It's headed the wrong way

Things are likely headed the wrong way when . . .


You are in the men's room taking care of some business in terminal C at DFW after sprinting from the parking lot on an August morning in your best suit getting ready for a long day trip to your largest customer when the toilet decides to autoflush and you see several gallons of water pour into your taped seat seams and your captoe shoes.

You reach for that pencil behind your ear and find a tampon.

You leave for work on an icy January morning and slip on the front porch and spill your coffee and sprain your ankle and you go back inside and reload and start over and this time slip on the ice in the driveway and fall on your tuckus under which is your lunch bag and now you are covered with not only hot coffee but chocolate pudding.

You are in the shower at 6:30 in the morning and your teenage son comes and tells you some strange person is at the door with a package for you and you assume it's some overnight delivery for the new campaign you've been working on and you tell him to just sign for it and then he brings you service of a lawsuit that's been filed against you cause you wrote a letter to the board of directors about that hoopenheimer who lied his way to president at your best client and fired you for no good reason other than you wouldn't do the inane, stupid work he wanted.

Your grown daughter says to you daddy I've got an idea for a new business but you're probably going to think it's evil.

You meet the police chief in the new small town you've moved to and he asks if your ex is so and so and you answer in the affirmative and he says he ought to arrest you on the spot for allowing her to move to his jurisdiction.

You arrive in Germany after an overnight flight and go to check in your hotel and they reject your debit card even though you just checked the balance and there's plenty of money in there but they say it won't go thru and it's 3 o'clock in the morning where your friendly small town bank is so you have to sit in the lobby and drink coffee for five hours till your friendly small town bank opens and then you finally get them to answer the phone and tell you that for your protection they limit daily debits to $400 and never allow international charges and that in order to help you they'll have to talk to the main branch but they are in a meeting and is there a number where they can call you back.

You are excited to see that your kids have said something nice about you on Facebook only to click on said nice things and find they have posted a video of you snoring on YouTube.

You go for your final review with your academic counselor before graduation from the University of Georgia expecting to graduate at the end of the quarter with honors only to hear Mr. Burks your grades stink and you still have to retake English 201 and you better pull things up if you want to graduate from this institution and you see your name with your own eyes on the paper he's holding and finally figure out there is another person with exactly the same name that's attended the exact same courses for the exact same degree who is from the same town and whose phone number is one number different from your own although you've never met this person.

You get a once in a lifetime chance to play Augusta National and you practice like crazy and buy new clothes and shoes and clubs and are so nervous you can't swallow and you play like crap until you jab a 6 iron into the precious fairway about a foot behind your ball on the 7th hole and give yourself a hernia.

I got the headache

No, that ain't a mistype in the headline.

If you are Southren, you understand.

If by the lack of the grace of God you ain't, hang on tight and you'll be better for it.

In God's country, if you get the headache, everybody knows you get you a headache powder and it'll knock it out.

No aspirin, no capsule, no nothing can cure the headache like a powder placed on the back of the tongue and washed down with an icy cold Co-Cola.

But, recent developments on the headache powder front are reason for serious concern.

Those of us Southren were one of three types. A BC powder fambly. A Goody's powder fambly. Or for those from the other side of the tracks that could only afford cheap imitations, the fambly that would snap back with Stanback.

And those loyalties and subtypes were as real and strong as, well, Ford or Chivalet. Baptist or Methodist. Chopped or sliced pork sammich. You know, the real defining points.

Not so long ago, I was watchin' some racin' and noticed the stupidest TV commercial ever.

In one commercial, they's selling you both BC and Goody's. Like they were on the same team.

Well, this here world wide interweb is pert handy. I checked some things out. And the news ain't good.

All the headache powders were invented in Nawth Calina. Don't know why. Don't matter. They was.

But now, some Yankee operated bigshot company has bought up both BC and Goody's! And they have the gall to act like the Hatfield's and McCoy's have kissed and made up. This just ain't right.

And to make it worser yet, some nabob at the bigshot company has messed with my BC powder packaging. You know, the one you buy at the Jitney Jungle. The three pack.

Used to be you had that handy red string you pulled and just easily opened the cellophane to get to your packets. But noooooooo.

Now, they have 'em gussied up in that kind of plastic that it takes scissors and golf language to open. The gawldarned thing is as hard to open as my ex-wife's mind.

I mean, what the heck was wrong with it the way it was? It cured the headache for 100 years without some bunch of lawyers and marketing types messin' up a perfectly good thing.

And here's the nastiest part yet.

Have you noticed (if you're a BC man) that you don't get quite that same feelin' as you used to once you got it down your throat?

Well, the braniacs at GlaxoSmithKline (sounds like a law firm to me, but they are the owners of both BC and Goody's) changed the dadgummed formula.

The ORIGINAL BC powder had a little something in it called salicylamide. The new one don't.

Have no idear what that stuff did, but it did something. All I know is the new one has a little hitch in it's git-along.

We need some serious investigating here.

Where is Lewis Grizzard when you really need him?

The cab driver was right

This was first posted on this blog May 9, 2009.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

From Kabul to LAX

Took a cab to the airport this morning.

The driver was a very nice man with a foreign accent.

"Where did you grow up, sir?"

"Kabul."

"How long have you been here?"

"25 years."

"What do you think about the situation in Afghanistan."

"The trouble is Pakistan. They are supporting the Taliban. The US and British must force Pakistan to take action. Pakistan is two faced. They want to be friends with the West, but they support the Taliban."

"Can the Taliban be defeated?"

"Sure. No problem. But not without help from Pakistan. And not without stopping funding coming from Saudi Arabia."

"What do you think the US should do?"

"Make Pakistan and Afghanistan kill the Taliban. The more troops the US sends, the more Taliban and al Qaeda will be created.

It was very easy to catch bin Laden right after 9/11. I do not understand why Bush allowed him to escape into Pakistan. I know he has been sick. Not sure if he is still alive. But if he is, he is in Pakistan.

And I don't know why Bush went to war in Iraq. A disaster. It was joke. Don't tell me CIA gives bad information. Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq for some reason that I can't understand. And Cheney was a very bad man."

"Sir, I agree with you. I lost my oldest son in Iraq."

He looked back over the seat. "I am so sorry sir. So many killed and injured. For what?"

We pulled up to the curb and he unloaded my luggage.

"God bless you and your family, sir. Again, I am so sorry for your loss. I have children your son's age and I cannot imagine the pain."

An Obstruction of Justice

It's my fault.

I could have prevented all this.

This has been bothering me, causing sleepless nights, since "the no-throw" happened at noon on August 12, 2007.

Here's the story.

I grew up in Atlanta.

I was there when Major League Baseball came to town. The Braves moved from Milwaukee in 1966, when I was 11.

In right field and batting third was #44 in your scorebook, #1 in your heart, Henry Aaron.

It was a great time. My folks would let me pack a tomato sandwich in a brown paper bag, give me $3, and put me and Bobby Spurlin on the bus to go to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to sit in the outfield and watch our hero.

Oh, those sweet supple wrists. My, how they could flick 33 ounces of ash wood and deliver enough kinetic energy to send a horsehide covered sphere over 400 feet in the air.

He was a natural.

He was a team guy.

He was, and is, an unsung American hero.

I love the man. How he lived. How he played. How he has carried himself on and off the field.

Nobody hated or hates Barry Bonds more than me. I admired his athletic ability, but always saw him as a selfish crybaby. Then he found "the juice".

He is the exact opposite of Hank Aaron.

And so in the summer of 2007, baseball found itself with a dilemma. Barry Bonds "broke" Hank Aaron's all-time homerun record on August 7. It had an asterisk then, and it always will.

It so happened that I was living in San Francisco that summer. After he had "broken" the record, tickets to Giants games became much easier to come by.

And so on Sunday, August 12, I packed up my daughter and the woman I had mistakenly gotten married to and off we went to AT&T Park to watch the Giants play the Pirates.

We got off the ferry, and I started talking to scalpers on the street. In ten minutes, I bought 3 seats at face value. Had no idea where the seats were. It didn't matter.

I was taking my little girl to a ballgame.

Section 137.

Guess where. Left field bleachers. Twelve rows up. Directly behind Barry Bonds. I could see the sweat running off his size 8 and half melon of a head.

Bonds had a pregame routine that I was unaware of.

He warmed up throwing to a coach standing just outside the left field line.

When warmup was over, Bonds turned around and threw the ball into the stands.

I still see it in slow motion.

A baseball just leaving the hand of the most hated, despicable player in baseball is headed in my direction.

The ball came down three seats to my right. The guy sitting there totally whiffed it.

I can still hear the ball whacking on the concrete, and bouncing into the air.

And then it lands. In my lap.

Never moved. Didn't reach for it. It landed in my friggin' lap.

This was a sign. This was a chance to right wrongs. This was a chance to do something for Hank.

The fans around were congratulating me on my luck. Little did they know my heart.

I stood up to throw the ball as hard as I could at the back of that swole up, steroid and garbage filled head. He was only 35 feet away.

As I was about to let it go, the woman that I had mistakenly married tackled me. She said it would be a travesty.

She was right. It was a travesty.

I could have gone to jail a hero. Bonds could still be in a coma.

I'm sorry, Hank. I'm sorry, Braves fans. I'm sorry, lovers of baseball.

It's my fault this dark cloud is still hanging around America's Game.

The rogue wave

I met Howard Davis in August of 1987.

Howard was the CEO of Tracy-Locke, the largest advertising agency South of Chicago.

He hired me.

Howard was Type A+.

He was a big boy. Six four. Big head. Big brain. Big ambition. Big appetite.

I was in his office when he got the phone call that his son had been killed in a car wreck.

I saw him crumble. Physically. Mentally.

I saw it all run out of him in that moment.

I got that phone call in November of 2007 when Pete was killed in Iraq. I was working in San Francisco.

I crumbled. Physically. Mentally.

Two days after we got the news about Pete, Howard called me from Montana.

"Alan, my friend, someone gave me an analogy that I hope will be helpful for you and your family.

You are walking on a beach and you are very near the water.

Right now, the water is washing over you. And it might take you under.

You have to keep walking on the beach.

Step after step. Day after day.

You will always be on that beach.

But step by step, you will get a little further away from the water.

In the next days and weeks, the water will still reach you and threaten to take you back in.

Eventually, if you keep walking, you will be a safe distance from the water.

But, my friend, the rogue wave will roll in and wash over you.

You have to choose.

Let the rogue wave take you, or keep walking."


Today, the rogue wave came and got me.

It was spurred by my silly mistake of going to a movie last night.

It is a really interesting movie. "Source Code".

But, part of the plot is a soldier KIA in Afghanistan.

I knew going in it had something to do with a soldier.

It wasn't until the images of him dying on screen that it hit me.


And today, the nightmares I had shortly after Pete's death came back.


It is spring time. Memories of Pete and friends and family in my back yard are overwhelming.


Memories of Pete fishing in the lake in the back of the house are fresh.

I walked in his steps.

I remember him out there in shorts and mud boots patiently waiting on the bass to take the bait.

I remember the Easter egg hunts.

I can hear his voice. I can hear that sneeze. I can hear that laugh.


Oh, buddy. I miss you today.


I know you are in a better place than me.


But I need to shed some tears today.


It is human. It is normal. It is your daddy missing his boy.


I'll see you one of these days.


I so long to kiss that stubbly cheek and hug that strong neck.


But tomorrow, I'll get up and keep walking, son.


Because that's what we do. That's what you tell me to do.


I'll keep walking.


Thanks, Howard.


Thanks, Pete.


Thank you Lord. Thank you for the trials that make us stronger and more aware of what we have to be thankful for.

To the Shores of Tripoli

Who said history doesn't repeat itself?

The Marines hoisted the American flag over Tripoli in the First Barbary War in 1805. We were there to stop North African Muslim rulers from pirating ships in the Mediterranean Sea. And the trouble started when they hijacked an American vessel. So, we had a reason to invade and stop the crap.

Today, we are invading Libya again. (Or flying over and bombing the living doodoo out of the Libyan military, you pick your choice of words).

But why? Which American person or property has been attacked?

Well, none.

So why are we risking American military lives in Libya? (Did you hear that a U.S. plane went down last week, and we had to send Marines in to save the pilots? We have had boots on the ground.)

President Obama, our Commander in Chief, has made it all so clear. " . . . our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives, we continue to pursue the broader goal of a Libya that belongs not to a dictator, but to its people."

Oh.

Just like we've done in Sudan. And the Ivory Coast. And Bahrain. And Saudi Arabia. And Iran. And Syria. And, oh darn.

I forgot. Apparently in those spots we don't have a military mission narrowly focused on saving lives, and continuing to pursue the broader goal of a (pick one: Zimbabwe, North Korea, Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, etc.) that belongs not to a dictator, but to its people.

In the oh so clear words of P.J. O'Rourke when explaining how a farm bill gets hatched in Congress, "What the fuck? What the fucking fuck?"

Please, Mr. President.

Either tell the truth. Or don't say anything at all.

This policy makes no sense. (Unless, oh my gosh, Libya has oil, doesn't it? Like, say, Iraq? Wasn't that the last idiotic invasion without provocation that the United States has made? That war you campaigned against and called stupid, Big O? Because there was no clear end game? But, that would sound crass to say we were risking American lives for oil. Except that we all know we have been doing it since WWII.)

Mr. President, there is another place on this earth where civilians are being massacred. Including Americans. Civilians live in fear daily. And this place has lots and lots of oil. It is ruled by an unelected dictator. The dictator's name is Drug Cartels. The country is Mexico.

How long before we invade the Halls of Montezuma?

A Hug for Courtney

I received this email today from a young friend.

This email has been circulating for five years.

No one knows the origin, no one can certify its authenticity, no one can deny its power.




Last week I was in Atlanta , Georgia attending a conference.

While I was in the airport, returning home, I heard several people behind me beginning to clap and cheer. I immediately turned around and witnessed One of the greatest acts of patriotism I have ever seen.

Moving thru the terminal was a group of soldiers in their camos. As they began heading to their gate, everyone (well almost everyone) was abruptly to their feet with their hands waving and cheering.

When I saw the soldiers, probably 30-40 of them, being applauded and Cheered for, it hit me. I'm not alone. I'm not the only red-blooded American who still loves this country and supports our troops and their families.

Of course I immediately stopped and began clapping for these young unsung heroes who are putting their lives on the line everyday for us so we can go to school, work and home without fear or reprisal.

Just when I thought I could not be more proud of my country or of our Service men and women, a young girl, not more than 6 or 7 years old ran up to one of the male soldiers. He kneeled down and said 'hi...'

The little girl then asked him if he would give something to her daddy for her...

The young soldier, who didn't look any older than maybe 22 himself, said he would try and what did she want to give to her daddy. Then suddenly the little girl grabbed the neck of this soldier, gave him the biggest hug she could muster and then kissed him on the cheek.

The mother of the little girl, who said her daughter's name was Courtney, told the young soldier that her husband was a Marine and had been in Iraq for 11 months now. As the mom was explaining how much her daughter Courtney missed her father, the young soldier began to tear up.

When this temporarily single mom was done explaining her situation, all of the soldiers huddled together for a brief second... Then one of the other servicemen pulled out a military-looking walkie-talkie. They started playing with the device and talking back and forth on it..

After about 10-15 seconds of this, the young soldier walked back over to Courtney, bent down and said this to her, 'I spoke to your daddy and he told me to give this to you.' He then hugged this little girl that he had just met and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He finished by saying 'your daddy told me to tell you that he loves you more than anything and he is coming home very soon.'

The mom at this point was crying almost uncontrollably and as the young soldier stood to his feet, he saluted Courtney and her mom. I was standing no more than 6 feet away from this entire event.

As the soldiers began to leave, heading towards their gate, people resumed their applause. As I stood there applauding and looked around, there were very few dry eyes, including my own. That young soldier in one last act of selflessness turned around and blew a kiss to Courtney with a tear rolling down his cheek.

We need to remember everyday all of our soldiers and their families and thank God for them and their sacrifices. At the end of the day, it's good to be an American.