Keep me in suspenders

Again I wore suspenders to work Monday night. You would have thought my hair was on fire by the comments people made.

Hey! It's farmer Jim!

He's a lumberjack and he's OK!

Pancakes anyone?

Is that Al Borland from "Tool Time"?

I've worn suspenders off and on since the rainbow-crazed days of "Mork and Mindy," but not for style purposes. I wear them to hold up my pants. A novel idea, really: Wearing things for utlilty purposes instead of style. Shocking!

I had a nice pair of suspenders several years ago I used to wear to work until the then-publisher commented on them. He was a Southern gentleman and always wore "braces," so he complimented me on mine. I immediately had to stop wearing them for fear of being labelled a patsie.

At the time, I also wore lots of flannel shirts. The then-managing editor spent the beginning of staff meetings making fun of my style choice. My flannel collection faded.

Anyway, I now where suspenders to hold up my "fat man" pants. I've put on weight (all this easy livin') but what I really got the pants for was the wide legs. Since I'm supposed to be wearing my leg brace whenever I'm active, I thought large-legged pants were the answer. They fit over that Medieval contraption. Unfortunately, wide legs equal wide waist.

Thought: Suspenders equal snappy style.

Holiday update

What a holiday weekend -- no weather concerns here!

Usually, we worry about travel in the snow or ice, but not this year. The temps have been above avaerage and there's even been sunshine. So, therefore, we spent Thanksgiving at home.

We had a nice, quiet day at the house, just the immediate family. And I didn't have to work the holiday itself. Hooray! Above, the girls show off their centerpieces they made at art class.

Today is Jayne's family's holiday event in Grand Rapids. She and the kids are there now. I stayed home to take care of Jayne's mom, who is ill. I feel bad for her because she's the one who really enjoys the whole family gathering.

Thought: Lots to be thankful for.

Misc. Sunday stuff

Jayne and I spent much of Sunday doing holiday shopping. I dislike shopping, but I enjoy spending time with my wife. Her mom had the kids, so we had the afternoon to hit some stores.

We had a late lunch at Panera Bread in Holland. I had never eaten there before. Food's OK. The soup was good. I was just happy to sit with my wife and chat a bit.

I laughed at all the people at the restaurant, though. All these young, hip kids with their laptops and other wireless devices just made me smile. They weren't talking to each other even though they sat at the same tables.

The only folks talking were two kids studying from books (yes, books! They still make those!) and old people like us.

We're really a sick society, but I think we all knew that.

Another example

What really highlighted this twisted world we live in was not the kids working on computers oblivious to the world around them, but the reaction in Michigan to the death of Bo Schembechler, the former University of Michigan football coach.

Schembechler's death was a huge deal, sparking complete front page coverage, special newspaper sections and lead TV coverage.

I asked people what the big deal was. The answer: He was a football coach with a great record.

Yeah, I said, but what else did he do?

He was a football coach.

Yeah, I get that. What else did he do?

Football.

OK, so I beat a dead horse (no pun intended), but here's my point. The man deserved praise, but he was just a football coach. Let's put this in perspective. He's not remembered for donations to charity, nor longterm committments to disease research or initiatives to end poverty or racism, and he isn't remembered for fostering spiritual growth. He coached a football team.

A cynical, petty, small-minded, bitter, lonely, old person at my work commented that Bo Schembechler did more than "my hero, what's his name" ever could. This person was referring to Lance Armstrong.

First, I don't believe in heroes, but let's think this over for a second.

True, Armstrong will be remembered for his Tour de France wins, but more so for overcoming a deadly cancer that invaded his body, his defeat of that cancer, and his ability to come back and win the most grueling atheltic competition in the world, But he'll really be remembered for using that success to start a foundation that helps cancer research and cancer victims.

I thought of a few others who rise above being a football coach:

John Lennon? True, a rock and roll great, but what makes him rise above just being an entertainer was his devotion to peace and his willingness to battle for that ideal in some groundbreaking ways.

George Harrison? Again, a musical giant, but more importantly, his raising spiritual awareness and putting a conscience in rock music through the Concert for the Bangladesh (the first of a long line of these events using pop culture to benefit victims) and his Material World Foundation that helps impoverished people around the globe.

Princess Diana? Her dedication to land mine eradication is inspirational and rises above the other trappings of her life.

Jimmy Carter? Not dead yet, but his success is not his presidency. He hasn't rested on that Oval Office time like Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush or Gerald Ford. Carter has made Habitat for Humanity into a true force that benefits thousands of people.

Bo Schembechler? He was a football coach.

Thought: Hike.

Whither football

I'm a professional football fan. I grew up not far from Rich Stadium watching The Bills. My dad took me to a Bills game when I was a boy. I watched the team train at Erie Community College. I went up the street and knocked on the door of Dennis Shaw, a backup quarterback, to get his autograph.

Football, to me, is like a giant, physical chess match where creativity is judged by action and intelligence within the rules.

But I'm starting to lose faith in the game.

I've always had the internal contradiction of being a believer in nonviolence but enjoying a physically tough game. I've always hated that players are commodities in the NFL, not people, and that loyalty to a team is only as good as the next paycheck. All that, though, I can live with.

What is shaking my foundation in the sport is not the greedy owners or fickle cities, but the players themselves. It's the T.O.s, the Chad Johnsons, the onfield brawls, the overtly dirty hits.

And instant replay.

The players

The players, well, their bravado sometime in the last 20 years turned to shameless showboating. The endzone celebrations turned from group hugs to orchestrated stage shows. All I can say is that I miss Barry Sanders. Watching him was like watching art in motion, and when his run was over, and if he scored a touchdown (remember, he was a Lion), he calmly handed the ball to the referee and went back to the sidelines. He was class. And he was good. Very good.

And off the field? The antics of players are just frightening. They play to the spotlight, and this is the result of ESPN.

The all-sports network has given egocentric, undereducated, overpaid puppets called players a 24/7 stage to spout off.

Another look

And instant replay?

Every football game has a rhythm, like the beating of a heart. When that flow is broken unnaturally (not by quarter breaks, but by penalties and instant replay), the magic of the game dies.

And the humanity of the game suffers with the instant replay. The referees and umpires are human and make mistakes -- that's part of the game and makes the NFL experience whole.

I have always said this: If your team must win by a technical call made by "the people upstairs," then maybe you didn't deserve the win. You might as well have flipped a coin to claim victory.

Monday Night Football

It is with mixed feelings that I read yesterday that ESPN's Monday Night Football ratings are the lowest in Monday Night Football history.

I had blogged earlier about how I hated the announcers who talked over the game and didn't focus on the action. Seems I'm not alone.

I lamented when ESPN picked up the Mondays games. Not everyone has access to ESPN and the shared community spirit of watching the game on a major network vanished to the fractured world of cable TV.

Thought: Look out hockey!

Oh, deer

For you Internet surfers, I'm sure you caught wind of this story out of the Grand Rapids area last week. It was all the rage around here and was lead item on MSNBC's Web site.

Seems a deer got its head stuck in a plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin, the kind you put candy in. All humanity seemed to be worried about this deer. People were trying to catch it to get the plastic sphere removed before the young buck died of starvation. The humane society and state wildlife folks were out with the tranquilizer guns, but they couldn't catch it.

The animal finally escaped its orange prison (the deer in the plastic mask?) after a heavy rain lubed it up and the animal slid it off.

Now, here's the stupidity of the entire incident. Tomorrow, thousands of people will take out their guns and start shooting anything that moves. It's deer season!

So, people spent all this time helping this deer, treating it with compassion and tenderness, so someone could shoot it by this Saturday and stick its head on their wall of their den.

The world is full of contradictions and this is an ugly one, indeed.

Thought: Hunting is not a sport. It's murder.

Quilp and Little Nell

Good news everyone. The election is over!

I've been meaning to write all week about lots of things, especially the election, but work just drained me. So much stress and so much tension! I'm still recovering. So, suffice it to say that I'm happy Bush got a smack-down and Rumsfeld is out.

Book talk

The important news is that I finished "The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens. Stop laughing!

This is my third time reading this novel and I like it more each time.

Dickens didn't mean to make this a novel, but he needed to extend a short story into a serial to save a magazine, so watching the structure change after the first few chapters is interesting.

The most compelling character in the story is not Little Nell. True, people on the docks of New York would wait for the ship to arrive with the book's next installment (the number, as it was called) to find out the fate of this angelic character, but I find Quilp a fascinating character.

In the image above, Quilp is talking with Nell in a sketch from the novel.

Quilp is the main evil character in the novel. He's a dwarf of extreme tendencies. He drinks scalding punch and smokes dozens of cigars at a sitting. He seldom sleeps. The scene where he stumbles into a tea party his wife is hosting is still hilarious after almost 170 years.

Throughout the book, Quilp makes sexual references to Nell, so his drive is not just greed, but lust. And the Marchioness, the poor child locked in the basement of Sampson and Sally Brass, is Quilp's love child with Sally Brass.

Sally makes Joan Crawford in "Mommy Dearest" look like June Cleaver.

I am disappointed in Quilp's death scene. It's filled with irony, but lacks the power of, say, the death of Sikes in "Oliver Twist," Ralph Nickleby in "Nicholas Nickleby" or the school master and crook in "Our Mutual Friend."

The book is OK -- I recommend reading it because all educated folks ought to know the references to Little Nell -- but not Dickens' best by any means. You can tell some of the plot is contrived and designed to stretch the piece, but, noting that, it's like saying The Beatles album "Let It Be" is their worst (which people tend to say). That album had four No. 1 hits! So, it's all perspective.

Modern readers often laugh at Dickens' works as being tame and prudish (Remember Clark Kent's joke about reading "A Tale of Two Cities" in the first "Superman"?). Oh, so wrong. You have to read between the lines about the sex (and it's in every novel) and the violence is everywhere.

Thought: "A Christmas Carol" is next.

Leaf fun

We had beautiful weather over the weekend so I couldn't resist getting out the rake and making a pile of leaves for the girls to play in.

I'm generally opposed to raking leaves. They're good for the lawn and I prefer to spend my Sunday time on the couch watching football (Lions won yesterday! So did the Bills!), but kids need to have fun in leaves. I think it's a law, or it ought to be.

And after a crappy week at work, nothing is more rejuvenating than watching kids have fun. That, and beer.

Thought: Leaves are itchy in underwear. Make a note of it.

Trick-or-treating

I took the kids trick-or-treating Tuesday. Good thing it was Halloween when I did.

Not to confuse you non-Western New Yorkers, but where I grew up, we went door-to-door on Oct. 30. It wasn't Devil's Night, as the Detroit arsonists celebrate. It is called Beggar's Night. I'm not sure why we went that night, but it was tradition.

You could always tell the new people in town because they went on Halloween itself. They learned fast.

Someone once told me that people went the night before Halloween to beg for candy before the big Halloween parties. If you went on Halloween, you'd be driven away from the parties and not get any candy.

And you wonder why I'm confused. This falls in with the naked swimming at school that will take up a blog (and a psychologist's couch) one day.

Spooky college

On Halloween, I took the girls to Hope College to trick-or-treat at the residence halls. It's a safer environment than the streets. You're indoors, except for trekking between dorms, and the kids put on some nice decorations. Oh, yeah. There's lots of candy. The college and students do a great job.

We went with some friends and it seemed all had a good time.

One of Elspeth's friends dressed as a werewolf (There wolf. There castle). She was decked out in great stage makeup, hairy hands and fuzzy feet. She looked cool, though had a tough time grabbing treats with her long-nailed hands. Elspeth was a pink Pokemon called a Mew. At the school party on Friday, she went as a monkey, but didn't like that costume, so she grabbed all her pink clothes and a pink hat to trick-or-treat as a Pokemon.

Alyssa was a cat at her school party. Jayne did a great job getting the costume together and painting Alyssa's face. But to stay in the Pokemon tradition Tuesday, Alyssa didn't want her face painted and went as some canine-inspired Pokemon.

Both girls are in the photo above in their Pokemon regalia.

As for me? I went as the tired, frazzled, mostly confused parent. I played the part well.

Thought: Boo!