, Mother Nature I guess, says, "What the heck, let's spring backward today."

So the "old girl" gives us a high temperature of 36, about five inches of snow on top of the green grass and tulips, knocks the pink and purple blossoms off the flowering trees, slops up the roads the day after we got  all our cars washed. I could go on. Ask her, "Why?" I think I heard her say, "Why do kids put beans in their ears?" (that's a whole different song from "The Fantastiks.")

It wasn't a total loss. My wife was noticing what she termed the varying shades of white. Okay. I did see a man walking with his prancing Great Dane in the park. It makes one really appreciate beige. I'd like to look on the bright side, but here's the topper. They are starting to announce water restrictions for the summer because of the drought. I'm thinkin' the guy who announces "drought" lives in a high rise with a cactus on his balcony. I think he is the same guy who dreamt up daylight savings time. It's all non sequiter, don't make no sense, stranger that a kid puttin beans in his ears.

Speakin' of vegetables my elder sister suggested I toss in some stuff from our youth. I do remember when dad, a fireman working 24 on, 24 off, was remodeling the house. So one 24 off he has put up the lath, and then plastered the lath for a new ceiling in a new bedroom. Well on his 24 on I thought it would be fun to aim my pea shooter at the wet plaster.  He'd never know because the peas would be hidden the plaster. Well that logic might have worked but for the chemical reaction taking place when the  plaster hardened. It heats up,by golly. And it makes peas sprout. Looked pretty cool, but I don't think he thought so.

Jim Croce knew logic. " Don't step on Superman's cape, don't spit into the wind." I'll add, "don't shoot peas into plaster."

But I guess it's still okay to put beans in your ears. Not everything can make sense.

Get a real job

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette is a real song, and it sets the tone for one thing I want to talk about. But more on that later. (That in the electronic news biz is called a tease. And this explanatiion if meant for the guy in Caspar, Wyoming, who just got a new job.) You would think Marvin Nolte would just want to kick back after retiring as a radiation safety specialist, but no. According to thedenverchannel.dom, Marvin noticed local TV station KTWO is having an "Anchor for the day," contest. Following a lot of resistence, Marvin decides to give it a shot. Well, no one knows who is going to win that contest yet, but they know it won't be Marvin. Caspar's competing station KGWC saw his audition, snapped him up, and made him an anchor for good. Marvin says he's had no TV or journalism experience, but he can read pretty good. And (ha,ha) friends say he has a radiant personality.  Its "Broadcast News" all over again. Anyway, Marvin, when I tell you we'll get to that later? That's a tease.

Most of us who've put "comma,  "Retired", after our names have decided we've pretty much done what we wanted to do, or had done to us in life. But I guess I have to admit I've got one little event that hasn't happened that bothers me. I don't have anything named after me. Okay Marvin, pay attention, here it comes.  Sitting in front of me is a mini-pack of cigars delivered to me by one of my students. The cigars come from the Dominican Republic, and they are called Fotinis. Oddly, the student who gave me the Fotinis goes by that same name. I turns out that her papa owns the cigar company and has crafted enough versions of his brand to name one after every family member. "If you've got em, smoke em."

"Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that cigar." Get it Marvin?

Oddly, (one of my favorite words) when I first met Fotini I boldly told her I would never forget her. That was because of her name. Even with a few oozos under my belt I'd remember Fotini. But now its a lock. I'm not a habitual cigar smoker. These Fotinis will be sitting in front of me for a long time looking for special occasions. There is every possibility that my promise of "Never Forget" will be kept. Wish I had something named after me like a fruitcake or something. They never get eaten, do they? 

Some closing advice to Marvin Nolte. You might want to get yourself some Fotinis. It'll give you something to do in between newscasts. "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Fotini!"

Bus Stop

We saw a college production of Bus Stop this evening. It had the pathos, the romance, the conflict and the painful resolution one expects from Inge. The blue grass, country and folk music really set and kept the tone alive.The performances were real and intense.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. But I have trouble leaving things unsaid that nag at me. I'll say at first I liked the set at Grace's Diner. But on the wall for all to see was a fairly believable menu board save one item. TUNA MELT. Even today I'm guessing tuna around Kansas City would be something you'd have to whisper to the waitress, and then you'd have to knock three times on the back door off the alley to just get a whiff ot it.  Go back to the 50's and tuna was not even an entry in Webster's midwest edition. Saying it out loud in a public place would be parallel to that Texas Cowboy ordering salsa made in New York City, or Beijing. Say tuna in Kansas and be prepared to defend your honor. Kansas is beef country!

Let me tell you how I know that. During my brief journalistic stint in Western Kansas, I was driven to tell the real story behind escalating beef prices. To get that story I approached the town's meat packer, the biggest feed lot owner in the area, the biggest rancher around, and the town grocer. I suggested we all sit down to sort out the truth.  Well they got their heads together and decided to educate me at their private club, where liquor could flow freely. Neophyte that I was I showed up with legal pads instead of reporter notebooks. I saw no reason for a tape recorder. Well, my education began with a scotch water and then a martini with two olives, and then a martini with three olives. They were buying. Soon my questions started losing their crispness and it must have been obvious. I think I heard something like, " I think we might want ta get this fella some grub."

I was carefully escorted to a table where a scantily dressed wait person showed up with a menu. While my focus was less than perfect, my blurred vision made out a specific entree listing that excited me beyond my wildest dream. Amongst the porterhouse, the t-bone, and the top sirloin, all corn fed, was the word Halibut. A California boy, seperated from the sea and his culture, all alone in this dusty town, was offered a gift from the ocean by a scantily clad prarie nymph.  What would you do?

"I'll have the halibut, thanks."

I've never known such lonliness. They scattered in all directions. The silence was deafening.  It was as if I cleared the room with methane.  I had to walk home, but not until I had devoured the HALIBUT.

Next day? Sure I had a headache. It was a headache that got more intense with the discovery that I couldn't read any of my notes. Today's lesson is that you don't order fish in cattle country anymore than you would play Mozart in the cab of a combine.

And if you are going to design a set for Bus Stop, don't put Tuna Melt on the menu.

Union Station

I took a group of broadcast journalism students on a light rail ride to Union Station. The mission was to hear ten things and see ten things and quickly turn them into a live shot. Well one of the things that most of them didn't see, was a watch. They missed the return flight on rail. They may have been distracted by something I wish I hadn't seen. Consider the simple observation, " I saw a man jogging by." Now watch the complexity develop.

"I saw a man, likely my age or older, jogging by. I say jogging because my accepted definition of that word simply means having one foot off the ground in front of the other, whilst swinging one's arms back and forth rhythmically. That's all the break I'm going to give this guy."

"I say he was likely my age, and let me add, at least my girth, probably greater.  He also seemed to have adopted my preferred jogging pace, one which if  he or I were the tortoise, the hare need never fear."

"The earth rumbled slightly as he trudged past our observation posts. Each breath he took looked like it may be his last. It hurt to watch the painfull grimace that had been his face. The skin was checkered with various shades of redness.  His cheeks looked pulled back as if he were doing 6 'G's in one of those NASA labs. Yet this man was going nowhere fast."

"Our subject could be forgiven all these visual reflections had he made at least one positive sartorial choice. You expect to see oddity around a Union Station. But this man's jogging wear was frightening. Lets start near the top. Picture this now. The man was wearing a tank top. To aid your perspective think Marlon Brando playing Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Now fast forward to Marlon Brando just before he died wearing that same tank top. Get the picture? I don't really want to elaborate. "

"Now let's jump down to the bottom. Here we have the old tennies with no socks look? Someone should have told him that choice was for finely tuned track athletes whose limbs had been sculpted by Michelangelo. Tennies with no socks do not belong at the bottom of two giant sequoias."

"Lest you'd thought I'd forgotten the middle, rest easy. You may well wish I had forgotten. This more than middle aged man of more than middle aged tonage was wearing track shorts. These were not the current clinging support hose we see on the track today. These were the old track shorts. Remember? Slit all the way up the side to give your lower appendages the freedom to go fast. Fast would have been a blessing in this case."

" I won't tell you what the shorts revealed. I will only say I'm concerned about the students who were stranded in LoDo. I'll be seeing them later today. I'm prepared to suggest to any number of them that they might want to think about professional help. I know I'm thinking about it. Should I ever even think about stepping into similar attire, lock me up, quick."