Category: Think-Scobe

Death

I fear death. I do; I fear death.

I want God; I do. I want God.

No, no, not the God of the Old Testament who condemned the entire human race to die because two people ate a fruit. Or the one who flooded the world killing all people except for Noah and his family or the deity who destroyed the unified language of man or the one who poured fire and brimstone to “smote” the people of Sodom and Gomorrah or the one who destroyed Egypt because of the institution of slavery which he allowed in the first place.

Not him. I do not want him.

Maybe I want the Christian God who was portrayed by Jesus as the loving father and the one who…no, wait, that God sent his son to earth to be horribly killed. For what reason? To rid us of the sins we didn’t commit?

Since many Christians believe that Christ is God, then God sent himself to earth to have himself slaughtered but at the end he said he didn’t want to do it but then prayed to God, who was himself, but accepted God’s will, meaning his own will, and went through with it.

I don’t want him; not him. There is something unsettling in that story.

I want a God who will hold me and comfort me, the way my mother did when I was a child. I still have some memories of those times—maybe I was five- or six-years old—as she calmed me in a world of hurt.

I want that love after I die.

I want to exist after I die.

Let me see my deceased family and friends now arraigned in their most beautiful guises.

I also want a heaven and, yes, yes, because I am human, I want a hell for those people who are awful people such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and all those other monsters from history who are too numerous to name.

I even want a heaven for dogs and cats and parrots and apes of every variety. Let the animals enjoy a heaven too. Let the lion lie down with the lamb without dinning on the wooly creature’s flesh. People with pets want that heaven to exist. They want a puppy paradise.

But does such a place exist? Seriously, does it? I doubt it.

The books about the God (Yahweh) of the bible and the gods of other cultures give me no credence for any of it. All those books that I’ve read leave me shaking my head that anyone of any intelligence can put stock in any of this.

What has brought me to this moment as I write this? It is death.

Death. Death.

Human beings have the ability to imagine their own deaths, usually sometime in the far future, or even imminently, as a sudden stroke of the awful slays them. But it doesn’t usually hang over our heads except in war. Mostly it is a vague feeling when we are young. Mostly.

But as we age, as we’ve lived an enormous segment of our lives and are well past our peak, we feel the tentacles of death truly heading to grasp us in their unbreakable grip. We have medicine, yes; but none of it has prevented anyone from dying the permanent death. Although, we fight death, we think about it and fear it. We lose to it.

I am now the elder of my family. I am the gray-haired one—I even have gray hairs in my nose! At Thanksgiving, I am the oldest one at the table.

Recently several of my friends died—two of them way too young. Their deaths were sudden; immediate, bam! They were alive, then dead. Just like that. These two people gave the world the benefit of their existences. Their lives were worth living and now they are dead. Dead. Bam! Just like that.

I am closer to death now than I am to my birth; I’d have to live to a 144 years to call this the midway point of my life. I doubt my storehouse of prescription drugs can help me last to 144 years old.

All the ideas about death and the afterlife sold to us in sacred books by supposedly sacred people and by pronouncements of true believers carry no weight. I just don’t see any of that speculation as at all compelling, as at all real. It’s spit in the wind.

Oh, I do see death.

I see death seeing me.

I know one thing for sure; death has no soul.

Do I?

 

Frank Scoblete’s books are available at smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at book stores.  

My Wife is THE Boss

As Valentine’s Day fast approaches, the 27th anniversary of my marriage to the Beautiful AP is at hand. We married on Valentine’s Day so I wouldn’t forget what date our wedded bliss began. That date was AP’s idea.

Make no mistake about it, the Beautiful AP saved my life.

I was about 40 years old, losing my teaching job of 18 years, in debt up to Wilt Chamberlain’s eyeballs, paying child support and the mortgage on my first house and sending (who I hoped would be) my soon-to-be ex-wife to graduate school to become a librarian and taking the kids on weekends so they could be with me and also enjoy working with me in the theatre company I half-owned and I was depressed.

We were sitting on the beach at Cape May, New Jersey, and I was lamenting everything. I am an excellent lamenter.

“How can I get out from under all this debt? How can I send my kids to a private high school and then college? I do not want them to have to pay back college loans; I don’t want them to start their adult lives in debt. I don’t know where I can get all this money I need.”

Although I was not married to AP at that time, I knew we would get married as soon as my first wife and I could settle our almost six years of divorce discussions. As anyone knows who has gotten a divorce, the old song “Our Love is Here to Stay” must be rewritten as “My Former Love is Here to Slay” because divorce is a killing business.

But AP came in to save me. “Scobe, you are going to become a famous writer. You are going to take this gambling study you’ve been doing and make something big out of it. The kids will be totally taken care of and you’ll get out of debt. You’ll see, you are not down as much as looking up at where you will be going.”

She was right. In every way I was headed up. In every way.

And so it was that the Beautiful AP and I got married on Valentine’s Day once my now ex-wife had met a man she wanted to marry (I love that man!), moved to Texas in lightning-like fashion, so I now had custody of the kids, and all was right with the world. We paid the tuitions for high school and college; my debt was paid off; 35 books were published; television shows were written; consulting boomed; I did a lot of radio; I did a lot of television and I was free and clear and happy as could be.

And soon after our marriage I allowed the Beautiful AP to become the boss of my whole life. She deserved that much, did she not?

She is now in charge of everything. I watch her happily dusting, vacuuming the house and washing the floors and cleaning the bathrooms in her delightful manner. I see her scampering to do the laundry and to take the clothes out of the dryer and fold them and put them neatly away in our closets and cabinets. Our bathrooms are spotless. She is totally in charge

The whole house is hers! She deserves this power. She saved my life and now she runs everything. A woman in command is a wonder to behold.

When I sit in my recliner for hours and watch her exercise her authority over the whole house, I am in a state of joy. All women would enjoy such empowerment. Too many husbands do not allow their wives to have such strength in life as I do with the Beautiful AP. She even works a full-time job that she loves.

For our anniversary I bought some slippers for myself; wrapped up the box and gave them to her so that she could now joyously slip them on my feet when I call for them. I have stocked the refrigerator with grapes for her to bring to me and feed them to me—one at a time—as I enjoy an endless stream of movies.

I bought her an easy-to-use snow blower so she can make sure our property is clear after a storm. She’s even promised me that she would clean the garage.

What a woman!

Happy 27th anniversary to my Beautiful AP

(Do not, under any circumstances, let the Beautiful AP read this article.)

 

Frank’s books are available on smile.amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at book stores. Why not subscribe to Frank’s web site and get his articles emailed to you free of charge?

 

 

 

“I Will Never Be Able to Kiss Her Again”

At the Chapel

Her name was Jacqueline Levine and she died last Saturday. Death was quick; a deep breath, a questioning sound, a fall to the floor and it was over. Her husband John Givre ran upstairs to the bedroom where he had heard a thump on the floor. He found her.

Nothing could be done to save her, not by John, not by the EMTs, not by the hospital staff. Jackie (as her friends and relatives called her), age 77, had passed.

The funeral service would be on Tuesday at the Boulevard-Riverside Chapel in Hewlett, New York. Jews bury their dead as soon as possible. There are no funeral homes with the preserved body lying “in state” for all to see. Instead, it is a closed-casket chapel service and then the burial.

I have attended several chapel services for Jewish friends and I prefer these to the religious ceremonies of Christians, particularly Catholics where the priest is the center of attention and the liturgy is full of pomp and circumstance and loads of fine-smelling incense. At many of those, there are no eulogies from family or friends; just the priest talking about a person he may not even know. Nothing beats a priest getting the name of the deceased wrong.

It is far different at a Jewish chapel service. The rabbi will say or sing some prayers and then he introduces some members of the family and friends to give their thoughts of the deceased. There’s little pomp and circumstance. But there are deep feelings. The family and the deceased are the focal points.

At Jackie’s funeral her two sons, her daughter, three of her granddaughters and her husband spoke. They were articulate, funny and gave a glowing tribute to a woman of great character and personal accomplishments.

Jackie helped so many people and was such a great mother and grandmother that her life, careers, and personality came across clearly to the large audience of mourners. My wife, the Beautiful AP, had become Jackie’s friend in the last 14 months. In that time AP developed a deep love for this woman.

John Givre looked out over the mourners and told us “Jackie was an atheist. She didn’t believe. I however believe everything. I look down,” he pointed towards the coffin covered by a religious flag with the Star of David emblazoned on it, “and Jackie’s body is there. But Jackie’s soul, her spirit, her being is not there. I do not think of the word ‘was’ when I think of her. I think of the word ‘is’ for Jackie is with all of us now. She is with us. My greatest sorrow today is that I will never be able to kiss her again. I will never be able to kiss her.”

At the end of the service Jackie had requested that Johann Sebastian Bach’s first movement of cantata Du Hirte Israel, 104 be played. .

When the chapel service was finished we rushed first to the bathrooms and then to the parking lot so we wouldn’t miss the procession to the cemetery. We needn’t have rushed. It took about a half hour for the procession to get going.

We were parked right near to the exit gate but a guy in a cruddy little red car decided he wanted to get directly behind the hearse so he zoomed over there, partially blocking us from getting into the forming procession.

But God has some wicked sense of humor, even at funerals. As the hearse was about to pull out of the lot, the little red car wouldn’t start. The guy in the red car was banging on the steering wheel trying to process his predicament, and, yes, wonder of wonders, we managed to get in front of him. He held up the whole funeral line while he tried to get his car to start. It finally started and he was right behind us. And we were right behind the hearse.

“Well,” said the Beautiful AP. “We won’t get lost this time as we did in Staten Island for Freddy’s.”

The Burial

The burial of Jackie was at Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York, only a few miles from the chapel. Since we were right behind the hearse I didn’t worry about losing sight of the procession. The cruddy red car behind us seemed to herk-and-jerk occasionally and once or twice I could see in the side mirror its driver worrying and searching for an explanation for his car’s sudden recalcitrance.

When we arrived at the Beth David Cemetery we had a long wait before we were lead to the gravesite. There was paperwork to be done and evidently one driver had made a wrong turn. That was John Givre, Jackie’s husband.

We drove up a small hill and I looked out over the expanse; this is a graveyard the way Manhattan is a city—packed with headstones going back over one hundred years. Many famous people are buried in this cemetery and now Jackie would be one of those, as she was famous to us.

The hearse finally stopped after a long trek through this city of headstones. We were at the gravesite. This would be our first Jewish graveside service.

“AP,” I said. “Look at the grave,” I pointed. “They didn’t take away the dirt.”

“I see,” she whispered.

“Do they just leave it there and when the ceremony is over the gravediggers shovel the dirt in?”

“Maybe,” she said.

We got out of our car. The little red car pulled up, the driver hopped out, relieved to have made it. It was the rabbi!

The gravediggers—who looked exactly like gravediggers look—were taking the coffin out of the hearse now.  It was just a plain wooden box; nothing like the elaborate coffins we have always seen at Christian burials. This was a family plot; maybe they didn’t have enough money for a flamboyant burial box? How could that be when everyone here lived the truly comfortable middle- and upper-middle-class life? A plain wooden coffin?

“AP,” I whispered as we approached the grave. “Where’s the fake grass?” Christian burials feature AstroTurf to cover the dirt around the grave.

AP shrugged, having no answer.

“I expected something more elaborate, you know,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

They placed the coffin over the grave on wooden planks. There was a shovel in the dirt near the foot of the casket.

“Are the gravediggers just going to use that shovel,” I pointed, “to fill in the grave when everything is over and we’ve all left?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

Then the rabbi—a young guy—spoke. I think he was saying a prayer but my attention was on the gravediggers.

(Oh, my God!)

More shovels were brought out and slammed into the dirt around the grave. The rabbi told us that we will all get the chance to shovel dirt into the grave. We needed to fill the hole in a certain way.

I turned to AP. “This is horrifying,” I whispered. “They actually bury the person.”

“I never knew this,” she said.

We have four couples with whom we are close friends—three of the couples are Jewish and one member of the other couple is kosher (go figure that one!), but I never knew this was how a person was actually interred. Interred? Placed in a hole and buried by those who loved them.

The rabbi explained that the first shovelful is to be done with the shovel upside down “to symbolize that this is hard.” Then, he said, the person is to spear the shovel back in the dirt, to symbolize that this is a bitter task. The next mourner takes the shovel out of the dirt.

Jackie’s son, Danny, quietly and graciously invited us to shovel dirt, if we so desired. AP briefly told him that we are from a different tradition and this is very new and shocking to us.

AP shoveled dirt into the grave four times, the first with the shovel upside down.

“It’s so final,” she said to me softly.

Stunned as I was, I said: “It is so final. There’s no pretending here. This is what it really is. This is it.”

“This is it,” she said. “Jackie is dead and buried.”

“By us,” I said.

“By us,” she said.

When the grave had enough dirt in it, we formed two parallel lines for the family members to walk through as we offered our words of comfort for them. I touched each family member on the shoulder. I didn’t know any of these people, except for John Givre. I didn’t know what to say. Yet…yet, I felt for each of them.

I am still reflective of this experience. I never knew; I never knew. AP never knew. She never knew. This burial had more a feeling of sacredness than I ever felt at any other graveside I have ever experienced.

This site; this grave; was indeed the final resting place for Jackie Levine’s body.

Just as I was about to leave the I bent down and touched the ground. Jackie’s body was now a part of the earth.

I then saw John Givre and I thought: Jackie’s soul, her spirit, her being is still with him and she shall be with him for the rest of his life. And he’ll get to kiss her again when he gets to heaven.

Frank’s books are available on smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at book stores. 

Awesome Monsters in Awful Movies

 

I make no bones about it; I love monster movies. Yes, indeed, I do.

Still many monster movies that are awful have terrific monsters in them. These monsters have become somewhat legendary even though the movie or movies in which they appear are terrible. Here are a few awesome monsters in awful movies:

The Blob: This 1958 movie is the pits. It has a bunch of annoying 1950s teenagers that you want to see killed immediately. Yes, it does star a young Steve McQueen but other than that, the only thing it has going for it is the Blob. And what a great creature the Blob is!

Coming down in a cheesy meteor, the Blob was a small, gelatinous mass (akin to red jello) that attached itself to some dull, old, drunken guy who lived in a old, ramshackle house deep in the old woods. The Blob attaches itself to the old guy’s arm and starts eating him slowly. When he dies, it is no loss.

When the Blob has finished devouring the old guy and it has grown proportionally, it eats a doctor and then begins to eat dogs and other townspeople. Finally, the monstrous Blob gets into a movie theater and all hell breaks loose. How can they kill the beast? Don’t worry the annoying teenagers have figured out a way!

Yeah, they freeze the damn thing and the movie ends with the question of whether the Blob will return. (It does…in more awful movies.)

But this monster is a great idea. If it keeps eating it can devour almost all living things on the entire earth. Wow! A wonderful concept; the entire earth consumed by a look-alike to the dessert you get in a hospital. The movie is awful but the Blob is awesome.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon: A 1954 movie about a creature from—where else?—the Black Lagoon. It was originally presented in 3D and I saw it way back when, but the only thing I can remember from that viewing was some hand stuck in a rock of a mountain range of some type. I have seen it several times now in 2D as an adult. The movie rots in either format.

Even as a kid, I had to stifle the yawns until the creature actually appeared. It was the gill man, partly a water creature but with a human physique.

The creature fell in love with one of those pretty 1950s women who enjoyed swimming in a dark, murky lagoon somewhere in the Amazon jungle. Okay, so women back then were portrayed as idiots but I really didn’t care. They were pretty and that was enough for me. It was also enough for the creature who took to her immediately. In the Black Lagoon there was a dearth pretty gill girls.

Needless to say, he tries to kidnap her and make her his bride (or whatever such horny creatures made women in the Amazon) but he is stopped and then brought to civilization and, like King Kong, things did not go well for him.

This is one great monster and he appears in two more films, each worse than the one before. The creature is 0 for 3 in movies but he is a memorable guy.

Christopher Lee as Dracula in a host of movies: Christopher Lee played Dracula in a host of movies beginning with the quite good Horror of Dracula (1958), a Hammer films production. Then he made sequel after sequel, each one suckier than the one before it.

Lee was a magnificent Dracula; tall, sexy, masculine, who commanded every scene in which he appeared, even in movies that should have been eaten by the Blob.

I will still occasionally watch the Horror of Dracula, a movie that pits Lee’s consummate Dracula against Peter Cushing’s intense Dr. Van Helsing. These two were great in one movie that was worth watching until Hammer’s Dracula vehicle went steadily and speedily downhill. But Lee was awesome and I think of him as the best Dracula of all time.

Godzilla: A 1954 film that mimicked the terrific American movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Admittedly, the movie has a great monster that is 300 to 400 feet tall; a fierce creature that can spew fire, but the movie itself goes up in smoke. The American producers dumped Raymond Burr into the film as a narrating American journalist for American audiences and based on his performance, Burr deserved what the teenagers in The Blob deserved. Until recent Godzilla movies, the entire series of Japanese films starring Godzilla as well as movies featuring other truly awesome monsters (Rodan among them) unfortunately need to be dumped into the radioactive part of the ocean from whence Godzilla obviously came. The awesome monsters cannot overcome a terrible screenplay, bad directing and lousy acting.

May modern filmmakers hear my prayer and give awesome monsters the films they deserve!

Frank’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

 

 

Does Amy Sherman-Palladino Hate Her Characters?

 

I love the works of writer, director, producer Amy Sherman-Palladino. She is the creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the first two seasons of which have been A+, and before that, the long-running Gilmore girls, which was an “A” show until…Ms. Sherman-Palladino went rogue and destroyed her two leading romantic characters, Lorelai Gilmore and Luke Danes.

Gilmore girls got so irritating at the end of the sixth season that my wife, the Beautiful AP, and I dropped out early in the seventh season. We became disgusted with the character of Lorelai and felt heavy-hearted for the mistreatment of the wonderful character of Luke.

You see from season one the audience knew (as did the entire fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut) that ultimately Lorelai and Luke would get together and marry. In a romantic comedy (some writers call this show a dramedy) the relationships dictate the eventual resolutions.

In this case, Luke and Lorelai were meant for each other. But our show-runner, Ms. Sherman-Palladino, decided to take Lorelai, the somewhat goofy, talkative, eccentric but lovable and accomplished main character and have her do two things that destroyed the entire series: Lorelai gave Luke a long-winded ultimatum about the two of them getting married right now, without letting Luke respond (Luke often finds it difficult to get his ideas into conversations), and then, after stomping away, she went to her ex-boyfriend and the father of her daughter and slept with him that night.

That night!

My wife and I looked at each other and both of us shouted, “What the hell?”

How could this charming character act so out-of-character? Yes, she had many affairs but her relationship with Luke went way back and was way deep.

From that point we couldn’t stand the character of Lorelai. Her witticisms were wormy; her machine-gun aphorisms and analyses were annoying; everything about her turned us off. How strange to suddenly despise a character you loved for so many episodes. How strange indeed.

The character went from humorous to humorless.

The show went from fun to exasperating.

I am talking about the writing of the show, not the acting—which was all topnotch. The creator suddenly didn’t know her creation and ruined it, like God wiping out his creation in a flood.

The Internet is replete with dismayed Gilmore girls fans who mourn the loss of their beloved characters and practically accuse Amy Sherman-Palladino of homicide.

With the third season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel set to premier in a couple of weeks, my wife and I are cautious. Will Amy Sherman-Palladino ruin her characters in this show as well? Can a writer of such magnitude actually enjoy destroying her creations? It remains to be seen.

My wife and I can only hope that Sherman-Palladino will give her audience members what they want…a satisfying ending.

 

 

The Empire State Building is Still the Tallest!

 

It is now common knowledge that the Empire State Building is listed as the 38th tallest building in the world. It isn’t even considered the tallest building in New York City anymore, having given way to the One World Trade Center, which is 1776 feet high and is in sixth place on the world’s tallest-buildings list.

Yes, look at the list and check out how many of the tallest buildings are in China and in the Middle East. Supposedly the United States just can’t reach for the sky anymore. We have been surpassed by a host of buildings-come-lately.

Utter nonsense! The Empire State Building is still the tallest building in the world—without question.

How do I know that the Empire State Building is the world’s tallest? Because King Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World, clearly demonstrated this.

Do not fall into the logic-trap by saying that King Kong is merely a fictional character in a 1933 fiction movie bearing his name. In fiction there is often massive truth and King Kong, the movie, and more importantly, King Kong the character, actually transcend all time limits.

He was the most powerful beast that ever lived and he climbed the world’s tallest, strongest building, New York’s now iconic Empire State Building, where he met his doom. What damage was this massive, super-powerful beast able to inflict on the building? None.

Now go to the Internet and look at the 37 buildings that claim to be taller than the Empire State Building. Can you picture any of them standing up to the power of Kong? Of course you can’t! None of these buildings could withstand the mighty simian.

Look at these buildings: mostly glass and steal and some concrete. Kong would have put his hand through all of them. They are fragile compared to his strength! I doubt he would have gotten a quarter of the way up their sides before his destructive power would have stopped him as the building started to crumble.

Keep in mind that the only fictional character to ever go up the side of today’s supposedly tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, was action star Tom Cruise who busted a window to get back inside the structure. Tom Cruise versus King Kong? Come on now. Yes, Cruise is a fine action-actor, but Kong would have squished him. At any time Kong could have crashed through the façade of the Burj Khalifa, something he could not do to the Empire State Building.

There stands the case: King Kong could practically level today’s tallest buildings but he could do no damage to the truly greatest of them all—The Empire State Building, the structural equivalent to the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

Kong clearly demonstrated what was—and is—the tallest, mightiest building in the world.

So don’t be fooled by today’s statistics of the tallest buildings on earth; as Mark Twain once wrote, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Take that quote to heart.

Frank’s books are available on smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores. Follow Frank on his web site at www.frankscoblete.com.

“Hell, No! I Won’t Go!”

My wife, the Beautiful AP, wants me to participate more in The South Shore Audubon Society so that, as she says, “You don’t become more of a hermit.” She is wrong. I am not a hermit; seriously I’m not.

“You are going to the protest of the Williams Pipeline on Wednesday in Rockville Centre,” she said in her I will not brook any dispute voice.

“I don’t want to go to the protest,” I brooked. “I have work to do; a few deadlines are coming up.”

“You are going to the protest at Kaminsky’s office,” she said. (Kaminsky is a New York State senator.)

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I brooked again.

“You need to take a stand,” she said.

“Oh, come on, I made calls and sent emails; how much more do you want me to do?”

“It’s Noon until one o’clock. One measly hour,” she said. “You can take a break from writing.”

I stopped brooking.

I have learned that marriage is a loving relationship between two people where one is always right and the other is the husband. I have on some days awakened in the morning, turned to my wife and said, “You are right. I’m sorry.” That’s before anything actually happened that day but if something did happen, then I was covered.

“And I will make you a sign,” she said generously.

“I have to carry a sign?” I was almost at the whining stage.

“Of course, it’s a protest,” she said.

I nodded. Then I said, “How do you want me to dress?”

“You can wear shorts and even your crocs,” she said.

“The shorts I’m wearing now?”

“No, those make you look like a bum,” she said.

“You told me the other day that the other pair I had made me look like a bum.” Was it possible I could win this argument by trapping her in her own words?

“Those make you look like less of a bum than you do now,” she said.

So I lost.

Okay, I have two pairs of shorts; one makes me look like a bum and the other makes me look like less of a bum. I choose (because I must) to look like less of a bum.

She made me a sign. It looked great. I was now ready to protest the possibility that this pipeline might be brought to New York to carry gas.

The Williams Company says we are going to run out of gas; the people I am protesting with say that there are alternatives. Truthfully, I haven’t studied this enough to know what’s what scientifically, but I do know that some of the people      I’m going to march with seem to have a handle on the issue.  One thing is certain; my wife has a handle on me.

The day of the event, I told AP to call me from her job (she is a librarian) and wake me at 11am so I can scurry out of the house to get to Rockville Centre early to find a parking space. I had been up since 3am writing and I knew I would need a nap before I tackled protesting.

“Be friendly and charming to the people there,” were her last words to me.

“Okay, okay,” I said as my last words. Friendly and charming? Am not I always friendly and charming?

On protest day, I sat in my recliner and immediately fell asleep. No worries about oversleeping, because my wife will call me at 11.

I opened my eyes for a moment, secure in the knowledge that I had plenty of time. After all, AP hadn’t called me yet. I looked at the clock and it was 11:13! She forgot to call me! Damn! (Admittedly, part of me was gleeful that my Beautiful AP had made such a glaring mistake. She couldn’t win a debate about this! I would finally win one.)

I jumped from my recliner and ran into the bedroom. Where the hell were my “not as much of a bum” shorts? Where the hell had I put them a few days ago? I ran around the bedroom like a chicken without a head (that’s South Shore Audubon birding-talk).

I looked under the bed; I looked in drawers. They were on the bed. My wife had put them on the bed, along with a t-shirt. There was a note on them: “The sign is in the car. Be friendly and charming. Wear this so you won’t look like more of a bum. Have fun!”

In the back seat there (of course!) was a beautiful handmade sign. It said: Just Say No to the Williams Pipeline. (But I still had her on that wake-up call.)

And off I went.

About a mile and a half from my home, I was to turn left onto Lakeview Avenue and go straight into Rockville Centre which was about two miles away. Lakeview Avenue does actually have a view of a pretty lake at one point.

Oh, crap! There was construction on that road. I’d have to take another street to get farther up so I could get onto Lakeview from there. I turned left onto Hempstead Avenue as I was at an intersection called the Five Corners which has five different streets converging on themselves; one of which is Lakeview.

I turned right almost immediately onto Nassau Boulevard which is the block on which my beautiful wife grew up. I got to the end of the block and, oh for God’s sake, I couldn’t turn either way onto Rolling Street as a construction truck was on the left side and another construction truck was on the right side. They were huge and there was absolutely no room to go around them, and going straight ahead would land me in someone’s living room.

Time was ticking.

As I was about to make a quick U-turn to find another route where there was no construction, a third truck had shown up, right behind me! Right behind me! I couldn’t go anywhere as this monstrosity had taken up the whole street. I was trapped like a chicken without a head is trapped by a farmer as it falls to the ground stone dead. (I’m not going to do anymore gruesome South Shore Audubon bird references.)

If I’m stuck here I will never get to the demonstration. My wife will kill me the way people kill turkeys on Thanksgiving! (More death in my analogies. I’m beginning to think like a killer since I joined the South Shore Audubon Society.)

So I made a courageous choice right then and there. I drove up onto the sidewalk, skirting the truck and headed back down Nassau Boulevard.

I did finally get to Lakeview Avenue, away from the construction. At 10 minutes to Noon I arrived in Rockville Centre where parking a car is a competitive sport. Would I find a parking space within a mile of my destination?

Yes! A car pulled out and I quickly zoomed into the space. I was just around the corner from where we were slated to meet. Glorious!

I grabbed the sign from the backseat, fed the meter every quarter I had, and headed to the corner. As I turned I looked down the block. It was empty. We were supposed to meet outside Kaminsky’s office which was about 200 feet away. No one was there except some mailwoman pushing her cart.

Did I have the wrong day?

Then I saw them; about 20 people standing outside the lobby of the train station. Many looked like left-over hippies from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Some folks were young —but most people today seem young since I’ve gotten much older than I was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Maybe I looked like some aging hippie too.

Several members of the South Shore Audubon Society were expected to be there. Not one.

So I stood in the midst of the 20. I was smiling charmingly and trying to look friendly. Some people smiled back at me. At least I think they were smiling back at me. A lot of them looked as if they were bums, just like me! Take that, you Beautiful AP, some of us do not have to look corporate as…damn it, some guy in a three-piece suit just showed up.

Everyone had signs; mostly homemade and almost all of them were not so hot. Mine was the best—I mean, my wife’s was the best. I mean mine (my wife’s) even had holders in the back to make it easy to put your arms through it. That’s craftsmanship.

Then there were some professionally made flags on poles that had seen much better days long, long ago. These were addressed to Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor. Wait. I thought Cuomo was against the pipeline. That was confusing. Why yell at him if he already stated he is against the thing we are all against?

Audubon members arrived: Franklin was carrying a huge bag of pistachio nuts— unsalted” he announced. Richard, who could have been a movie star in the 1920s, with his classic good looks, arrived. That guy never looks like a bum.

Our VP, Brien who is a terrific writer and hard-hitting activist, stood next to me. A lovely lady, and like my wife, a librarian.

Across from me arrived Jim Brown, another former librarian (there’s something about those librarians) and his wife Gail, another director. Jim is a past president of the South Shore Audubon Society and he is also a big wheel in the Green Party of Long Island.

Yes, you could say this was a progressive demonstration. Some of these people look at me weirdly when they find out that I have friends that range from super-conservative all the way to socialist. Hey, I take ‘em as I like ‘em.

Now Franklin is an interesting guy. On our bird walks, he collects garbage to throw out once he gets home. He also knows a lot about plants some of which he rubs on his skin to keep the mosquitoes away.

“Hey, Frank, I bought one of your books – the confession one,” said Franklin.

“Ah, Confessions of a Wayward Catholic,” I said.  I love it when people buy my books. I just love it. From 5th grade on my life was basically dedicated to having people read my stuff or, at the very least, notice me.

“I gave it to my mother,” said Franklin. “She’s a hundred years old.”

“Wow!” I said. “I hope she liked it.”

“She hated it. She said she didn’t like your Irish humor.”

What the hell? My Irish humor? What does that mean? Oh, come on, she’s a hundred years old—an old battle ax right? What does she know about humor, Irish or otherwise?

I looked at Franklin and swallowed hard. I tried to stay charming and friendly to him as I turned away from him. I was elated when a whole ton of pistachios fell out of his bag. “You might have to clean that up,” I said to him (charmingly and friendly) pointing to the mess on the sidewalk. Then I walked over to Jim and Gail.

Did Franklin have to tell me my book sucked? Really? Couldn’t he have lied and told me his mother loved it and I had made her last days a fun experience?

More people had arrived while I was having my heart broken by Franklin. I noticed Marilyn, another very active board member of the Audubon Society. She took some flyers to hand out to passersby.

“You know,” I said to Jim and Gail. “This might look like a walk for affordable senior-citizen housing.” They laughed. See? I am funny.

The three community organizers leading the protest, two young women and one young man, herded us cattle to Senator Kaminksy’s doorstep.

I was checking out the new arrivals when suddenly a loud, deep, female voice started singing the Star-Spangled Banner—through a hospital mask! She had trouble hitting all the notes, which may or may not have been due to the mask. But people clapped amiably when she finished and then toddled off into oncoming traffic. I was relieved she wasn’t a part of our demonstration. There is a hospital nearby.

Now the male community activist went over what chants we would be using that day.

Chanting is a brilliant way to stop people from thinking. Warriors of all types chant before battle; religious people chant in churches and temples; picketers and protesters chant too. Monks chant their mantras to get them to go where no man or woman has gone before. I’m not a public chanter.

Then Guy, another member of our board of directors, came up alongside me. Guy is an activist’s activist. He knows every politician on our section of earth, and he belongs to several societies and civic clubs. Guy also has a huge pond in his yard – right there that endears him to me as I am a fish lover.

“So I see we’re making an activist of you,” he said.

“I did this long ago,” I said. That’s true. My past had some interesting demonstrative moment. I led two demonstrations when I was in college against the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, too many of the demonstrators seemed to hate our soldiers who were just guys who had been drafted. I had friends in the army, guys who didn’t go to college and were not deferred as I was.

In my first year of teaching three of us decided we didn’t like the superintendent of schools’ policies so we dressed like priests, went in front of the huge picture window of his office, and hung him in effigy. The superintendent wasn’t happy about that and was probably relieved when the principal later fired me for a different, but equally outstanding offense.

I’ve led union marches; I even once emptied an auditorium when the PTA allowed skits that maliciously made fun of teachers. I simply stood up and told those who were disgusted with this crap to follow me. A thousand students and teachers walked out, leaving the PTA parents stunned.

We planted ourselves outside Kaminsky’s office and the chants began. I didn’t chant; I just looked over the approximately 50 people who were now there. I was holding my (wife’s) beautiful sign but I was looking at each and every demonstrator to see which ones were crazy. Political action can be much like religious action. Some people wrap themselves in their beliefs to the point where they are—let’s be frank here—totally and completely nuts. Unthinking, chanting nuts.

There were some hollow-eyed idealists and others amped up way beyond the level of this event. After all, we weren’t confronting hordes of soldiers of the Chinese regime out to club us into submission. Our group was chanting against politicians such as Kaminsky and Cuomo who probably would vote as we wanted them to vote.

But most of the people present? Just regular folks.

For the first 15 minutes we stood in a horseshoe formation outside the office building. The prongs of the horseshoe touched the front façade; the curve was at the street. Between the prongs was a big flag.

The three community organizers walked about inside the horseshoe conducting the chants. People were into this big time. Individual protesters would shout out as if they were in some evangelical church meeting. “You tell ‘em! You tell ‘em!”

Then one of the young women organizers stepped into the center between the prongs and called everyone to order. Silence. She then thanked all the groups that showed up to demonstrate today, and the list was interminable. There seemed to be more groups represented than there were actual people there.

The speeches began. The first was Jim Brown who represented the Green Party and the South Shore Audubon Society. He had a prepared speech which he read and it was a good one; comprehensive, intelligent, and devoid of cheap chanting tricks.

As the next speaker was introduced, everyone noticed a newcomer. The newcomer would steal the show. No subsequent speaker could hold the crowd’s attention once the newcomer showed up—not that the subsequent speakers had much to say anyway. Nope, Fido had arrived at the protest and all eyes were on him.

Around the fourth speaker some woman with dyed blonde hair on a 60-year-old head grabbed Fido’s leash and brought the dog to the center of the horseshoe, so all of us could see her romping with him. She pet, cuddled, coddled, and commanded the dog to perform tricks. She completely upstaged the speaker!

While I was happy that the speeches were over, one of the organizers announced with great fanfare that there was to be one final speaker. Everyone applauded, although no person had yet been announced.

Then the person was announced—doggie-girl! The very one who had stolen the attention of most of the crowd with her antics with the dog, got up and called for the crowd to…chant. Oh, boy, would my wife hear about this!

Finally we took a group picture and my civic duty was done.

Will I attend other demonstrations? I don’t know. Ask my wife.

Want Frank to speak to your club or organization? Just click here to see the talks that Frank gives. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

The Warriors of July 4th

 

I like the idea of celebrating our country on July 4th but I do not enjoy the local residents exploding monstrous fireworks near our house. These bombs go off late into the night and some houses have even had small fires on their rooftops when roman candles land on them. Happened to my house one July 4th.

If people want to see fireworks they can go to the parks or to the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn and have themselves a ball watching real professionals light up the night skies.

At 6:30 AM on this July 4th I went to my local supermarket to get some cold cuts for the day. Usually at 6:30 there aren’t many people – or any people – in the store, but today at the deli counter there were three people, a elderly woman in the process of ordering, a gray-haired old guy, and a short guy of maybe 40 years old waiting patiently.

I stood next to the short guy. We nodded at each other.

Behind the counter was Fred Laconic, who was the opposite of the meaning of his last name, and something of a pain in the ass if you were in a hurry. He would regale you with his ideas from the many “important” books he had read.

“Do you know people are idiots?” he once asked me as I was waiting to get my cheese. “Complete and utter idiots?”

“Ah,” I said. I have mentioned the sound “ah” before. It is an utterance that can be used to stop a conversation or at least one’s participation in a conversation. When it is used properly it merely means you heard the person talking but you had no real response. It usually works well. But with Fred? Not so much.

“I am going to kill my older brother!”

“Ah.”

The elderly woman who was ordering walked down the counter. “Could I have a taste of that ham please?”

Fred cut her a small slice of ham and gave it to her dangling on a plastic fork.

“Not so good,” she said wolfing down the meat. I can’t stand the supermarket nibblers who think they are entitled to samples of everything. You even see them in the fruit and vegetable aisles grabbing loads of produce and shoveling them into their gaping mouths.

“Good morning,” said the short-guy to me after he had nodded his hello. “A great day, the 4th of July isn’t it? The celebration of the greatest country of all time.”

I nodded. Please, please, don’t get Fred involved in….

“Don’t give me that crap!” said Fred Laconic. “This country isn’t the greatest country of all time. We’re a face with a lot of pimples; religious nuts and conservatives of all types. You want a great democracy go to ancient Greece!”

“Let me taste some of your Swiss cheese,” said the elderly woman.

He slowly sliced her a small piece of Swiss cheese, handed it to her on another plastic fork. She smelled it as if it were an expensive wine and then gobbled it down. “I’ll take an eighth of a pound of that,” she said. He started slicing it for her when she waved her hand. “No, no, I changed my mind. I’ll have an eighth of a pound of white American cheese.”

“To celebrate the 4th!” said the old guy in front of the short guy.

“You think we have a free country?” said Fred. “We don’t. Just about everyone is brain washed and has been for centuries. We had slavery for crying out loud. Our so-called founding fathers had slaves. That’s some free country, ha!”

Well, his ancient Greece had slavery too – probably the majority of the population of those Greek city-states did not allow women or the salves to vote. Some of those states had more slaves than citizens. But I wasn’t getting involved in that conversation. Picking out the faults of the United States is easy. But I always think of such talk to be the equivalent of looking at some pimples on an otherwise good-looking face.

Allowing slavery was the worst decision our founders made. I sometimes flirt with the idea that those geniuses who formed our nation should have just told the South and anyone else in our land practicing slavery that such would not be allowed in our new union.

Maybe we shouldn’t have broken away from England? Maybe. After all England outlawed slavery in 1833 without a Civil War. I wonder if that thought is sinful for an American to ponder, that maybe our country started on the wrong foot – a shackled foot for some of the population?

I don’t know the answers to almost every question I’ve ever asked myself. That’s how it is with me.

“We are ruled by the ad agencies!” Fred said forcefully. “We have no free will!”

Fred looked right at me. “You’ve read all the great modern day atheists. I know that.” He then started naming the authors, “Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan,,,”

I held up my hand to stop him. You see I had once made the mistake of having a conversation with him one morning about the group known as the “new atheists” and that conversation made him always regale me with his new atheist ideas. I really don’t want to be harangued so early in the morning even though I have read all the “new atheists.”

The elderly woman pointed to the baloney, “You are ignoring me,” she said to Fred, who looked at her as if she were a worm.

“Let me have a piece of that baloney over there,” she pointed. Fred sliced a piece of baloney for her and then he continued with his baloney. “There is no God; anyone who is intelligent knows that. But the society has been trained to believe in fairy tales. It keeps them quiet and controlled. We are all just subatomic particles working ourselves out. We are not conscious. We just think we are.” Isn’t the saying, “I think therefore I am.” (Or was it, “I doubt therefore I am.”)

“A small slice of cheddar please,” said the elderly woman.

The short guy turned to me and said, “Isn’t she full by now? She’s had her breakfast right here.”

The other guy left. It was now just the elderly woman, the short guy and me. And of course Fred, demonstrably waving his arm in the air, “I find myself disgusted with people. They are fools!”

“Let me have an eighth of a pound of salami, the cheapest one,” said the elderly woman. “Let me have a little nibble of that too.”

“Jesus Christ,” said the short guy.

“Jesus Christ,” said Fred. “He’s a joke.”

Fred obligingly did as requested for the elderly woman. He then slid over the small amount she had bought.

“Thank God it is over,” said the short guy as the woman started to move away from the deli counter.

“Oh, crap,” said Fred, “I forgot to put on the number sheets for customers to take.” He flipped a switch and the light went over the machine that gave out tickets to tell you what place you were in line. The short guy has just ordered something so he didn’t have to get a ticket.

I strolled over to the machine to take a ticket but this skinny guy of about 70-years-old practically sprinted to it and grabbed a ticket before I could reach the machine to get mine. I took the ticket after his.

“What numbers do you guys have?” asked Fred.

“My number is seventy-four,” said the skinny guy.

“I’m seventy-five,” I smiled. “But I should go next since I have been waiting while that woman tasted everything in the case,” I smiled again. I figured the skinny guy would let me go ahead of him because I had been there long before him. I was also being very friendly.

“No,” he said. “My number is lower than your number so I go ahead of you.” Then he took out a sheet of paper with eight-trillion things on it that he was ordering. Remember this was, of course, July 4th and he was stocking up for whatever the hell he was doing to celebrate the day.

“But I have been waiting here for over fifteen minutes,” I said.

“That’s right,” said the short guy. “We had a long wait.”

“So I really am next,” I said.

“The rule is,” said the skinny guy pontifically. “The lower number goes before the higher number. That, sir, is the rule in case you didn’t know.”

“Look,” I said, almost beggingly, “I have to get one thing, one thing. That’s all. Some Swiss Cheese.”

“I have the ticket that’s ahead of yours, sir,” said the skinny man, now looking up and down his monstrous list of items.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” It was that elderly woman again. “Egg salad. Can I have a taste of egg salad to see if I want to buy it?”

“Lady,” said the skinny guy, “I am next after this guy,” he pointed to the short guy. “You have to wait your turn just like everyone else.”

“Fred, hey Fred,” I said. “Aren’t I before this guy?”

“I never interfere with customers,” said Fred. “Work it out among yourselves.”

“Lady,” said the skinny guy. “You aren’t getting ahead of me.” And he gave her the thumb to get away from the counter.

“Well, I never!” she remonstrated and walked off in a huff.

The short guy got his order and turned to the skinny guy and said, “He’s next (meaning me), and you should let him go next.”

“I have the lower number,” he said.

I haven’t had a fight in fifty years. But now I was ready to re-enter the arena.

Could I take this skinny guy? Maybe. You never know. He could be in great shape as opposed to the whale-like condition I’m in. He could be some MMA kind of guy but he didn’t look anything like that. He looked as if he smoked. The fight wouldn’t last long if I did the usual routine. Left jab! Right cross! And a powerful left hook! One swiftly after the other. I might be able to knock this piece of dung on his ass, get my Swiss Cheese and leave the store.

So I looked at him and I was truly ready to fight him in the deli section of my local supermarket.

We stared at each. I said in my scary voice, “I’m going next.” Just then, the elderly woman came back with the store manager. “I was ahead of these gentlemen,” she said. “But they wouldn’t let me order my two pounds of egg salad. They were totally disrespectful. You are going to lose a lot of business if you allow people such as these men with no manners to get ahead of an old woman.”

The store manager looked at us and made his pronouncement. “The woman is next.”

I looked at the elderly woman. I looked at Fred who was ignoring all of this. I looked at the skinny guy. Then I turned and walked out of the store.

The last I heard was the elderly woman saying, “I’d like a taste of the potato salad.”

I’ll save my return to the ring for some other time.

Frank’s books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Buy Silver and Gold!

Hi, I’m Willow D’Vain, an actor who made a few forgettable movies that can’t even be gotten on Netflix, and I want to talk to you about silver and gold. There are two things that I believe in and that is my beloved country America and also precious metals.

Do you know that throughout the world economies are crashing and money is becoming worthless? Especially that paper stuff! That’s right! I want to keep us in the U.S. strong and that’s why I want you to send me your money, which will be worthless quite soon as I said, so I can send you silver and gold which have been used by civilizations throughout history such as ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Norway.

There was a time when America was respected throughout history, especially during the Middle Ages, and that’s why I am standing in front of a green screen that is showing you one of America’s greatest battleships. I want to keep America great again and make it strong again and we can all do that if you send me your money so I can send you some of the tonnage of silver and gold the company has in warehouses all over the world.

Why not be safe with a safe filled with silver and gold? You’ll be the envy of everyone starving on your block that put their faith in the crumbling currency of the world.

Make America good again!

Frank’s books are available at Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores

Please, Just a Regular Haircut

My hair is curly and thick. It used to be really blonde, then turned brown in my twenties and now it is completely gray. I don’t mind that because it has stayed curly and thick.

There have actually been people who thought I wear a wig because very few men my age have such a great head of hair. I was once doing a talk in Las Vegas and some idiot came up behind me after I was done and pulled my hair.

“Hey, hey, it’s real!” he shouted to a friend. “You win the bet!” Some people have no manners. I told the guy that I should share in the win since my head hurt from the pulling of my hair. They laughed and left.

But the biggest problem I have is when I go for a haircut. Most of the barbers in my area do not speak English well. Those who do, especially the young ones, don’t really know how to cut my kind of hair. An electric clipper just doesn’t work that well on it and the older guys, what few are left in the profession, just cut from rote and do a crummy job as my hair is all different lengths when they are finished.

So the barbershop I am reduced to patronizing is owned by people who have trouble with our language. It is the closest to my home.

So this morning I entered the shop.

“Hullo!” said the owner who was trimming some bald guy’s tuft of hair. The barber next to him held open the apron he’d put over me.

“Hi,” I said to both of them.

I sat down in the chair.

“I’ll have a regular haircut and a beard trim. Leave the lines I already have on the beard; I don’t want it cut near to my chin. I keep it this way so the flab on my neck doesn’t show too much,” I said, waiting for a laugh on my last line. Nothing.

I continued: “Make sure you cut the hair sprouting out my ears and nose, and do my eyebrows,” I said. “Those are recommendations from my wife.”

My barber looked at the owner. The owner said to him, “Kaže da mu se sviđa sve kratko.” My barber nodded and turned to me nodding.

“Shurt,” he said. He rolled the “r” a little.

“Not short,” I said. “A regular haircut.”

“Shurt,” he said.

“No, regular,” I said.

He put the apron over me and took out an electric clipper. “Shurt,” he said.

I looked over at the owner. “Give me some help here.”

The owner said, “Kaže da mu se sviđa sve kratko.” My barber nodded and turned to me smiling and said, “Shurt.”

“Regular, normal, regular,” I said.

“Shurt,” he smiled.

I looked at him. He was nodding and smiling up a storm. I gave up. Let him cut it shurt. And he did. I looked as if I had just joined the Marines.

When he had finished and started with my beard I repeated to him not to cut it too short and to keep the lines on it the same. He looked over at the owner who said, “Kaže da mu se sviđa sve kratko.”

My barber smiled, nodded, placed the clipper on my beard and took a huge chunk of hair off. You could see more skin than beard. What the hell? I was stuck because a big section of my beard was so short that every section of my beard now had to be mowed the same length.

My hair was now short and my beard had almost disappeared.

He then did my eyebrows (he left them too long) and my ear hair (he left too many bristles) and my nose hair (he left a few sticking out). Gray hair sticking out of your nose looks as if something else is coming out of your nose; if you get my drift.

I gave the guy a good tip; I always tip well as that was my training in Brooklyn, New York where tipping is the true sign of a man—even a man with short hair and a beard that looks exactly like a five o’clock shadow, and with something gray sprouting out of his nose. I tip, therefore I am. It’s an old Brooklyn expression.

When I got home my wife, the Beautiful AP, looked at me and said, “My god, your hair is way too short!”

“Shurt,” I said. “It’s pronounced shurt.”

Frank’s books are available at Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores.