Pushing 100 and still having fun!?! We should all be so lucky!

What could be better than to be pushing 100 and still having fun??

I just watched a TCM special featuring the actor Ernest Borgnine who when the segment was filmed, was well into his 90s’. The guy is amazing! He’s coherent, articulate, compelling and most of all … interesting!

What a great life!

To have done the things he’s done and lived the life he’s lived and to still be enjoying yourself at that age. Isn’t that everybody’s dream?

Seriously?

He’s outlived all of his contemporaries and he’s still going strong. He may die tomorrow, but damn! Even if he’s gone tomorrow, what a great life!

I dunno. I’m 62 … about 35 years younger than Ernest Borgnine and I’m not at all sure that my next 35 years (if I’m lucky enough to experience them) will be half as great as what he seems to have had!

Wow! To be pushing 100 and still be having fun!

Larry McMurtry Update … Those Berrybenders are Back!

Today, I took a trip to Barnes & Noble to make use of the gift card I got for Christmas.

When I walked in the door, among the “new arrivals” was an extremely thick volume that had just hit the shelves by Larry McMurtry …

No, not a much appreciated re-issue in hardback of the book that made him famous, but a compilation of some of his weakest work ever, entitled “The Berrybender Narratives” …

Yes, that’s correct.

One book.

With 1,500+ pages.

Priced at $37.50 USD!

And, devoted to … combining the four individually awful books that were already published earlier, each costing around $25 bucks apiece.

I suppose you could almost have predicted that this would happen. There was absolutely no reason for the four original volumes to have been published separately. In fact, I maintain that they were so uniformly bad, that there was little justification for publishing them at all.

A short while back, I wrote a blog giving my impressions of the direction McMurtry, one of my favorite authors, has taken since hitting the literary jackpot by writing “Lonesome Dove” … my all-time favorite novel! Here, he created an epic tale that painted a huge story on an immense canvas, populated by some of the most well-developed and interesting characters ever conceived.

Of course, he’d had successful efforts prior to this. For instance, his “Last Picture Show” was a very popular novel and proved to be an extremely successful movie when it was filmed in the late 70s, as was “Terms of Endearment” later in the 80s.

But, it’s hard to argue that he really hit his stride when he conjured up the vibrant characters of aging Texas Rangers Augustus McRae and Woodrow Call, and set them in motion through the glorious “Lonesome Dove” saga and subsequent sequels and prequels.

For me, there has been no greater piece of modern fiction and no finer film adaptation than this masterpiece.

So, it troubled me to report that in the decades following his best effort, McMurtry seems to have fallen victim to the curse that has afflicted other hugely successful fiction writers like John Grisham and Stephen King, etc.

McMurtry appears to have either consciously or subconsciously decided to rest on his laurels.

Individually, each Berrybender Narrative proved worse than the one that preceded it. For a fan of McMurtry, getting through these shorter stories was difficult, but achievable when taken in smaller doses with the forlorn hope that it would get better if I just gave it time.

In the form of this one huge tome, I fear the task will prove unbearable even for the most dedicated McMurtry disciple.

Happiness Is …

Happiness is … Christmas Vacation!!!

Up on the rooftop
click, click, click
two-weeks for Judson
might just do the trick!

God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
’cause Judson won’t be back at work
’til after New Years Day!

Hark the herald angel speaks
Judson’s off for two whole weeks!

Yep … I’m feeling pretty happy right now.

How about you?

The Case of the Curious Blogger

This blogging thing is a curious activity.

Not being a professional blogger or even a particularly aggressive one, I still enjoy looking at my stat report to see how much activity a particular blog may have generated.

After blogging for well over a year now, I proudly passed the 15,000 hit mark a short while back and then on November 21st, I experienced my busiest single day ever … 132 hits!

I realize this is peanuts in the grand scope of the world-wide blogosphere, but for little old me, it provided a much needed injection of enthusiasm that I hadn’t had for a while.

Then it struck me.

I actually had not posted a new blog in over two weeks, and yet, my very busiest day ever took place during this period of inactivity! I studied this situation for a while and even did some research to try to figure it out.

What I noticed quickly was that many, if not most of my hits were coming from innocuous posts I’d made months ago on such esoteric topics as the mental condition of Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of the novel “Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole, the sometimes less than flattering story behind the Pilgrims and the “Mayflower”, and a brief throw-away quickie that I hacked out called “Pondering the Meaning of Life” … in which I really did very little actual pondering.

What the …. !?!

Actually, nothing I’d written lately was producing hits!

Why??

I dunno, but I still wanted to take advantage of the jolt of adrenaline I got when I first looked at the stats, so I jumped right into a creative rant about today’s Christmas decorating and shopping rituals.

Timely, seasonal, broadly appealing … everything that I supposed a blog should be.

If material I wrote months ago still had legs, then this thing was bound to knock’em dead!

Well, “dead” would be a pretty apt description of the response.

Since writing my “sure thing” blog, my hits per day has dropped steadily from the dizzying heights of November 21, down to the current average of about 25 per day.

Don’t get me wrong, there was a time over a year ago, when I finally reached the level of averaging 25 hits per day and I thought that was pretty good. But, not now.

Hah!! Now, I’m a seasoned blogger!

And by blessing my audience with a snappy well thought out seasonal blog, I figured to reach even new heights!

NOT happening! Go figure.

In what appears to be a classic illustration of LESS is MORE, if I’m to believe my dashboard, statistically I’m better off not to write more than once or twice a month. Maybe even less often!

Of course, I’m being facetious … sort of … but not entirely.

Like I say … this blogging is a curious activity.

Post Script: When I pressed the “publish” button, I got a message that contained a series hints for driving more people to your blog. Hint #7 … Blog More Often. So there ya go! Intuitively, that makes perfect sense. In reality, I still wonder …

Clark Griswold Would Be Proud!!

As our Thanksgiving holiday came to a close this past Sunday I lamented two things.

One … the obvious fact that the current holiday was over.

Two … the less obvious fact that the next holiday was beginning.

Well, actually it had already begun. These days, we don’t even wait to polish off the Thanksgiving leftovers before we’re off and running toward Christmas, or whatever you choose to call your winter holiday!

Why??

Well, for one thing, decorating has become such laborious task and expensive investment that you don’t feel like you can afford to do it all for a mere two-week time frame. Nope, if you’re not decorated by Thanksgiving, you’re really behind the curve … and as you observe the decorating “arms race” taking place in November, you can almost make book on which houses will still be decorated for Christmas in February …

I’ve watched with a certain degree of fascination as a fair proportion of my neighbors began the laborious task of decorating their houses for Christmas just as soon as they could rip down and store their Halloween paraphernalia.

Without even stopping long enough to consider the significant holiday in between, they began crawling along their roofs stringing miles of multi-colored lights along their gutters and strapping the life-size inflatable Santa and reindeer to their chimneys long before the last of the leaves were even off of their hardwood trees.

And as incredulous as I am at the amount of time, effort and expense that society now seems to dictate that we invest in decorating, the really unbelievable evolution that has occurred has taken place in our shopping habits!

I suppose there has always been a “Black Friday” even before they officially named the day after Thanksgiving. Even so, the biggest shopping day of the year used to be just that … the biggest “day” of the year.

How much this has changed over the past few years struck me hard as I drove my daughter to her department store job late Thursday night where her shift was to begin exactly at the stroke of midnight! That’s right, before Thursday was even in the books, Friday had begun for eager shoppers and harried store managers and employees alike.

Driving in, I was amazed to see that the shopping center, normally blacked out at this hour was as alive as any normal Saturday afternoon. Much more so in fact. The parking lots were already packed with cars and even motor homes that had carried and in some cases actually housed people determined the literally “bust” the doors in their quest for “door buster” specials.

Isn’t there something basically wrong with this entire picture?!?

Never mind that historically the word holiday is derived from the term “holy day” … even from a secular perspective (according to Webster) a holiday is defined as a period of relief … and a general exemption from work. But in a very real sense, we could now flip that definition on its head and define “holiday” as a period of greater stress and anxiety with general increase in work.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned. Heck, maybe I’m just an old fart. Probably I’m both!!

But, there’s something in me that believes it’s a problem when we’re worried about hanging Christmas lights on November 1st while waiting for the daffodils to bloom before taking them down.

And there is something basically wrong with lining up at midnight to begin a fevered aggressive rush to accomplish that which could (and probably should) be done in a leisurely and civilized manner over the subsequent couple of weeks.

Is it just me? Am I the only one who is tired of all this?

Well, if the throngs of people lined up around the entire store on Thursday night eagerly anticipating the kickoff of Black Friday is any indication, I may very well be.

And a quick assessment of the number of houses celebrating this Valentines Day by flipping the switch one more time on their icicle lights might just provide final confirmation.

Well, anyhoo … Happy Holidays!!!

Oh Lonesome Dove, Where Have You Gone??

Lonesome Dove is my all time favorite novel.

That needs to be established up front. It’s also my all time favorite screen adaptation of a novel.

I really like Lonesome Dove!

And when Larry McMurtry followed up with well crafted and exciting sequels and prequels; “Commanche Moon”, “Streets of Laredo” and “Dead Man’s Walk”, he succeeded in making Texas Rangers Augustus McCRae and Woodrow F. Call two of the most interesting, compelling and vividly drawn fictional characters in all of modern literature.

In the years since the last of the “Lonesome Dove” series I’ve really wanted Larry McMurtry to at least maintain, if not build on the foundation he had created.

Alas, it hasn’t happened.

I’m currently three quarters of the way through “The Berrybender Narratives”, a four-volume series by McMurtry that I had hoped would revive at least some, if not all of the magic his previous efforts inspired.

To put it bluntly, “The Berrybender Narratives” are terrible!

I read the first installment and was so unimpressed, I told myself to stop there and go no further. But, I was convinced that McMurtry was just whetting my appetite in the way that “Lonesome Dove” itself took a good while to really get rolling and to become the enthralling epic western classic that I came to love!

So, I got the second volume and labored through it only to find that none of the characters became any more interesting, nor did the general plot gain any particular momentum.

Now that I’m almost finished with volume three, I can see that McMurtry tries to succeed … he really does … perhaps too hard. He fills these books with dozens of characters and he labors mightily to provide a cast of heros and villains who might possibly generate the level of entertainment of practically every character big and small, good and evil that seemed to populate the great stories he put out in the late 90s and early 80s.

Sadly, there appears to be a limit to just how far even a talented author can take a storyline and even a genre.

McMurtry seems to have reached his limit.

As I labor through “The Berrybender Narratives”, the feeling is almost palpable that McMurtry is desperately trying to paint heros and villains for us who are as flawed, and yet admirable as Gus and Call were, and as nasty and despicable as Blue Duck and Buffalo Hump were.

He wants to provide us a plucky heroine possessed with the combined qualities of both Clara and Lorena. But while we respected Clara for her self-reliance and steadfast devotion and we felt deeply for Lorena for her sad hopelessness and grief-generated loyalty, in Tasmin Berrybender we get a female who is so irritatingly self-centered and unlikeable that we find ourselves wishing she’d meet with some sort of harm or at least ill-treatment.

I readily admit … I have not finished with “The Berrybender Narratives” and I plan to stick it out in spite of my conviction that it will get worse rather than better. I cannot imagine what could possibly happen in the fourth volume to redeem this story or these characters.

Unlike “Loneome Dove” and any of the followup’s I really do not particular care what happens to any of the Berrybender clan or their entourage. All of the Berrybender’s are obnoxious whiners. All of the frontiersmen are irritating stereotypes. None of the villains are particularly frightening. There is currently a plague of small pox running rampant and it would not bother me greatly if it wiped out the entire group.

Even so, I will finish the series because for some strange reason I am constitutionally unable to give up on a book or a story until I see it to the end.

I’m determined now to finish the entire thing.

In a couple of weeks I would dearly love to have an update that will turn this blog entry on it’s head. I truely hope that in the final of the four volumes everything comes together.

But, I just don’t see it happening.

In fact, I’m not even afraid of someone who has actually finished these books providing a spoiler for me. Go ahead. Tell me how this thing ends! Provide me with hope, or put me out of my misery. Tell me what you think!

It won’t stop me from finishing … but it may mercifully lower my expectations to a level at which I won’t keep turning pages with any particular urgency or anticipation.

I need to be stronger. I need to just cut my losses and quit! But, somehow, I cannot.

Life’s really too short to keep on reading books that stink. I can’t fully explain my inability to put this story down.

More in a couple of weeks …

Blame it on Me, Myself … and Irene.

Chicago … Chicago … that invisible town?

Recently, I had to make a presentation at a conference in Chicago.

One of the things I like about my job is that over the years I’ve had the opportunity to travel a great deal and I’ve been able to experience a lot of places in this country and around the world.

Chicago is a city I’ve visited 3-4 times now and while it doesn’t provide the overall fascination of a trip to New York, London, or Paris, Chicago in the fall of the year can be a very pleasant destination.

But, only if you have the chance to get out of the hotel, which unfortunately this time I didn’t.

So … Blame it on Me, Myself and Irene.

Blame it on Me … because I didn’t do what I usually do. I didn’t build in an extra day on the beginning or the end of the business portion of the trip just to enjoy the location.

Blame it on Myself … mostly because I told myself that after numerous trips to the Windy City, I could use the remainder of the day on the front end of the trip after my flight to do everything I needed to do.

But mostly …

Blame it on Irene … that pesky storm that crept up the east coast so unpredictably, playing havoc with airline schedules and causing my flight to arrive after midnight instead of 10 am that morning.

Subsequently, I missed out on all of my fun time, as I spent the rest of the trip stuck in the hotel before catching a flight back home never having seen Chicago in the light of day the entire time!

Oh well … what did I miss that I hadn’t seen before anyway? I guess I’ll never know.

If I could ever have a trip planned when the Cubs were in town it would finally complete my Chicago experience! I’m not a Cubs fan … not even a really hardcore major league baseball fan. But, I am a fan of nostalgic settings and Wrigley Field is among the best!

So far I haven’t seen the Cubs play in Wrigley. The only time that was set to occur, another much bigger situation took place … I was due to fly out on September 12, 2001.

I was fully prepared for that Chicago trip and nothing was going to get in the way of my Wrigley Field visit! I had already bought my Cubs ticket online. A coveted seat in the “bleachers” behind the ivy covered outfield wall, where the most rabid fans sit and where heckling is an art form and where opponent home run balls are thrown back out onto the field with disdain!

It was going to be great!!

And, I actually still have that ticket, un-used of course.

I hold onto it, not so much as a souvenir of baseball, as a reminder of 9/11 and how it changed all our lives … in some small and trivial ways like missing a ball game. And in many more huge and life altering ways that help put everything else in perspective.

This past trip, my flight to Chicago was delayed a few hours and I missed out on a little funtime.

Ten years ago, my entire life was put on hold and I haven’t recovered yet.

My New Passion …

For the past few weeks I’ve neglected my writing in favor of my new passion … performing live at open-mic nights.

I’ve now gone on stage three times, most recently this past Saturday night. It’s beginning to get easier. I’m beginning to overcome my stage fright little by little.

Still, it’s quite intimidating to stand (or in my case sit) in front of 40-50 strangers and put your self-esteem on the line.

My kids even went along with me for support. I feel sure they were quite eager that Dad not embarrass himself and by association, embarrass them as well.

When I was done with my 4-song set, I got a nice round of applause and my son said I was “awesome“. Invaluable positive feedback from all concerned!

Still, it’s a bit of a mystery to me why I’ve become so determined to do it.

I’m beginning to believe it’s a form of self-discipline … making myself do something I want to do, but that’s outside my comfort zone.

At my age, I don’t anticipate ever being much more than sort of “sonic wall paper” for a few people after hours in a bar or coffeehouse. But, that’s okay.

It’s like my writing.

I do it mainly for me. The fact that other people may enjoy it is just a bonus.

“The Path that Charlie Chose” …

This is my latest effort at writing song lyrics. It’s all about happiness in life, or lack thereof, and the choices some people make trying to achieve it.

Tell me what you think.

Praise and constructive criticism are equally solicited and welcome.

It’s called …

“The Path that Charlie Chose”

Charlie was a rich kid
But, Charlie grew up poor
Having things he wanted
But always wantin’ more
Charlie found the more you want
The more the wantin’ grows
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

That’s just the way the story goes
That’s just the way the river flows
And if he’ll find his way
Lord only knows
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

Charlie met a woman
And Charlie found a wife
But, Charlie wasn’t satisfied
With the bonds of this new life
Charlie saw an open door
That was just too hard to close
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

That’s just the way the story goes
That’s just the way the river flows
The man who takes that road
Reaps what he sews
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

Charlie tried to settle down
But, it never would take hold
The gifts that he’d been granted
Were quickly bought and sold
The vows that he had taken
Were easy to oppose
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

That’s just the way the story goes
That’s just the way the river flows
The price we have to pay
Is more than we suppose
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

Charlie is an old man
He’s lost all that he had
Charlie sits in silent thought
And slowly he goes mad
Charlie’s life is over now
His time’s come to a close
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

That’s just the way the story goes
That’s just the way the river flows
The more a man seeks to acquire
The more that he forgoes
That’s just the path that Charlie chose.

That’s just the path that Charlie chose

That’s just the path ….
… That Charlie chose.

PS: I have composed music to go with the song as well. After I get it polished a little bit, I plan to use it at open mic night and perhaps I’ll be able to post an audio file or a youtube of the finished product in the future.

Putting Out Fires at Work …

You know how some people complain that they can’t get any work done because all they do on the job every day is just “put out fires” ??

Well, that old adage became literal for me Tuesday morning when fire broke out in the utility area of the large conference center I manage.

Yuk! Black oily smoke from melting PVC pipe permeated an extensive portion of the meeting rooms. In the end, it wasn’t a big fire and the flames were doused in a few minutes.

No permanent damage, but it’s surprising how messy, how extensive and how expensive a simple smoke situation can be!

Nobody was hurt, that’s the important thing.