John Shore

Archive for the ‘Autobiography’ Category

My Dad, My Book, and the 2008 San Diego Book Awards

In Autobiography, Family, Religion, Writing on May 6, 2008 at 4:48 pm

My book, “I’m OK–You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers, and Why We Should Stop.”, is one of three finalists for a 2008 San Diego Book Award, in the category of Spirituality. (My book “Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang” won that award in 2006.)

If, on the evening of Saturday, May 17, I attend the SDBA awards ceremony/ schmooze-fest, my 80-year-old father will be with me. To me, this is like saying I’ll be accompanied by Popeye, or that on that night I’ll sprout wings and fly to the affair. It’s that unimaginable. As it happens, my father will be visting me that weekend. My father hasn’t stayed overnight in any town I’ve lived in since I moved out of our family home when I was 16 years old, which was 34 years ago. From then until I was 45, I don’t think I saw him five times. I grew from a teenager to a middle-aged man without him.

I became a Christian when I was thirty-eight. Then I wanted to be closer to him: Honor your father, and all like that. So I started writing to him. One day he wrote me back. Then I called him. Then I called him again. Then he invited my wife and me to come to his home for a week and visit with him and his wife, my stepmother. So we did. The following year, he invited us out again, and of course we went again. A lovely time, both times, was had by all.

In February of this year, my dad’s wife of 40 years, my stepmother from way back when, succumbed to cancer, and passed away. (I wrote a little about that here.) Since that sadness, my father and I have grown considerably closer; I would say we have become good friends. My wife and I would like him to come live with or near us. It’s for the purpose of exploring that possibility that he’s coming out to stay with us the weekend of the San Diego Book Awards.

My dad — who is straight from the 1950’s school of Responsible Living — thinks it’s Beyond Bizzare that I’m a writer. To him it’s like I make a living making balloon animals, or … I don’t know … stacking rocks. (Wait. Writing is a lot like those two things….) He doesn’t understand how I can possibly make a living doing something so nebulous and … weird, basically.

And, of course, all I ever wanted my whole life was for the guy to take me seriously. Same as all sons want from their fathers.

I don’t know if my father’s going to be in the mood to go the San Diego Book Awards. I don’t know if I will be. But we’ll probably go. And if we do go, and I do win, I could see, once I’m back in my seat with him, having to take more time than I really should to stop smiling.

 

The follow-up to this post — what DID happen the night of the SDBA – is Connecting Flights.

My Giant Head

In Autobiography, Family, Humor on January 31, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Seems to me this would be a good time to take a break from the Major Commentary Action happening with my last post, What Non-Christians Want Christians To Hear.  Before too very long I am sure we will revisit the topic of Christian and Non-Christian Relations — but for now, lemme offer this bit o’ something completely different, which for some reason popped into my head this afternoon:

One of my earliest memories is of lying on my back in my crib, think­ing, “My head is too huge to move without breaking something vital. What a bummer.” It was awful. My head and neck felt like a piece of garden hose jammed into a medicine ball. And I really wanted to move my head, too. I knew there were places to go out there, things to do, people to see. I could hear life happening just outside the confines of my room. My mom cooking and clean­ing. My dad grousing about having to make a living. My sister mur­muring threaten­ingly about how nice life around there used to be. I yearned to par­tici­pate in it all. But I couldn’t. My stupid head was so huge I couldn’t even get it off the mattress.

As it turned out, I really did have a big head. So big that years later, when I was play­ing Little Leauge baseball, I had to buy my baseball cap from the manager’s catalogue, instead of from the normal kid catalogue all my teamates used. It was pretty embarrassing.

COACH CRETIN: Okay, Shore, whaddaya? An extra-large?

ME: I think so, coach. Probably.

COACH CRETIN: Well, let’s make sure. Parker’s got an extra-large there, doncha’ Parker? Shore, try on Parker’s cap. (Parker hands me his cap. I put it on.) Jeezus. Looki’ that. You can barely get it to balance on yer head. What are we gonna do for a cap for you, Shore? Pin it on? Ya’ can’t wear wear that in the field. It’ll cut off the circulation in yer head. Yer ears’ll fall off. (Much laugh­ter.) Whatta we gonna do, Shore? What are we gonna’ do for a hat for you?”

ME: Um . . . I dunno, Coach.

COACH CRETIN: Well, crap. I guess we’ll just have to order ya’ a cap from the managers’ catolog, then. It’s gonna cost ya’ extra, though. You tell that to your mom, Shore. Tell your mom your new cap’s gonna cost you more, on accounta ya’ got a head like a blimp. Don’t forget to tell her that, Shore. Tell her it’s gonna’ cost more money.

ME: Sure thing, coach. Say, why you’re at it, why don’t you order my athletic supporter and cup through the managers’ catalog, too? My head’s not the only thing that’s adult-size, you Nazi dink.

Okay, I didn’t say that last part.

Coaches. Can’t live with them, can’t figure out how to kill ‘em in their sleep.

Amazingly enough, there was a kid in my neighbor­hood with a head even larger than mine. Tommy Wrightsman. What a noggin that poor kid had. It was like some­thing you’d see float­ing down the street in the Macy’s Thanksgiv­ing Day Parade, threatening helicopters, terrifying children. I think the main reason Tommy’s head looked so much larger than mine was because he had such a small face — it was like his face had just given bloom to this monster growth around it. Plus, his head was inor­dinately, spectacularly, basketballishly round. Plus his mom cut his light-colored hair in a buzz cut all around his head, so it looked like his brain was emitting static electricity. Poor Tommy Wrightsman. He was a good guy to hang out with. Especially when you needed some shade.

Anyway, that’s one of my first memories: lying face up in my crib, staring at the ceiling, being oppressed by my giant baby head. The next thing I re­mem­ber after that is my mom’s gargantuan head suddenly looming over the walls of my crib at me. Her head was so . . . so mobile. And that hair! It was clear to me even then that if her hair had been any bigger or stiffer, it could have dropped right off her head and killed me. And I remember being extremely clear about who she was, too: I knew this was the one from whom I’d come. I re­member think­ing as I looked up at her, “I know that smell. I know this person. I came from her. She has great skin. Wonderful eyes. Giant hair. Excellent head movement.”

My next thought — and I’m weirdly embarrassed to even write this, but …. whaddaya’ gonna do? — was that if this woman wanted to, she could easily take my life. With her big hands. With her big head. With her big hair. On accident. On purpose. On a whim.

And in that moment I became entirely sure of one thing: Doing everything I could to ensure my own survival meant becoming as cute and as cuddly as it was possible for me to become.

“Goo-goo,” I said.

My mother smiled down lov­ingly upon me.

“Goo-goo!” I said.

For a related piece, see Baby Hitchhiker.

My Stepmother Passed Away

In Autobiography, Family on January 14, 2008 at 5:04 pm

This morning my father called from across the country to tell me that his wife of 40 years — my stepmother since I was 10 — had passed away.

The chemotherapy for her cancer proved too much.

This woman was the first person who ever showed me what real work is. She had been raised as poor as poor gets in northern rural Minnesota; farm people who dig at ice and pray it grows food. At 15 she ran away from home to Minneapolis; two days into that unimagineably big city and she had herself a full-time job as a secretary: She looked 18, was deadly beautiful, and smarter than any four people combined. And she knew enough about how the world worked to start making it work for her for a change.

She must have been around 30 when she married my dad in 1968. When they met, my dad was already divorced from my mother. He was a Big Deal Actor in the San Francisco Bay Area, which even then was famous for the quality and diversity of its regional theater. He was a leading leading man, looking majestically cool in his black turtlenecks and sideburns; she was — as people who were in their 30’s in 1968 still tended to think of it — a real bombshell.

She took an acting class he was teaching, and was smitten.

“The minute I saw your father,” she once told me, “I swooned. Swooned! I simply could not believe my eyes. He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.” She pulled in her breath. “And when I found out he was single?” She stared at me, meaning to convey the enormity of her incredulity, and I saw flashing in her eyes that same resolve that had once set her walking away from her family’s land toward a life she knew could only be better. “Well,” she said, “I knew that was going to end. I said to myself, ‘Annie, that man is going to be your husband.’”

Within a year my dad had a new wife, my sister and me a new mother.

Literally, too: My dad and his new wife legally adopted my sister and me: in a day, they became to whom we came home from school.

My sister left our Home 2.0 when she was 15 years old. I lasted until I was seventeen.

Nobody’s fault. Life is hard. Things happen. We all spin like crazy from hits we never even saw coming.

Once I left my house I didn’t have much contact with my father or stepmother for the next 20 or so years. Then (at 38) I became a Christian — and so became a generally kinder, more patient person. So I began writing my dad and Ann letters. After a while they invited my wife and me out to their home. So we went, and spent a week with them.

It was a trip. I had become a stranger to my own father–and to the woman who had basically been my mother for seven or so years. But we all had a lovely time; my parents and I weren’t, after all, total strangers.

And my wife cracked my dad up — my dad, who spent his life making others laugh. Whom no one is funnier than.

It’s a fine thing, to watch your father gazing at your wife with love and respect. Watching him watching her that way engendered in me a combination of emotions I had not known before.

My wife and I visited them again the following year. That was the last time we saw my step-mother.

She called me, for the first time ever, about a year ago. She had read my book, “Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang: Why I Do the Things I Do,” by God (as told to John Shore.) She wanted me to know that the book had awakened in her a desire to go to church. She sounded like maybe she was crying — except she was also clearly joyous. She sounded like a little girl.

“I can just go to church, can’t I?” she said. “Just to go?”

“Of course you can,” I said. “Of course.”

“It would be a start, wouldn’t it?” she asked, laughing.

The 11 Biggest Things That Ever Happened to Me

In Autobiography, Family, entertainment, technology on December 5, 2007 at 11:39 am

1. Born the first time
Midnight, March 21, 1958. I actually remember it, which I know makes me sound like a nut so never mind. (But I do. I remember the doctor and the two nurses, with their white maskes on – I particularly remember the huge blue-green eyes of one of the nurses — and the green tile in the delivery room, and this little stainless-steel pan of warm water they washed me in, and this bright light I couldn’t stop starting at because I thought it was the most riveting fellow life-form in the room.)

2. Dad’s gone
I was eight years old when, out of the blue, my dad told my 12-year-old sister and me that he and our mom were getting divorced, and that the next day he’d be moving out of our house forever. Bummer. I liked having a dad.

3. Mom’s really gone
About two years after my dad removed himself from our premises — in other words, two years into my sister and I living alone with our mom – our mom disappeared. It was a Saturday afternoon; our mom left to pick up a few things from the grocery store; our mom didn’t return. Bummer. I liked having a mom. 

4. Dad’s back
The day following the insanely disorienting disappearence of my mom, our dad moved back into our house to live with my sister and me. Great! We had a dad again! He was accompanied by his new wife. So we had a mom again, too! Sort of!

5. Mom’s back
After two years remaining as gone as gone gets, my (real) mom suddenly reentered our lives. One afternoon after I’d returned home from a Little League game, my father said, “Your mother called.” And instantly, right there in the hallway, my legs gave out beneath me. On my way down to the floor, I thought, “Oh, wow. So this is how it feel when your legs give out.”

6. Sis is gone
My sister so disliked our stepmother that when she was 15 she moved out of our house to go live with another family in our neighborhood. Bummer. I loved having a sister.

8. I’m gone, too
In the summer between my junior and senior years of high school I, too, moved out of our house, to end up living in an apartment building occupied mostly by coke dealers and prostitutes in East Oakland, CA. Fun! Only different!

9. I do!
At 23, I had no zero qualms about answering “I do” when the (gay!) pastor we’d hired to officiate at our wedding asked me The Big Question. Cat and I got married in the Shakespeare Garden of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. You’re not supposed to just do that in the park, but at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning no one cared.

10. Born again
One second I couldn’t have been less of a Christian; the next I am (at 38-years-old) down on my knees, deeply shaken by the sudden, Massively Imprinted knowledge that the figure known to history as Jesus Christ really was God come to earth as a man. So. That … settled that. (You can read a bit more about my conversion here.)

11. I get an iPod
Last week my wife Cat saw that I’d slipped into my past; sometimes when that happens, I sort of … freeze, and … do a lot of staring at nothing. Anyway, she told me, “You need a present,” and the next thing I know we’re at a mall, and she’s handing me my new iPod Nano. I’ve never had an iPod. The last thing I had anything like it was a Walkman.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that at some point in my life I’d delete getting an iPod as one of the most significant things that’s ever happened to me. But that point is a way off yet. I’m insane for this thing. I had no idea how the whole iTunes, download-any-song-for-one-dollar thing worked. Within a day or two I’d downloaded some 50 songs, which I am now purely mad with joy at having inside my life/head.

I’m listening to the thing right now. Playing is the song I first wanted to download from all those on iTunes: 50 Cent’s In da Club.

This. Is. One. Fine. Song.
 


Oh, Boy. I’ve Been “Tagged.”

In Autobiography, Humor on September 12, 2007 at 8:11 pm

If my friend Jaime Windon hadn’t done this to me, I wouldn’t be … having this be done to me.

But she did. And I am. And … so here we are.

So then. First, I guess, I’m supposed to post, right here, this, which I cut and pasted from her site:

So I’ve been “tagged” and it goes something like this:

1. Post these rules before you give the facts.
2. List eight (8) facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) someone and list their name (linking to their page.)
4. Leave them a comment on their blog letting them know they’ve been tagged!”

Isn’t this fun?? It’s just like … something fun.

So here are 8 things I’m thinking of exactly as I type them:

1. I think I smell bad. I spent about ten hours today in two coffee shops waiting for my car to get fixed, and drank, like, fourteen cups of coffee. So I’ve been SWEATING all day, and I think emitting that weird, wired adrenaline smell you do sometimes when you’re about 200 rapid heartbeats away from becoming a full-on smack fiend. So I figure right now I probably smell like something that would make dogs howl.

2. I want a dog. I love dogs. I also love cats. Since I’ve been married, I’ve lived with probably 40 cats, and NO dogs. My wife’s name is Cat. How stupid would I have to be not to notice the connection? I will have to speak with her about this.

3. My wife Cat is about 18 times smarter than I am. So having a conversation with her can be pretty tricky, especially if you go wading into it thinking you’re going to in any way impune her character. It’s best to think long and hard before you go diving into those waters.

4. I’m a weirdly good swimmer. I have no idea why. My father was an elegant swimmer. So maybe that’s why. Except he was also a phenomenal basketball player, and I play basketball like I play bocce ball, which is to say never. I never played  basketball, and today cannot. I never much swam, but today make dolphins envious. Life’s a mystery.

5. People say that life is a mystery. I don’t see how anyone can think anything is a mystery when they know EXACTLY how it’s going to end. We’re all going die. End of mystery.

6. I have memories that begin from the moment of my birth. This is supposed to be impossible–which of course I can’t help. I have as many memories from when I was born until I was five as most people have for any five year period of their lives. It freaks me out to think of how people can have NO memories before they were three or five or whatever. I simply can’t imagine having a blank that huge. 

7. It wasn’t until I was 23-years-old that I realized that everyone in the world DOESN’T have memories beginning right when they were born. It STILL amazes me. I hate it, because I have always wanted to WRITE about all the stuff I remember from my infanthood and very early childhood–but CAN’T, because everyone always tells me how no one will believe that I have memories from that far back, and so I’ll be essentially wasting my time. Drives me insane. So far, the ONLY thing I’ve ever “published” about that whole huge must-stay-silent-about-it chunk of my life is here. 

8. The first thing in my life that I was ever truly mystified by was the awesomely bright light on the wall of the delivery room when I was born. I thought it was ALIVE. Truly. Yet, it seemed … quiet. The nurses and doctor I totally understood to be My Kind. But that light. That thing just … transfixed me.

Well, that was … surprisingly fun. Thanks, Jaime! Do anything like this again, and I’ll …. I’ll … I’ll never again hire you as a freelancer if I ever again take over a magazine that’s geared towards skate punks and girls who, naked, could make metal detectors go off like a bank alarm.

Hmmm. Now I have to tag someone.

Okay, Skerrib it is.

, ,

My Name Is Not Pato Banton

In Autobiography, God, Humor on September 7, 2007 at 1:49 pm

pato_banton.jpg

This is Pato Banton

So the other night I went to see a concert by Famous Reggae star Pato Banton.

Isn’t that the coolest name ever? Pato Banton.

I wish my name was Pato Banton.

One of his Pato’s big hits, titled “My Opinion,” features the refrain, “My name is Pato Banton.” So even he likes saying it! He likes singing it!

I would too, if I were him. I’ve been trying to replace the lyrical, sonically touching, “My name is Pato Banton,” with “My name is John Shore,” but what a dud that is. I might as well be singing “My name is Benjie Bigbottom,” or something. “My name is Gilligan Floppyhat.” It’s just … forget it.

I saw Mr. Banton perform in a large indoor club. I’m pretty sure that every single audience member in the club that night except for me was smoking pot. The thing is, though, even stoner Rasta enthusiasts at a concert want to be sneaky about the fact that — gee, what a surprise — they’re having yet another experience that’ll be enhanced by their ingesting a lung-frying psychotropic drug that’ll make them seem absolutely fascinating to themselves. But the way to get stoned privately in public, apparently, is to bend way down at the waist when you’re sucking on your joint or pipe, so that no one can see the little fire you’re making glow like … well, like a beacon straight to Security Central.

It was like being at a concert with 300 people who’d all lost their contact lenses. I could have walked across the floor on all the backs. I had no trouble seeing Banton. People would bow down, rise back up, surreptitiously exhale in such a way that no one looking at them would ever suspect they had a huge amount of thick smoke pouring out of their face, and then bend back down for another toke.

I felt like I was at some sort of convention for beach dudes taking lessons in primary Japanese social behaviors.

The music, though, was entirely acceptable. As a musical genre, I’m not actually a big fan of reggae. I am, however, a major fan of Bob Marley, who was one bonafide musical genius, and no doubt about it.

And therein lies the rub, for me. I know it’s stupid and limited, but, to me, all reggae but Bob’s sounds unsatisfactorily derivative of Bob. So I can never like it. I’m Joe … No Bob Imitators Allowed.

Only Bob!

Bob lives!

Though Tosh was on it! So there are a few exceptions! But let’s not turn this into a dissertation on reggae because how boring would that be!

But I must say, ol’ Pato pops up a roof pretty good. He’s very … spiritual. I assume he’s a Rastafarian, but don’t really know. (Hey, I just went to his website — and I think he’s a Christian! Whoo-hoot! He’s got a double-CD out called, The Words of Christ ! Sweet! Oh. Wait. It’s ” … a double CD featuring over 100 minutes of soul touching lessons from Jesus Christ as revealed in the Fifth Epochal Revelation, The Urantia Book.” Oh. So he’s … not a Christian. Or maybe is a little. Or something. Bummer. So close — and yet so … well, stoned. I would guess. But that’s mean, since I don’t know. So let’s move on.)

Whatever the meat of Pato’s spiritual soup is, he sure feels it. There was a moment in his show where he stopped and did a long, clearly sincere prayer. It was a little hard to see and hear him through all the smoke and ongoing Stoner Aerobics, but it was clear his prayer was entirely heartfelt. I believe he was praying for world peace, unity, harmony, and for every person in the audience to once and for all get their shoes tied right.

And then he told us to turn to the people nearest us, and to greet and show them love.

Whoo-hoo! Being an Episcopalian, I have practice at doing this! If I had to turn to total strangers around me before I was an Episcopalian and act like they were long-lost cousins, I’d be down and pretending to have lost something on the floor before you could say, “Oh, no. I lost my lighter.” But now I’m Mr. “Peace Be With You”!

Cool. I was ready.

And it turned out to be quite the lovely, naturally prolonged little moment.

Faux-Japanese stoners turn out to be quite the affable greeters!

They were at that time, anyway. That was pretty early on in the show.

Ninety minutes later, and the Happy Mass Pot Buzz had transmogrified into the Unhappy, Highly Individuated Fry that invariably leaves “partyers” with the distinctly unpleasant feeling that, once again, they’ve fallen off that big bus to Funville, and are instead stuck exactly where they are.

Pato was still doing his thing, though: alive, bright-eyed, singing and doing the happy, hoppy little dance for which Rastas are famous.

As for me, it was all good. I’m almost never as content as I get whenever I’m surrounded by more strangers than I can count.

You, Jarvis Lunalo, and the Man Who Saved My Life

In Autobiography, Christianity on August 30, 2007 at 6:30 am

In high school I had an absolutely brilliant, wildly popular English and theater teacher named Rick Hornor. It’s no exaggeration to say that by taking me more seriously than anyone had ever taken me before, Mr. Hornor saved my life. He consistently took precious time out of his 12-hour days spent teaching and directing plays to make sure that I understood that I was special, that I had talent, that I was worth infinitely more than I thought I was. It is his genius that he made a lot of kids feel that way about themselves.

Mr. Hornor’s unstinting love and belief in me forced me to change my image of myself. The way he lived his life (he was and is a Christian — which at the time I counted against him) forced me to change my deep cynicism about people.

Mr. Hornor is now Dr. Hornor, and is today chair of the Theatre department at Whitworth University, in Spokane, WA. (I’ve stayed in touch with him all these years because … well, because it’s not like I ever doubted he was one of the greatest men I’d ever meet.) He is just back from a six-month sabbatical spent in Nairobi, Kenya, where, at Daystar University, he designed courses of study for a major, minor, and certification in theatre, with an emphasis on theatre in ministry and education. (Both Whitworth and Daystar are Christian colleges.)

Among his many new Kenyan acquaintances who particularly impressed Rick was a Daystar student of his named Jarvis Lunalo. Rick wrote back home of Jarvis’s strong, positive character, his open-heartedness, his selflessness, his deep commitment to Christ. He was also struck by Jarvis’ rare acting ability. “This devout young man,” he wrote, “is simply a natural on stage.”

Rick was so impressed by Jarvis that he arranged for Jarvis to be enrolled at Whitworth University, full-time, for four years, beginning … well, two days ago. Jarvis feels very strongly that God is calling him to study theatre, and then return to Kenya to full-time ministry and evangelism.

Whitworth has agreed to pay all of Jarvis’s tuition and school fees. Jarvis has also received a $3,000.00 work study grant that allows him to work on campus. From family and church friends also came a donation of (amazingly enough) $1,000.00.

For the year, that leaves Jarvis in the hole — for room and board, books, insurance, and miscellaneous expenses — about $9,000.00.

Jarvis’ financial picture at Whitworth will of course change over the next four years. For that reason (and to allow for tax-free donations), Whitworth has established the Dedicated Scholarship for International Students in Theatre fund.

My plea today is that you donate what you can to this fund, so that Jarvis Lunalo can get his exceptional education at Whitworth, return to Kenya, and do God only knows how much good in the world. For that to happen is going to take money. This whole plan depends upon … well, the kindness of strangers. Like you, I’m hoping.

Please be assured that 100% of your donations will go directly to helping the young Mr. Lunalo. As I say, that’s the entire purpose of the fund.

This kid deserves our love and support. Please join me in showing Jarvis how Christians in America take care of their own.

Send your tax free donations to:

Whitworth University

Attn: June Hanson

Re: Dedicated Scholarship for International Students in Theatre

300 W. Hawthorne Rd.

Spokane , WA   99251


My Private, Difficult Conversation with Chrissie Hynde

In Autobiography, Humor, relationships on August 22, 2007 at 8:00 am

hynde0001.jpg 

Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. It’s so important she move on. 

As many of you already know, the other night I enjoyed (partially due, perhaps, to Martians afraid they were being watched) backstage access during a concert featuring REO Speedwagon, Stray Cats, The Pretenders, and ZZ Top.

Along with some friends my wife Cat and I were hanging around in a comfortable, furnished room backstage after The Pretenders’ set when Chrissie Hynde came in from her dressing room, wet-haired and freshened up after a typically dynamic performance. As soon as she stepped into the room the eight or nine of us already there spontaneously applauded for her.

The others did, anyway. I tried to quietly slip out the door. But it was too late. Chrissie had seen me.

I was near a bank of blossoming, fragrant honeysuckle vines when I felt Chrissie’s hand upon my arm. I turned and there she was, looking up at me through her frowzy bangs. Her trademark heavy mascara hardly hid the longing in her eyes.

“I was hoping you’d come,” she said in her slightly raspy, post-performance voice.

“Chrissie, please,” I said. “Don’t.”

“Did you like the set?” she said hopefully.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I did. As always, you owned the stage.”

“I saw you, you know.”

Of course I knew. We’d been sitting in the very front row, smack in the middle, best seats in the house. I had tried to avoid taking those seats, for I knew what would happen if I sat so near the stage. It did.

Chrissie sang her entire set looking straight at me.

“Does she know you?!” my wife screamed at me while Chrissie was just above us, passionately singing about all the things of hers that she was going to use to get my attention.

I pretended that the deafening sound prevented my understanding what she’d said. But I knew she was asking the same question most everyone else in the packed amphitheatre was asking: Was Chrissie Hynde performing a private, personal concert for only one person, or what?

“I know you saw me,” I said. “And perhaps you saw my wife beside me?”

Chrissie made a dismissive, disparaging sound, and turned to pluck off a honeysuckle blossom. She smelled it for a moment, and then tossed it to the ground.

“You’re married,” she fairly spat. She tried, and failed, to hide the need beneath her anger. “How long have you been married?” she said. “It can’t be long at all. What is it? One year? Maybe two?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Huh?”

“Twenty-six. I’ve been married 26 years.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Yes I have.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Yes, Chrissie, I have. Cat and I had our 26th wedding anniversary just this week.  On August 16.”

“Really?” said Chrissie unbelievingly. She seemed to slowly drift off to somewhere inside her head. “Wow,” she murmured. Then she came out of it. “Oh, I don’t care,” she cried. She plucked and immediately discarded another blossom. “I don’t care how long it’s been. All I know is it’s been too long for me.” She took a hold of my forearm, hard. “It’s been too long,” she said in a near sob. She pulled my arm towards her. “Too long,” she whispered desperately. “John, can’t you see? I’m special. So special.”

“Chrissie,” I said. “Stop.”

I heard my wife’s voice say, “Let go of my husband’s arm, Chrissie Hynde.” I turned and saw Cat walking rapidly toward us. “And I mean, right now. Or so help me God, you’ll wish you were back on the chain gang.”

That Cat. She’s small, but … adequately scary in a pinch. She came and insinuated herself Chrissie and me. She turned to me.

“John,” she said. “John. John. John.”

I opened my eyes.

“What?” I said.

Oh. Right. I was off in a secluded area outside the backstage dressing rooms, lying on an amazingly comfortable, ultra-padded lounge chair. Cat was now sitting at my side.

“Were you dreaming about Chrissie Hynde?” she said.

“No,” I said, sitting up a bit. “How in the world do you know stuff like that?”

“Well, let’s see. Maybe because I heard you say ‘Chrissie, stop.’ I figured that might be a clue.”

“Well, it’s not,” I said. “I was dreaming about … something else.”

“Not only were you dreaming about Chrissie Hynde,” she said, “But you were dreaming you had to stop Chrissie Hynde from doing I don’t even want to know what.”

“Well,” I said, sensing the gig was up, “as it happens, she was being rather aggressive. Luckily, though, you arrived just in the nick of time.”

“Oh, right. I’m sure I did.”

“You did!” I told her about the last part of my dream. When I had finished, Cat said, ” ‘Or you’ll wish you were back on the chain gang.’? That’s what you had me say to Chrissie Hynde? You couldn’t think of anything cheesier for me to say.”

“That’s not cheesy. It’s great.” I leaned forward, and put my arms around her neck. “It did the job. You scared her.”

“I better have.” Cat waved her fist around a bit. “Gonna use my fist.”

Ha!

Man, Cat’s funny.

I leaned back in my chair, and took hold of Cat’s hand. We really had just celebrated our 26th. “Great show tonight, huh?” I said.

“The Pretenders, you mean? They were fantastic. Your girlfriend has got such a great voice.”

“The Pretenders, REO, Stray Cats, ZZ. Each of them was just so extraordinary.”

“They really were,” said Cat. She gazed lovingly at me, and gently squeezed my hand.

“It’s all about the long haul, isn’t it?” I said softly.


Why Martians Could Have Snagged Me at a Rock Concert Last Night

In Autobiography, Humor on August 20, 2007 at 9:55 am

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Be afraid, Martians!! 

Last night my wife Cat and I went to the largest outdoor concert venue in San Diego to see (in order of appearance) REO Speedwagon, Stray Cats, The Pretenders, and ZZ Top.

Whoo-hoo! Rock ‘n roll!

Except … older!

Whoo-hoo again!

By way of generally complementing my mostly silver goatee (which, many people don’t know, is French for, “Bleed less while shaving”), I wore to the concert my usual middle-aged hipster outfit of khaki pants, a Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt, and leather boat shoes.

Once on the grounds of the show, I felt like I’d slipped into some sort of Felliniesque, constantly-shifting hall of mirrors. Everywhere I looked were middle-aged men with silver goatees sporting khaki pants, Hawaiian shirts, and leather boat shoes. It looked like some kind of giant … Bahama family reunion.

Cool! For how long have I longed to belong? There is, after all, protection in numbers. If the tour guides at San Diego’s Wild Animal Park are to be believed, one of the prime advantages of animals herding together in the wild is that their markings make it difficult for perspective and color-challenged predators to single one of them out. (As if such predators don’t have enough problems.) To a lion, for instance, a herd of zebras all packed together apparently looks like a single zebra that’s 50-yards long and weigh 20,000 tons. This tends to give the hunting lion … paws.

Get it? Paws!? Pause?! Get it? Huh? Did you get it? Did you get the joke? Huh? Didya?

Man. I cannot believe that when I was a kid I used to think it was impossible for middle-aged people to be funny. How woefully wrong I was.

And how woefully wrong any hovering, predatory Martians looking down from their spaceship with a mind to extract a single man from last night’s concert crowd would have been to have thought that what they were looking at wasn’t a bunch of individual men, but rather … well, whatever 10,000 bald spots floating atop loud tropical patterns would look like to Martians. Maybe like 10,000 large, single, pupil-less, hair-surrounded eyes staring back at them from a deep, dense jungle.

Pretty scary!

The point is, we’d have been safe.

And all of our wives and girlfriends would have been safe, too. Because … well, because balding and slightly pudgy though we may be, we’re still men, and of course would be instantly ready to do battle with any and all aliens who started trying to kidnap our wives and girlfriends.

Besides, it’s safe to say that if Martians have come to attack us, they’ve studied us first. And I don’t think you’d have to watch Our Kind for too very long to know that, when it comes right down to it, it’s no safer to Martian-nap women than it is men. They must have noticed how much of Human Life women so commandingly control. Plus, men don’t carry around 80-lb. purses they can swinging around like killer Wal-Mart ninjas.

If I was an attacking Martian, I’d go for the men. Women will take you out. Men will try to … bond with you, or charm you, or just chat you up first. You can have a man tied up or drugged before he can finish saying, “So, what football teams do you think are lookin’ strong for this season?”

With a woman, all you can do is scream, duck, and get your Martian backside back to your ship.

Wait. What was I talking about?

Oh, right: Naturally confusing hovering predatory Martians.

Well, last night I would have been snagged by the Martians, because I did break from the pack. And do you know why at last night’s Major Concert I willingly separated myself from my fellow pupil-less Sky Starers?

Because my wife and I totally had backstage passes to the show!

Oh, but woot, and woot again.

That’s right. I, personally, and quite privately, got to chat with Chrissie Hynde. And I now count as one of my personal friends who doesn’t yet know me as well as he really should Slim Jim Phantom, the inimitable, show-stealing drummer from Stray Cats.

The Martians could have snagged me somewhere during the walk between Everyone Else and the VIP area behind the amphitheatre –where, last night, while sipping beer and gnoshing free munchies, major, legendary rock stars showed themselves to be not snotty, ego-crazed basket-cases, but rather everyday, humble, polite people who had the class, for instance, to pretend not to notice that, try though I did to resist, I pretty effectively scarfed down all their M&M’s.

Mmmmm …. rock star M&M’s …..

Man, did this blog ever not accomplish anything.

Stupid Mondays after you spent the night before at the rockinest’ rock show you’ve ever been to.

Tomorrow: I stop doing stupid, lack-of-sleep triggered meanderings about bald-spot confused Martians, and actually maybe say something about the show and my Excellent Backstage Adventure.

Ah, Memories. What’s Their Point, Again?

In Autobiography on July 14, 2007 at 10:29 am

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For me, chief amongst the mighty and majestic mysteries of life is how in the name of Methuselah I could be 49 years old. It’s simply impossible to fathom. One minute I’m playing my green tambourine in a meadow of crimson and clover whilst trying to smooch the sky, and the next I’m lying awake in the middle of the night, fretting about my cholesterol level. How did this happen? How did I go from wearing tie-dyed shirts to (sometimes) wearing shirts with ties? From “Power to the People!” to a power mower? From Joe McDonald and the Fish to Joe Fish Sandwich at McDonald’s?

Where, oh where, have all the flowers gone?

I know what the more mathematically inclined amongst you are thinking: “But John! If you’re 49 years old now, then in 1968 you were only 10 years old. That’s not old enough to be a hippie! You wouldn’t know Eldridge Cleaver from Beaver Cleaver. Get some memories of your own, you anachronistic loser!”

Wow. Pretty rough talk for someone who’s disturbingly proficient at math. And anyway, I used to dance the jerk, okay? I used to “jerk” until my little 10-year-old back would spaz out and I’d have to hobble around like Jed Clampett. Sure, I was 10 in ‘68. But it so happens that my mother enrolled in college in 1966, and that she used to return home from campus demonstrations against the Vietnam War sporting tear gas welts and all kinds of nasty cuts and abrasions. She’d come stumbling in after a protest, my sister Nancy and I would bring her ice packs and ointments, and then we’d all settle in front of the TV to see if we could pick out Mom in any of that night’s local news footage. One time I did spot her running across the bottom of the screen, a club-wielding policeman hot on her trail. After that I wasn’t too interested in seeing my mother on the news anymore.

The revolution, it looked to me, was being televised.

Of course, my personal acts of social rebellion involved things like substituting my pet rat for my class’s pet hamster, stealing every single board eraser at my school, and perfecting a belch so loud and sharp it would make our lunchroom monitor, Mrs. Blinkard, start like a gun had gone off. But I knew what time it was, man. I was down. I railed against the man. I advocated the complete overthrow of that system by which the establishment attempted to oppress me by giving me so much homework I hardly had any time left at all to watch cartoons. I organized a protest, picket-line and all, against the 7-11 in my neighborhood when they raised the price of Slurpees to 12 cents. Oh, yeah. My freak flag was flying, baby.

Meanwhile my sister, four years older than I, had transformed into Ms. Mod, in her frosty white lip gloss and white vinyl go-go boots. It was like living with Nancy Sinatra. Her high school binder was covered with stickers of those fat yellow and orange power-flowers. She thought Dean was cuter than Jan. She knew how to dance the jerk for hours without having to hobble around afterwards. She wore micro mini-skirts.

And I remember looking around the dinner table at my mom, her red eyes wet and swollen, a cut across her forehead, and at my sister, looking like Snow Blight. And I thought, “I live in a country that’s in the middle of a terrible war. And since mom and dad got divorced, I now live in a family that doesn’t have a father.  I don’t see how the three of us here can possibly make it.”

Don’t kids think the darndest things?