PAGING DELTA FORCE: This is who we're fighting, the people who would take hundreds of children hostage. I don't know how to fight this war, or if it's even winnable. But I do know you don't negotiate with people like this, and you don't wage a more "sensitive" battle against them. Here's my question, my overarching question: When it's time to face down these maggots, do I trust Bush/Cheney/Powell/Rumsfeld...or Kerry/Edwards/?/?. I do know I'm glad it's no longer Clinton/Gore/Albright/Cohen, for goshsakes. (It *was* Cohen, right? Lord.)

MR. MUGWUMP: Just so y'all are clear I'm not turning into a partisan Republican, let me formally announce (as if anyone cares) my endorsement for Barack Obama (in the Illinois Senate race) over the engaging nutbird that is Alan Keyes. (I find Keyes somewhat mesmerizing, until I actually listen to what he's saying, and then I often feel disgusted.)

ONLY IN AMERICA: Apparently I'm supporting the Party of Don King.

BYLINE ALERT: Michael Ventre has to be one of the best freelance writers in the business. Here's his take on the Kobe Bryant trial, enlightening and entertaining as always.

THE POLITICS OF FASHION: Walking around Chicago over the weekend I couldn't help but notice all the Kerry/Edwards paraphernalia. T-shirts. Signs. Bumper stickers. Lapel pins.

Everywhere I looked I saw someone proudly displaying their support for the Dem ticket. Meanwhile, I saw only one Bush sign.

I wrestled with what conclusions I should draw:

a) Kerry is going to win in a landslide?

b) Chicago is a very Democratic town?

c) Bush backers couldn't care less for displaying their affinity for their candidate?

I'm sure the answer is d), all of the above, but I really think there's something to c).

I know a lot of folks in each camp. My Kerry pals are almost apoplectic with disgust for our president and, as a result, are much more likely to wear political t-shirts and display signs than are my Bush buddies. My Bush buddies, on the other hand, are a portrait of quiet resolve, perhaps not altogether wowed by 43, but certain they'll choose him over Kerry.

Meanwhile, I continue to straddle my fence, as I expect to do until election day. Maybe that sounds idiotic to some, but I think I'd like to keep listening, keep thinking, and eventually make the best choice I can with the best information available on the last day possible.

If I had to vote today, I'm back on the Bush side. My most significant disagreements with him -- on same-sex marriage (and specifically on amending the Constitution to prohibit same), abortion (I can't imagine making it illegal, but I think we should continue as a society to make them highly undesirable and yes, even stigmatized), and stem-cell research (let's not create a factory-farm scenario for embryos, but fortheloveofGod can't we please make the most of our homeless stem cells?) -- don't outweigh my utter distrust in Kerry's ability to deal with foreign policy, homeland security, and the problem of maniacal Islamic terrorists and totalitarian regimes the world over who would like to exterminate us.

So I don't expect to be wearing any t-shirts anytime soon.

NOTHING TO CRY ABOUT: An absolutely beautiful piece in the Chicago Tribune about mortality.

DO THE STRAND: I happened across a book last night, a poetry collection by Mark Strand, the Warren Beatty of American verse. I had forgotten how compelling and honest I found so many so many of his poems way back in college. If you're bored or intrigued, this site has a nice little bio of Mark, plus links to some of his best poems. "Courtship" is especially hilarious, and "Keeping Things Whole" is something of a Zen koan.

WRITING IN THIN AIR: I've been writing plane poems of late. I published one on a friend's blog the other day, as I mentioned earlier.

Here's another recent plane poem:


ON THE PLANE

At coming-down time,
right before you
see the ground
there is a moment of

“is this it?”

a leaning back falling
feeling like a child
sliding down
the stairs
on your behind
for no real reason
save for fun
and because you can.

TOTALLY WICKED: Check out this cool Ali G Translator.

FILE UNDER REASONS TO VOTE FOR BUSH: Apparently Omarosa is a Kerry supporter.

POEMS ARE REALLY BIG WITH THE KIDS THESE DAYS: The lovely and talented Herberta has published one of my poems. Check it out!

JEREMY PIVEN, I TAKE IT ALL BACK: Have been Tivo-ing ENTOURAGE, the new HBO show that tells the tale of a 'round-the-hood NYer who makes it big in Hollywood and takes his posse of pals with him. Still not sure how I feel about the Markie Mark Wahlberg-produced series -- can't tell if Wahlberg is laughing at himself or celebrating himself, and only the former is funny over the long haul -- but one thing I do know: Jeremy Piven, who I've often loathed in person (screaming and fist-pumping like a loon at a Pearl Jam show, drunk at a Cubs game, etc.) and on screen is friggin' AWESOME as the star's vapid, hard-charging agent. His direction to the star's sidekick a couple episodes that they "hug it out" after having an argument was genius, and not just the writing, but the way Piven plays it. He shifts gears between ingratiating and grating, razor-sharp and retarded with consummate skill, creating one of the best comic performances I've seen in a long while, maybe since Rip Torn's "Artie" on LARRY SANDERS. Fantastic.

BACK FROM BLOGBLIVION: What happens to this blogger is that after a certain point, when so much has happened since last I wrote, I get stuck. What to write, where to start, so what, etc. That's where I am right now. And usually the only thing that gets me unstuck is to just start somewhere in the middle.

One thing I've been thinking is how much better it might be if I could just write everything that happens, unvarnished. Use real names. Cite real problems. Wrestle with demons incarnate. Y'know? My boss this. My wife this. My mom that. My son etc. Blah blah blah. But then even when I'd be trying to get somewhere good, to wrestle down angels in demon's clothing so as to better celebrate the bestness of my life...you know...to sling mud with good intentions, to alchemize mud into chocolate fudge, to turn bitterness into tanginess, to make sour into something to be savored...well, people's feelings can get hurt, even when that's the last thing you wanna do.

Can't a writer wrangle his way off the hook by disclaiming at the outset: "I know nothing. I'm just sayin'..."

Nope. It don't work that way.

So I'm back from a week away, went to another high school reunion. See I split time between two high schools. One was a kind of redneck public school in a post-industrial Ohio town, the town where I spent some of the best years of my life in what, years later, doesn't look like a very great place to grow up. Lots of latent Type 2 diabetes, I'd wager. Not a lot of ethnic food or racial mixing. No Starbucks. Etc.

The other was a preppy public school in a post-industrial suburb of Detroit, another city on the decline, and yet this second school was still afloat in a major and stable way, as old money worked wonders plugging holes and propping it up.

The Detroitish reunion was first, a tony, cocktail-centric affair not out of line with the kind of social stuff me and the wife do here in Chicago. Bunch of college-educated folks comparing notes about babies and corporate travel and then repairing to each others' nearby sailboats for a nightcap. A pleasant, occasionally ecstatic event.

Then came Ohio, a wedding band-bolstered beerfest where various social strata mixed somewhat uneasily, with talk of stepkids and teenage offspring, of city jobs and smalltown scandals ("yep, he's back in crack rehab") even as a surplus of goodwill held everything together. It was like, hey, we went to friggin' SECOND GRADE together, we are friends 'til the end. Sincere. Seriously. Loved it.

Thing is both were great, the best entertainment values a 38-year-old soul searcher is ever gonna find. People were open and kind at both events, genuinely thrilled to have a few hours together. There were these aforementioned social differences, some nuances of content and context (in Michigan we wondered who might have Mob ties; in Ohio we wondered if a fistfight would break out), but all in all a big smile and a wide-eyed sense of wonder were the common wardrobe at both events, and a kind of "holy shit, look at us" attitude permeated the music and memories and kept most of us up past our bedtimes.

So that's one middle I can give you, readers. There's also the stuff about drinking, about friendship, about not being able to go back home but doing it anyway, about realizing that all you have is your time and it's not yours anyway, so you have nothing, and then circling back through all the damn Zen books you've been reading and wondering if you're still trying too damn hard at something that requires no effort.

The question I keep coming back to is: Do I focus on the much ado, or on the nothing?

And the answer I keep coming up with is the infernallly true: Yes.

If that makes as much sense to you as it does to me, Hello!

DUH: Wow! The monkey can talk! Holy cow, maybe them animals do have feelings!

IF IT QUACKS LIKE A WINNER, IT MAY BE A WINNER: Alex at the Cub Reporter does a great job of summarizing my shock and awe at the Cubs' front office, especially their recent, brilliant acquisition of the best available non-pitcher in the game at the trading deadline.

WE NEED MORE BALLOONS! DNC dude Don Mischer's "more balloons" tirade (apparently caught live last night on CNN) ruled.

It almost sounds as if my pal Dick Costolo scripted it:

'Go balloons, go balloons! Go balloons! I don't see anything happening. Go balloons! Go balloons! Go balloons! Standby confetti. Keep coming, balloons. More balloons. Bring it- balloons, balloons, balloons! We want balloons, tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet. 'No confetti. All right, go balloons, go balloons. We need more balloons. All balloons! All balloons! Keep going! Come on, guys, lets move it. Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit. Go confetti. Go confetti. More confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons.'We need all of them coming down. Go balloons- balloons? What's happening balloons? There's not enough coming down! All balloons, what the hell! There's nothing falling! What the fuck are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down, more balloons. More balloons. More balloons'... "

What a nut!

CAFFEINATED KERRY: This guy agrees. Kerry blew it.

RAW DEAL: Just back from an empty nearby sushi joint where I popped for a high-priced lunch. I go there every now and again and am known to many of the folk there. Which made my recent troubles all the more odd...

I order a Coke, as I often do, and receive a very flat, light brown Diet Coke instead. "Ummm, can I get a regular Coke, please," I ask my nice waitress.

She comes back with a really flat, light brown Coke. "Ummm, this is flat, or maybe the syrup is low, or probably both," I tell her.

"I get you new one," she says.

She comes back with the same thing.

"Still bad," I say.

She goes away and comes back again.

"You in luck," she says. "Found a bottle. This last one from bottle."

It's flat. It's light brown. It ain't from no bottle.

"Ummmm, maybe can I just get a ginger ale?"

She goes away and the skinny manager-lady starts gesticulating at me from behind the bar, pointing the soda-gun at me and shaking it. "This good!" she says angrily. "Nothing wrong! Good Coke!" She's not smiling, and her body is rigid. Her lips are drawn taut across her teeth in a sneer.

"Not good Coke," I say. "But I don't want to argue. I just want a ginger ale."

"This good Coke! Nothing wrong!" she insists, loudly, from across the restaurant.

"The Coke is fucked up," mumbles one of the sushi chefs behind the sushi bar.

My food comes and my order is wrong. I tell my waitress I wrote down a spicy tuna handroll and a tuna/avocado maki roll, and that she's delivered a spicy tuna handroll and a spicy tuna/avocado maki roll. I see the manager-lady shaking her head from across the bar. The waitress just looks at me with a little smile, as if to say, "I'll stand here all day, but that's all you're getting, mister."

I eat my wrong roll. I sip on my flat ginger ale, which has been placed alongside two bad attempts at Coke, left there perhaps to remind me that I'm a picky asshole.

I sign the $35 bill and figure out why this place is always empty.

ME NO LIKE HILLARY EITHER: I'm half-pleased with something I wrote in Just Procrastinating's comment feature:

Hillary is flat-out tone deaf to her own vocal presence. She's awful, frowny, and awkward, as if she were being maneuvered by an arthritic puppeteer and voiced by a non-native speaker who's mastered pronunciation but not inflection...

Sometimes I get very attached to my own perceived/imaginary cleverness.

LET'S NOT PRETEND KERRY IS A GOOD SPEAKER: I only saw clips from the Kerry speech last night. (I was flying back from Dallas and only arrived home near the end.) I rewound our Tivo and caught some of it until my wife made me switch to the local news. Then they played five or so clips. Then I caught some more this morning.

I'm not going to base my vote on a speech. But boy was that a dud. Kerry was sweaty, rushed, and unconvincing. A stellar orator he is not. Of course Bush is no Martin Luther King Jr. himself. Still, I was shocked to hear people saying he gave "the speech of his life." I mean, c'mon. I may vote for him, but he was abysmal. Gore had more charisma.

All I kept thinking was, Boy is this whole thing hokey. Can the chorus of "help is on the way," take off your funny hats, and just distribute a one-sided, bullet-pointed sheet of where you are on the issues, who's endorsing you, etc. If generals endorse you, great. If fat ladies in silly hats cheer you, no big whoop.

So I guess I'm burned out on the Dem convention. And the only reason I'm looking forward to the Republicans' event -- well, wait, there are two reasons:

1. Wanna see McCain speak. He's always great.
2. Wanna see W. speak. He's always entertaining, if only 'cause his style is not unlike a drunk on a tightrope in his boxer shorts, not aware he's drunk, not aware he's on a tightrope, and not aware we can see his balls from where we're sitting.

CALL ME A SUCKER FOR CONVENTION RHETORIC: This time from a Dallas airport lounge...

Okay, so now I'm listing Kerryward. An e-mail to Andrew Sullivan summarizes my feelings nicely. An excerpt:

"I'm a social libertarian, fiscally conservative, hawk -- an eagle, in your lexicon. In the past, I've been willing to give Democrats a chance. I voted for Clinton in 1992, although I soon regretted it. Since 9/11, I've morphed into a one-issue voter -- the war on terrorism, at home and abroad. And until recently, my efforts to be open to John Kerry ran aground whenever I considered who the terrorists would rather see elected. And my anxiety only intensified after recent reports on pre-election terrorism attacks. Surely the terrorists' rationale for such attacks would be to help elect Kerry, a la Spain. I'm not sure American voters would react the way Spaniards did, but the terrorists may not appreciate the resolve of the American heartland.But if the terrorists were listening to Edwards last night, and Obama the night before, they may be second-guessing their plans. If the Kerry camp's war rhetoric is in earnest (and there are good reasons to doubt it), then the terrorists may not get the easier ride they were strategizing for."

Go read the whole thing. Well worth it. Bottom line is if I believed Kerry was every bit as hawkish on terror as Bush (just smarter), and if I believed Kerry favored personal responsibility and accountabilty over government subsidy/assistance, then he's my guy. He's obviously smarter, more courageous, and more qualified than our current president.

One thing that still pisses me off are the literal nobs who keep acting as if Bush is some sort of evil genius (even as they call him an idiot), some kind of grand-plan conspiracy master who's managed to create a profitable new chaos for himself and his best pals the Bin Ladens.

So even though I may -- MAY -- vote Kerry, I'll still think Michael Moore is just as big, fat and idiotic as Rush Limbaugh, and that the Hollyweird liberal set (for which Timothy Robbins and Sean Penn have become poster boys) are pompous poopheads.

Oh, and liked that spiked Ann Coulter column, even though I'm generally no fan of hers. Go figure.

WHERE I BE? I was at my 20th high school reunion over the long weekend. So much to process and maybe even post about. But just thought I should let my few faithful readers know why I've been quiet for the past few days. More from the road on the 'morrow, as my week launches off to the Big Apple and the Big D. See you back here soon...

NEVER BE IDLE: Oh, great. So in-flight cell phones are just over the horizon. Before long it'll be normal to e-mail, call, and just generally be productive on the flight. Joy.

What's next? Stair-steppers attached to the barber chair? Laptops embedded under massage tables? Constant productivity is way overrated.

RECALLING THE WHITE FLAG: Okay, so I don't give up on the Cubs. I take it back. But man-oh-man were they embarassing yesterday. I was so thrilled to see them put eight runs on Matt Morris early...and then I sat there in disbelief as they found various ways the rest of the game to play bad and look worse, resulting in a backbreaking loss.

Still, there was that little glimmer in the ninth where I sensed they just might come back. And so I started feeling bad about my post, my early white flag. Thing is this team is still dead-center in the wildcard race, still a formidable club that can beat anyone on any given day.

So now I'm looking for Hendry to make a deal. We need a shortstop and some bullpen help, for sure. We could probably use another super-sub, given that Hollandsworth may be out for a while and Aramis is a gimp. C'mon, Hendry. Nose back to grindstone. Phone to shoulder. I promise not to give up if you don't.

Meanwhile, it's time to see some character from this team. No more temper tantrums. No more excuses. Let's see how big a dent we can put into St. Looey's 10-game lead. Let's see how quickly we can lock up the wildcard. And let's see a chance for vengeance against those Cardinals in the playoffs. Heck, screw vengeance. Let's redeem ourselves, earn back some of the respect that was handed away in the past 48 hours.

I AM A BIG SUCKER: The Cubs have totally self-destructed in the past 24 hours. Miserable. Is it hockey season yet?
 
Thank God NASCAR revs it up again this weekend. I need a diversion.

SEMANTICS: I agree with Schwarzenegger, although I don't think he should have used the term "girly men." "Great big pussies" might have been more apt.

CYBER-SISTERS AND ME: I guess I disagree pretty evenly with BOTH of my sisters-in-law from time to time. Still, they're both great people, both interesting and smart. All the Hess boys have been lucky in love.
 
One of the sisters-in-law, Paula, writes phaneromania, among other things. The other, Laurel, is a frequent Blind Camel reader and commenter, and now she's started to do the same on Paula's blog. Right now, we're all weighing in on a discussion of fraternity/sorority life, pro and con, etc. A pretty amazing thing that we can have this conversation in this way...

BLOGGER BETTER: Looks like Blogger has really improved the "Edit Posting" interface, with all manner of easy, training-wheels tags for losers like me. Check it out:

"This is a blockquote."
- Scott Hess

 
You can also do colors...
 

BLAH BLAH BLAH: I got to hang out in the pits and the garages at the Chicagoland Speedway, in advance of last Saturday's Tropicana 400 (NASCAR) race. I met and shook hands with my favorite driver, Jimmy Johnson, and I stood about a foot away from most of the cars that would later hurtle around the track at around 200 MPH. Then I watched the race itself from a corporate box above the start/finish line, and I won $250 in a pick-the-winner pool. (I blindly drew race winner and controversy-hound Tony Stewart.)

I spent Monday and Tuesday in the Pacific Northwest, nestled in amidst mountains and tall trees. Oh, and there's water flowing here, there, and everywhere. Very pretty.

Yesterday I flew first class back from Seattle and sat next to a young, smart United pilot. He answered a bunch of my dumb questions about flying, and he told me turbulence to a pilot is just like waves to a guy driving a boat: no big deal, just something you have to maneuver through. He made several analogies between air and water, and said driving a plane is also alot like driving a submarine. Anyway, for this nervous flyer, it was a big help to hear from a guy who lives half his life aloft.

What else? I'm glad Bush's gay-marriage amendment got smashed. I'm glad Tony Blair is off the hook in the UK, just as Bush is (or should be) here. (I'm referring to the two recent intelligence inquiries that found that the pre-war intelligence was faulty, not the leaders' judgement.) Neither one of these guys acted recklessly in sending troops to oust Hussein. That's my view and I'm sticking with it. I think the two inquiries support that view.

I listened to the Smiths "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" in the car today, and I laughed out loud. "I was looking for a job and then I found a job/And heaven knows I'm miserable now." Indeed!

LIVE FROM SOFTWARE CENTRAL: Little to say today, save for the fact that, ironically, I'm on via dialup from Bellevue, WA, just a short jaunt away from the software capitol of the world: Redmond.

Some of my stress fell away yesterday, and some of it lingers. I've had the good sense to go running each of the last two mornings, and it's true there's no substitute for exercise when you need to clear a cloudy mind. Still, what's plaguing me is more central, the question of how to spend my fleeting life and time. I have the best job I've ever had, in many respects, and still I'm not very happy. The good news is I can see the solution...now it's just a matter of enacting it.

Sucks to have to have this blog be so veiled, eh? I've never been as good with the reckless public disclosure stuff as some of my blogging brethren. For better and for worse, I'm sure.

LIVE FROM LUMBER COUNTRY: Online from Portland (Oregon) today. Have been re-learning lessons about stress and how it can manifest itself in a million different ways. More on that when I have a free moment. In the meantime, let me simply note that it's awfully pretty out here this time of year. My view is framed by mountains and washed in green, gold, and a sleepy brown.

VOICE OF REASON? Am listening to a CNN press conference about the Senate Intelligence Committee report on WMD in Iraq and am struck by how impressive and reasonable the committee chair, Kansas senator Pat Roberts, comes across. He's old and not especially telegenic...but he seems "presidential" as hell. I'm gonna keep my eye on the guy. Maybe he actually favors stem-cell research and same-sex marriage.

A BETTER MAC ATTACK: Here's a better evaluation of what's wrong with the Mac show.

STINKERMAN: Hit the 12:01AM showing of Will Ferrell's new ANCHORMAN tonight (this morning) across the street from the hotel. Sadly, it was just as I suspected. More dumb than funny. Sure, there are some moments. I'm too tired to recount them. Before I retire, though, it's my duty to tell you this: Wait for HBO, or at the very least, BLOCKBUSTER. This is lighter fare than even ELF or OLD SCHOOL. This ninety-minute movie had less big belly laughs than a single SNL skit. A few good sight gags and cameos, a couple funny facial expressions and ad-libbed lines, but in general a sprawling mess of a costume comedy stretched three times too long.

MAC IS BACK AND STILL SUCKS: The second night of MCENROE was nearly as awful as the first. Mac seems to be scolding more than hosting the show. Somehow he turned telling Ralph Nader that he'd voted for him in the last election into a harangue, and he made it seem like Nader was only there to hawk his book. (Mac would grudgingly wave it around at odd intervals.)

Next came the ridiculous Lars and James from Metallica. Lars is about 5'2" and extra dorky, hardly the brooding, intense rock drummer of legend. And James is a gangly lerch, sort of like a stretched-out Jeff Bagwell with an extra helping of self-consciousness. They were shilling for their documentary, which came across as unwittingly comical (a sort of real-life SPINAL TAP), when they seemed to be aiming for poignant.

Finally Mac grumped at Karch Kiraly, the aging beach volleyballer. It was a mess. A mess, I tell you.

ONE SHINING MOMENT: Okay, there was one highlight on the miserable MCENROE debut last night. Asked to explain how he's managed to stay in such good shape all these years, Sting thought about it and replied: "Vanity."

Of course that didn't make up for the "it can't get any worse -- oh no, it's getting worse" nature of the rest of the show. The finale -- Johnny Mac playing audibly poor guitar (for gosh sakes, if he sucks just turn him down! worked for Bob Weir) backing his wife -- was creepy, awkward, and hard to watch. As the credits rolled to the strains of "Goodbye to You" (with Sting attempted to lend ear-cupped backing vocals) one could hardly muster anything but sympathy for the tennis brat and his television brethren.

THIS SHOW CANNOT BE SERIOUS: Am about twenty minutes into watching the trainwreck that is the MCENROE show on CNBC. Although I've been a McEnroe fan over the years, there's no denying he's more wooden than Trump, more awkward than Chevy, and more impatient than...well, I mean, his timing is horrendous. He's almost annoyed at the audience as they clap and laugh at Will Ferrell. Johnny Mac is so unfunny and uncomfortable he's almost destroying Ferrell's dead-center comedic genius. Unreal.

FROM A GARDEN STATE STARBUCKS: More randomness from the road, maybe this time on men and male friends and such. Because when it's time for a husband to fall apart a little bit, to be uncertain or stressed, to seem less than powerful, to spend a moment outside the bounds of traditional masculinity -- and let's say the husband is just tired, has spent too much time on the road, has spent too little time sleeping, and is finding his brain so fully occupied by work so as to squeeze out the other more important stuff -- who is he to turn to? I'd argue he shouldn't turn to his pregnant wife. I'd argue she has enough on her mind, that she looks to her husband for power and certitude and will be uncomfortable seeing him a mess.

And thus the need for strong male friendships, for having guy friends who will listen to and allow your gripes and doubts, and who will reveal their own.

But who has time for friends?

Something's not entirely right with this equation. Love the job, hate the lifestyle. Something's gotta give, and rather than writing about it here I need to be talking about it in a concrete building in Northbrook, Illinois.

Read this post now and fast, 'cause it's probably coming down sometime soon.

WHAT YOU TALKIN' BOUT, CAMEL? No, Morgan, I didn't spend the weekend in the Denver airport lounge.

Instead it was a whirlwind weekend, with family in from the Detroit-ish area and all manner of outbound events (the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago Botanic Garden, a mom-mandated trip to Chipotle, etc.) on our schedule (pronounced "shed-yule").

Don't know where to start so I'll just start...

Woke up sweaty at 4AM...actually, wait...went to bed at an unchacteristically early 9:30PM last night and, given my current work schedule and recent habit of late nights and early flights (wow, that would be a great yuppie album title: LATE NIGHTS AND EARLY FLIGHTS), woke up sweaty and ready to work at 1:15AM. (Another great yuppie record title: SWEATY AND READY TO WORK; could also work as a porno title.)

So at 1AMish my dog Vladi was conducting his nightly toe-nail-noisy shuffle from the bathroom tiles onto the hardwood and then plopping onto his understuffed bed with a leaky sigh. I knew how he felt. My lower back was sore from doing basically nothing but living, I was sweaty from humidity and a 12-hour decongestant, and I was running through my upcoming itineraries and deadlines in my brain. Somehow I drifted off again into a sweaty dreamscape for another three hours or so, but at 4AM I knew there were no more slumbers coming for this blogger. I adjourned to my study, checked the weather and sunrise time on my computer (this despite the fact I'm an avowed non weather-checker), then set off for an hour walk-jog around my little corner of Chicago.

I thought of a David Eggers piece I read yesterday in SPIN, a sort of celebration of the band Big Country, especially their album THE CROSSING. And I remembered thinking, as I read it, that Eggers is not a better writer than me (okay, okay, feel free to pot-shot me here and now, readers), but that he's just more fearless and honest. Celebrating Big Country, a band most take for one-hit wonders! What stones, I thought as I came across the article. This Eggers will write about anything.

And then I read it and I know he's right, he's right, and I start mentally digging for my Big Country discs, all part of the Great Unwashed Music Pile (GUMP) that litters my study and the basement and my car's trunk, so much so that I've considered hiring someone to sort through and re-case and re-file all my wayward music. I come across the song "In a Big Country" on my wife's 80's disc as I drove home last night, and it is almost too poignant to be true: "I'm not expecting to grow flowers in a desert, but I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime." Amen, Stuart.

So many other things came to me, visited me on my walk, to the extent that I remembered thinking on some earlier walk that I should never be walkless again, because walks are when my brain has a chance to defragment, to clean up lost clusters and/or find new hard disk space for future memories.

Bought two new discs last night (and I thought this morning about the phrase "chasing the dragon," meant to describe how drug addicts [especially crackheads] are constantly re-seeking that high, the feeling, trying to "get normal" by catching the dragon's tail [you know, the firebreather, the crack pipe] just one more time, and I thought how that's sort of like how I buy records and books, hoping that maybe just one of them will hit just the right note, get me off the consumption treadmill, answer The Question), the new one from The Cure and then a new one from some group called PepLab. And the first sounds like it should and will hopefully grow on me, but the second is just a full-on dance party right out of the box, what the label sticker describes as Rick James meets Crystal Method. It fulfills the "soundtrack for a big black car" requirement, music that complements the leather seats and the lightly tinted windows and my chin-down driving style. In the words of Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington, it's music that has a certain "Hi there" quality.

My two-year-old son answers the following questions expertly:

Q: What does Ed McMahon say?
A: Hi-O!

Q: What does Hank Kingsley say?
A: Hey now!

Q: What does Fonzie say?
A: Aaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!

Q: What does Mork from Ork say?
A: Shazbat.

Q: What does Gary Coleman say?
A: What you talking 'bout Willis?

LINGERING IN THE LOUNGE: Chillin' in the Denver airport Red Carpet Club, eating mini-bagels schmeared with mixed fruit spread. I'm just about the only guy in here, and I can't help but think this might be a good place for a vacation. Although there's not much to eat, there are current newspapers, a bar, TVs everywhere, wireless Internet, etc. They should sell memberships to stressed parents. You get a babysitter, stash some take-out in some luggage, and head over to the Red Carpet Club during off-hours. It's like a little oasis of calm...and the fact that it's plopped into the middle of a bustling airport makes that calm all the more exquisite.

BLATHER: Was planning on an 8:00AM flight to BWI this morning, so I had a cab scheduled for 6:15. He showed up early, traffic was nil, and I breezed through security...and jumped on a 6:35 flight. Awesome ease! So now I'm in Baltimore six hours early. Maybe I'll head over the local Starbucks and do wireless from there. This hotel room is freezing.

GET BACK IN THE ARMY! I remember the Bushies telling us that maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq at the same time would not strech the military too thin. This article says otherwise. Good gracious. Ugh. I have never felt so torn before an election.

MIRA'S MESSY MAN: What is it about the "dirty elf" look that chicks dig? Little head, stubble, bizarre hat and/or shaggy hair-do...ala Johnny Depp, Hayden Christiansen, Orlando Bloom, and now this guy? Come to think of it, Justin Timberlake kinda has that dirty elf vibe, too.

OUR BLOGS COULD BE YOUR LIFE: So now Blind Camel regular Trisha has a blog, too, and I see that yesterday's hero Morgan Worth is already commenting there. Maybe Blind Camel can be the Velvet Underground of blogs, the blog that launched a thousand blogs...

Or maybe it's more like the Grow Bugs of blogs, which was a really bad band I was in in college that played mostly covers and had more to do with parties than it did with music. Alas...

BTW, Trisha's blog is called the least of my worries, but it's hosted at netsmarts.net. Which leads me to this Gary Colemanesque query:

What you talkin' bout, Trisha?

Oh, and there's this, too:

My sister-in-law (and stealth Blind Camel reader) Paula also has a new blog, called phaneromania. It's quite nice, and y'all should check it out, too, whilst you're just procrastinating.

LADIES LAST: I like etiquette, doing the right things socially so that you don't look like a simp. I do. Sure, in our liberated world, where guys and gals are working side-by-side and nobody wants to be politically incorrect, it can be tough to do the right thing. Sometimes it's best just to pretend we're all gender-neutral action figures. But most of the time I still try to use the classic "Miss Manners" protocol, and I find I'm one of the only people left in the world that knows the real "rules."

One thing that really bugs me is elevator etiquette. The right way to do it? Guy gets in first, holds the door for the ladies, presses the appropriate floor for them. Guy moves to the back of the elevator so the ladies can get out first. Does it usually go down like that? Nope.

Just this morning at my building some guy dramatically steps back to let some ladies in first. I happened to be close to the elevator, and I happened to know the PROPER etiquette, so I jumped onboard and held the door...and got a dirty look from the guy and the ladies. Hello!?

The other one that always bugs me is the revolving door thing. Guys are supposed to enter revolving doors first, pushing the door around for the ladies. But everytime I step into the revolver first (in mixed company) it seems like I get all manner of ugly stares from men and women alike.

I'd like to buy billboards in every major city, or a Super Bowl ad, or something, so I could just blast the truth out there:

Polite guys get in elevators and revolving doors first! Dumb guys stand back and let the ladies in! Duh!

HE IS SPUDBOY, HEAR HIM ROAR: My old pal Morgan Worth has a cool blog you should wander by: Swallow Everything. Check it out. When you're reading him, bear in mind that he's a long tall drink o'water with big eyes and an infectious enthusiasm. Cheers to Morgan!

ABSOLUTELY GREAT READ: Am just about to finish David Lipsky's wonderful ABSOLUTELY AMERICAN, an apolitical account of a class's four-year trek through West Point. Believe it or not, the book grew out of a piece the Army itself pitched to Rolling Stone magazine, and editor/icon Jann Wenner originally envisioned it as a hatchet piece on the military. Instead, Lipsky, a self-confessed military doubter, penned what is at the very least a tribute to the men and women he more or less lives with for four years, and may even be a tribute to the military system in which they live and prosper. A tremendous book, a real page-turner of a nonfiction work. (An illuminating interview with Lipsky is here. Interviewer Dave Weich agrees that the book is an amazingly clear-eyed account of of a loaded subject. He writes, "Again, I come back to the absence of a loaded political agenda in the book. In that sense, it's very different from most of what gets published and promoted today. So much of what we see, or so much of what sells, is either Ann Coulter or Michael Moore. You know what you're going to hear before you even open the cover. Instead, Absolutely American is a story about people and values and commitment.")

THE REAGAN LEGACY? I'm in a San Diego hotel room listening to Ron Reagan on Larry King. He's carefully unpacking the idiocy behind the Bush administration's ban on stem cell research. He's very compelling and likeable. In fact, I'd say he's done more to sway me towards Kerry than anyone else. Ironic, eh?

HITCHENS 1, MOORE 0: Please to be checking out Christopher Hitchens' marvelous disembowelment of Michael Moore. For some sick reason I'd love to see the two old wheezers in a real live slugfest sometime.

SNOOZEAPALOOZA: I'm with independent concert promoter Seth Hurwitz, as quoted in the New York Times story on the cancellation of Lollapalooza. In real estate, the mantra is location location location. For big festivals, it's about lineup lineup lineup.

The reason this year's festival couldn't motivate people to buy tickets was its limp lineup. Morrissey's new record flat-out blows, and Sonic Youth are the most boring wankfest of a band since the Godchaux-era Grateful Dead. P.J. Harvey is a critic's darling but has never been a big draw (literary pretensions, no hooks? small crowds). Modest Mouse's Isaac whatever-his-name-is yells too much, and them Flaming Lips dudes make good studio records but bad live performers.

Plus, c'mon...after a decade of these megaconcerts, most of us have learned that standing outside all day in some corporate shed is about as much fun as working at Taco Bell with a keg-beer hangover.

HOWDY: I've gone quiet of late because I've been traveling -- Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, and Miami in the last ten days or so -- and because I've felt I have nothing to say.

Today was dull, but then tonight got better.

The rain stopped as I pulled up in front of my house and the sun extemporaneously warmed the soggy green canopy that is my street. The air rippled with humidity and lurid photosynthesizing, and the smell of damp chlorophyll rose from thousands of sated plant forms...

Etcetera. It was nice.

Now my ten-year-old Airedale Terrier, Vladi, is spread-eagled on the bathroom tile, flatulent and twitchy. I've just drank two cans of Schlitz while watching a Shane MacGowan documentary, and I set my cab pickup for 6:10AM -- or "six-tan-yam" as the Southern dispatcher pronounced it. It's time for bed, but I felt I needed to break my silence here. More from San Diego tomorrow. I'm there the next couple days.

ADVENTURES IN MARRIAGE: When you marry a guy named after a gun and his only file photo shows him with a bandana drawn gang-style across his face...well, I'm not saying you get what you deserve, but you gotta know he ain't gonna be Ward Cleaver.

TODAY: I'm camped out in the LAX Hilton lobby for the next several hours, then doing some focus groups, then catching a late flight over to Vegas for the weekend. This lobby is bustling with international flight crews. What a subculture! A whole lot of jet-setting young people eyeing one another and speaking with funny accents. Meanwhile I'm trying to stay awake, not eat too many pretzels, and imagine myself staying up past midnight at the blackjack table.

RALL RAILS AGAINST REAGAN: I find Ted Rall so loathsome I can barely stand it. It's to the point that I'll never get his message because the messenger is such a putz.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT, LESSON #371: Avoid suing your customers, if at all possible.

J. WHO? I wouldn't admit it either.

TOUGH MORNING: It starts with me having my umpteenth high school reunion dream. This time it focuses on my Ohio reunion, although a week or so ago it was about my Michigan reunion. (I did two years at each high school. My 20th reunions for both schools are in the next couple months, and I'm planning to attend both.)

In the dream I come upon a table of people I knew in high school, although not necessarily friends of mine. I recognize them all, greeting them by name and/or nickname, but none of them seem to recognize me. One of them, a guy who wasn't even in my class, gives me a book he's written. All of a sudden it starts to beep, startling me. They all laugh.

"There's an alarm built into the book," one guy explains through chuckles.

I realize I'm dreaming, and slowly it dawns on me that my alarm is going off on the nightstand next to my head. I swat it off. My wife wakes up and gives me a dark look.

"I dreamed you left me for a guy at my office," she tells me, deadpan.

"I would never leave you for a guy," I tell her. "Especially not a guy from the insurance industry."

Ewww.

I pull on some running clothes, grab some jeans and a t-shirt, and speed down to my car. If I get on the highway by 6:30, I'll miss the morning rush and be out at the Chicago Botanic Garden by 7:00. Plenty of time for a run, a Starbucks, and a shower.

I get on the highway and pull into dead-stopped traffic. Huh?

It takes me 55 minutes to travel about four miles. The whole trip -- usually a 30-minute proposition at this hour, covering just shy of 20 miles -- takes an hour and a half. As I pull off the highway I realize I've forgotten to bring a towel. I also realize I need to go to the bathroom, and I'm not talking about the old number one. We're talking the deuce here. Serious. As in, "I can't believe I ate a whole grilled portobello mushroom sandwich yesterday," serious.

I drive by the CVS hoping to find a beach towel. Not open for another 15 minutes. Oy vey. Now what? I'm supposed to be at my desk around 8:00, and here it's after 8:00 and I've yet to run or shower or get coffee or do anything, plus Nature has gone from tapping on my shoulder to grabbing me by the arm and tugging.

I race over to the Botanic Garden and take care of business in the lovely main building. Then I say what-the-hey and have a great run, weaving my way through the Japanese Garden and through the Prairie and around the lake. I jog back to the car and make for CVS. Three beach towels for ten bucks. Perfect. I hit the Starbucks, cruise to my building, spill coffee in my lap, rush through a shower, and make it up to my desk by 9:30. What the heck, I think. All is not lost. I had a good run. I feel refreshed. I count my change from CVS and notice the clerk has charged me $18 for the three towels. I wonder what's next.

I write it all down in this post.

LAUGHING AT OUR DIFFERENCES: One of the reasons I like Howard Stern is that he shows how it's possible for different races and sexual orientations to get along with each other while still enjoying the richness of our differences. You could say he demonstrates his respect for black people or gay people by refusing to tiptoe around stereotypes and refusing to camouflage his own biases and prejudices. He acknowledges that the topics of race and sexual orientation can make us uncomfortable, and yet he's courageous enough to dance through these dual minefields rather than tiptoe. And, if you listen to the show, most of his minority listeners and guests seem to love him for it.

(On the other hand, for what it's worth, I think much of his ridicule of handicapped folks -- whether they're mentally or physically challenged -- can veer off course and become plain old cruelty.)

I just ran across a fun exchange in my personal life that reminded me of the best of the Stern approach.

One of my best friends is engaged to a black woman. (He's a white guy.)

We were organizing a Belmont pool, betting on the race, and his girlfriend wanted in it. We had three horses apiece for three guys, so the math didn't work out. She was all bent out of shape.

"Why can't I be in?" I heard her begging in the background of the phone call. "Is it because I'm a woman?"

"No," he replied. "It's because you're black. This pool is whites only."

If we could all make these kinds of jokes with one another, the world would be a better place.

FOUR MORE YEARS: As much as I go on about Bush 43 here, if Slick Willie were to run again I'd vote for him in a second. I got so tickled reading this quick news piece about the kickoff of his MY LIFE book tour, I was grinning ear to ear. Here's a favorite quote from the article:

"A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving," the two-term president told a booksellers convention. "I hope mine is interesting and self-serving."

This guy may be far from perfect, and he may have told a few fibs in his day, but at bottom I think I admire him for his honesty. Go figure.

GABBA GABBA GOP: Turns out there's at least one cool Republican.

ACCIDENTAL POETRY: My friend Trisha sent me a picture of her son Robbie. He looks very cute, as I told her in my reply. Her response struck me as an (inadvertent) great poem, and so I've formatted it appropriately:

ALWAYS MORE LOVE
He said Mommy yesterday.
I could not love him more.
Ooops, I do.
I do again.

THE ZENMASTER DOES BAGHDAD: My pal Rob looks at the picture (below) of new Iraqi president Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer standing in front of a portrait of the slain chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Saleem, and comes up with the quip of the week:

"Why is there a huge picture of Phil Jackson in the background? I hope they vote for him. He really knows how to build a dynasty."

STERN SOFTENING? As I've mentioned, I have terrible mixed emotions about Howard Stern. On the one hand, he's sometimes so breathtakingly funny that I find myself tuning in and hoping for one of those moments. On the other hand, he can be be so heartless and cruel that I feel dirty and wrong for listening.

Some of my favorite things about Howard are that he spotlights the hyocrisy and/or self-importance of celebrities, that he's willing to say something sucks if it sucks, and that he seems to speak his own mind no matter what the consequences. But some of his recent choices suggest this devil-may-care attitude, his me-against-the-system veneer may be on the fade. Today, he ass-kissed the reunited Wilson Phillips on the air. And a few weeks ago he gave the same treatment to Alanis Morrisette. What's next, a tribute to Phil Collins?

NOT TO MENTION MY FRIENDS BEN & JERRY: Maybe I can blame those ten extra pounds in the past year on my commute.

BADONNA: The Canadian National Post points out how lame Madonna is.

SPORTING LIFE: Just as my NEW YORKER subscription is about to run out...and just as I'm seriously contemplating *letting it* run out for the first time in maybe six or seven years, they hit me with Ben McGrath's excellent "Project Knuckleball," a meandering examination of the flutterball pitch and the hurlers who live by it. It's a great read if you have a moment (and if you have even a passing interest in sport). As a sports misfit myself (I was a soccer goalie and a breaststroker, both specialties that have long-standing associations with mental imbalance), I found myself dying to go out and perfect my own ghostball. If only I had somebody to throw the ball with. I'm working with my two-year-old on this, but thus far he's much more interested in "backerd" throws than in hitting Daddy in the hands.

(When I saw the Ben McGrath byline on the knuckleball piece it gave me pause at first. Luckily a quick Amazon.com search revealed that the pause-inspiring writer is actually Ben Marcus, the guy who's responsible for one of the most useless novels I've come across in this or any other decade, the appropriately titled po-mo wank-job that is SUPERBAD. Steer clear of Mr. Marcus or, if you like him, please to be explaining to me why.)

In the past couple years, I've found myself investing more time in two seemingly different sports: NASCAR and baseball. NASCAR is my new interest, born of a "just for laughs" fantasy league that, in stealth mode, ignited my passion for redneck racin'. The dynamic nature of the sport -- an entirely new event each weekend, new track, new strategy, new alliances and enemies -- really works for me, as does its inherent patriotism and aw-shucks humility. I thrilled to the 3-D NASCAR IMAX movie on its opening weekend, and I devoured the insider account MEN AND SPEED on a recent vacation.

If NASCAR is my new love, baseball is like a first girlfriend who, after losing track of her, shows up on your doorstep in her same old sundress, the years having done nothing but add magic to her smile. After a few strikes (as in 'work stoppages', not dead-center pitches), I had sort of given up on baseball, had stopped following the free-agent signings and the latest sensations. After realignment, I'd even lost track of which team went where.

But I found I couldn't boycott baseball; it was already too deep in me. I found myself imagining my old baseball cards -- the Ron Santo TRADED card, the way Milt May held the bat like a toothpick, the snapshot of the knuckleballer Wilbur Wood with a dozen fish on a stringer, the sheer gleaming mass of men like George Scott and Willie Stargell, the insouciant leer of the young Dusty Baker. I remembered hearing Jack Brickhouse's "Hey, hey!" and later Harry Caray's malaprops and "Holy Cow" and "Vizza-kye-EE-no!" And over the past two seasons, as my Cubs regained some measure of competitiveness, I jumped back in with both feet. Earlier this year Michael Lewis' excellent MONEYBALL offered me another entry point into the game, showing how my current vocation (research) is changing the game of baseball in grand and subtle ways.

With baseball and NASCAR alike, the more knowledge I gain the more fun it is to watch cars going around in circles and frustrated jocks taking miserable swipes at fluttering ghostballs for three hours at a stretch. What looks slow to some feels exquisite to the initiated. Trust me.

(UPDATE: A quick Googling reveals a cool old Chicago Trib piece on the knuckler, complete with a handy little animated GIF on how to throw it.)

MCMAHON/CARSON: This CBS News poll shows that a Kerry/McCain ticket runs a great chance of beating Bush/Cheney. (Adding McCain to the ticket doubles Kerry's chances of winning.) I know this holds true for me -- you add McCain, and I'm on board. But I keep thinking: Shouldn't it be McCain/Kerry? I mean, Kerry/McCain is too much like Barney and Fred to me. The wrong guy gets top billing.

MAKE IT HAPPEN AND ROLL OUT: My brother Eric forwards me this link to Snoop Dogg holding forth on an unlikely subject: Ivan Lendl. Love it.

QUICK HITS: A few interesting things you should be aware of out there:

- Snoop Dogg is getting divorced. Hey, who knew he was married? Somehow I thought making porno movies in your background suggested you weren't yet promised to anyone. Go figure. (Very funny article, by the way. Hat tip to Just Procrastinating for the link.)

- Apparently Bill Cosby is a pretty decent guy. This I'm not surprised by.

- Two different guys gripe about Michael Moore. Apparently he's not such a decent guy. Also no big surprise. Here's the first guy...and the second.

- Is it just me, or do the summer megaconcerts sound like torture? Madonna, for the love of all that is holy, please hang up your pointy bra. Your act is not just tired, it's embarassing. Check out Michael Ventre's light and funny piece on the summer's biggest and dumbest tours.

KNEEJERK RESPONSE AFTER READING A VERY LONG ARTICLE: Wesley Clark for President. (I mean, let's face it: Do you really think W. is capable of contrasting post-Ottoman state socialism with the emergence of Balkan democracies? I wasn't a big Gore fan, but I justified my Gore vote last time around by saying I couldn't vote for a dummy for president. But then came that whole election debacle, and by the time W. was shoehorned into office I was pretty much politic-ed out. Fine, W., you be president. Go ahead, I thought. Who cares? But then the terrorists reminded me that, when bad guys say they're going to kill you, you owe it to yourself to care...and to kick them in the jimmy preemptively. And all of a sudden W. emerged as a first-rate preemptive jimmy-kicker. All of which has had me tilting into W.'s arms for the past coupla years. But then I read Clark's seemingly cogent, insightful analysis, bookened by all manner of war atrocities and bike wrecks, and I'm reminded that a U.S. President oughta have some sense of history to go along with his intuitive understanding of human nature and ultra-low heartbeat. Oh, and he should be smart, too. Right?)

THAT'S WHAT I GET FOR ACTUALLY BUYING MUSIC: Buzzed past Best Buy last week to pick up recent releases from two of my favorite artists, Morrissey and Lloyd Cole. Yes, I'm a child of the eighties. Lloyd has made a few good ones in a row, especially that last one with The Negatives, and Morrissey has this whole massive media push behind him again, so I was nothing if not optimistic about both records. Sadly, five or so days later, I'm not feeling great about either record. The unformed sense that keeps playing in my head is that both guys have come to understand their own brands so well -- Morrissey is the petulant, almost bitchy ne'er-be-happy, and Lloyd is the hopeless romantic with a taste for poetry and red wine -- they almost sound like they're covering themselves.

The production on the Morrissey record is uneven, with one song sounding bright and treble-soaked and the next one awash in guitars and blurry, compressed midrange. Oh, and I can't say I care how Moz feels about American politics, so there's that. He says something like "until the president of the United States is Black or Hispanic or Gay you've got nothing to say to me." Okay, great. Forget about democracy, we'll just appoint a deserving minority. Thanks, Mo!

The Lloyd record is, in a word, subdued. His vocal range seems to have been reduced to four or five notes, and where there was once a kind of piss-and-vinegar attitude we're now left with something more like salad dressing, nicely blended but not so special as a standalone item.

I'm hopeful the new Bee Gees compilation, purchased on the same trip, will deliver more bang for my music-buying buck.

ON DADHOOD: I've been thinking a lot about fathers and fatherhood of late, which is appropriate since Father's Day is just around the corner.

In a perfect world (or in a major magazine that paid me to do so) I'd write a coherent essay about fatherhood, the various aspects of it that have been swirling around in my brain. But this world is not perfect, I'm sad to report, and so I'll just write aimlessly here on my blog.

(Sigh.)

I saw Moises Alou, he of hand-peeing fame, hit a walk-off home run to beat his father Felipe's S.F. Giants last night. I saw it in-person from nine rows behind the Giants' dugout, thanks to a very good pal with great tickets. Wow, I thought afterwards. Felipe Alou changed pitchers to try and beat his son. He obviously spent time with the new pitcher discussing how best to beat Moises, which weaknesses to exploit. And still, on this night, the son not only bested the father, but he did it in dramatic fashion, the ultimate "You are not the boss of me" blast slicing the night and sending a packed house spilling into the beer gardens of Wrigleyville. How cool for Moises! And, I wondered, is it really so terrible for Felipe to see his son deliver such a heart-stopping, heroic performance? Nah. Can't be. Somewhere, deep inside perhaps, Felipe Alou was beaming. Had to be! (And Moises had to feel a tinge of sadness, too.)

(Holy crap! As I type this Moises has just swatted another one in today's game, tying it up in the seventh inning! Moises!)

What else? I've been thinking back on an overlooked novel I loved, Jonathan Dee's THE LIBERTY CAMPAIGN, in which a father-son subplot lends poignance to a wonderful story about self-knowledge and male friendships. Great book, and I ought to read it again.

And more...

I thought last night about things my father has given me, the many interests and ideas he's sparked in me and that I've carried on...my love for the city of Chicago, its Cubs and Bears...of mystery novels and reading...my simple personal fashion aesthetic, where navy blue and khaki begin and end my color palette...my desire to coach my son's teams and to be present for his athletic triumphs and travails, ala Moises and Felipe...

And then I get to wondering what part of me will filter through to my son...what will stick...

I could write a million words and (hopefully) never say it any clearer than this: Fatherhood -- parenthood -- has added an extra dimension to my life, a richness that I can't imagine how I ever lived without.

So that's what I've been thinking.

ME AND THE BOY: My brother Casey took this shot (below) with his digital camera. It was a quick thing, not really as posed as it looks, and I think I'm as happy with it as any picture I've ever seen. My son looks so damn adorable to me, and I can even see in myself how thrilled I am to be his dad. (Can you see it?) The picture was taken during our Sanibel vacation, where our extended family came together to check in with one another and to recharge our batteries. Oddly enough my dad thinks I'm nuts for posting pictures of myself on my blog. Perhaps my paternal pride will earn me a free pass on this one.

FAREWELL FELIX: The deaths of TV icons from my youth always make me sad. Today it's Tony Randall. Some interesting notes from his CNN obit:

- His real name was Leonard Rosenberg! No way! Next thing you know we'll find out uberwasp Ralph Lauren is actually Jewish.
- No mention of his very young wife and child. What gives?
- They note his frequent appearances on THE TONIGHT SHOW, but make no mention of his frequent walk-ons to LATE NIGHT. Huh?
- Funny that he played the first openly gay TV lead, was constantly the subject of innuendo about his sexuality, but managed to bag a hot young wife. (Maybe Kevin Spacey will hook up with the post-Andy Mandy Moore and prove everyone wrong.)

UPDATE: Okay, apparently I saw a very early version of the obit this morning. They've now updated it to include wife/children info, the LATE NIGHT link, etc. And to those who've commented/e-mailed about Ralph Lauren...c'mon give me some credit. I was kidding!)

IN BEAVER COUNTRY: I'm in Portland this morning for a meeting. Seems like a nice town, almost like a hipper version of Cincinnati. Maybe it's the mountains that up the hip quotient. Oh, and the hippies. There are a lot of hippies here. Of course hippies up the "fragrance" quotient, too, but you gotta take the good with the bad. There's a "clog superstore" across from my hotel. So either the hippies have a serious foothold here, so to speak, or there are a lot of nurses in this neighborhood.

I'm thinking hippie nurses. Huge clog market!

WHAT I WROTE IN ONE OF THOSE COMP BOOKS YESTERDAY: Still that nagging feeling: Am I doing it right? Is this it?

Nagging, even though I already know the answers...


1) There is no 'right'. And there really isn't any 'I' either.

2) Yes, this is it. Enjoy.

WHAT HAVE I DONE FOR ME LATELY? I got to thinking last night, mulling over the things in my life I'm most proud of. (Maybe I am having a midlife crisis!) My first thoughts were kind of obvious and nice and related (pun intended, and not in any order):

- My son, C.J.
- My marriage to Eileen (nearly 13 years!)
- My relationship with my extended family

Hmmm. Very nice, I thought, but what if I eliminate genetically relevant stuff and just get a little selfish? Stuff I've done, you know?

Here's what came to mind:

- Quitting smoking and dipping
- Completing two AIDS Rides
- Maintaining my friendships

At this point I drew a blank. Sure, there are other things, but many of 'em are so small and seemingly insignificant (coming in second place one year in breaststroke after having to re-swim the finals; finishing my three grad-school applications, even though I didn't get in to any of the programs; etc.) that I'm almost embarassed to list 'em.

Anyhow, this is what I'm thinking about today...achievements...what they are and why they matter.

POSTPONING MY MIDLIFE CRISIS: I turned 38 yesterday. Given that the average life expectancy in the United States is approximately 77 years, you could make the case that I've reached the halfway point of my life, give or take a few years and barring any untimely cancers, car crashes, or incidences of bioterror in my immediate vicinity. In other words, I've successfully reached the mythical "midlife" we hear so much about and, as a result, can expect to be visited by the attendant "crisis" sometime soon.

Somehow I don't think so.

I was talking to my mother yesterday afternoon. She had called to wish me happy birthday and, as we often do when one of notches another year, we got to talking about how old we both are and about the parallels in our lives. And the differences.

As we were talking, I realized that she had given birth to all three of her boys by the age of 31, whereas my wife had our first child at 36 and will be 39 when she delivers our second.

"I was the old lady," my mom told me, recounting a kindergarten parent conference for my youngest brother Casey, eight years my junior. She went on to describe how she sees grey-haired parents chasing toddlers around airports and thinks they look old enough to be grandparents...only to realize they're the same age as her eldest son...grey-haired me.

It seems that my generation -- or at least the urban folks my wife and I live around in Chicago -- are operating six or eight years behind my parents' generation, getting married a bit later and procreating a bit later. (I'm not sure if this applies to our rural contemporaries or not.) Although many journalists are rallying around the phrase "60 is the new 40," I'm starting to think that's wishful thinking. So on the morning after my 38th birthday, after waking up in my contacts after a glorious sushi dinner in the company of dear friends, I've come up with a rallYing cry that feels right for me:

"38 is the new 30."

Which gives me eight more years before I have to start planning my midlife crisis.

COLOR ME DEEP BLUE: Yet another totally frivolous and enjoyable online personality profilers:

you are deepskyblue #00BFFF

Your dominant hues are cyan and blue. You like people and enjoy making friends. You're conservative and like to make sure things make sense before you step into them, especially in relationships. You are curious but respected for your opinions by people who you sometimes wouldn't even suspect. Your saturation level is very high - you are all about getting things done. The world may think you work too hard but you have a lot to show for it, and it keeps you going. You shouldn't be afraid to lead people, because if you're doing it, it'll be done right. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

(I'm a sucker for anything that's about me and positive. Every time I get a favorable fortune cookie I wrestle with the idea of having it framed.)

SURVIVORAMA: Some quick thoughts from last night's SURVIVOR ALL-STARS finale:

- Rupert will walk away with the extra million, but I voted for Colby. The guy deserved it the time he gave it away to Tina, and he was once again awesome on this show. That said, I love Rupert. He's great, too. He's in the now, as they say.

- Sure, the show is manipulative, cheap, etc., but I love it, and I also think it's a great learning/teaching tool. I learned so much about grace under pressure just watching this show. I think stress does reveal peoples' true character. No matter how you slice it, I think Big Tom looks like an idiot. And for all this talk about what a "great girl" Jerri is, two shows' worth of SURVIVOR suggests otherwise.

- I'm definitely with the "it's just a game" crowd. My wife and I sat there and marveled at lecturing Lex and blubbering Big Tom and crying Kathy. (Of course we were also amazed that the clueless ShiAnn actually seemed to *get it* for once.)

- Alicia and Amber look worse in all the makeup. Kathy and Jenna looked much better. Jerri demonstrates how a bad personality can turn a hot girl ugly.

- Most of the contestants looked way hotter to me super-skinny than they do more full of face. I don't know what this says about me or how it relates to the fact that low-calorie diets supposedly help you live longer.

- Jeff Probst is spooky. That shot of him hanging out of the helicopter and then making the "take it down" hand gesture (as if he was in control of the landing) was so over the top I could barely stand it.

- I also agreed strongly with Jenna's admonition to Rob and Amber to stop apologizing and to revel in a job well done.

- Lex seems like a cool guy in so many ways. But the bottom line is he's about a forty-year-old guy with a mohawk, a ton of piercings and tattoos...and undoubtedly some big-ass issues.

WHAT'S A BLOG? I recently told a friend to check out my blog, this Blind Camel thing you're reading right now.

"What's a blog?" asked my friend.

A day later over lunch another friend described his fledgling company's new product, an innovative product for adding relevant advertising (among other things) to RSS- or Atom-enabled (syndicated) blogs.

Two different days, two different friends, two different levels of blog awareness.

Trouble is, sometimes I forget that the mass of folks have more in common with my first friend than my second. If you're reading this blog right now, you're part of a relatively small (albeit growing) group. And if you understood that stuff about syndication, you're breathing still more rareified air.

One recent study reported that 11 percent of Internet users visit blogs written by others, and between two and seven percent of adult Internet users in the U.S. write their own blog. (And of that group, only 10 percent actually update their blog on a daily basis.)

I wonder if that's more or less people than are still buying and reading literary fiction? Poetry?

I betcha more people read blogs than read poetry.

What am I on about today?

Well, I'm in wondering mode. Wondering about how big this blogging phenomenon will get. Wondering about if the metastory about blogging should be more about 'vehicle' than content.

Right now, I'd bet most of us who "blog" and read blogs think of blogging as something largely personal, confessional, homespun, and cute. But what if a blog -- that is, a template-driven, actively updated content experience that typically arises from a singular POV or reason-for being (even if it's created by more than one person) -- is really an early incarnation of next-generation narrowcasting, a sort of Christopher Columbus for exploring how content creators can match up with their audiences and create real and ongoing customer relationships (to use a hackneyed business phrase). In other words, if I'm a big fan of Bob Mould, then maybe I'll want to subscribe to his blog, which will be the central point of distribution for his writing, his music, his merchandise, and the scheduling of his live performances. In other words, Bob's blog (or Andrew Sullivan's or even BlogCritics) will be the nexus at which you can enter into various value exchanges with one another, minus the mediation of a record label, a publisher, etc. Am I making sense? (Perhaps I'm stretching with the BlogCritics cite. When RSS enables you to be your own aggregator, who needs another layer of middleman?)

Our first collective attempt at creating the next generation of online content was corporate and money-driven and, as such, it missed the power of the medium. Blogging is the tip of the personal and creative next wave, a lurking iceberg that is arising from our passions and our needs.

"What's a blog?" Good question, I say.

GIVE UP: The older I get the more life feels like it knows what it's doing. Sure, day to day, life is a mess. Even week to week. Hell, maybe even year to year. But somehow this mystical "grand scheme of things" you hear people talking about...well, the older I get, the more I buy into it. And the nice thing about feeling this way is I get to just sort of give up, to lay back in life's big arms and enjoy the ride. At least that's how I feel today.

LISTEN WHILE YOU WORK: If you ever have a lot of work to do and you just want some beautiful, chill-out music on in the background...some stuff that'll set your head right, calm you down, and seep into the cracks between the work and your blues...try out Joe Pass's incomparable SONGS FOR ELLEN. One man, one guitar. Quite lovely.

AERIAL POETRY: A while back I mentioned I'd been writing more poetry of late. Not too long ago I wrote one I really like. Here it is, for your enjoyment (I hope):

Other Invisible Winds
When I’m on an airplane is it life
that is flying by
along with the landscape?

Is it only
the scenery receding?
Is this me missing
my son and my wife,
or worse --
am I also hovering
beyond the dying
intersection of our time
together in this life?

It could be
this is how love works,
all this floating above
the gaps in time and space,
still staying aloft and held
together even far apart
by unseen hands
or other invisible winds.

LEMME HEAR YA... I've been bitching about my COMMENT function for eons without doing anything about it. And a month or so ago I wondered how to get more readers, how to get more satisfaction and recompense from this weird blogging thing. Seems to me the two items are related. Seems like I oughta fix the COMMENTS feature so as to better engage those readers I do have, thereby generating greater stickiness and interest. Also seems like the recomponse I get right now comes from the feedback I get from readers (you!) more than anything, so how dumb is it to have the COMMENTS thing be all broken for so long.

And so I've fixed it, so that you can comment and I can comment back. Hope this works, you enjoy, etc. Love to hear from you, as always.

(Until I get all popular, when I'll have no way to keep up with all y'all, but then you'll just talk amongst yourselves then anyhoo.

STILL NOT HATING CHRIS: Regular Camel readers know I've been encouraging Chris at EveryoneHatesMe to love himself and his life a little more. There's something about Chris I find hilarious and loveable and so I follow his writing and his various plights (losing weight, finding a job, trying to drink less, etc.). Most of the time I think Chris's troubles are everyone's troubles, it's just that he has the balls to talk about them, write about them, etc. But Chris's most recent post suggests he has some issues most of us do not. An excerpt:

A couple of months ago I ran off to Mexico. I was out of my head, and was not thinking clearly. So, I drove to El Paso, TX and crossed the border there. I was never so scared in my life. I ended up driving non-stop from Chicago. I was having a nervous breakdown.

Anyway, it must have been the lack of sleep. I thought people could read my thoughts. I had some dental work done on a tooth years eariler, and was convinced that there was a transmitter implanted in the tooth at the rear of my mouth. So, I stumbled around the Mexico border town and wandered into a dentist office. I had the tooth extracted.

I'll admit, my first instinct is to laugh. And somehow from what I gather of Chris's personality, I'm sure he sees a bit of the humor in this. After all, he *is* the guy whose blog "About" statement reads "I am 31, fat, loosing my hair, living with my parents and I am poor." A pathetic statement, to be sure, and yet naming your blog EveryoneHatesMe and airing your dirtiest laundry in such bald (excuse the pun) fashion suggests a guy who's not afraid to poke a little fun at himself, to allow other a vicarious window into his travails.

My next instinct is to worry about Chris. My God, what a nightmare! But then, I don't really know Chris. I only stumbled past his blog one day, maybe linked from ChicagoBloggers.com, if memory serves. How much should I worry about someone I don't know? After all, aren't there people in my day-to-day life who need and deserve my attention more than Chris? Of course.

The bottom line: If you have a moment, blow by EveryoneHatesMe and say a nice word or two to Chris. He's suffering, and he could use whatever spare support you have to offer.

DOING IT RIGHT IN THE MODERN WORLD: Maybe 25 years ago my Chicago grandmother came to visit our family in Ohio. Gramma, as we called her, had lived downtown her whole life, and so she seemed wide-eyed at much of our medium-small town existence.

Her greatest and most celebrated fish-out-of-water moment of the trip came at McDonald's. She stood back from the counter, pondering the menu, mouthing the various item names and furtively (and, of course, futilely) scanning for the "cocktail" section. Finally she stepped forward, ready to order:

"I'll have a cheeseburger, hon, medium rare, and a baked potato."

The needle dragged across the record. The counter-simp stifled a smirk. All around her, patrons gaped and mumbled. I distinctly remember a young boy around my age repeating it to his parents. "She said medium RARE!" And another: "She said baked potato!"

Meanwhile my brothers and I shrunk into the bright yellow and orange scenery, denying our genetic link to the woman who -- gasp -- didn't know how to order at McDonald's! (Today I realize it's a small miracle she didn't ask for a patty melt, compounding our horror.)

I had such a moment again this morning. Standing at Starbuck's, my automaton-like order at the ready ("tallsoylatteandicedlemonloafpoundcakeplease"), my money pre-counted, I found myself behind an older couple (they were maybe 58). He was dressed like a banker or an undertaker, with his hair meticulously wetted and sloped across his pale skull; she resembled an attractive young blonde secretary from the movies, although her face and her clothes and her hair were not new enough, not to mention altogether too pressed.

"One coffee," the undertaker intoned, his zen-like understatement drawing quizzical glances from the baristas.

"Are these pastries fresh, dear?" asked the old young secretary.

Meanwhile all around them the clued-in sighed and shuffled, wondering how it was possible in this day and age not to have your Starbuck's order down pat.

Somewhere I'm sure Gramma felt vindicated.

EXCUSED ABSENCE? A responsible blogger would have told his readers he's vacationing on Sanibel Island (off the coast of Ft. Myers) for a week and, surrounded by his extended family, unlikely to spend much time online let alone blogging. Thus far it's been a very relaxing melange of naps, Red Wings playoffs games, Cubs games, crappy paperbacks, and water-related hijinks. I'm tan above the waist, burned below it. Sounds dirty, but it's really not that exciting. Forgot to lather my legs and feet, so I'm half bronzed-man, half lobster-man.

WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? So Dr. Evil is offering a truce to Europe, eh? How big of him. I can already hear Chirac's "thank you, Dr. Evil" from here.

SEXY SAVANT: I'm with Howard Mortman. When it comes to 9/11, Britney Spears gets it better than Norman Mailer.

CJ@2: My son C.J. turned two years old yesterday. As I wrote in his birthday card, no child has ever been more loved or more lovable. Sounds hokey, and I'm reminded of a Bill Hicks bit that mocked parents who thought their kids were somehow special. But the thing is, kids are special, every last one of them. Go ahead, have a kid and look in his or her eyes, and then try and say otherwise.

And when we realize we were all children once, well, then, there must be some residual specialness in all of us, right? Somewhere?

NOW I'LL APOLOGIZE: As usual my pal Bart makes a lot of sense (below) and reminds me that "Raze Fallujah" is diametrically opposed to why I originally thought this war was a good idea. The combination of an oppressed people and a horrible despot harboring WMD seemed to me to create a defensible case for military action. But as Bart argues below, there's the problem of no WMD and a less-than-"grateful" band of "liberated" Iraqis who are overwhelming their supposed liberators. Once again I'll give Bart the floor:

"Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)" George W. Bush 2003 State of the Union

Scott- I have to admit, I'm horribly disappointed. Damnit, this is what a hell of a lot of us were arguing 15 months ago - there was never a question that the US army would roll over what was left of the Iraqi army. The questions instead were related to what was to me a hell of a lot more important: will this war actually make the United States (and its allies) safer? Is there a plan to actually accomplish the goals we set forth prior to invasion , absent the roses in the street welcoming party that was promised? Given the complexity and flexibility of the terrorist groups we are fighting, is the lack of international cooperation that is sure to follow this invasion worth the potential security of removing a despot? In retrospect it seems quite clear that the answer to all three question was no. The pro-invasion chorus was consistently "things will work out fine - are you willing to suffer another 9/11?" Well, damnit, now the chickens are home to roost and the pro-war voices have moved pretty quickly from "we need to take him out to protect our country" to "did you see the mass graves? Are you pro-Saddam?" to "the motherfuckers don't appreciate what we're giving 'em -fuck em all let's raze the city and get the hell out." I hope you don't mind me pointing out the incredible hypocrisy of this argument. If we fought this war to make our country safer I can't think of a more effective way of recruiting poeple to blow themselves up in our bases, buildings and homes than dropping a Dresden on an Islam holy city where, right or wrong, the whole uprising started after our shutting down of a freely published newspaper. All the humanitarian justifications I heard seem to have droppen by the wayside as well (Over 600 dead Iraqi's in the last week - I know Saddam was bad but I doubt that families were losing 600 a week in only one city).

I'm not trying to defend the inhuman and despicable acts that have happened over the past week. All I'm doing is pointing out that is a war that we chose to enter - there was no imminent threat to our national security, there was no connection to Al-Quaeda (although it sure as hell is there now, along with every other chicken shit terrorist organization signing up every orphaned son who last their father to a US bomb). We built this shithole because a fucked-up administration felt that God had touched them to lead the world to their vision of heaven and like a lot of people who are convinced that they have the one and only true answer they found themselves swimming in a world of shit. Power carries reponsibility and razing towns and pulling out of a country we helped arm and then destroy promises nothing but more and more death for both countries. I screamed against this damn war, not because it was wrong but because we went about it all wrong. The costs are only going to grow higher, I'm afraid, but the costs of leaving will be even greater. GWB started a fire certain that he could contain it and his error in judgment could very well cost us all far more than we ever thought.

RAZE FALLUJAH: I won't lie to you, nor will I apologize for this: I saw a crazed Iraqi on the cover of this morning's New York Times joyfully displaying the boots of an American serviceman. They were apparently snatched from the soldier after his convoy was bombed. And I immediately thought, Raze Fallujah. Full steam war, no polite occupation and roadblocks, but full-on bombs and disaster, shock and awe all over again. Look, I'm not proud of myself, but I bet those images are doing more to bolster Bush than to hurt him. I was reminded of the section in Tom Friedman's FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM where talks about (if memory serves) "Hama Rules," that unwritten code of leadership in the Middle East that the only way to rein in fundamentalist zealots is to unleash broad and brutal measures, like what Syrian president Hafez al-Assad did when he literally leveled the city of Hama. Nice, via Google: A link to a Friedman column on same.

And meanwhile, how to reconcile my recent and zealous pro-military stance with my expanding Buddhist reading and practice? If I am containing multitudes then I think those multitudes themselves are at war...or maybe just balancing one another.

SELF-PLEASURING IS GOOD FOR YOU: As my good pal Rob writes, "It's comforting to know that if you stick with a hobby long enough good things happen."

RYAN VS. OBAMA = BUSH VS. NOT BUSH? So I've started piecing together the differences between Obama and Ryan, and there seem to be many. I'm hoping to do a helpful side-by-side comparison on the issues in this space at some point. Believe it or not, and I trust some of you will choose NOT, I'm still undecided.

In the meantime, I did find this Sun-Times editorial (penned by Thomas Roeser) reprinted on Ryan's website, and I think the distinction he makes -- that Ryan will stand by Bush and his war whereas Obama will not -- may be the deciding factor for me, not to mention the rest of IlliNoise. In fact it's quite possible that all the House and Senate races in '04 become referendums on Bush, moreso than unique local contests. I'm sure ace strategists are already considering this scenario. Duh.

CUBS WIN! The good guys take their first game. I'm so dang happy it's baseball season again.

HANDSOME SMART BLACK GUY VS. HANDSOME SMART WHITE GUY: So yes, I'm back. Sort of. And one of the things I want to focus on in the weeks to come is the Illinois Senate race. My dear friend and provocateur Bart issued an opening salvo below in my mysterious and lame comment box. I'm reposting it here, to kick us off:

...as of right now it's looking pretty clear that Barack Obama is going to be the Dem nominee going against Jack Ryan on the GOP side. I have to admit that the Dem campaign wasn't exactly riveting political drama but it really seemed to me from pretty early on that Obama had a hell of a resume to run on, if maybe a little bit short in actual government experience. When Blair Hull ran into his personal iceberg (and let's face it, the guy was pretty damn creepy to begin with and throwing his kids all over the back page of the Trib didn't help) it just seemed like Obama was ready to grab the torch. His take on the positions are pretty relevant: pro use of force, anti Iraq (primarily the unilateralism, not necessarily the cause), pro-Israel, commited to a multi-lateral approach in regards to the war on terror, and committed to free trade (albeit while kowtowing to the Dem base in terms of promoting "minimum rigths for workers around the world"). He's also solidly on the gay rights side of the fence in a state that despite it's downstate advocates is pretty clearly in the live and let live camp. Jack Ryan could be a formidable candidate but he has several pretty distinct disadvantages going into the race: his name is Ryan in a state that hasn't been friendly to it lately (thanks George!), he will be forced to take a fairly hard right stand on issues (gay rights, PATRIOT act, Iraq, abortion) that don't play so well, all the while fighting what really appears to be a fairly strong groundswell against the policies of GWB. It should be a good contest with distinct choices; in the end I think that's good for Illinois. I recognize this hs nothing to do with the post, I just wanted to see if I couldn't get a little discusson going...

Bart, I'm looking forward to exploring and discussing with you. Let's see what we can learn.

ME MIA: Where have I been? Traveling like a beast. I'm in L.A. right now, camped out in a wired Starbucks across the street from CAA. The place is full of Beverly Hills cops, a mix of uniforms and detectives. They're as clean-cut and polite in real life as they were in the Eddie Murphy movie.

Later today I'm giving a presentation to the General Hospital writing team. Fun!

I wrote a new poem on the plane yesterday, and I'm quite proud of it. I'll post it here once I've had a chance to give it a more thorough once-over. Sometimes inspiration at 37,000 feet can look a little less gilded on the ground.

LITTLE BUDDHISTS: Here's something to lift my spirits, an e-mail from my nephews (typed by their grandmother):

hiuncle scott (cott), per stevie. how is c j? i'm at grandmas house. i went to the fire station. i love you.
- david hess and steven

All little kids are Buddhists, aren't they?

MUDDLE: A month or two ago I was reminded how bad it feels to be sick, to get the flu. Now I'm reminded that lack of sleep is insidious, that it can make a man crazy, and that it feeds on itself, so that when you stop getting sleep for a while it becomes all the harder to get to sleep the next day and the next day.

Meanwhile two good friends are kicking cancer's ass, so I'm also reminded how minor my challenges are, and how a little fatigue is not the end of the world.

I've gotta jump in the shower now, see if I can't blast some sense back into this brain.