Humor

“That’s Clearly Over The Line”

It’s an amazing era to be alive, mostly because You Tube has archived our most embarrassing moments in perpetuity. This morning I was forwarded a video of my childhood nemesis, Lawrence Welk, the man my parents chose to watch instead of “The Six Million Dollar Man” on our only TV. Welk’s wholesome blend of gospel, orchestral, and country music was inflicted on America for more than twenty-seven years before it was perpetrated again on that generation’s offspring in the form of endless syndication on PBS. The purity of The Lawrence Welk Show made Ed Sullivan look like Timothy Leary, yet clearly one of his producers let one slip past the goalie in this particular episode broadcast in early 1971. The duo of Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performed “One Toke Over The Line” as a gospel/country number… and with straight faces! To appreciate the irony, it’s important to note that Brewer & Shipley’s song (and only hit) had just been banned by the FCC. The Vice President of the United States at the time, Spiro Agnew, had just named them personally as dangerous and subversive to American youth. On April 15, 1971, Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the song, “began a steady cruise up the charts – until the FCC issued it’s ‘reminder’ to broadcasters to know the meaning of songs that ‘tend to glorify or promote the use of illegal drugs such as marijuana, LSD, speed, etc.’ Now, at least half a dozen Top 40 stations have dropped the single.” Explaining the meaning behind his lyrics, Michael Brewer  said, “One day we were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, Man, I’m one toke over the line tonight.   I liked the way that sounded and so I wrote a song around it.” In fact, Shipley often introduced the song in concert as “our cannabis spiritual.” How fitting, then, that Lawrence Welk looked on approvingly at the end of the song and said, "And there you heard a modern spiritual by Gail & Dale." There is something deliciously appropriate in seeing those who hold themselves up as paragons of virtue unwittingly switching sides for a moment. In a state of religious fervor, one of Welk’s producers must have heard the words “sweet Jesus” and “sweet Mary” and completely missed that Mary was actually Mary Jane. A song referencing pre-marital sex and smoking pot, sung by a woman dressed as a cowgirl as she bounces on the lap of a grown man? That is really “over the line.”

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A Steady Diet of March Madness

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on March 24, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) As the NCAA Tournament begins its second week today, so does the March Madness diet that accompanies the basketball marathons I watch on TV. With my bracket on one knee and bacon cheese dip on the other, I watch my picks implode as I wolf down an entire bag of nachos. It’s Pavlovian, an annual rite of spring that inevitably leaves me with indigestion and extra five pounds by the time they crown a new champion. Each year, though, I promise that I won’t do it again. After two months listening to my home scale groan under my weight while it answered only with an endless series of error messages, I knew it was time to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the local gym. Like most gym memberships, I kept mine because not paying for it would be an admission that I’d given up. However, other than flicking the card out of the way each morning to find my house keys, it wasn’t getting much of a workout. Unfortunately, it seems this year’s “New Year’s resolution exercisers” are still hanging in there and clogging the gyms with the same regularity the bacon cheese dip is clogging my arteries. I needed something new. On my lap this afternoon is something called the Beach Body P90-X, and the box states that Tony Horton (whoever he is) is going to provide me with two “extreme workouts” using “the science of Muscle Confusion." It will get me absolutely ripped in 90 days.  While it sounds painful, the people on the box look really happy. Evidently, if I’m good, I’ll also get a chance to buy Tony’s Ab Ripper. Granted, when you’re as overweight as I am, “extreme workouts” seem like a one-way ticket to the emergency room. Ripping your abs loses its appeal when you’ve already ripped a hernia through your stomach wall. This box comes courtesy of my older brother, a well-meaning attempt to “confuse my muscles” into losing some weight. It’s the latest in a long line of boxed hope that has blighted my doorstep over the years. When it comes to yo-yo dieting, I am the Duncan Glow-in-The-Dark Deluxe Yo-Yo. The Zone Diet promised to retool my metabolism with a balanced diet that would hold off heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. It left me pining for carbohydrates and so hungry between meals that people began looking like big hot dogs. The Atkins Diet promised to change my body from a carbohydrate-burning engine into a fat-burning engine, albeit an engine evidently fueled by incessant constipation. Dr. Phil’s Diet Solution promised to change my negative thoughts to positive impulses, but he lost me when he said to substitute old habits (like eating pizza) with new ones (a nice shower or a good book). Doc, if I showered every time I wanted to eat ice cream, I’d have scraped off all my skin by now.…

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Music for a Phantom Holiday

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on February 24, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) The onslaught of President’s Sale commercials has finally subsided. Before the craziness of car clearances and appliance sell-offs, however, President’s Day marked Timothy Dwight Elementary School’s annual spring concert. What better way to punish our parents for a hard-won day off from work than to subject them to one-and-a-half hours of pre-pubescent interpretations of our country’s most patriotic songs? In middle school, my music class was the only place where my fellow students and I were faced with the harsh reality of our limitations. Mostly, the teachers would fall over themselves to prop us up and keep our faces out of the mud. My shoddy compositions were “an improvement.” My low math scores showed “creativity and promising thought.” Even in history, my butchering of events could be termed “revisionist optimism.” (Then again, my teachers kept referring to a President’s Day that even now does not exist as a federal holiday. It’s simply Washington’s birthday with Lincoln tagging along.) But in music, as in life, talent wins out in the end. I might have gotten pats on the back for remembering not to pick my nose in class, but by the time I got to music I knew the jig was up. To be in a room where children are playing instruments is to see God’s bias toward music. Those without talent stick out like a sore thumb—thumbs that would sound better if sucked rather than used to play the cello. I still remember how excited I was on my first day of sixth grade music class. Finally, I would get to play an instrument other than the tambourine or maracas. It doesn’t take long for the glory of a well-practiced recorder concerto to lose its luster. On that glorious day, our music teacher picked up each of the shiny, polished instruments before him and demonstrated how each sounded. I was hooked after hearing the trumpet. Even in music, I fell into line on the phallic spectrum: not quite the trombone, but certainly not the clarinet. No, the trumpet seemed “just right.” I don’t recall the exact reasoning behind this decision: the closest I’d come to a trumpet was listening to “All You Need Is Love.” Mostly, I chose it because it only had three buttons. Unlike the others, with their forest of valves and holes and strings and bows and slides to fuss about, the trumpet seemed like a scooter in a sea of Harley Davidsons. It might not get me any dates, but it wouldn’t take much to get on the road. My music teacher told us that we should name our instruments in order to better “connect” with them. My parents refused to buy me a trumpet, instead opting to rent one from the school. My dad would sooner buy me shotgun than a trumpet because it would make less racket, and even if everything went wrong he wouldn’t suffer long. I kept at him,…

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The Winter Sword of Damocles

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on February 2, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) The news that the first day of April vacation has already been lost due to the recent snow cancellations reminded me of a story my brother once told me after several consecutive snow days when we were kids. As I celebrated the latest cancellation, he told me we have to be careful what we wish for because sometimes it comes back to haunt us. “You think you want it now,” he said, “until you realize you have the Sword of Damocles over your head.” I’m pretty sure that’s when I threw the pillow at him that scratched his cornea, but I could be wrong. Regardless, I listened without enthusiasm while he exacted his revenge by ruining snow days for me forever. Damocles was a courtier in the court of King Dionysius II of ancient Italy and one of history’s original suck-ups. He flattered the king constantly, raving about his good fortune, his power, and his greatness. Eventually, the king grew tired of this and asked Damocles if he’d like to switch places to sample that good fortune for himself. Damocles quickly agreed and was soon seated on the throne, surrounded by every luxury that the king enjoyed. However, King Dionysius had arranged for a large sword to be hung directly over the throne, held aloft by nothing but a single hair of a horse’s tail. Daunted by the prospect of the blade looming so precariously over his head, Damocles begged the king to release him from this “good fortune.”  As a kid, I never made the connection that my brother had hoped. I looked forward to a snow day like some look forward to Christmas morning or a parole date. There was no greater joy than hearing my mom trek down the hallway to sigh, “There’s no school today because of the snow.” I’d switch on the radio to WICC and listen to the parade of school districts cancelling classes, imagining what wondrous things I could do for the rest of the day. If it were only a delayed opening, I would listen to the roll call coming from my radio speakers and pray that nearby districts had changed from a delay to a closing. I learned more about Connecticut geography by calculating the distance between the surrounding towns and my house than I ever learned in school. “If Bridgeport is closing, and Trumbull is closing, and Westport is closing, then surely it’s only a matter of time…” It was even worse if a storm was predicted the night before. I would scour the local stations for weather reports, hoping each snowfall would not start too late (after five in the morning) nor end too soon (after one or two in the afternoon) to merit a snow day. My dad always scoffed at how I crouched before the small TV set, waiting for the weatherman to appear. “They make more money in advertising money when they threaten…

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“The Lights of Christmas”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on December 23, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") My wife loves me. Mostly. It’s the middle of December that makes her wonder. “You see what the neighbors put up this year in the front yard?” she’ll ask. I know where she’s going, so I feign temporary deafness. “Big ‘ol inflatable Santa,” she’ll continue (she’s on to me). “Little elves pop out of the back of the sleigh with a stack of presents. They put out three more light-up reindeer this year, too.” “Hope Santa’s got something to help cover their electric bill,” I mutter, but she’s way ahead of me. “You know, at 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour, it’s not all that bad. My mom’s c7 lights (handed down to us on a faux garland), plus your dad’s c9 lights (handed down from my father, quite possibly borrowed from Thomas Edison himself), the 2 strands of 150 mini-lights that we wrap around the trees, 2 strands of LED lights and 2 LED light bulbs only eat up .15730000000000002 kilowatts. That comes out to $0.0325611 an hour. That’s 18 cents a day, $5.40 for the month.” My wife is far more intelligent than I; with a little math, she’s exposed me for the Grinch I’ve slowly become. In my defense, I wasn’t always this way. I still remember driving with my parents to church every Sunday leading up to Christmas, my brothers and I judging each house’s seasonal decorations and declaring a winner before we hit the parking lot of St. Pius. Reindeer on the lawn were nice, but reindeer on the roof? Bonus points. Each year saw more lights, brighter lights, until for those few weeks a year we were like Alaskans bathed in 24-hour light. The history of light-up decorations is a recent one. Before the twentieth century, most people didn’t put their Christmas trees up until December 24th because of the fire hazard they represented. (Be sure to read Stratford Fire Marshall Brian Lampart’s article on holiday safety in the December 9th Stratford Star.) In the middle of the 17th century, people attached small candles to the ends of tree branches with wax or pins. With the advent of electric lights, people started putting them up earlier and keeping them up later. By 1882, Edward Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, hand-wired 80 red, white and blue bulbs and wound them around an evergreen tree. The tradition really took off after President Grover Cleveland set up a lighted Christmas tree at the White House in 1895. Early bulbs needed to be wired together by professionals until 1903, when American Eveready Co. came out with the first Christmas light set that included screw-in bulbs and a plug for the wall socket. Still, the person responsible for popularizing Christmas tree lighting in America was a 15-year-old boy named Albert Sadacca. After candles on a tree resulted in a tragic New York City fire in 1917, Albert convinced his family to paint and string their novelty…

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“The Strangest Celebration”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 24, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, mostly because so little of the way we celebrate it makes much sense. In school, I learned most of the history behind Thanksgiving through a series of confusing school plays. These involved brightly colored Indians (now referred to as Native Americans), some well-dressed Pilgrims (now referred to as people who thought they were Native Americans), and large quantities of corn (still referred to as corn—evidently, this one stuck). As far as I could tell, this guy Chris gets lost at sea (actually, he got three ships worth of people lost) and stumbles on to North America. He figures he better think of something quick, because a lot of angry sailors at that moment are trying to figure out why they aren’t looking at India. After conferring with some of the local Native Americans, he decides that he has “discovered” a “new world,” conveniently forgetting the people who had lived there for centuries who’d just told him he’d discovered it in the first place. This news takes some of the edge off of getting lost, which can be a tough thing to explain to a Queen who gave you three ships in the expectation that you would return them loaded with Indian spices. Regardless, some years later a number of English citizens set sail for this place on purpose and they didn’t get lost—although they were forced to come ashore in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which ain’t no picnic. All I remember about these Pilgrims were the very large hats with buckles on them, which I can only assume were spares for the even larger belt buckles they wore (they must have assumed that the new world required much heavier pants). They, too, tried in the best Columbus tradition to ignore the fact that the Native Americans had already set up shop. As they began dying of starvation, however, they extended the good neighbor policy and invited the “Indians” over for supper. Since that day, every school hallway in the country is stinking with pictures of poorly drawn turkeys, tables full of food, and, yes… corn Originally a religious holiday to give thanks to God for the harvest, it’s gradually transformed into a secular kickoff to the holiday season; just as Labor Day signals that white pants should be closeted until spring, Black Friday announces the nonstop Christmas barrage that paints discretionary spending as a national responsibility. Binge eating is not only expected but encouraged, as is the sight of your tipsy uncle napping in front of the Cowboys game on TV. Luckily, the idea of giving thanks in a palpable way is still alive thanks to the dedication of special people for whom sharing with their neighbors is a way of life. Donations of old clothes, linens, blankets or money are needed year-round at homeless shelters like the Prospect House in Bridgeport (203-576-9041), Spooner House in Shelton (www.actspooner.org), the Bridgeport Rescue Mission…

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“Wampum Doesn’t Grow On Trees”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on September 16, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") It was while riding atop a withered horse at a painfully slow trot through the cheering throngs packing either side of Main Street that I saw it. Leading my horse by the reins in the front of the Memorial Day Parade, dressed in full feathered headband and faux-leather Native American garb, was my dad: Big Bald Eagle. And he was crying. Not the flowing, girlish tears I’d cried earlier that day when I couldn’t find my 3rd Year White Feather for my headband. No, he cried the subtle tears of that lone 70's commercial Indian on the side of the road after seeing a driver toss garbage out the window. Even in that pre-pubescent moment of drunken adulation, astride my trusty steed and waving to the frenzied crowd in my Native American splendor, this was a total shock. This was not a man who shed tears. Was it the culmination of centuries of pain inflicted on the once-proud Native American nation? Was it a swelling pride in the fact that his son had finally gotten a chance to ride one of the rented horses for our Indian Guide tribe in the parade? Could it have been the crushing irony of a third-generation Irishman and his son in face paint and feathers leading a parade that celebrated the military deaths of every American except the people we’d stolen the land from in the first place? Turns out it was hay fever. My dad was severely allergic to horses yet never said a word about it as I pleaded each year to be one of the riders in the parade. The slogan of the Indian Guides, a program for fathers and sons sponsored by the YMCA, is “Pals Forever.” My father more than lived up to that. An operations manager for General Electric with a wife and seven kids to feed, time was a precious commodity. Still, we never missed our bi-monthly Tuesday night gatherings of the tribe, a group consisting of nine hyperactive sixth graders and their bone-weary dads. The meetings would begin with the Chief asking one of us to beat the Tribal Drum, once for each of the four directions of the earth and for each boy present. After the prayer to the Great Spirit, the Wampum Bearer collected the tribal dues from each brave. My dad, brilliant with money, was the logical choice for Wampum Bearer. Wampum was the money we were supposed to earn through our chores for the week, a kind of kiddy tithing we offered up to the tribe. Like the real world outside the tribe, it was an imperfect system. Dave Crowe's mom gave him five bucks allowance each week for doing nothing, while my dad parceled out my weekly twenty-five cents as if he were donating a kidney. As we placed our wampum in the Wampum Drum, we had to say how we earned it. Dave would mutter, “I took…

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“The Retail Queen of Fairfield, Connecticut”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on July 22, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") It is the day after Thanksgiving, and the masses descend upon the local retail outlets like water from a burst dam, flowing like lemmings through the aisles in a pre-Christmas frenzy. However, one woman in a lonely corner of the grocery store is not there to shop. She waits patiently at the Returns counter with a turkey, or at least what’s left of it after her husband and seven kids had attacked it twelve hours earlier. The skeletal remains were easy to slip into the small plastic bag—even the wishbone had long since been taken out and snapped. “It went bad,” this woman says to the lady behind the counter, sliding the carcass across the counter. Only a pro walks into a store and demands her money back on a turkey without any meat left on it. Janet Walsh is a pro. My mom understood the craftiness one must adopt when trying to feed a family of nine each day. The family checkbook was packed like a musket with coupons skinned from local newspapers. Trips to the grocery store were military operations as seven kids invaded the unsuspecting stores offering samples on Saturday afternoons—who needs lunch when you can wolf down eight tiny slices of pepperoni pizza and wash it down with a thimbleful of the newest Coke? Our family did not merely buy in bulk; we stocked up as if winter was coming to Valley Forge. Each grocery trip ended with a game of culinary Tetris, where we’d stuff three separate freezers and two refrigerators with surgical precision. There was no rummaging through the fridge in my family; asked what was for dinner that night, my mom’s answer was, “Whatever’s up front.” It was not uncommon for a loaf of bread to lie frozen in state like Vladimir Lenin for up to a year before it was discovered in the back of the freezer. She’d thaw it like the wooly mammoth on those National Geographic specials, using a hair dryer to separate a few pieces for school lunches. These clay pigeons with peanut butter and jelly slathered all over them sat in our lunch pails like a muttered apology, still frozen by the time our class had lunch. “It keeps the sandwich fresh,” she’d say as we showed her our chipped teeth. What the poor lady working at the Returns counter that day couldn’t know was that my family lived on food that had long since passed its expiration date. She viewed the freezer as a time machine, cryogenically preserving batteries, cheeses, cold medicines, and milk that would make the folks at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not take notice. In fact, there were three types of milk in or refrigerator: the “good” milk (within a week of its expiration date), “mixing” milk (older, used on cereal or in recipes), and “sour” milk, which would only be so designated when something inside it tried to bite…

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“Puppy Parent Scum!”

At the dog park, it’s inevitable. “Where did you get your dog?” someone will ask as our dogs do a little butt-sniffing. It’s as if I just drop-kicked Santa when I say we got her from a breeder. My wife will chime in that we tried to find one in the pound first, but we can see the judgment in their eyes. As a white male in America, it goes without saying that I’ve had to fight prejudice and discrimination as I’ve clawed my way up to the lower-middle. The latest obstacle the Man has placed in my path is the stigma attached to acquiring a dog through a breeder rather than a shelter. These days, skipping the local pound is akin to gut-punching a nun. My wife and I have always looked to rescue abandoned dogs; we’ve volunteered at the local shelter, participated in supply drives, and served on the planning committee for a new shelter in town. We loved the feeling that we’d given a second chance to our dogs, and it allowed us to endure the endless airings of Sarah McLaughlin singing “In the arms of the angels…” over the pictures of neglected pets that dominate late night television commercial breaks. Then we got ZuZu. ZuZu is a blessing. She is also a veterinary Black Hole. Unsure of her age or her breed (mostly Cocker Spaniel-ish), our vet informed us on our initial visit that she had horrible ear problems. This was followed by a crippling skin rash that necessitated an extensive drug regimen after a blood sample yielded no fewer than three pages of things to which she was deathly allergic. The Cocker in the Plastic Bubble cheated death, and outside of the telltale baboon butt where she’d permanently scratched away her fur, her skin specialist declared her out of the danger zone. However, she could only eat dry venison dog food. Not only did this ruin any chance of her ever becoming a vegetarian like all the fashionable dogs, it also required us to order this special blend through our vet. At two, she began biting mercilessly at her paws. Over time, despite a wide variety of trimming, nail clipping, and massage, we had to order special booties to keep her from nibbling them into bloody stumps. She goose-stepped around the house for a while, clearly annoyed at this 80s-era velcro fashion statement. The urge to chew on them went away after a few months, and eventually we mothballed the booties. At six ZuZu broke her back, apparently as she engaged in the dangerous activity of… lying down. She couldn’t take a step without pain, and after much hand-wringing we agreed with her back surgeon: she needed surgery. She came through like a champ, and we learned how stupid we could feel for passing up pet insurance. At almost five thousand dollars, it was not as expensive as the years of special food or the years of extra vet appointments, but it hurt. At seven,…

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