Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
COLUMN: Go with the Flow
By Tobin BarnesI got a Rolex watch for Christmas.
Of course, me, a high school teacher, wearing one of those insanely expensive watches is like Jed Clampett teaching philosophy at Harvard. There’s something wrong with the picture.
Chuck’s son Rob gave it to me. He gave my wife a Rolex, too. To say the least, it seemed an embarrassment of riches.
This all happened when we were at Chuck’s Christmas Day for a gathering of some of my wife’s side of the family.
I’ve talked about Chuck before.
He likes to refer to me as his brother-in-law. I’d rather refer to him as my wife’s sister’s husband. It gives me the mindset to think of this as a pretty distant relationship.
Anyway, Chuck’s a character.
He’s the guy who bought six pink sports jackets because they were a great buy at fifteen bucks apiece. By that token, six squirrel hides at a quarter apiece would be a great buy, too.
He’s also the guy who bought a seven-hundred-dollar art print. He had to show it to me first thing I got there one time. I hadn’t known he was such a committed art lover. The price tag was still on the back...$700, in black ball point. “I added a zero,” he said.
Chuck’s kids don’t have quite the character characteristics he does, thank God.
Children oftentimes bounce off their parents and decide to head in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Chuck’s kids can still be Chuck in their own tangential way.
So Rob gave my wife and me our own Rolexes, both in one small black box with little medallions certifying Swiss workmanship and authenticity.
He’d bought them several years ago when he was serving in Iraq with his National Guard unit. He bought nine black boxes of Rolexes at the time, knowing they’d come in handy eventually. I guess a shopper’s got to snap up bargains with the future in mind.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Rob thinks they’re truly Rolexes, and I don’t either. But who am I to know? It’s not like I can ask him how much he paid for them.
I just go with the flow in Chuck’s house just like Chuck himself does.
Several months ago, my wife and another sister were visiting Chuck’s wife, Joey, for a few days. The two visiting sisters decided to rearrange the living room furniture, perhaps not-too-subtlely implying that Chuck and Joey’s arrangement had been pretty darned inadequate for nigh on thirty-some years, and as visitors, they weren’t going to take it anymore.
So Chuck comes home to find his calm and order surprisingly rearranged and the sisters still at that moment assiduously improving things in other parts of his house. I mean, who amongst your invited guests goes so far as to rearrange your furniture?
Well, Chuck’s wife’s sisters do.
But Chuck evidently went with it because when we got there on Christmas Day, the furniture was still in the same positions as the sisters had moved it. That is, with the exception of his TV lounger. No way, for the sole sake of stylishness, was he going to turn his head and get a crick in his neck just to watch TV.
And, let’s see...what else was going on?
Oh yeah, this other sister I’ve been talking about, Ann, told us she’d recently gotten a Kindle, one of those electronic book readers that have become popular. We’ve had one for about a year now and had highly recommended it to her.
Perhaps you’ll remember that it is Ann who finds the nearness of “Employee-of-the-Month” reserved parking spaces at big-box retailers a fine personal convenience, not to mention a great time saver on her busy shopping trips.
Anyway, Ann says she likes her Kindle so much she takes it to church with her. Because the Kindle comes with a black leather case, even from a short distance it could easily pass for a hymnal or prayer book.
Taking your Kindle to church gives all new meaning to the minister’s oft-heard instruction: “Open your books and let us pray.”
Sunday, December 21, 2008
COLUMN: Give yourself a break
By Tobin Barnes Look out. There’s a tradition circling around in the gleeful holiday atmosphere that tries to guilt you into making those little kind-of-difficult resolutions for the new year.
Bah! Humbug!
That’s right. Follow me and resist that Mary Sunshine twaddle with every fiber of your being.
If you’re a fairly mature (relax, no one gets all the way to full maturity), tax-paying, law-abiding, most-of-the-worst vices-avoiding, halfway-decent adult, you’ve already got plenty of pain-in-the-heinie things to do on an everyday basis. Please, don’t add to the list.
Think you’re going to win a prize by adding more difficulty to your life? Take a powder.
Besides, let’s face it, if you haven’t made those little tweaks to your performance by now, it’s probably not going to happen. Period.
(Disclaimer: I’m not talking about those who smoke their lungs into dust, gamble their finances into foreclosure, or drug themselves into oblivion. Those people need more dedication and perhaps professional help than a New Year’s Resolution is going to do them. They don’t need to resolve, they need to get on a program.)
On the other hand, the average better-yourself-a-little resolution just leads to yet another guilt trip. So spare yourself.
Of course, the hair shirt-wearing Puritans amongst you would disagree. But H.L. Mencken wisely described Puritanism as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” So don’t give in to it.
Like me, use the current holiday spirit self-compassionately and make some goof-proof resolutions instead.
For example, when there’s a good golf tournament on TV, I’m resolving to lie down on my couch and watch it, by golly. Yup, I’m going to Tivo it ahead of time, and I’m going to just plant myself there, fast-forward through the commercials, and wallow in golf, golf, golf.
And you know what? I’m going to score a near-100 percent success rate. (That’s if my wife doesn’t work herself into the equation. Then, of course, I’m dealing with a cosmic force, and as all you husbands know, all bets, not to mention resolutions, are completely off the grid. So it goes.)
Anyway, Tiger Woods is coming back this season from his injury, and he’ll be as good as ever, and there’s a bunch of young players out there who’ll challenge him and even beat him once in a while, and, hey, that’s fun, too.
Okay, okay. I know. Golf puts some unresolved people to sleep, poor ignorant souls, but I tell you: This, my 2009 TV golf resolution, is bound for glory.
And another thing about golf. If I get a chance to play a round or two or even thirty, I’m going to play them. Uh huh, another slam dunk. Pow!
And here’s another easy resolution. When I don’t feel like writing a column, I’m not going to write one. Another 100 percenter!
That brainstorm comes from many hours of scientific self-study. It’s led me to this conclusion: When I don’t want to do something, it’s hard to do, but then when I don’t do it, it’s easy.
From now on, I’m going to write columns only when they write themselves. When I mysteriously find myself tapping out an idea and it all just kinda happens. Voila!
Like this one. I’m obviously not even thinking while I’m doing this one.
No more working and reworking a mediocre idea into something presentable. No more Sisyphus pushing a rock up the mountain. Those huffer-and-puffer columns usually aren’t as good anyway.
So if it isn’t easy to write and fun, fun, fun--like golf, golf, golf--it’s not going to happen. I’m going to be temporarily off the radar. Yeah, I won’t be there then.
Sorry, but we’ll both be better off.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Late Night Monologues
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: Anthropologists have found — and this is crazy — a well-preserved brain. They believe it’s from the Middle Ages. Here’s the surprise. They found it in the head of Dick Cheney.But Dick Cheney said that we made the right decision to go to war in Iraq. And I said to myself, “Well, that’s good enough for me, by God.” Read more…
And Thursday night: Now here’s something historical. In January, all five living presidents are scheduled to have lunch together. Clinton suggested the VIP room at Hooters.
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