words fall short

Last night, as I was organizing my thoughts for a post on a sports related topic, I began to hear the news reports of the powerful earthquake that hit Haiti.

The topic started to seem insignificant. Now, as I see pictures of the catastrophe that is unfolding, words seem incapable of describing the devastation, chaos, desperation and human suffering.

I hope the death toll will be far less than some of the current estimates. And survival will be a true testament of the human spirit.

the change that cometh

Perhaps not 1,000 words, but these pictures express the 500 that I typically post.





the old





the change





and bringeth on a desire to stow...and even briefly to take out the trash.

mid winter malaise

I’m over the head cold and laryngitis I suffered through most of last month. I am glad about having received my flu shot for the season. I am gradually making my way back to a routine of 3 long runs per week. And I generally like the wintry crisp air and the prospect of time off for a weekend getaway of snow tubing or skiing. But I need to refrain from whittling down my vacation days at least until February. So, if you were to ask me how I feel right now, my response will have to run a bit negative if I value staying within the confines of the honor system.

My truth is that I feel an eerie connection with the character of Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray as he struggles to break a time loop in the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. The short days and cold bite of winter have transformed me into a creature of redundancy. The arctic air and wind chills which have blanketed New York and most of The United States for the past few weeks have chiseled me into a lethargic creature craving monotony. I am stuck on routines and my brain cells are frosty.

After being jolted awake each day by the dancing of my new cell phone’s vibrate option against the hardwood of my dresser I am ready for duty. I peer out my bedroom window to view the frozen lawns and the expanse of the now lifeless, leftover and weather worn Christmas decorations that no one on my block, including myself, has any desire to stow.

I plug in the coffee pot and the déjà vu begins. I start toward the porch, methodically reaching for the hook that holds my coat and hat. I need to venture out and retrieve the morning paper from the withering basket of holly below the stoop. While outside, I dust snow off my car and warm up my wife’s SUV, as she has a longer commute and is the first in our family to get underway.

My son is in on the repetition as well. At 8am we simultaneously zip our coats, don our hats and reach for our gloves. He wears the school backpack and I carry the lunch. We walk along with frozen noses, whistling and engaging in chitchat over whose freezing breath is more visible. As we approach our last intersection, the position of the crossing guard triggers the day’s strongest allusion that I have landed in the shadow of Punxsutawney Phil. ‘Have a nice day’ we chirp and wave, passing her by, with her white hoodie up and her body planted between the exact same lines as she stood yesterday in the painted crosswalk.

Once on the go myself, I make an automatic stop at the corner delicatessen. As if ready for me upon sight, the owner puts together my buttered roll and coffee-decaf, dark and no sugar. As a sales rep I am on the road much of the day. My schedule has become bogged down by the need for an hourly stop to pick up hot tea at the nearest 7 Eleven or coffee shop. I sit in my car and use their parking lots as an outpost to make phone calls and respond to e-mails as the day proceeds.

Unknown as to why, I have become addicted to eating a brown bagged apple before lunch. I then follow with a sandwich-usually fish or chicken. Green tea is my other slight but welcomed variation. Once back on the streets, I intermittently listen to the news reports on my car radio as I drive. I jot down notes hoping to formulate my ideas later on when I get home. I begin tossing Post-it notes at a growing pile of musings.

As the hours pass and the end of my work day starts to draw near, I find a Chinese take-out restaurant and I switch from hot tea to wonton soup helping me bridge my appetite from my last appointments to home. As I take this final break, I become aware that I have no place left on my dashboard to post and so I begin to read my scribbled forethought's. I am left wondering if Yemen is on a watch list. Is Cuba off the watch list? Is Joan Rivers under surveillance? Have the repair crews fixed the surveillance cameras at Newark International Airport yet? Will our airports be first in line to receive full body scanners, or have the NBA locker rooms been given priority clearance? What crisis will Jack Bauer foil this year, and will my cable provider allow me to view it on FOX? Will health care reform get enacted, or should I proceed to the nearest terminal B for my annual physical? Should I wear boxers or designer briefs for my next flight?

I leave the unanswered thoughts on my console like an unsolved crossword puzzle. I have fallen victim to a global contagion and I cannot connect the dots.

Sometime shortly after 8pm, I pull into my driveway. I step over the emaciated holly and enter through the front door. I greet my love of 27 years with a kiss. I study her facial lines ever more carefully now. My timeline for going berserk from recurrent dreariness is becoming narrow. I fear not being able to indulge my late night cravings and sustain a supply of Mallomars that will last until spring. My current box is due to expire on January 19th. I need change soon.

I hold out hope that a chance NFL playoff win by the NY JETS, after a long hiatus will snap me into a new day. Otherwise, quite soon, I may need to test my facial recognition skills and render my dearest with a flattering ice sculpture at midnight as a way to reveal a new me and a new dawn.

For now though, I will apply a healthy dose of moisturizing lotion to my dried out hands, close my eyes and await the morning bell.

(c) 2010 Christopher's Views

the wrong approach

Several years ago, during a round of golf on the challenging Bethpage Black course, I made an astonishing tee shot that resulted in one of a very few pars that I have ever made at this site.

Reeling from miserable play for my first seven holes I haphazardly grabbed a 3-wood as I approached the eighth hole. The eighth is a par 3 hole, about 200 yards long and downhill from tee to green. The proper club selection calls for a mid to long iron. But I was frustrated, demoralized and still had eleven holes to play. All I was thinking is that I did not want to land short of the green. Being short would likely mean adding a few too many penalty and recovery strokes to my already overworked scorecard as I would have to dodge pond water, bunkers and the rough that my balls were so far magnetized to detect. I speared my tee deeper than usual into the launch pad with my right hand as I tried to recklessly compensate for holding the wrong club at my left side. My swing featured a precisely straight back swing and a full and hefty follow though. The ball screeched off the center of the 3-wood, and in a line drive fashion, hugged the downhill slope perfectly and more rapidly than any ball I had ever hit. In what must have been less than three seconds from club impact, the ball impacted the flag pin half way up and thankfully dead on. The thud clanked loudly enough to unnerve not just my foursome, but it turned heads on several nearby fairways as well. The errantly hit ball was traveling too fast to drop straight down the pin and into the hole, but hitting the pole dead on did take out most of its energy. The ball rolled about 15 feet away onto the green and with two subsequent putts I scored a rare par on the Bethpage Black. Yes indeed-I was lucky.

‘Yes indeed-we were lucky’ is what Janet Napolitano, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary, would have been better served to say over anything else she was trying to piece together to spin and minimize the attempted terrorism aboard Northwestern Airlines flight 253 on December 25th. I do not think it is fair for her to pay with her job, as some members of Congress and the media have since suggested, for her strange choice of words. I suppose I’ll just wait to see if she manages to ace the handling of her next crisis. Until then, my impression of her is about the same I would have of someone who would try to convince me that a line drive dead on off the flag pin is the way to par the eighth hole while playing Bethpage Black.

(c) 2010 Christopher's Views

ringing in the new

wishing you all good fortune on this
sleep in late
take an Alka-Seltzer
resolute
holy
snow
bad hair
gather the Post-it notes
buy a calendar
clear the clutter
quit smoking
stop drinking
join a gym
start to run
begin Pilates
commence a diet
engage a hobby
take up painting
register for a class
change careers
open a business
patent an invention
remodel the kitchen
set up a college fund
learn to golf
learn to fish
learn a language
learn to fly
follow a dream
reach for the stars
hopefully slow news
grab the remote
TV marathon
couch potato kind of
Happy New Years Day!

living in a satirical world

Sometimes I think there is no choice but to have a satirical outlook of the world. After all, there has always been a steady diet of paradox to digest. Of course, a patently ridiculous setting during my early years in elementary school provided some good fodder from the start. In the long walk-in coat room, behind six rows of desks, or in the hallway outside the classroom I was enrolled as a member in a multi-year study regarding the exploitation of common sense. The prerequisites were that I needed to be able to sit on the floor, with legs crossed and curled while keeping my corduroy coat atop my head. The pretense was that this simple skill set would allow me to roll with the shock waves of a nuclear explosion. And, thanks to my jacket, I could do so without getting dust in my eyes.

The religious setting of my parochial education added another layer of incongruity. It was a regular occurrence to observe a child getting lashed across the knuckles with a yardstick length pointer for such things as fidgeting and turning around in his or her seat to borrow pencils, or perhaps distracting other children. Ironically, it was also common that the person who was wielding the stick would be wearing a cross. As a six year old, this kind of contradictory behavior scared me because it was unpredictable-at least at first.

Expecting to survive a nuclear blast with corduroy armament was a culmination of denial and insanity. As for the yardstick, I am confident that many of the children exhibiting behavior problems in the 50’s and 60’s had ADHD. But society was largely in denial about it until the 1980’s. We didn’t just suddenly spawn a generation of agitated children. We gradually and painfully came to a realization about the genuine needs of some children and the learning problems they face. The theory of the 1950’s and 60’s teacher was to lash out strongly at anyone exhibiting behavior problems so that the rest of the class got the message that they had better behave. But, developmentally, most young children want to please people and they do not need intimidation as a means of motivation.

Over the years, I have grown to expect unpredictability because I think it is a byproduct of a favored coping mechanism utilized by mankind. Our default to denial causes us to engage in a considerable amount of insanity. Fast forward to the present and note that the favored method of protection against dirty bombs and chemical warfare is that we seal our windows with duct tape. I have twenty-nine windows in my house. By the time I would near completion and be done with all the measuring, cutting, tucking and untwisting of the gluey cloth I would either have coughed up a lung or be ready to jump off my roof.

Currently, our back and forth power plays over climate change reflect another glaring case of denial. We have a finite amount of fossil fuel to burn in this world. But instead of recognizing this fact, our climate summits, proposals and debates are fundamentally based on trying to figure out how quickly or if the planet is getting warmer. Meanwhile, we are just digging a bigger hole. No person or group will be declared a winner when we hit the dryness of this bottom. The level of denial here is enormous. At some point soon we have to wean ourselves off our addition to fossil fuels and look to alternative energy sources in a serious manner. We cannot drill our way out of this dilemma.

Denial was certainly a leading cause of the wholesale miscalculations Wall Street made regarding how far they could push the envelope as well. The end result of that denial was quite messy. Lehman Brothers went down the tubes, and banking and insurance giants had to be bailed out and propped up with billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars. And what amuses me is that while this bubble was being inflated regulators were busy putting Martha Stewart in jail. Meanwhile, Bernie Madoff was having the time of his life manipulating people and institutions out of almost incomprehensible sums of money.

Just this past week I have been trying to understand yet another interesting peculiarity. Let’s say a world leader addresses a military academy on 12/02/09 in West Point, NY and orders 30,000 troops to war. Would it be possible that on 12/10/09 in Oslo, Norway that the same world leader is bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize? Would it be possible to slip so quickly into denial as to rationalize a good acceptance speech over the fact that within 8 days of getting honored for peace this leader had ordered 30,000 troops to war to try to prop up a corrupt government that is highly unlikely to change? Well, it’s hard to believe, but it happened.

I think this deviation from common sense may be less about denial and more about undiagnosed learning deficits that are coming back to roost. I think a little more focus is required here. Peace is peace. War is war. I don’t care that President Obama talked about scaling down the war in Iraq and paying more attention to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan during the election. This build-up is hardly a must do and the eighteen month pullback statement was silly. If predictions and time lines were so easy to come by regarding Afghanistan, then Obama would not be calling for 30,000 more troops after we have already been there eight years. I voted for President Obama, and I view him mostly as an intelligent, level headed leader. But, to pronounce him a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate at this point in his tenure is a far-reaching stretch indeed.

In the future, it may be worthwhile if the NNC members in Oslo, Norway made a phone call to a town a little to the north of West Point, NY before casting their vote. They could ask to speak with someone associated with the BBWAA in Cooperstown, NY. Hopefully, they could become familiar with a methodology called career numbers. It is the guiding principle that got Ted Williams inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966 instead of 1941, when he had a season batting average of .406 from April through September.

Yes, I live in a world where I expect inconsistent, unpredictable and ironic behavior. I then take the events that scare me most and I turn them into humor—that’s how I cope.

(c) 2009 Christopher's Views

ode to a tiger

a Thanksgiving day faux pas
beside a driveway
lengthening a three par

a rifling through the PDA address book
prompts a rambled pleading
to hurry up and reset the greeting
oh my dear, texting so late?...is the query

time to pig out on turkey, lay low on Ambien
and usher in a plan, becomes the theory
but the cat gets out of the bag
and the tiger goes on the run
time to go
whoosh!!
time to duck
whoosh whack!!

a festive food fight?
amid flailing golf clubs round about midnight
a dog legged turn unnavigable
a fire hydrant and a big old tree unmovable
when air bags do not inflate
prop up a story of courage in place
unworthy although to placate
and oh no pictures please
this tiger would rather hibernate
than dare to show his face

retreat to the bunker
and hunker down on the web
the tabloids have a scent
and the gold digging cannot stop
until the sordid tale is long gone dead!

breakout some old footage
run some loops
good times, bad times
mom, nanny, wife
mistresses and blonde's galore
porn stars, harems
heck, an a to z medley of a traveling man's party life

pancake house parking lots
hotel doors ajar
try concealment a little bit
tour with point men of interest
coordinate with the secretary of affairs
promote this, expose that
backseats, penthouse suites
and pass the Vicodin

yes to liposuction, it is told
no not much for brunette's, as it seems
lawyers, agents, ad exec's
payoffs, buyouts, prenups
Jamie who?
Rachel when?
Elin...why?

savor the twelve days of a Christmas past
savor the twelve lays of a Christmas past
now check the list twice
and please Santa please
a new cell phone
encrypted, password protected and tucked into a golf bag
is all that a tiger really needs.

(c) 2009 Christopher's Views