NCAA Tournament

As I get older, I find that my memory is not what it used to be. This irritates me, because once upon a time I had a very good memory. I say "very good," because over the years, I've realized that I only remembered things that I care about. If I didn't care about it, I probably didn't remember it. I've never cared about numbers and I have always had trouble remembering phone numbers. The only way that I've ever remembered a birthday or anniversary is by fighting my natural inclination to not care about them (and ever since they were invented, setting Outlook reminders).

However, every year when the NCAA men's basketball tournament starts, all of a sudden I realize that I can remember all sorts of college basketball things from years and years ago.

Starting lineup of the 1985 St. John's Redmen, my second favorite team ever? Check. (Mark Jackson, Willie Glass, Chris Mullin, Walter Berry, Bill Wennington...coached by Lou Carneseca.)

Starting lineup of the 1983 Houston Cougars, aka Phi Slamma Jamma, my favorite team ever? Check. (Reid Gettys, Alvin Franklin, Larry Micheaux, Clyde Drexler, Akeem Olajuwan...Michael Young off the bench...coached by Guy Lewis.)

Favorite name of a player? Memphis State's Baskerville Holmes, who played in the early 1980's with Keith Lee and Andre Turner.

Names of Rick Barry's sons? Sure...Scooter (Kansas), Jon (Georgia Tech), Brent (Oregon State) and Drew (Georgia Tech).

I can go on like this for awhile...but I usually don't because unless I'm around other people that know some of the same minutiae that I do, I've found that most people find it obnoxious. (Especially when I do stuff like insisting on spelling Hakeem Olajuwan's name the way that it was in '83 or referring to the University of Memphis by its former name.)

Most people point to the 1979 NCAA championship game that featured Magic Johnson and Larry Bird as the point that most people really began to pay attention to college basketball. I come from a basketball family, so I remember that, but in all honesty, it didn't stand out to me any more than famed Catholic Al McGuire and Marquette winning the title in 1977. We were, after all, an Irish-Catholic basketball family.

No, my defining moment with the tournament was the 1983 one...known famously to most people as the Jim Valvano year. That was because Valvano's North Carolina State team upset my beloved Houston Cougars -- who had just won the most entertaining basketball game ever by defeating Louisville in the semifinals -- and the coach ran all over the court trying to find someone to hug. It was already a big deal just because of the last second nature of the shot that won the game...but its taken on epic proportions since Valvano's untimely death from cancer.

To this day, I remember staying up on a Friday night early in that tournament and watching NC State come from behind and beat Jim Harrick's Pepperdine team. The game didn't get over until after midnight Eastern time and I didn't sleep for a while after that because I was annoyed at the outcome. From that point on, I watched every game of that tournament that was televised...which, let's face it, wasn't anywhere near what it would become years later.

So, there it is...not only do I watch the NCAA Tournament every year, I watch replays of old games on random cable channels.

This is the stuff that I can remember...but I have to set a reminder on my phone for my wedding anniversary and I start most conversations with business associates with, "Hey, how's it going?" so that I can buy time to remember their name.

God willing, I suppose, I'll be in the home someday babbling on about why Louisville's Rodney and Scooter McCray were a better sibling teammate tandem than Stanford's Robin and Brook Lopez...all the while calling everyone on the staff, "Hey you!"

St. Patrick's Day

If you're Irish like me, St. Patrick's Day is supposed to be a big deal. Not because its a venerable Holy Day, honoring the saint that legendarily banished snakes from the Emerald Isle (sure, if you talk to natural historians, there never were snakes in Ireland, but what Irishman would let some scientific malarkey stand in the way of a good story), but because we Irish-Americans have decided that it's "our" day.

Perhaps because I was named after a different Irish saint, I've never been as enamored of the day as others. Or, maybe its because the modern meaning of St. Patrick's Day involves the words "pub crawl" which isn't overly enticing to someone that doesn't drink very much. The one pub crawl I've been on in my life ended early when I decided it was better to go home than to start punching drunken idiots.

But, that's just me. Most of my Irish-Catholic brethren do not seem to share my apathy towards the day. In fact, every year recently, I'll get a text from my family on the East Coast from a bar...usually followed later by pictures as one group of my relatives runs into another group of my relatives.

I am actually proud of my heritage...at least most of it. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm very effective when it comes to verbalizing that. Yesterday, as Marty and Casey were going to school to participate in their classes with the Irish-themed festivities -- which can get confusing around here thanks to freakin' Notre Dame -- I pointed out that they needed to represent since they are, themselves, Irish. They both looked at me quizzically and said, "We are?"

Last year, Marty came up with this game for St. Patrick's Day called, "Find The Leprechaun." He organized Casey and I to help him leave clues around the house to lead Amy to the spot where the Leprechaun was. On one of the clues, I put down something about Dublin. "What's that?," they both asked.

I could feel my father and my Uncle Jimmy both rolling over in their graves. When I was just a tyke, my father would send me over to my Uncle Jimmy to ask him if I were Irish. "As Irish as Paddy's pig!" he would reply.

The fact that this typically took place in a bar and that I still don't really know what that expression mean is irrelevant. I knew where I came from...something I've apparently failed thus far to impart on my offspring.

When I was growing up on the East Coast, it was a lot easier. Everyone knew their ethnicity, because no one was that far removed from a time when you lived with your own in the same neighborhood. To this day, you can tell what the population of a neighborhood used to be by what saint the local Catholic church is named after.

Where my sons are growing up, being Irish means that you are a fan of the team that plays beneath the Golden Dome. Much like my lack of affinity for St. Patrick and drinking, I've never understood why so many Irish-Catholics like Notre Dame. It's not like it's the only Catholic university in the country. There are dozens. The fact that they call their sports teams the Fighting Irish and have a brawling Leprechaun as a mascot has never been anything that I thought should make me like them better. If I were just going to pick a Catholic university to root for without having any sort of actual attachment to them, I would've gone with Gonzaga...if only because it's fun to say.

So, I have to come up with some anti-Notre Dame way of teaching my children about their Irish heritage. You'd think it would be easier, since Casey already has displayed an overabundance of the gift of blarney.

I suppose I add it to my ancestors to get them proud of whence they came. Or, at least get them to acknowledge it. I don't need them to go nuts and try to learn Gaelic or anything. Maybe just get it to the point that they can actually point to the land of my forefathers on a map.

Probably my responsibility as a father or something...you know so that they don't have to repay the sins of the father or that kind of stuff. After all, "an nì chì na big, ‘s e nì na big." (What the little ones see, the little ones do.)

Friends

Marty and Casey were having a conversation that is painful for a parent to hear...especially one with a kid with Asperger's.

It started off as a simple argument. Marty, who believes in just about anything, holds out the possibility that there are unicorns. While that might sound like an odd thing for a 9-year-old boy to even mention, in his defense, the topic was related to an Annoying Orange YouTube video.

Casey, who is creative in his own right, but without the whimsy of his brother, feels that this is ridiculous.

While this discussion was going on, Marty tried to get Casey to give him a toy that he was holding. The younger brother refused.

Marty tried to point out to him that sharing is very important, and that it helps you win friends. Casey, in his interminably Irish way, said, "I don't need to share to have people be friends with me."

The arguing continued along this line, with Marty pointing out that he had become friends with someone by going out of his way to talk to the person. Casey, never one to switch a defense tactic if it's working, said, "I don't need to talk to someone to make friends."

Shortly thereafter, Marty became upset, feeling as though his little brother doesn't care about him. It was that point that I stepped in and stopped them. It could be argued -- probably rightfully -- that I should have stopped it before that, but my philosophy is that they're brothers and sometimes they just need to try to work through things themselves.

There's a whole team of people assigned to Marty to help him learn how to function socially. He goes to social interaction classes. They have meetings on his progress and discuss other ways to help him recognize social cues and try to fit in with his peers. They've even had talks with some of the children that are most friendly with Marty to try to help them understand better why he behaves the way that he does sometimes.

And, his little brother takes about 15 minutes to wipe all of that out.

Casey does mostly understand the challenges that Marty faces, but he's also one of the people that has to live with it...and he's the one that feels as though attention is diverted from him while everyone deals with his brother. I don't know that jealousy is the right word, but Casey makes it clear that he doesn't have the patience for Marty's quirks that most others do.

The fact is that Casey is just naturally adept at being social. He's made friends easily since before he could even talk. More than any blood relative of mine that I can think of, he has a personality that people gravitate to. If anything, he's more in line with his godparents -- both of whom have rarely been in situations where they aren't well liked -- than with anyone in my family.

Meanwhile, Marty lives in his own world that sometimes intersects with reality and sometimes doesn't. He's always been comfortable playing on his own...usually more so than with another person and definitely more so than with a group of people. For years now, he's desperately wanted a best friend and has no idea how that's supposed to work.

As a father, the whole thing is a killer to try and watch and understand. I keep trying to relate it back to when I was a kid, but in my memory anyway, it seems like I was kind of in between them...and all that really does is paralyze me when it comes time to try to give advice.

One the one hand, from the time that I was 4-years-old on, I always had at least one really close friend...and that person changed depending on circumstances. In the apartment complex I lived when I was really young, I had my friend Jeff. At the Catholic grade school, that I went to I had my friend Billy. And, when I moved to a different neighborhood and different school for junior high, I had my friend Mark. In high school, I had a circle of friends that has continued on for the rest of my life, even with everyone going to different colleges and me moving all over the country. Heck, I'm still at least in touch with both Mark and Billy, despite being geographically nowhere near them, and have tried for years to figure out where Jeff is now.

All that said, outside of those friends, most people don't remember me. If they do, the word that they'll use to describe me is "quiet." I was never popular...my friends were. What I had was I was always funny in my odd, usually sarcastic way. I always had just enough fans of my brand of humor to keep anyone from bothering me too much...or more accurately, to make it worth the people that didn't like me to have to deal with the people that did.

However, in watching my sons, it's become apparent that what works for one person doesn't work for someone else. As much as I might like Marty to be able to use the coping mechanisms that I did when I was a child, in actuality, he can't. He has to figure out his own way of doing it...and the more he struggles, the more I have to try to stop myself from using his little brother as an example. Or from trying to tell him what to do.

I've told Amy that I always come away feeling as though our job is to just try to get Marty through his teens. If we can get him safely to college, then the creative urges that takes over his day-to-day life on a regular basis can stop being a hindrance and instead become an asset. Hopefully by then he'll have learned how to focus and move his projects from start to finish, while working with others.

Hopefully. As long as he gets to a certain point, the world will start working for him instead of against him.

But, as his father, getting him from point A to point B -- while simultaneously not braining his brother for just being himself -- is a bit more of a challenge than I would have ever have thought.

I'm pretty sure that Marty is up for the challenge. I just wish I was more sure about myself.

Dance Fights and Other Things

The other day, I was watching the film version of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." While they were eating lunch, Marty and Casey joined in watching the movie.

With that opening, I'm 99-percent certain that I'm describing a situation that was only happening in my household at that moment -- a father and two sons watching "Seven Brides" -- any place in the country...if not the world.

It becomes 100-percent when you add on the part of the father -- me -- providing commentary on the fact that you usually don't see the guy that plays Benjamin (Jeff Richards) dancing is because he was really a former baseball player that is only in the movie because he was under contract to MGM. Or, that similarly, while Howard Keel was a tremendous singer, he wasn't a dancer. Or, that while a number of the other brothers came from a ballet background, Russ Tamblyn's background was really in gymnastics. Or, that the barn raising scenes involve some of the most difficult dancing ever committed to film.

The boys didn't watch the entire movie, but the fact that the hung out watching a significant chunk of it says something about the household in which they are being raised.

It's not quite to the level of what I was exposed to. When I was a kid, CBS's annual showing of "West Side Story" was treated as a holiday in my family. I knew the Romeo and Juliet plot and cried for the first time over the demise of Tony before I could even form full sentences. My father and sister took me to a showing of "The Sound of Music" when I was about 4-years-old...and the movie is over 2 1/2 hours long. I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar" on stage for the first time when I was six. I honestly don't remember a time when there wasn't a movie soundtrack or Broadway cast recording not played on a regular basis in my childhood home. When I lived in Los Angeles, if I had occasion to meet an actor from one of those musicals (Dick Van Dyke, Buddy Hackett, Shirley Jones, etc.), there was always a certain charge that I got, like being a kid again...and I made it a point to go to every showing of those films that American Cinematheque put on, as well as things like the sing-a-long "Sound of Music" at the Hollywood Bowl.

To this day, I do things like watch "Superstar" around Easter every year (yes, the Norman Jewison film version of Rotten Tomatoes/Golden Turkeys fame). I watch "1776" on Fourth of July weekend and "White Christmas" multiple times over the Christmas season. I have two different versions of "West Side Story" on DVD...as well as copies of pretty much every major musical dating back to the 1950's. I have both the Todd-AO and Cinemascope versions of "Oklahoma." What I'm saying is that this has been my way of life.

While I'm sure that there are other households where stuff like this happens, I'm not sure how many of them are in the Midwest and have no daughters living in them.

My kids aren't as schooled in this stuff as I was, but they still are growing up to not think twice about people breaking out into song. With the "High School Musical" trend in tween entertainment -- something that seems to still continue as far as I can tell with the shows that the boys sometimes watch -- they're able to tie back to the origin of some of what they're seeing. When a recent Nickelodeon show (Big Time Rush) included a number of references to The Beatles, it didn't take them much to get it.

So, when they do things like try to ape Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" moves from "Singin' In the Rain" or when Casey sat through three performances of "Godspell" last summer, I always feel a pang of pride that a family tradition is being carried on.

It might make things easier if either of them could sing or dance, but that's the problem with real life...no Marnie Nixon track to overdub you.

The Village

There's been a couple of things that have come up recently that have caused me to remember that perhaps my youth wasn't quite the same as many people. Not in a bad way -- and not really even in an overly interesting way --but maybe just a touch different. Of course, a lot of that probably just had to do with the fact that I might have been just a little bit odd...or maybe the right word is geeky. Or, at least geekier than the son of a bookie is probably supposed to be.

During the course of a conversation with Amy, it came up that when I was a teenager, I subscribed to Ellery Queen Magazine...which publishes detective/mystery short stories. Had I been a teenager in the 1940's through the middle of the 1960's, there probably wouldn't have been anything unusual about this. However, this was in the mid-80's and let's just say that it wasn't what most of my peers were doing. Of course, one of my best friends -- Marty and Casey's godmother -- was getting Architectural Digest at the time. Then again, we both did fun things like went to academic summer camps and bandied about ideas for future novels. We met similar contemporaries in college, but we were living in the middle of nowhere at the time that all of this started. Back then, I used to frequently read three newspapers a day and would specifically take a route that would allow me to stop at the appropriate stores to get them since they weren't all available in one place.

Of course, Amy, the one that raised an eyebrow at my magazine subscription, used to read her local newspaper, pointing out every grammatical error along the way.

The other part about my younger days is that I'm actually a pretty good example of the "it takes a village to raise a child" thing. I'm at least enough of an example that you would think that Hillary Clinton would want to meet me, instead of slapping me with a restraining order.

When Amy was filling out a form for the kids' upcoming visit to the eye doctor and had to ask me when I first started wearing eye glasses. In actually, I started wearing glasses because my friend's mother made me. Marie, the AD reading friend from above, is about six months younger than me so initially I was a frequent chauffeur for her. She mentioned to her mother that I was having trouble reading street signs. Her mother -- who along with many of my other friend's mothers -- was one of the main reasons that I ate a regular dinner in high school. She was also a little overprotective of her daughter. Let's just say that I am still fairly well versed in what the proper procedures are in emergency situations because of her. She never made me take a CPR class, but that's only because she didn't think of it.

At the point that it was known that I was having trouble seeing, it immediately became an unacceptable situation. Marie's mother made the eye doctor appointment for me and then came to school to pick me to ensure that I went to it.

Having read plenty of Sports Illustrated stories, I know that this kind of thing isn't unusual. However, as I hinted at, her mother was only one of a group of people that would've done that for me. When I was younger, there was always at least one family of a friend that would keep tabs on me and try to make sure that I was staying on a straight path. I still remember in junior high when my English teacher told me with a touch of surprise that he had been someplace and when it came up where he taught at, one of my friend's mothers had started quizzing him on me.

When I was in high school, in a completely different part of the country, that number wasn't just one or two...it was at least five families. I ate dinner so often at friend's houses so often that usually the people that lived there stopped even noticing if I was there. Everyone made sure that I was taken care of. I was told by others that weren't part of those families that they were fiercely protective of me out in the small community in which we lived. By the time that my mother officially moved back to the East Coast and I moved in with the family that Marty and Casey consider their family, most people thought that I already did live there. Here's the thing though, when it became known that my mother had told me that she was not returning from her "visit" the group of families that watched over me all let me know that I was not in danger of having nowhere to go.

So, while there are undoubtedly things from my childhood that were not ideal -- I come from a crazy Irish family and that kind of goes with the territory -- there were other ways where my youth was unique in a positive way. I learned firsthand that there are good people in the world that will go out of their way to help someone. I don't know that you can underestimate how important a lesson that is to learn when you're a kid.

Knowing that people care about you no matter what when you're a kid gives you the freedom to be yourself...even if that just gives you the opportunity to be a geek.

How are you remembered?

This morning as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee I looked down at my mug. For years now -- at least 12 -- I've drank my coffee at home in a mug with the face of a classic Warner Bros. cartoon character on it. Most of the time it's the Tasmanian Devil, but sometimes it's Sylvester the cat. There's more than one mug, so I just kind of rotate them.

As I was looking at the mug, I was struck by the thought that perhaps this is something that Marty and Casey are going to remember about me. Then again, maybe they've never once noticed that I always use the same mugs every morning.

That's the thing about how you remember people...you don't really know how people will remember you and its hard to tell how you'll remember someone else. I'm not sure that most people care about it, but its one of those things I've been conscious of for probably too long.

When my father died when I was seven, I tried hard to keep whatever memories that I could of him. I don't remember anyone telling me that I should try to do that, but maybe someone did. However, most of my memories are just of small things...like remembering being in a car with him or random moments at the racetrack. I remember him looking at Playboy or listening to the soundtrack of "The Sound of Music" (or, in memories that probably lead to some behaviors in me that cause a lot of confusion for Amy, doing both of those at the same time). Oddly, I remember him being upset when people like Jim Croce, Bruce Lee and Moe Howard died -- Lee, in particular, because he had a young son named Brandon, which seemed to be the part that had caught my father's attention. To this day, I sit quietly in a movie theater because that's what he ordered me to do as a tot. And, ever since that final goodbye, the smell of too many flowers is something that I can't stand because it brings back a memory that I really don't like.

But, were something to happen to me, I don't really know how my children would remember me. I'd like to think that there's been enough things that would allow them to have good things that they could latch onto...however, it's the kind of thing that actually concerns me. Conversely, it's also not the kind of thing that you can do very much about.

Around the holidays, I went to an Indianapolis Colts game when we were staying at Amy's sister's house. My brother-in-law and their 11-year-old daughter went with me when I ended up with a couple of extra tickets (I had the tickets initially because of work). It was a nice time...the game was good and the weather was nice. As we were walking back to the car after the game, I just happened to catch a glimpse of my niece beaming up at her father in the winter sunlight. It was a week before Christmas and all I could think was, "She's making a memory of her father...she's picking this moment to try to hold onto."

Hopefully, even now, Marty and Casey have at least a couple of those moments to keep with them...but I'll keep trying to give them the opportunity to make the ones that they want.

Saturday Mornings

I recently acquired one of those compilation DVDs of cartoons from the 1970s, and Marty and Casey have been watching them. This morning, it was hard not to be a little confused as "Funky Phantom" was on our television... I was simultaneously having flashbacks to being a 4-year-old and having to fight the urge to put on polyester clothing and light a Kool while enjoying a glass of Tang. I suppose the urges were just a byproduct of the memories. As I closed my eyes, I could very nearly smell the mix of menthol smoke and orange powder.

Its nice to have kids that are willing to watch older cartoons. Thanks to Boomerang, I realize that a lot of kids have continued to be exposed to everything from The Flintstones to Yogi Bear to Jabberjaw. My kids, particularly Marty, don't have a problem taking it a step further. He'll watch animation from the '30s and '40s... which, thanks to me, he has access to. They will also go on YouTube and watch obscure stuff.

So, its funny when they start talking about stuff that I would've talked about when I was 10, like figuring out the relationships between the different Hanna-Barbera characters on "Laff-Olympics."

See, it turns out -- and I was reminded of this earlier in the week with the passing of The Monkees' Davy Jones -- I watched a lot of television when I was a kid. I remember doing a lot of other stuff, but I don't know where I found the time considering the amount of things that I remember from TV shows from the 1960s and '70s. Last week, I was watching an ESPN Classic replay of a "Battle of the Network Stars" from somewhere in the neighborhood of 1980. Amy found it troubling that I was able to match-up the actors with their respective shows before either Howard Cosell or the chyron display did. I found it disturbing that there was a show that I didn't remember. (It was a NBC show called "Games People Play"...which was the launching pad for Mr. T, a story that I remember but the show itself escapes me.)

Back when I was a kid, all three networks (that's right... three) used to run a prime time special to introduce that season's Saturday morning cartoon lineup. I was the target audience for those shows and watched them religiously. I would probably be better off if I could forget some of that useless knowledge -- it's probably not critical that I be able to identify all of the characters on "Yogi's Gang" by sight for my sons -- but so far, I'm stuck with it.

I'm the annoying person that corrects someone with a "No, that wasn't 'Bewitched,' that was 'I Dream of Jeanie'" during conversations that I'm not even involved in. Or, calls up radio stations to point out that it was Stephen Stills that was originally considered for "The Monkees," not David Crosby.

It makes me wonder what I'm imparting to the kids... what kind of obscure references they'll confuse people with in 20 years. Some fathers pass along a trade to their children...I offer them knowledge that will be helpful with the retro release of Trivial Pursuit's 50th anniversary.

Hey, at least it's something.

Weird

The other day, Marty asked me, "Is our family too weird?"
How do you respond to that? I pointed out that since I'm a writer and a former member of the Hollywood establishment, that we're allowed to be a little bit weird.
Amy said that I should've just said that all families are weird and let it go at that. It turns out that Marty's concern was really that he felt that he had gotten the kids in his class to accept him and he was worried that the weirdness of the rest of his family might blow that for him. Considering that Marty's Asperger's related peculiarities are known by a decent amount of peers, beyond just his class -- and really the population of the town we live in as a whole -- it was kind of endearing to have him worrying about the strangeness of the rest of us.
It also seems that his query was driven by the interactions of his little brother Casey and myself. Marty believes that when Casey and I are intentionally being obnoxious, making statements to each other that we know aren't true or singing badly at the top of our lungs, that its weird. Most people use the word "stupid" along with the obvious "obnoxious" designation. Of course, our behavior is also fairly consistent with adolescent boys. According to Amy, that's fine for Casey but less ok for his 4o-ish father.
So, what I suppose it boils down to is that I'm weird and that's a concern for Marty. I find it amusing that some of the normal behaviors of boys his age are what he finds weird. I'm sure that opinion is not without merit, but I don't that its members of the class itself that typically express it.
Lost in all of this is Amy, who doesn't believe that Marty's concerns are in any way directed to her. She might be right, but all I know is that for years she used to flip her shoes in her hands, like a juggler, before putting them on her feet. I don't believe that repressing your idiosyncrasies keeps them from being picked up on by your children.
I doubt that our family really is any weirder than others -- although I did wonder the time that Marty and Casey began arguing over who is more "creative." We might do a little less to hide it than some others, but that just keeps us honest.
Notice that I said "family"...there's a decent chance that I'm a complete lunatic, but why should that drag all the others down with me. For safety's sake, though, I might lock myself in my room until Marty's out of high school.

All Hallow's Eve

I'm not really a big Halloween person. It really seems like I should be...it's got candy, which I like, and there's the whole theatrical nature of the holiday, which you would think would be up my alley.

It's not that I dislike it, really. I've just never gotten that into it. When I was a kid, my older sister (by 16 years) was a Halloween person. She liked making costumes and going to costume parties and all of that. Her and her husband would make these really elaborate costumes, many of which stayed in their basement for years. I was never clear on where these costume parties were, but my brothers seemed to go to them too during one stretch. Still remember my oldest brother, who spent a number of years as a military police officer, dressed as a nurse, and my other brother, who's 6-foot-8, dressed as a sheik. Outside of Christmas, I don't actually remember that many people in my family having a good time at once on a holiday.

Yet, while I love Christmas -- possibly a little too much so -- I'm pretty indifferent about Halloween. I went out to a costume event at a bar exactly once. Then I remembered that I don't really drink that much. It didn't take long before I almost got into a fight with a drunk jackass about 8-inches shorter than me, and decided that I should probably just go home.

I don't remember having any traumatic experiences when I was a kid. There was one time that I was sick and laid in bed watching a rerun of "The Carol Burnett Show," but I don't think that particularly scarred me. And, when I was a little bit older, one of my cousins was amongst the neighborhood bullies. All I had to do was give him a handful of candy and keep my mouth shut, and me and my friends got to go about our business (sadly, we fared much better than the non-relatives).

My concern is that I'm passing my indifference on to my children. They should really be free to decide if they want to be into the holiday or not.

This is only the second year that the boys have actually gone trick-or-treating...and the second year that I went to Casey's classroom for their party.

This year, one of his classmates was kind enough to say, "Who's this, you're grandpa?" While, with the history of teenage pregnancies in this area, it might be entirely possible that there are grandparents around here my age, I'm happily not one of them. But, it did make me realize that I need to shave my head more often to get rid of the stupid gray hair.

Last year, the town that we live in inexplicably decided to have trick-or-treating on Friday night, and I had to cover a high school football game. So, this year, I got to be the parent that takes the kids walking around. Where I come from on the East Coast, this usually involved a group of guys walking around each holding a six-pack, but I don't really have any guy friends here and there were cops all over the place.

I did not know that people apparently now stand outside of their houses to give out the candy, thereby eliminating the whole knocking on the door thing that I had to do as a child. I guess all of that knocking must have been annoying.

While we were walking around Marty kept stopping every so often and staring blankly. I had to keep pushing him to catch up. "I keep hearing something," he said. After a few more times, he said, "I think someone's saying my name." As we started to walk away, I stopped. "Wait," I said. "I heard that one too."

Finally, we noticed the girl that had been apparently trying to get Marty's attention for quite some time running up to us. Turns out it was one of his classmates, and it took a couple of more minutes to realize that she had apparently abandoned her sister to get to where we were. No wonder she wanted to talk to Marty...that's the kind of thing that both of kids would do.

We didn't really stay out very long...much more and we would've almost been forced to go to one of the various church based functions around town. I don't have anything against those, but I always get heartburn from the hot dogs that they give out.

Instead, we went back to our house where Marty and I started passing out candy while also studying for a social studies test (his, smart guy). After a couple of visitors, Marty decided that he wanted to be the one handing out the candy. Towards the end of that, a kid came up that knew him, leading to one of those classic, "Hey..." "Hey" moments that 9-year-old boys share. When Marty came back to me, he shared conspiratorially, "I gave him two, since he's my friend."

That's at least part of the Halloween spirit that I'm glad that he's gotten down.

9 Years

Today is my son Marty's ninth birthday. If it was hard to wrap my head around being married for 10-years, its even harder to fathom that.

As he's quick to point out, Marty was born in Los Angeles at Cedars Sinai Hospital. Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to know what that cost my insurance company.

They actually tried to induce labor...for two days. It started innocently enough. I took the day off to go with Amy to what was supposed to be her final ultrasound. Since they were making us do it at a location down the street from the hospital, we decided to hang out in Beverly Hills for a while. We had breakfast sitting next to Judge Judy and her husband, and went to the BH library to vote in the Arnold Schwarzenegger gubernatorial election.

Finally, we went to the ultrasound place to wait. When the technician did the scan, they pointed out that Marty had very little amniotic fluid and left to go call the obstetrician's office. After a while, they came back into the room and said that they were going to send us over to the hospital to be admitted, and then left again.

So, we waited. And waited. And waited. A couple of times I left the room to try to find someone, but never did. We became suspicious, however, when the lights started going out. I yelled, "Hello?" and one of the nurses popped her head around the corner and said, "What are you still doing here? I thought you went over to the hospital?"

Turns out they just assumed that we when they told us that they were going to send us to the hospital, we were just supposed to leave. We, on the other hand, assumed the "going to" part of the sentence meant that there was still something else that we were to wait for.

When we got to the hospital, they did take us right back and get us through admissions, but then because Amy wasn't in labor they took us into a triage room and there we stayed.

They started trying to induce right away of course, telling us that it would probably be a few hours. The next morning, we were still there in the little triage room waiting.

The cool thing about Cedars Sinai is that the late George Burns and Gracie Allen were major donors to the hospital. So, on a closed circuit TV station, they show stuff like "The Burns & Allen Show" and "The Bill Dana Show." OK, so I thought it was far cooler than Amy did, who would've preferred that I just go down the street to the Museum of Television and Radio to satisfy my old sitcom fetish.

Sometime during that second day, I took a walk over to the Beverly Center to try to get some things to kill time. Got an Etch-A-Sketch, a book about Christmas songs, some puzzle books and a couple of other things. Meanwhile, Amy remained hooked up to a bunch of monitors and really wasn't allowed to do anything except lay there.

They would try every so often to induce labor again, but it did not seem to be working the way that they thought it would.

At the close of the second day, Amy was pretty angry...so much so that I didn't even bother complaining about having to sleep on some chair thing again.

The next day, we were still there in our little triage room and had at that point become a cause celeb for the nurses, who really did feel bad for us being stuck there.

As the day dragged on, they were finally taking increased steps to move the labor along, and finally began bringing up the option of a C-section.

Late in the afternoon, the nurses finally seemed happy since labor was actually jump started at last. After having been stuck in our closet for so long, the nurse on duty actually held us there a little longer. They had decided that in reward for our travails, they were going to get us the best birthing room that they could (short of the $10,000 a day birthing suites).

The room that they put us in had a view of the Hollywood Hills and the Hollywood sign. We put our preordained "birth" music in the stereo and...we went back to waiting.

On the plus side, there was more room and a nice view...which it turns out you shouldn't say to a woman that's been strapped to a bed for more than 48 hours.

After another few hours the obstetrician showed up and things actually got into gear. However, the newest delay threw off my son's godmother, who arrived planning on going down to the nursery and looking at a baby through the glass. Instead, she was directed to the room where the action was still going on and popped her head in, not quite prepared for the scene that she saw.

As she stammered, the doctor apparently took that as a cue that she wanted to help. The baby doc instructed me to grab one of Amy's legs and for the godmother to grab the other. Our friend, let's call her Marie, does not have any children and really didn't want the front row view...but coming from a small town in Michigan, she did what the doctor told her to.

Things were going ok, but then Marty's head got stuck. Suddenly, they were pushing and pulling...and then they got this suction cup thing. They attached it to his head, and started yanking. Were this a book, I would describe the horrified look that Marie and I shared, but it would take a couple of paragraphs to do it justice.

When they finally got him out, they put Marty on Amy's stomach and all I remember is hearing her say, "Come on, baby, breath."

Next thing I knew, a SWAT team came rushing into the room and grabbed Marty. They took him across the room to a little station with a heat lamp and they began intubating him. I looked back at Amy who looked weak and was being stitched up and then I looked back at Marty being given what looked like CPR.

I was in the middle of the room kind of spinning around in a terrified daze. All I could think was that this was supposed to be the best day of my life, and it was looking like it was dangerously close to being the worst possible day that I could imagine.

I didn't hear the exchange, but apparently Amy encouraged Marie to go try to get me from my spinning. Marie, who's known me since we were kids and we were now in our 30's, came up next to me, awkwardly put her hand on my arm and said something along the lines of, "I'm sure it'll probably be fine."

Oddly, that helped since that was pretty much the way that I would expect Marie to handle that situation. If she had done something differently, I might have freaked out.

While I still wasn't sure that Amy was ok, the doctors dealing with Marty forced me to come over with them. The crisis was averted, Marty was breathing normally, and they had figured out that I wasn't necessarily doing good. They had me come touch Marty so that I could feel him breathing and forced me to cut the umbilical cord. And, I mean forced. I tried to beg off and they put the scissors in my hand and moved it to where they wanted me to cut.

After that, I got shuffled down to the nursery with Marty. Since he had struggled to breath, they were still watching him closely and I needed to go with him.

When we were down in the nursery, I just more or less stood there not knowing what to do. The nurse came over and told me that I needed to touch and talk to Marty. So, I stood there holding his little hand and saying stupid things like, "Hello, Marty...um, that was kind of exciting, huh?"

Once they were sure that he was ok, they told me that I could go back to where Amy was and they would meet me with Marty at the normal room. I'm sure there's some other name for it, but that's what it was after the triage room and the birthing room.

When I got back to the birthing room, I arrived just in time to find the nurse and Marie picking Amy up off the floor. She had passed out. They make the mother get up and walk to show that she's ok -- and I think go to the bathroom -- but instead she took a step and dropped. So, they made her stay in the birthing room even longer as they worked to make sure that she was stabalized.

Around 11 p.m., they let us go to the other room. As we arrived there, Marie -- who had expected to be at the hospital for about an hour...five hours ago -- took her leave with a simple, "Yeah, I gotta go."

They offered to have Marty hang out in the nursery, but we kept him in the room instead...if for no other reason than that it had taken him so long to actually arrive.

Since we were on the West Coast, had he been born a few hours later, it would've been Halloween in the East...which is really when our families found out about the birth. I stood outside the hospital at about 7:30 a.m. making all of the necessary calls. I also tried to send out a group e-mail...which AOL flagged as spam. At the time, I was working for the short-lived AOL Time Warner. I was standing in the hallways of Cedars Sinai on the phone with a sister company of my own employer, trying to convince them that I was jsut trying to send out a birth announcement and not a link to porn.

On Halloween night, after three days of hospital food -- which, don't get me wrong, if someone is going to force you to eat food from a hospital, pick Cedars -- I wanted to have something else. I had spent the day staring at a Jerry's Famous Deli across the street from the hospital and decided that a nice ham and swiss on rye would do the trick.

As I left the hospital to cross the street, I looked around and noticed all of the people in costumes. In my sleep deprived state, it took a minute for me to put together what day it actually was.

The fact that all of that was nine years ago seems unreal. The fact that the little red-headed baby that I stood in a nursery with is now a red-headed third grader makes me feel a little old.

The fact of the matter though is that ever since those handful of minutes that I stood watching a team of doctors working on him seconds after his birth, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't realize how lucky I am to have Marty.

I'm guessing that I'll never stop feeling that way.

Hands of Stone

It is quite possibe that I am the least handy person in the world. We're talking when I try to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, not only do they tell me that I'm not needed, they hire extra security to make sure that I don't wander onto the construction site.

All of my male friends -- gay or otherwise -- are more handy than me, able to assemble things and fix lawn equipment and all of that. All of my female friends are more handy than me. My wife is more handy than me.

The biggest problem is that outside of comedy and sexual orientation, I have trouble doing anything straight. I can't saw straight, can't hammer a nail straight, can't screw straight (all right, get your mind out of the gutter).

The oddest thing, to me anyway, is that I've actually done quite a few things that, given my affliction, I probably shouldn't have. Back when you used to be able to do such things on cars more readily, I changed a variety of starters and alternators on a variety of rust buckets. With assistance, I've changed out both an engine and a transmission. I used to be proficient at taking apart and putting together office cubicles back when I worked at companies that liked to make departments move offices once a year. I've switched out electrical fixtures, installed ceiling fans and earthquake proofed an apartment.

You would think that at some point, something useful would've rubbed off on me. But, no, nothing. If anything I've gotten worse the older I've gotten, because now I'm not a prideful young man anymore. Now, I just admit from the start that I'm not good at things and find someone else to do it.

Sure, I guess that I could try to learn some of the things that I don't know...or try to learn how to do the things that I don't know how to do. Let's face it though, I'm not going to. At this point, its really only something to inspire me to be more successful.

That way, I can just hire the people to do stuff instead of trying to find people to do it for free.

Fit of Anger

In a fit of rage, Marty approached me, angry that I said that he couldn't watch television. Even though he's only eight, his anger can manifest itself in different ways, including sometimes, him trying to hurt himself. So, I was on alert for what was about to happen.

He came up to me as I was sitting down and screamed a frustrated, "Aaaarrrggghhhh!"

Then he grabbed my leg and started pulling on my shoe. Confused, since this wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I asked, "What are you doing?"

He ignored the question and went right on tugging on my shoe. Finally, he gave up trying to just pull it off without untying it and took a moment to loosen the laces, before yanking it off. He then hurled it to the floor.

Still angry, he grabbed my foot again and took off my sock, and hurled that to the floor.

And...that was it.

Oh, he was still mad. He went and grabbed some small free weights that we have around the house and started lifting those, announcing that he was going to exercise. Then he peeled off his shirt and went running around our yard for a few minutes. After that, he seemed to be fine.

But, back to the shoe. I don't understand that one. I watched to see what he was going to do, because I honestly didn't know. I was half expecting to see him start pounding on the table with it, ala Krushchev.

I know that there's something about shoes in Middle Eastern culture...I seem to remember people throwing shoes at the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein, to the confusion of most Western viewers. But, I'm pretty sure that Marty hasn't gotten up to Middle Eastern culture in his social studies/history class. Last I knew, they were learning about the Great Lakes.

And, did the sock have some significance? Was it that not only didn't I deserve a shoe, but no sock either?

I've got a pretty good idea that I will never know what was going through his head in that moment, but I guess of all of the ways that he could've dealt with his anger, taking off my shoe and then exercising probably isn't all that bad.

LA, Day Three

Holy cow, has Disneyland gotten expensive! I mean, it was always expensive, but I'm pretty sure that their prices have gone up faster than inflation. And, that's just the tickets for one park...not one of those Park Hopper deals where you can go back and forth with California Adventure.

But, with the number of classmates of Marty and Casey that vacation every winter in Florida at Disney World, there really wasn't a choice about whether or not we were going.

Sticker shock aside, I've been to Disneyland plenty of times with a variety of people but the only times I've been there with my own child was when Marty was essentially a baby. This time the kids knew what was going on.

Oddly, I was expecting them to be a little more excited when we first got there, but maybe you go into a kind of shock that you're actually at someplace like that the first time. I had picked a Tuesday, because I thought it might be less crowded...but it was still plenty of people.

I forced my family into doing my traditional circle, meaning that you start with Adventureland and then you make your way around from there. The main flaw in my plan was that even though the park had only been open for a half-hour when we got there, Indiana Jones was already down. I've gone on Indiana Jones as the first ride, I'm pretty sure ever since it opened, but fate's fickle finger pushed me over to the Jungle Cruise instead. (Indy did reopen, and we did get to use our Fast Pass for it, so I guess all's well that ends well.)

Marty and Casey both really liked two of the rides that I didn't know how they would take -- Pirates of the Carribean and the Haunted Mansion. They're not really fans of the Pirates movies...and we won't even talk about the Eddie Murphy HM film. Maybe it was just the cruising around looking at animatrons, but they thought both of them were cool.

Less shocking was how much they enjoyed Splash Mountain. It is August after all.

And, also in grand Disneyland tradition, Amy, Marty and Casey got stuck on a ride in Mickey's Toon Town. They finally got to walk out after about 15 minutes of sitting in Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.

Also in keeping with tradition, Casey was a little freaked out about meeting Mickey Mouse. You have to wait in line, and he kept trying to convince me that we should leave and go do something else (Marty was busy watching the cartoons they were showing). Someday, I'm sure that he'll be happy that I made him meet the mouse...and, luckily, he didn't have the same reaction to Goofy.

In all the times that I've been to Disneyland, I've never stayed in Anaheim...in large part because that would've been silly. However, since we were doing it this time, we decided to go over to the hotel for part of the afternoon to rest. Turns out that's a really good idea.

I went to get fast food for us -- which cost about 1/10th what it would've been in the park -- and had a guy notice my USFL Michigan Panthers T-shirt. He struck up a conversation, mentioning that he used to go to the LA Express's games. I didn't really ask, but I'm pretty sure the guy was from the front office of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim since it was game day and we were about a half-block from the park.

We had to get back to the park in time for our Fast Pass to Space Mountain. Man, do I still love me some Space Mountain. I'm not really a "ride" guy, but I love that one. I wasn't sure how the boys would take it...I have to remind myself that they are still kind of young...but they both got it. Roller coaster in the dark...coolness.

Everyone else would've been happy to leave not long after that, but with what those freakin' tickets cost I insisted that we stay for the fireworks. We also watched the Fantasmic! water show, which I had never actually stopped to watch before. Just like a parade, though, the boys had trouble seeing, so there was a lot of jostling around to try to get them into position to see the action. That's when everyone's best instincts come out as every parent tries to shove their kid someplace with a decent view. It always reminds me of that scene at the end of "Animal House" at the homecoming parade where the father asks one of the Deltas if his son can stand in front of them, and the the Delta says simply, "No."

Yet again, by the time the boys got to the hotel room they were already out cold. If I could figure out a way to get them to walk 5-10 miles during a school day, apparently bed time during the rest of the year wouldn't be such an issue.

LA, Day Two

Marty found out today that we're not actually going to the beach until Wednesday, a situation that he finds unacceptable. Trying to convince him that there are plenty of other cool things to do in Los Angeles did not alter his conviction that the Pacific Ocean ranked above all of them.

As tour guide, we were trying to find something low-key to do since the plan calls for us to go to Disneyland tomorrow. So, we went over the hills into Hollywood.

When Marty was asked in the spring what U.S. landmark he most wanted to see, his answer was "The Hollywood Sign." Even though technically he's seen it previously -- he used to toddle around Hollywood and Highland trying to get young actress types to pick him up -- he doesn't remember it. Well, now he has.

Casey spent the first hour that we were out complaining about the sun and his lack of sunglasses, until he was finally allowed to purchase an overpriced pair from one of the souvenir places.

We took them to Grauman's Chinese Theater, but then realized that their only frame of reference to it was exterior shots. They haven't really ever been able to see anything where the concrete hands bit is featured (they've never seen the John Wayne episode of "I Love Lucy," and while I saw "Blazing Saddles" for the first time when I was around Marty's age, I've been barred from repeating that parenting mistake). Not surprisingly, the indentations that they found most interesting were the "Star Wars" ones.

We set out to go a star on the Walk of Fame that Marty is named after. I've been to the spot before, but I used to be around Hollywood Blvd. a lot, since I've had friends live not far away.
What I forgot is that the star isn't really on the touristy part of the street. It's more in the stripper outfit retail section.

As we were walking, I could see Amy looking at the stores unhappily. Finally, Marty looked at a mannequin dressed in what amounted to pasties and dental floss and exclaimed, "She's hot!"

"Hurry up," I heard Amy hiss.

We found it and took the pictures and all of that, but that also put us close to a store that I had told Marty and Casey that we would go to: Hollywood Toys & Costume. I once ran into Kristen Dunst there...literally. Security guard got all bent out of shape about it, but I didn't actually knock her down. From my standpoint, she walked into me. Hey, I'm 6-foot-2 and she's like 5-foot-nothing...she's not the only actress I've ever had trouble seeing because I was looking over top of them. The boys did enjoy it, although they got quite a bit bent out of shape when they weren't allowed to get a woopee cushion. I don't know where that came from, but they were both protesting that they've always wanted one.

For dinner, we ended up going to another of my favorite places in LA, The House of Pies. Its this diner that sits in the Los Feliz area, which has long been a hip and trendy location. The movie "Swingers" basically takes place there...The Dresden is just down the street a little bit and The Derby, before it closed, was just up from there. There's basically a whole bunch of other places in the area that you can spot a variety of celebrities hanging out at.

The House of Pies is not one of those places. Its more the type of place that some actors go to for a late breakfast wearing dark glasses because they're really hungover and need to actually eat.

Shockingly, one of the high points of going to The House of Pies is getting to eat some pie. The diner food is fine...burgers, Monte Criscos, etc. But the pie is why I love it. They don't just have banana cream...they have chocolate banana cream, with whole bananas. It'll kill a diet quicker than you can blink, but oh my God is it good.

I was going to take the boys up to Griffith Observatory before realizing that its closed on Mondays, so instead we went into the park for a little while and the boys played on a playground that was outfitted to accomodate kids with disabilities.

I don't know that Amy was thrilled with me since the place -- named Shane's Inspiration -- was built by a foundation started by parents of a child that died after two weeks because of severe disabilities. Or, at least, she wasn't thrilled that I convinced her to read the placard with the story. It might be sad, but the idea is a cool one. They're called boundless playgrounds because children in wheelchairs are meant to be able to access most of the features. Also cool is the fact that the organization (ShanesInspiration.org), helps other places build similar playgrounds.

So, the kids got Hollywood sleaze and social responsibility all in one day. That kind of sums up my parenting style, to be honest.

LA, Day One

I woke up this morning back in my city. Well, kind of. I guess I woke up in North Hollywood, but you know what I mean. I'm back in the Los Angeles area.

The hotel is really only a few miles from our old apartment in Burbank, my last address in California and down the street from my old office on the Warner Bros. lot.

After everyone was awake, I grabbed Marty and went to get a few things that we decided not to pack -- or were restricted from packing by government regulations. Plus, I wanted to reacquaint myself with my former haunts.

And, Marty was a baby here. His first home was Burbank from the day that he came home from Cedars-Sinai. Drove by the Ralph's supermarket where baby Marty would regularly gawk at the breasts of the actress types shopping there.

I drove by the Warner's lot, just because. I spent some really good parts of my life there and I just wanted to be looking at it for real again.

Marty was more interested in if he was going to be able to buy candy at the store. We ended up stopping at Krispy Kreme instead. The lady running the counter for some reason thought that I was buying a doughnut just for myself. So, she slipped Marty a sample and then gave him a bag with another doughnut in it. The big problem with that was the doughnut that I bought was also for Marty...who didn't protest suddenly having three doughnuts. I, on the other hand, was trying to figure out a way to explain that to Amy.

We met my sons' godmother and her husband for lunch at a famous Bob's Big Boy. With all of the Big Boy stuff around, I thought that Marty might be amused -- Casey is less picky about restaurants, if its got food, he's good with it -- but he was not.

Still kind of jet-lagged from yesterday, Marty started acting out. I took him for a walk around the block, passing an actor (Gruber Allen) that I've met a few times but who wouldn't have remembered me and even if he did, I was trying to deal with a son on the brink.

When I got him back to the restaurant, he sat down for about 2 minutes before asking if we could take another walk. I looked at my hamburger with its one bite, and agreed. Turns out that he didn't want to go back in at all this time...leading up to him yelling, "I hate Bob's Big Boy!" right by the entrance, causing a gasp by the fellow patrons.

I explained to him that was impossible, because no one hates Bob's Big Boy, but he wouldn't budge from his position.

Finally, I convinced him to go back in long enough for me to eat, but it wasn't exactly relaxing.

The kids' godmother decided to hang out with us for a bit, while her husband left and we ended up at Amy's favorite coffee house in the world, Priscilla's. It's really only her favorite because it has a vintage table top Ms. Pac-Man game, but everyone has favorites for their own reasons.

We then went to Johnny Carson Park, next to NBC Studios, which was a little surreal. When Marty was young, Amy used to take him to that park frequently since it was only a couple of minutes from our apartment. I still remember getting a phone call from her after she had spent some time there talking with actor Eric Stoltz, while Marty played with his dog...and only realized why he had seemed familiar until she had been home for an hour. The boys have watched home movies of Marty at that park, so it was kind of strange to see the much larger version of my son now playing there again...or sort of playing since he was still in a bad mood from the trauma that is Bob's Big Boy.

The evening went far better. Right after we had bought the plane tickets, my next purchase was for the Hollywood Bowl. They were doing selections from "Fantasia." The Bowl is one of those places that I've always loved...more so than a lot of other people. Its one of those things that's kind of "my" Los Angeles. I've attended work events there at different times, spent a handful of Fourth's of July there, and used to go 3-4 times every season. If I still lived here, I would still go multiple times a year.

I wanted the kids to get to experience it, so I went to the market and bought food for a picnic and we got there a little after the doors had opened. It was apparently a sell-out because it was plenty crowded. In fact, when we got to our seats, the people behind us had already spread out their food on our seats. Its such a congenial atmosphere though that it wasn't a problem.

The show itself was superb. The Hollywood Bowl orchestra playing the classical music from "Fantasia" live while the corresponding clips played on big screen was extremely cool. Even better, instead of just playing it straight, they included four different selections that never actually made it into the movie...one of which didn't even make it being animated, so it was just the storyboards with the music.

Unfortunately, the ending -- which was complete with fireworks -- started with "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." Marty and Casey have spent their whole lives going to sleep to soft music. It was dark, they were each under a jacket, and there was lilting music going. They went to sleep.

Suddenly, the orchestra launced into "Trepak," with the "bump-pa-da-bump-bump-bump" and the fireworks started going off. Startled the heck out of my sleeping sons. Casey sprang back awake, but it took Marty a good couple of minutes to work out if he was dreaming or not.

By the time we got back to the hotel, everyone was wiped out again. This time, however, unlike yesterday's flight delays, it was all worth it. Even the Bob's Big Boy parts.

Air Travel

And, after much delay, I am finally back in California. Man, does it feel good to breath in the smog once again.

Here's the thing, though, in order to get back to my beloved City of Angels, I had to fly with my family. It's not that I've never flown with members of my family, but the last time I wasn't on a plane by myself, 8-year-old Marty was 1-year-old Marty.

We flew out of Chicago. If you're a frequent flyer, you can probably already predict where this is going.

It was out of Midway, which I've never actually been to before. Since I had much less of a grasp on how to get there, as opposed to O'Hare, we left pretty early...and we got there really early. Even earlier than the FAA recommends. So, we decided to get some breakfast.

Our flight was supposed to leave Chicago around 11:30 CST, and get into LA around 5 p.m.

When we left the restaurant, the first thing that we noticed was the dark sky and the flashes of lightning in the distance. Amy checked her iPhone and our flight was still on time. By the time we got to the airport 10 minutes later that was no longer the case.

Being stuck in an airport with a flight delay sucks no matter what. Doing it with a pair of boys under 10 does not help the situation. Young boys inclination is not to just sit quietly. It goes against nature to try to make them.

Even more fun, they kept delaying our flight...which is enjoyable if you're supposed to have a layover and connecting flight someplace else, in our case Las Vegas.

By the time we actually had a firm departure time, it was supposed to put us in to Vegas at pretty much the same time that our second flight was going to leave. We asked the flight attendant about it, but she was non-committal. Our flight could get in earlier, the other flight could be delayed, etc.

Because there are four of us, I ended up sitting in front of the others on the initial takeoff. I couldn't watch Casey, who had the window seat, on his first plane ride or Marty on the first one that he could really pay attention on...but I could hear them. Casey was playing with the window shade, annoying Marty, and Marty was complaining about having to put his iPod away (which, at least, he's a kid and doing...plenty of the adult passengers still complain about that, even after that "Mythbusters" episode where they showed that it actually can affect the planes controls).

At some point, we traded seats so that Amy could sleep -- I've never slept on a plane in my life, and that includes red-eyes -- and I could corral the boys. I must admit that it was kind of fun to be able to point things out to them as we were going into the descent to Las Vegas. Being state afficianados, they were excited to get to say that they had now been in Nevada.

The flight attendant turned out to be right on one count...our plane did get in early. Unfortunately, that meant that they didn't have the gate ready. So, we sat on the tarmac looking at the hotels on the south Strip while our connecting flight took off to LAX.

They actually made an announcement to tell us what flight we were being put on while we sat there. Amy looked it up...it didn't leave for 2 1/2 hours.

I said that delays always suck, but really Vegas is kind of exempted from that. I mean, you can gamble in every terminal. If you're going to be stuck someplace, Vegas is a good choice. That is, if you don't have kids. If you have kids, then you get to look at the slot machines so tantilizingly close, but yet so far away. And, because you have kids, you can't drink either.

At one point, I did let Amy go try to gamble, but it was still a hollow slice of Sin City.

Our new flight was now going to put us in at 8:30 PST...or 11:30 p.m. by our body clocks. The good thing though is that Vegas to L.A. is just a hop, skip and a jump...a fact that I used to take advantage of a few times a year when I lived here.

The second flight went off without issue, but once we got in there was the little issue of getting the rental car. I left Amy and the kids at baggage claim while I took the van over to the lot. Only, the van for my rental car agency wasn't exactly quick. People came and went, and yet, I still sat there.

Finally, it came and I hoped on with Amy's iPhone in hand, ready to take pictures of the car before I left the lot. As I got on, I tried to look at something on the iPhone...which was locked. Turns out that I don't know the passcode for her phone. That also meant that I couldn't call her on my phone once I got the car.

I spent the ride to the lot frantically trying combinations that I thought would work...until I basically double-locked the phone. It told me I could try again in 15 minutes.

Once I was through the counter, I still couldn't use the phone. But, as I walked to the car, the phone suddenly rang. I didn't think that I could answer, but luckily I was wrong. It was my sons' godmother calling to say that they had had an emergency situation come up and wouldn't see us until tomorrow. I was stuck in the uncomfortable situation of saying, "I'm sorry to hear that...say, could you call Amy on my cell phone and ask her to call me."

Not one of my finer moments, but 5 minutes later Amy called to tell me how to unlock her phone.

The worst part was that thanks to the delay, we had eaten at the Vegas airport. So, I wasn't hungry as I drove past an In-N-Out. I had planned for months to go directly to that In-N-Out at that very minute, and yet, here I was driving right on past. But, I wasn't going to force my first Double-Double in years.

The kids tried to stay awake to watch the bright lights, but didn't quite have it left in them. They sat in the backseat quietly dazed.

We're staying just outside of Burbank in North Hollywood, with the Bob Hope Airport in between. Why didn't we just fly into Burbank, you ask? There's a couple of hundred reasons why and they have a $ in front of them. When I was single, I would pay the extra to just fly into Burbank since I lived nearby, but with four tickets, I don't care what gas prices are, it still comes out to a whole lot more.

The kids have crashed and so has the wife, but I'm back in my element.

Horses, Horses

All summer long, Marty has been part of this program for special needs children where they are taught to show horses, you know, like at a county fair.

The program ends with a showing at an actual county fair. Which was today.

My wife has been the one taking him the whole time, every Wednesday unless there was lightning, so I only had a passing idea of what was going on. I did go to high school out in farm country and have been to more than my share of county fairs, so I know basically what it means to show a horse, but I didn't really know much about the program.

I had always assumed that the program was for kids with various autism related issues, but it turns out that I was way off-base on that one. While there were other kids with autism, there were also people with various physical handicaps as well. To be honest, Marty and his Asperger's Syndrome, might have been the person least affected by his condition than anyone else from what I could see.

I had the honor of sitting in the stands with Casey during the program. Being a little brother, Casey was kind of interested in seeing Marty do his thing...once. Beyond that, he was far more interested in trying to get me to go sample the wares of the fair's Midway.

When Marty came out for the first time with his grouping -- there were a number of groupings -- he seemed to do fine. They were just leading the horse around for the judges. However, when they awarded places, he actually finished last. My heart sank a little bit. Did I mention that there were other children with really significant physical disabilities?

But, then the next time Marty came up it was for the portion where they show the horse by riding it. Again, being untrained, he seemed to do fine from what I could tell. This time, the results were a little bit different. He pulled a worst to first...and took home a Blue Ribbon!

With Marty anyway, I'm probably never going to experience those moments in sports where he hits a shot or gets a hit. He's just not that interested in those kinds of activities. But, hey, I got this. Equestrian is an Olympic sport after all.

I could see Amy from across the arena and could tell that she was having trouble holding back the tears. Trying to get Marty to participate in anything, especially anything that he doesn't get to be in control of, is like pulling teeth. Having him do it and succeed, is icing on the cake.

Winning his grouping for the event, meant that he got to go one more time for the overall. He ended up being fourth, which still was pretty good since I think he was one of only two first time participants to make it that far...and some of the others, while suffering from more debilitating afflictions, were also significantly older and more familiar with the routine.

Afterward, we celebrated by letting Casey drag us around the attractions and getting some fair food...which is the kind of thing that you can really only do once a year. Well, I guess you technically can do it more often...but you really, really shouldn't.

So, now Marty has a host of multi-colored ribbons that he can display. Interestingly, I think he would've been disappointed if he had gotten a second blue ribbon...he already had one of those and wanted a yellow one.

Godspell

The community theatre of which I am the president had its first production in the building that we bought over the window. The fun -- and I use the term extremely loosely -- thing about getting ready for a performance in a renovated building is that you literally don't have any idea whether everything will be ready until pretty much the show is underway.

When we bought the former church that is now the theatre's site, it was agreed that we would do "Godspell" because its a) simple to stage and b) the place used to be a church.

However, it was a church built in the early 1960's. While structurally it was fine, the fact that it is almost entirely concrete didn't always help with the renovation process. In particular, the electrical set-up was a mess. So that we could have the performances, there needed to be some power run places that didn't have power (or more perplexing, places that looked like they had power at one point, yet we could never find where it had come from...the wiring would just kind of stop).

The work on that was still being done right up till the dress rehearsal, and the work on the seat risers wasn't completed until the day before that.

Oh and the parking was always a little bit of a concern...the building has two long driveways, and we really couldn't have people parking there so we had to have people out directing traffic.

And, since its summer and the building doesn't have air conditioning, there was the threat of the building becoming an oven. We installed a large industrial exhaust fan a few weeks ago to help move the air through the building, but that was one of the places where an electrical modification had been made, since the power lines that had gone to what we presume was a similar fan at one time were cut.

The opening night went off just fine, however. The audience came and the show itself was terrific. The shows director, who I had not worked with, and musical director, who I have since he's done the music for two shows that I directed, were working off of a revival version of the show with updated arrangements. The fear with "Godspell" is sometimes that it can feel dated, even if its based on Gospel. But, they did some fun things with the parables and the music was fantastic...as was the performances of the young cast, most of whom were college students.

At the end of the opening performance, and the cast was getting a standing ovation, I started feeling a little misty. There are precious few people that know how much work it was to complete the purchase of the building and then to work through the initial renovation, trying to keep groups working on different tasks from bumping into each other, trying to keep things moving forward and trying to work with long-standing board members that were now trying to reassert authority since, hey, there's a building!

I turned to a member of the crew that was standing next to me -- someone that has worked with me on shows previously -- and clasped his hand, uttering, "And, we just opened a theatre."

The joyousness lasted for all of two minutes. As the audience started filing out, I tried to turn on the ventilation system which we were turning off during the acts for sound purposes. It didn't turn on. I went from swelling pride to launching expletives. I did manage to find the problem and get it working again, but the moment was lost. It also meant that instead of going home, I was going to a hardware store to try to buy materials to keep it from happening again.

The rest of the weekend went along those lines...great show and performances, building or logistically problems. We had a loose wire that sparked near the band and caused them to freak out. Some costumes were moved under what apparently was a leaky pipe and got all wet. Me alternating between joy and wanting to kill someone. Fun stuff like that.

My sons got a chance to see the play. Actually, it was more complicated than that. The family came on opening night, but Marty was falling asleep, so they left at intermission, much to the chagrin of Casey.

On Saturday's matinee, the boys came with me to the theatre and ended up sitting by themselves inside, while I was working on things, and watched the show. They've seen plenty of theater before -- Marty has sat through Neil Simon's "Fools" and Stephen Sondheim's "Into The Woods" on his own in similar situations -- so intermission came and they went out to the lobby and went back in for the second act.

On Sunday, they weren't supposed to be with me, but something came up and they had to come along at least for a while. Casey ended up helping to sell raffle tickets, but Marty was unhappy with having to be back at the theatre. While I was trying to deal with him, I kept losing track of Casey until finally one of the crew said that they would keep an eye on him.

Marty, who didn't want to see the show again because he's not really a fan of crucifiction, was finally sated when I found a quiet spot for him to sit and play, away from everyone. When I went to find out where Casey was, since the show was underway, I found him up in the tech booth sitting quietly next to the director and watching the show for a third time.

Later on, I had them at a department store buying some clothes for our upcoming trip to California, and Casey suddenly started reciting lines from the show, insisting that I help him out with a part that needed byplay. So, apparently he was paying attention.

When the audience was leaving from the final performance, I must admit that I was pretty well spent. I guess that I knew I was under a lot of stress, but once all of the big things are over and you haven't had a visit from the police or your insurance agent and can kind of breath again...and your muscles don't want to relax because they've been held taut for so long, all you really want to do is sleep.

I can't tell you how happy I am to have a vacation coming up. Couldn't come at a better time.

Don't Forget Those Lyrics

Despite my regrettable, yet extremely obvious, lack of talent, I am a singer. I'm not a singer in the same manner of some of the very talented people that I've worked with that have been paid to do it. I'm not even a singer in the way that a number of actors that I know - who claim they can't sing, right before they start belting out a showtune. No, what I am is a supermarket singer.

At least a couple of times a week, I find myself in a store...whether its a food store or a Wal-Mart type place...and they'll have music playing over the speakers. Time was that the music that they played was the much maligned Muzak and everyone just ignored it. But these days all of these places have a satellite music service that plays contemporary music.

Well, apparently, as I shop I must kind of zone out because it doesn't take long before I'm unconsciously singing along to "Time After Time" while I check out the sale on cereals...unconsciously that is until I notice the women looking at me with their looks of, "Oh, sweetie, you really shouldn't sing."

I'd love to be able to stop it, but its kind of hard when you don't know that you're doing it. I've caught myself singing everything from Elvis to Motown to Fleetwood Mac to Cowboy Junkies. I sing along to country music songs that I haven't heard in 20 years. I sing along to one hit wonders that I didn't like when they were released. I've hated Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" since the first time I heard it, but that doesn't stop me from singing it in a department store.

The really unfortunate part is if there's any sort of unconscious dancing. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes it can't be helped. Since I was 10-years-old I've always had to do an involuntary shoulder shake during Elvis' "Burnin' Love." Turns out that I still do that according to the quizzical looks I received a few weeks ago in a Target.

Now, when I lived in Los Angeles, there would be people all over the place that would sing in line at the bank or in the laundromat or in the park...and it would sound like a real life musical. For all I know, the young guy that I used to run into at the local laundromat in my Burbank neighborhood is off doing a touring production of "Rent."

It would be great if people looked at me that way as I butchered a Beach Boys song, but that's not the lot that I have in life. I'm stuck being the adult version of Alfalfa terrorizing my fellow shoppers.

There are moments that I do enjoy being an unintentional singer, and that's when I get to collide with another of my kind. The other day I was arriving at a business lunch and as I was getting out of my car still singing the War classic, "Why Can't We Be Friends," I heard one of my associates walking towards me doing the same. I still remember one time when I was working in a deli in my youth, hopping out of my car after listening to the Beatles "Hey Jude," still singing and opening the door to the store just as one of my coworkers inside was getting to the same point in the Na-na-na-na's...and we looked at each other and belted out the next line. Or the time in cubicle jungle when I walked past a coworker's desk singing Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia" only to have him suddenly join me in the chorus. None of it might sound good, but it is fun.

So, apparently I'm going to go on singing whether I really want to or not. It's a mostly harmless flaw...although, I would recommend maybe avoiding the aisle that I'm in while I'm picking out bananas and laying waste to "Walk This Way."

High School Reunions

My 25-year high school reunion is this coming weekend. That's one of those things where if you live long enough its bound to come up, and its certainly good to be alive. Being reminded that you're squarely in middle age - and probably on the back end of that if you go by statistics - is a little less fun than the person that invented such reunions was probably shooting for.

Actually, I'm now kind of wondering if someone did shoot that person.

Sadly, I won't be able to attend the festivities, since the theatre is having the grand opening of its new building this weekend - and, I don't always know what my role is as president, but "Show Up To Grand Openings" seems like its probably in there - and then I'm leaving for Los Angeles right after. Plus, my hometown is certainly closer than it was during on the years on the East and West Coasts, but it's still a couple of hours drive.

All very legitimate excuses, by the way. It has nothing to do with avoidance. Nothing, I tell you.

It's not that I necessarily mind my age. OK, that's a lie and there are multiple posts just on this blog alone that would out me as a liar. How about, I don't mind my age when I don't think about it?

The other weekend they kept running specials about MTV turning 30...although it was on VH1, apparently because the suits at MTV didn't want to clue the current generation in about its age or have to answer questions about why "Video Killed the Radio Star."

Someone said to me, "Wow! MTV started 30 years ago! Can you believe it?" The answer was yes. Want to know why? Because I can remember where I was when I first saw the cable channel about 6 weeks after it debuted...and I was in junior high at the time.

Especially with the various emails about 25-year class reunions, and even with math not really being my favorite subject, I can do the math on that one.

(Quick shout out to my high school math teacher, the late Ms. Sours, who really could have done without me. Every year, she would walk into her classroom, see me sitting there, and then say, "Why? Why are you in my class again?" I'd usually wait for her to smile to let me know that she was just joshing, although she never did. "Because the colleges say that I have to," I'd reply. "Plus, I like the way your forehead creases when you see me.")

Much like the lions share of my life, I was fairly ambivalent about high school. I don't have a yearbook. I never had a class ring. I've got maybe six pictures from the time period. I'm sure I have the diploma around someplace, and I'm pretty sure that its in a box with my basketball stuff from back then. I'm sure that Amy probably knows where it is, if I ever really need to find it.

My biggest problem know is that my high school years happened to coincide with John Hughes' run of 80's teen movies. After 25 years, I sometimes have trouble remembering what was me and what was his movies.

"Remember that time that we snuck out of detention?"
"No, because that was 'The Breakfast Club."
"Remember when we were hanging out in the record store listening to Otis Redding?"
"That was 'Pretty In Pink."
"Rode a float in a Chicago parade?"
"Ferris Bueller."
"Sat around on Saturday nights with nothing to do?"
"Now, that was us."

Oddly, despite the general ambivalence, my best friends to this day are largely from my high school years. Part of that comes from having gone to school in a small town. But, still, the godparents to both Marty and Casey are high school friends of mine. The same ones. When it came time to pick godparents for Casey, we actually felt that anyone else was going to be a step down from who Marty had that we just made them godparents for both children.

My sons now know the same small town where I went to school, although to them its where Grandma and Grandpa live. Never mind that anyone that is an actual blood relation to me moved out of the area in 1985, its the family that I lived with in high school that my kids consider the real one.

Of course, it was just this year that my kids finally noticed that everyone in my hometown, including family, still calls me by my high school nickname of Slim. Really though, that just means they're slow on the uptake or they just don't care. I mean, it took them till grade school to notice that every time they went to their grandparents house people started calling their dad a completely different name. The saving grace is that community college will be significantly cheaper.

It's really only a core group of people that I kept in any sort of touch with, five or six people...and then Facebook happened. Thanks to the social media giant, not only do you get to suddenly have contact with people that you haven't spoken to in 25 years, you get to see what they look like now. That's got to help more than the "Hello, My Name is" stick-ons ever could.

I'm sure that my former classmates will have fun with each other while I'm off doing my meet-and-greet with the theatre patrons. One of my friends who's attending proudly declared that its close enough to his house that he doesn't need a designated driver because he can just walk home. That's the kind of spirit that you still find at the 25-year reunion that probably gets wiped out by the 50-year one.

Maybe, just maybe, someone will reminisce about that time that we all paid a dollar to that one geek just to look at a pair of panties.

(Sixteen Candles)