Shaving and a bit of shameless pandering. (For a good cause, of course.)

Well, the snow’s melting and St. Patrick’s Day flags are sprouting up all over the neighborhood like a plague of reminders that it’s St. Baldrick’s season again; so if you’ve ever had the urge to either shave your noggin or at least try to convince one of your more malleable kids to do it, now’s the time.

Anyway, it was time to send out a Thank You email to everyone who supported our youngest who did it last year, and since I hate letting anything go to waste I figured I would repurpose the email and post it here. I am, in short, never afraid to maximize the heart-string-pulling potential of a piece like this. So then here it is:

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3/9/10

Hello all:

First, thanks so much to everyone who supported Ryan’s St. Baldrick’s Day Shavee Extravaganza last year; your generosity is much appreciated.

Now given Ryan’s foray into the exciting world of Type 1 diabetes last year, some might be tempted to wonder why he’s chosen to participate in a pediatric cancer fundraiser again rather than one related to his own thing.

At least partially, it seems that Ryan is excited to repeat the exercise because it gave him a reasonable excuse to avoid what is, apparently, the horrendous chore of getting a haircut. To that end, he has not had even a trim since being a shavee last March.

That said, Ryan’s participation this year is, of course, more than just about his hair. When Ryan was diagnosed last May he spent a week in Westchester Medical Center's pediatric wing. We all learned a lot that week, but perhaps most importantly we were reminded of a lesson that’s all too easy to forget: that there are always, always others less fortunate than ourselves. There is, in short, perhaps nothing more humbling than spending a week with children who are both living with and battling cancer.

So thanks again. The following URL links directly to Ryan’s St. Baldrick’s page where you will find a “before picture” of his unruly (tangly, unsightly mess) of hair that’s long overdue to hit the floor, as well as the links necessary to donate to the cause. (There are also before and after pictures from last year.)

2010: www.stbaldricks.org/participants/RyanReeeallyNeedsACut

Thanks!

Relativistic Ramblings: Is the music good? I dunno, let’s ask the 80’s.

There are few things that live on in perpetuity like those that you grew up with. Or, put simply in deference to you, Kent: everyone knows that the music you grow up with is that which continues to resonate with you long after it has any right or reason to. At weddings or similar events, for instance, you’ll find those who were young during WWII are always shuffling around in a wobbly approximation of swing dancing whenever “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” is played. (Quaint? Sure, but at least while grandma and grandpa are occupied on the dance floor the waiters get a break from getting yelled at for not bringing the Harvey Wallbangers fast enough.)

Moving on in generations: Acappella Do-Wop groups that regularly terrorize county fairs and the like are populated exclusively by beefy old guys who came of age in the 50’s and have a penchant for hot rods and size XXXL satin jackets. Do-wop? Really? I say “get some instruments and stop pretending you’re on a street corner in Flatbush, you vagrants.”

Then there are those who came of age in the 60’s, and as far as I’m concerned they still have to answer for Herman’s Hermits and The Turtles. (Is it fair to imply that Herman’s Hermits is characteristic of all 60’s music? Not really, but so what? Yeah you can bring up the Stones, The Who, Dead and Beatles, but it doesn’t change the fact that The Hermits sucked enough to smell up an entire decade. And Tiny Tim… oh never mind.)

Next of course came the 70’s; a dark time during which there was, inexplicably, no music at all. None. Moving on.

Now then, having arrived in the 80’s we find a decade represented by a golden renaissance of melodic genius. All was right with the world. New Wave bands littered the musical landscape like diamonds. (Neon pink and green diamonds.) Hair was big, clothes were all the colors of that neon rainbow, and if it didn’t come from Benetton it wasn’t worth wearing. (But what about Capezios and Members Only jackets, you ask? Yes, grasshopper, they were awesome as well.)

Music from the likes of Fine Young Cannibals, XTC and The English Beat filled frat houses and clubs alike, and there was a singer named Madonna who was, to some, young and attractive. Really! No lie!

The 80’s were fair and equitable though, and there were bands for those who preferred alternatives: That decade also saw, for instance, a few 60’s guys like Steve Winwood and John Fogerty come to their senses and create solo works that still define their careers. To me.

But then, all too suddenly, the dream ended when the 90’s blew in like a bitter wind. A bunch of bands from Seattle started filling the airwaves with their atonal nonsense called “Grunge,” and that, as they say, was pretty much that. Since then the musical landscape, such as it is, has been pretty much dominated by teenagers artificially manufactured in Disney’s musical sweatshops and something called Hip-Hop. Or so I’m told.

So there you have it: an exhaustive, scholarly history of music worthy of the finest tubes on the interwebs… and all in a mere five or six hundred words. Relativistic nonsense, you say? Well sure, but just to raise the stakes, I bet next time I can explain all of the world’s major religions even quicker. So there.

Diamonds in the rough.

As I’m sure I’ve pointed out more often than is good for anybody, there are few activities that I enjoy as much as wallowing in the shiny baubles that magically appear on the interweb each morning. To some, time spent that way is akin to getting caught in a virtual La Brea Tar Pits of link bait and indefensibly ridiculous bits of electronic effluvia; but I’m more than shallow enough to enjoy all of it.

To wit: just this morning I followed a few links on the Times’ Op-Ed page that were part of a sidebar entitled “Resources: More on what books to throw out and why it’s a good idea to clean one’s home library.” One of the links included was this little gem by Lewis Grossberger, which just shows to go ‘ya why one should never, ever, take anything at face value. Grossberger’s “Resource” is, in short, one of those shiny baubles I so enjoy, and even better, it was hiding in plain sight amongst some of the rather solemn bits of literary opinion on which the Times has always depended.

So, enjoy the shiny and have a nice day while you’re at it.

Oh the irony. I even lost track of this post til just now.

Made it. It was close, but I just barely crawled across the finish line by dropping our 80 or so Christmas cards in the mailbox. And now that it’s official, I guess I can remove the razor wire from around the chimney and invite Santa to come work his magic. Good thing too; if the Fat Man’s only choice had been to pass by our house and leave nothing but lumps of coal, the boys would likely have staged a mutiny here at our little compound. Or a bloodless coup at the very least. Either way, I would have been kind of disappointed to not get my annual allotment of boxer shorts and socks. You know, exciting Dad stuff.

Anyway, I’m still mortified that we very nearly ran out of time for everything this year and… holy crap, I still haven’t gotten any eggnog… that coup may still be in play after all… gotta go. Merry Christmas.

The Special Olympics of Holiday Cheer

There are very few races in which I have the slightest bit of interest, yet I believe I’ve found another I couldn’t care less about: The First Christmas Card Mailed race. I should have known it was coming, really.

As I wandered down to the mailbox yesterday there was a suspiciously wintry chill in the air and the hushed silence that pervaded the driveway meant that the omnipresent leaf blowers were all done for the season. It was, in short, December 1st. As I nosed through the effluvia that the United States Postal Service is forever leaving in the mailbox, I spied what could only be a bit of red and green glitter at the bottom. Glitter from a Christmas card that was winking and smirking at me in the way that only a harbinger of this particular holiday season can.

“Yoo hoo,” whispered the glittery card, “guess what? It’s December and you haven’t even thought about Christmas cards have you? No you haven’t. I, however, came from a family that is organized, has their shit together and probably looks like they belong in a Ralph Lauren catalogue to boot. So there.”

I rolled my eyes which is really the only thing you can do when faced with cheeky, albeit hallucinatory harbingers of this most glittery of holiday seasons. Worse, by the time I got the offending card indoors and isolated it as one would a biohazard, I realized that it had left a trail of glitter behind me that looked as if I was being stalked by Phyllis Diller.

What to do then? Well, even though I realize I’ll never win the First Christmas Cards Mailed race, I really do have to get my holiday game face on. So then, it’s time to 1: beat a few smiles out of the boys, 2: snap a picture of the enforced smiles regardless of what I’m assuming will be their spectacular insincerity, 3: think of a pithy seasonal remark to add to the cards, and 4: actually mail the damn things.

So, I figure if I get all that done by, say, the 23rd or so I’ll be a winner just for finishing. Kind of like the Special Olympics of holiday cheer, if you will. Happy holidays!

The Tao of Wu? How about the Tao of Me?

Sure, we all know the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Tao of Steve, the Tao of Pooh and the Tao of goodness knows who else, but now the “abbot” of Wu-Tang Clan and awesome nickname owner Robert “The RZA” Diggs (The RZA? Yes, I believe a nickname pronounced “Rizz-a” is pretty awesome.) has offered us the Tao of Wu. Really. Well that’s just fine but I think it’s high time I stood up and shared the Tao of Me.

So what are my qualifications for flaunting my own, unique Tao? Well, mostly that I’m anything but unique, really. That is to say that basically I’m a young-ish guy who’s a husband, father of two and all around regular guy. And unlike Mr. Diggs who is, apparently, chock full of Tao, I’ve never had to overcome any great obstacles such as race, gender or disability. Everything in my life has, quite frankly, come pretty easily.

To put a finer point on it, I’ve never had to work very hard. Well... I did spend twenty years in the trenches of the food service industry, but I hardly think the difficulty of my career trajectory matches, say, coal miners, single moms, factory workers in South America, child laborers in Asia or even Victorian waifs selling pencils on snowy street corners. So in the scheme of things, working a job where I catered to cranky old people who liked to pretend they were still in the Catskills was, in short, a cake walk. Sometime literally, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, to summarize what otherwise might be an unnecessarily long winded treatise, the Tao of Me pretty much boils down to these two things:

1: Be nice to people. It’s not that hard and even if you don’t believe in Karma, you will, over the long term, feel better. (Except of course if you’re a douche bag, in which case never mind.)

2: Share. Or, put much less simply: even if you’re tempted to feel like an entitled libertarian because you don’t think your tax dollars should go to undeserving people or be used to light streets you don’t drive on… just stop. Stop feeling all persecuted because some government services are inefficient and there are some people who take advantage of them. And just because you don’t personally use a particular service doesn’t mean that it’s unnecessary or has nothing to do with you, because it does.

And how is that, exactly? Because even if you’re the sort of dismissive jerk that’s frightened by anything you think is liberal or touchy-feely… bear in mind that we’re all connected. How? What do you think happens if no one with dark skin can get a loan for a car, house or business? What happens if kids in struggling families can’t get access to meaningful higher education? What happens if everyone who’s born into a crummy neighborhood is allowed to fail? Chaos, that’s what. It’s the recipe for the creation and preservation of a permanent underclass. Remember the Watts riots? Sure you do. And if you don’t, look it up. ‘Nuff said.

Anyhow, I once again seem to have gotten far enough afield that there’s no obvious way to turn this little intellectual safari around. And that’s fine, really, because I actually like it here and it’s time for lunch anyway. Tao out.