Olympic Observations

If you don't fall and sprain, break or dislocate something while doing some death-defying gymnastics routine, it should be scored a "10." (or whatever constitutes a perfect score in this digital age in which we reside...17.58324398??) I really don't care if your elbows and your hips didn't occupy the same linear space...if you're still able to walk after doing what you just did, you win.

At the risk of being a judgmental hack, I'm pretty sure Bob Costas is convinced that the reason we're having these Olympic games is to provide him more face time (fairly certain he believes the Lord created major league baseball for the same reason.)

I've long thought the ceremonies (both opening and closing) are too long, too lavish and too overstated. They're no longer about athletes and athletic endeavors - they're about "productions." My point, I think, was proven by the use of farm animals (let me repeat FARM ANIMALS) in the ceremony I witnessed last Friday night. I was shocked to learn the budge for this ostentatious display was $42 million. I was more shocked that the $42 million price tag paled in comparison to Beijing's $100 million opening ceremony budget. One suggestion to Danny Boyle should he be asked to produce something of this magnitude again - less Paul McCartney, more Pink Floyd.

Speaking of opening ceremonies, kudos to Michael Farber @ Sports Illustrated who provided this gem:

"...the avantgardist winter ceremony in Albertville, France, two decades ago, at which each nation paraded into the stadium behind a woman encased in a bubble that stretched from neck to knee while a voice on the P.A. system recited a rhyming couplet that included the name of the country. Mercifully, Nantucket had not declared independence."

In this same piece by Michael Farber, I learned there that the concept of flyovers by military aircraft at sporting events was apparently born (if not born, this had to be the earliest instance of such things) at the 1936 games in Berlin. The aircraft that flew over Hitler and the opening ceremony and the torch relay that day? The Hindenburg.

Good move NBC. For those that avoided any print, online or broadcast information during the day on Monday, July 30 (so as to enjoy the events at night with some degree of anticipation) you ran a promo 6 minutes before her race advising us that gold medal winner Missy Franklin was going to be on Tuesday's "Today" show with her parents. Well played, well played. (as they allowed in this morning's ajc.com, even if you had your t.v. muted, they showed a picture of the 17 year old sweetheart flashing her gold medal.) Perhaps less time should be spent on Bob Costas' hair and more time in the details.

Can you imagine the jokes if they'd used farm animals in the opening ceremonies in Atlanta in 1996?

John Wayne recorded an album?

Yep, The Duke recorded an album. I might not have known this were it not for the fact that on every 4th of July morning during my childhood, I was awakened by the sounds of this album shouting through our house. It included such "songs" as "American Boy Grows Up" "Face The Flag" and "Why Are You Marching, Son?" The 4th of July was always a day for patriotism, fireworks, brunswick stew at Uncle Ralph's farm for us. No matter what was on the agenda that day, it started with John Wayne being very American. Christmas is a nice holiday. But those 4th of July's are the times when I remember feeling like we really were a family and (church folks forgive me) the holiday I enjoyed the most. Perhaps it's my preference for hot weather over cold weather. Perhaps it's my love of cooking outdoors. Perhaps it's my love of lakes and beaches and summer-type activities that are synonymous with the 4th of July. Or perhaps it's the time spent watching my mother on this national holiday. I realized then that living through World War II and watching so many people important to her give lives and time for our freedom made the 4th of July quite important. So run road races and shoot off fireworks (that scare dogs by the way..sorry, the yellow Lab at my feet asked that I throw that in) and do what you do on the 4th. But remember why we're doing all this fun stuff....and "Face The Flag."

Front Porches and Sunday Dinners

An actor died today. He was an actor that played a hayseed recruit getting into a peck of trouble trying to make it into the army. He was an actor who played the main role in a television series about a small-town sheriff with a big heart and the wisdom of Solomon. He was an actor that advertised Ritz Crackers ("mmmmmmmmm...gooood cracker....") He was an actor that played a lawyer in the big city who was usually the smartest man in the room. But to simply say we're lamenting the loss of an actor certainly doesn't explain why we feel so empty. Why ARE we all feeling the loss of a person we didn't know? I think it's because right here on the eve of our country's birthday, we've lost a part of something that is quintessentially "American." And it has been for several generations. You may not have been able to talk rock & roll with your elders. You may not have been able to talk politics or religion with them (because they surely weren't as enlightened as you!) But you could all sit in the same room and watch Andy Griffith together. It's hard to not first think of Sheriff Andy Taylor when thinking about Andy Griffith's body of work. Mayberry is a world where drug stores still make milkshakes and businesses close on Sundays. It is a world where every dinner is a Sunday dinner and all the world's problems can be solved while sitting and relaxing on somebody's front porch. It is a place where kids still play outside barefooted and human interaction involves handshakes on sidewalks and cups of coffee. Notice I refer to Mayberry in the present tense. I feel compelled to because, though the actor that brought the town to life is now gone, the hope that this perfect spot surely still exists somewhere hasn't yet died. It serves not only as an "ideal" of someplace we'd like to live but of what we strive to be. And that just might live forever in the hearts of those who have watched the same reruns over and over and over and laughed and cried just as hard as we did the very first time we watched them. I'm pretty sure Andy Griffith would tell us all to quit being sad. He'd probably tell us all to go to the filling station and get a bottle of pop and then wander over to the movie house and watch them change the sign on the marquis. It lowered my blood pressure just typing about such things.

Valentine's Day

Everyone who knows me knows I love my bride. They all know she's the most important thing in the world to me and the reason I get up when the alarm clock screams. Everyone who knows me knows I loved my Mother. I can't think of baseball, collard greens, Frank Sinatra or Glen Miller without getting tears in my eyes because I worshiped the woman who gave birth to me. Everyone who knows me knows I love my sisters. Three distinct individuals who all did their part to raise the baby of the family. Everyone who knows me knows I love my Mother-in-law. Mother-in-laws become the butt of way too many jokes. Not mine. When my own mother died she made it a point to pull me aside and tell me that she couldn't replace my Mother but she'd do her best to make sure I knew she loved me and wanted to take care of me. She does that and then some. What people may not know is that, so far, the first person to make me cry like a baby on this Valentine's Day wasn't a woman (and it's supposed to be a woman that makes you emotional on the day we've set aside for, well, mushy things.) No, the person that put me in a 'mushy' frame of mind was my father-in-law.
He put a Valentine's card in my hand yesterday. Hallmark's handiwork didn't mention a son-in-law. It mentioned a son........period. We talked on the phone later in the evening and he wanted to make SURE I'd noticed the card didn't say son-in-law....he wanted to make sure I'd noticed it just said "Son."
My own father left this world when I was a still a young man. ONE time he shook my hand and I damn near fainted. I figured he loved me, but was never really sure. He's probably somewhere now regretting that he didn't tell me. By the same token he's probably somewhere thanking God that Charles Fowler IS taking the time to tell me. He may one day get the opportunity to thank Charles Fowler personally for saying things he never got the opportunity to say. I sure hope that day ain't in the near future.

Nancy

I'm not much of a praying person. When/ if I do pray it's usually a "there's no atheists in foxholes" kind of a situation. But when I do, I usually end it with a message to to any of my angels who might be listening. I guess it makes praying more believable if you're praying to souls you've known "in the flesh" rather than the Creator of the universe. I'll keep that list of angels private...but if you know me, you know who they are.
So that brings me to you Nancy. There I was standing in the lobby of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Loganville, Georgia about to be a pall bearer at your funeral. You immediately got added to my list of angels. We'd had lunch together not a full day before you left us. For the first time since we met, you hugged me and said "I love ya'....I'm proud of ya..." But there I was just days later in the lobby of that church, asking my newest angel how to make my bride smile again.
Christmas wasn't good - she went through motions and went to church and lit candles and acted like all was right with her world. But it really wasn't. It only served to remind her how much you loved Christmas. Just days before she was elated that you'd put up your "dream tree" in the living room....a tree that Rich's would've been proud to light on Thanksgiving night (yeah, I'm showing my age.) But then you weren't there to see it lit on Christmas morning.
When I first started dating the woman that became my bride, you were the friend I was most worried about meeting. I knew you cared so much for her that if I didn't pass your inspection, it might be a deal breaker. Thank God you approved. So much so that you bought me a Christmas gift that very first Christmas. I exhaled because I guess that meant I passed the test.
I'll be hollering at you quite often in the weeks, months and years to come. I know there's going to be times when the hole you've left can only be filled by your laugh, your hard head and your determination. And not just for her - you provided a swift kick to my posterior on more than one occasion....I'm sure I'm going to need more. So, for me, you're heaven's newest angel...I know you're making the other angels behave!

"Woke last night to the sound of thunder...."

Oppressive heat. What the old folks used to call "stinkin' heat." You could walk outside yesterday and cut the muggy with a knife. But you know what? I love it. LOVE it. I thump my chest and say "yeah it's hot but this is the south and it gets hot! Deal with it!" Kind of like folks from Minnesota and Wisconsin move down here and laugh at us calling any weather cold. I see hot and muggy as part of what makes us, well, US! Long days, sticky nights and lightning bugs. LOVE it!
The muggy and the hot made a nice stew for some huge thunderstorms. I enjoy those loud storms as much as I enjoy the hot. A short blast of cool and wet and the earth smells clean and looks momentarily green...a short reprieve from the scorched look it wore before the storm. As a small child I remember those loud, dark and scary storms as an opportunity to get wrapped up in a parent's ability to shield us from all evil. "It's just noise." "Listen,,,the time between lightning and thunder is getting longer..that means the storm's moving on." "Look! The devil's beating his wife! The sun is out and it's raining at the same time!" That's when a daddy is a daddy - when he's making the storm go away. I don't have any children. But I have a yellow Labrador Retriever who was less than thrilled with the loud proceedings yesterday. I wasn't paying attention 'til I walked through the living room and noticed her lying between couch and coffee table. All I could see were big, fearful, begging, brown eyes. "Make it go away!" I stopped what I was doing and sat down on the couch and rubbed that belly 'til she was sure that not even the devil himself could get in through the back door. A belly rub and supper hitting her bowl made everything right with the world again. I felt like a daddy.

Sunday night at the First Baptist Church....

I'd spent the majority of the weekend in the woods, drinking beer and smoking meat and engaged in general male camaraderie with some fellow neanderthals. It was hot and it was fun. Needless to say I needed a shower in the worst way when I got home Sunday afternoon. My bride was thrilled with the mud on the outside and the smell of sweaty men inside her Tahoe. Anyway, I got the needed shower and we proceeded to go hear her mother sing at the First Baptist Church. I figured I'd washed the dirt off of my outside and now I could go commune with the Baptists and cleanse the weekend's debauchery from my soul (there's "Power In The Blood!")
My mother-in-law sings with a group called The Silvertones. They're a group of senior citizens that sing old-time gospel sort of music. My grandfather used to call them "singings." I reckon that's what I went to this Sunday night - a "singing." It's a huge choir - a hundred or so folks. I don't remember the names of many of the songs...doesn't matter. The music's not what I took away from the evening. A little background...
I've documented well some of the wars I wage with my own mind. I've drastically changed my body over the last two years but my state of mind is still short-circuited from the years spent in poor self-image and lack of self-esteem. With the weight gone I now find a variety of other things to seriously dislike (even hate) about myself. Mostly my lack of (what I deem) success in any one area. I've tried a thousand things. Failed at most of 'em. I now sit here forty-six years old, pretty much convinced that the best of times are gone. I've missed any opportunity at making my life notable beyond taxes and a mortgage and I'm fairly convinced my wife regrets the decision she made to walk down that aisle thirteen years ago.
I've got a big step I want to take and not discussed with many folks - a magazine the concept of which was born in my head some fifteen or sixteen years ago. 'Course then I wanted it to be a hard copy publication. In the last year I've come to realize that most publications I read are online magazines. Hence the notion of this magazine once again has life in the corner of my mind where I keep dreams (that corner is getting smaller and smaller.) I've even been offered assistance from a very talented relative who can assist with web design and all the stuff I know nothing about. He says my concept is good and we ought to run with it. His youthful exuberance should be rubbing off on me. To some degree it has. But I live in paralyzing fear that if I give this a shot and it goes nowhere it'll join the list of dreams that became duds. And, looming large, we're back to that number - forty-freakin'- six. Why start something at this age? I'm staring at fifty and starting to hear peers whisper about retirement plans. So really what's the point of me taking this leap now? Life's half over..it was a helluva ride. Just enjoy your morning coffees, your afternoon martinis and baseball. Start eating dinner at 4:00 in the afternoon and marking bowel movements on the calendar.
But then there stood those Silvertones, singing and smiling Sunday night. Their average age is 74. They've raised families and had careers. It would be easy to say their best years are behind them. But in talking to them I realized that, for them, every year is the best year. As long as there's breath in their lungs their journey continues. They're leaving Sunday for a tour, taking their songs on the road. There's musicians in their midst, learning new instruments and expanding their repertoire. There's one woman who writes and is constantly working on new stories. One fellow stood up to give what I reckon they call a "testimony." (I grew up Methodist..if somebody stood up in church it was to announce what to bring for covered dish or how much registration fees for softball would cost...I don't remember "testimonies.") This fellow is a retired Marine - in his early 70's. He still looks the part - tall and lean and cut like he lifts weight daily. However he has now found the one foe that even a bad-ass Marine can't conquer - bone cancer. He told us best-case scenario was four years. He didn't cringe at the thought, though - he stood there with a smile on his face and told us that if all he had was four years he was going to make it a very busy four years for him and his wife. When the words left the doctor's mouth I would've quit - he got excited about how they were going to spend the time that was left.
It's just not fair - I'd talked myself into quitting..and here are these folks making me ashamed that I'd let a defeatist attitude creep in again. I reckon forty-six isn't so old. I reckon I need to go to more "singings."