LONGWALKABOUT

I took my kids to a playground recently, so they could tire themselves out, and maybe go to bed on time. Any time you take kids to a public place, you have to always be aware of where they are and who is hanging around them. I think that most every kid has been beaten over the head with Stranger Danger. This is a great service we provide for our youngsters.

It occurred to me the other day that we may be ignoring another demographic where stranger danger is concerned. Adults. Much is made of teaching kids about potentially bad people, but we have neglected to educate our adult population about things they should be on the lookout for. As a public service, I am going to run a series of bulletins. These are people you should be avoiding.

• Guys who wear scarves as fashion statements:  Seriously.  Have you ever seen an interview with Johnny Depp?  My wife convinced me to wear a scarf this winter.  It was freaking cold.  I put it on, and I have to say, it felt good.  So good, in fact, that I was in danger of falling asleep on my feet.  If it is 60 degrees out, though, and some dude with a scarf on comes walking toward you, it would be best to not make eye contact.
• People who wear their pajamas to the store:  Look, speaking for myself here, my wardrobe is already pretty relaxed.  I don’t need to be hanging out with people for whom that level of sloth is acceptable.  Those people are a bad influence.
• People who eat a lot but don’t gain weight:  Again, bad influence.  They may have been gifted with good genetics, or maybe they used some sort of black magic to get an unholy metabolism, but one thing is for sure, if you hang with them, you will get fat.
• People who don’t believe in vaccinating kids:  You don’t need this kind of irrational conspiracy nonsense in your life.  Ask them where their kids are.  They are either going to tell you that they don’t have any, or, that they are home recovering from a bout with polio.
• People with lots of bumper stickers on their car:  Okay, so they obviously care passionately about many things.  One of these things is not their car.  Do you really have time to hear about all of their causes?  Me neither.
• Guys who don’t watch sports:  Not trustworthy.
• Guys who care too much about sports:  This guy is using valuable brain space to store facts, like how many stolen bases Ricky Henderson had in 1982, instead of actually learning useful things.  By the way, it was 130.

This is just the first part of my, Adult Stranger Danger List, or as my wife calls it, the reason Marc has few friends list.  Granted, you may not be abducted by any of these people,,,,,, well, maybe by guys who don’t watch sports, those guys are seriously untrustworthy,,, but all of them can make your day unpleasant.

LINKS

• On this day in 1882, Jesse James was shot in the back by Robert Ford.  Or was he?
• Cool photos from some of the worlds most impressive abandoned hotels.
• Our boys have been devouring pineapples lately.  It gave me the idea that we should try to grow one.  We are going to try planting a pineapple top.
• The new James Bond movie trailer is out.  I’m stoked.

Shortly before my wife and I got married, I had the chance to check an item off of my bucket list. The one and only,,,, the man, the legend,,,,, Sebastian Bach was going to be playing a show in Jersey. Some of you may be saying, “wait, who?” Shame on you. Sebastian is probably one of the greatest vocalists in hard rock/metal history. He is the former front man of the late 80’s/early 90’s band Skid Row. You remember that era. Back when rock music knew how to have fun. Before every single song was self-loathing and super depressing.

This was my wife’s first live rock concert. As she puts it, she kind of jumped in the pool at the deep end. The show was at the Birch Hill Nite Club in Old Bridge, NJ. It was an old venue that had a long history of hosting rock acts that were on their way up or down the musical popularity ladder. A friend of mine, and his girlfriend met us there before the doors opened, and we all stood in the line. We had gotten there early so we could claim a good spot on the floor. This proved to be both a good and a bad move. It was good because we got a great spot. It was bad because there turned out to be three opening acts. Once in a while an opening act is decent, but that’s not usually the case. We went 0 for 3 on this particular night. Since the Birch Hill was a club, there was no seating. We stood for three straight hours of musical punishment. First, was an all girl band. (not around anymore) Then came a bad band from Philly named Generic Angel, or Embarrassed Angel, or maybe Pitchy Angel,,,,,something like that. (not around anymore)   At this point, early twenties Marc and his friend were getting restless. We started to voice our unhappiness. The last opener was a local band that had been around since the mid eighties. (again, not around anymore) This was the last straw. My friend had discovered that he had some pennies in his pocket, and of course he was doing the logical thing and throwing them toward the stage while yelling something that could be described as impolite. This had no effect on the overweight lead singer of the band, who was wearing orange spandex with a jack-o-lantern on the rear. My lasting image of this guy was him cracking open a beverage on stage, taking a huge sloppy swig, and then handing it to someone in the audience. The guy who was on the receiving end of this gift, stood there looking at it, and then slowly reached out and put it back on the stage. If only we could have given the music back.

It took three hours, but eventually Sebastian came out and put on a great show. We all had an awesome time. The thing that makes me laugh the most about that night is my wife’s description of it. When asked about it, she usually says something like, “Do you know who the biggest troublemakers at that show were? Not the biker guys, not the guy with a swastika tattoo on his neck, not the guys who got into a fight down by the stage, no,,,,, it was the guy in the Hawaiian shirt (me) and his friend.”

I’ve aged a little since then, and the Birch Hill has been torn down to make way for a retirement community. I still love the energy of live music though, even if it probably won’t be me and my buddy winging pennies at the stage anymore……. We’ve classed it up, we use quarters or half dollars now.

 

I’m stoked for the Walking Dead season finale on Sunday. It seems like post apocalyptic is in right now.  Sometimes I think that I would enjoy the silence if I was the only one left on the planet.  It might be nice.  Nevermind the crushing loneliness that would set in on day four.

Here are the top ten things I would do if I was the last person on earth.

10.  Live on a boat.  I don’t think I could live in an abandoned town or city.  Super creepy.

9.    Drive to New England, take all of the Patriots Superbowl trophies and throw them in Boston Harbor.

8.   Take my dog for all the walks that he has deserved to go on for the last three years.

7.   Visit several jewelry stores to get a large collection of gold chains.  Then I would shave my hair into a mohawk and walk around saying “I pity the fool” for a week straight, just to know what it felt like to be Mr. T.

6.   Spend a night in the White House.  Get some pictures of myself behind the desk in the Oval Office wearing shorts, flip flops, and a t-shirt that says Leader of the Free World.

5.   Finally get around to watching Game of Thrones.

4.   I’m not really a car guy, but I’d like to try out that Magnum P.I. Ferrari and see how fast I could make it from New York to Key West.

3.   Remember when Tom Hanks made a friend for himself out of a volleyball.  I would do the same thing, but I would use golf balls.  Golf balls have better names, like Callaway, Dunlop, and Slazenger.  Hanks ruined Wilson for me.  Also, it would be way easier to tote my posse around.

2.   Make a bronze statue of myself and put it in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

1.    Take a nap whenever I felt like it.

LINKS

• Today is the anniversary of the first sighting of the Yosemite valley by European explorers.  Here are some National Geographic photos of Yosemite.
• An astronaut once snuck a corned beef sandwich into space.  Of course, politicians got upset.
• The other day I dusted off my metal detector and found twelve cents in our yard. Cha-ching!  Here is a list of the coolest things ever found with a metal detector.
• I don’t care how many couches the guy jumps on, Tom Cruise makes solid movies. The new Mission Impossible trailer is awesome.

The first college that I attended had a pretty good sports program, as far as religious schools go. I was a member of the baseball team. We were NCAA division II. Since we live in an age of participation trophies and feelings that must not be hurt, I’m not going to say that we weren’t very good. I will, however, say that we were imbalanced in the win/loss department. By the way, I do have a killer participation certificate. Yes, a participation certificate,,,,,,,, from an institution of higher learning. They handed them out right after we finished our orange wedges and Capri Suns. On the bright side, it is actually worth as much as some bachelor’s degrees.

Baseball is a spring sport, so in college, that meant that you had to spend spring break at the school, while everyone else went home or to the beach. Me and the other guys from the team were stuck in a nearly empty dorm for a week. We had several games scheduled, but the rest of our time was unaccounted for. During one two day gap, me, my roommate who was our catcher, and our buddy, the second baseman, decided that we were bored enough to use the limited funds that we had on a short road trip. My roommate was from California and had never seen the Atlantic Ocean. Okay, we could check that off of his list fairly easily.   From the school, it was about two and a half hours to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. It was a late afternoon in March. We threw some blankets and sleeping bags into my 1988 Honda Accord, and we were out. The road trip is a time-honored tradition. I don’t know how people live without cars and the freedom that they provide. The ride to Rehoboth was uneventful. Rural Delaware is lonely. We arrived after dark, and since it was still cold and none of the boardwalk shops had even thought about opening, parking was not a problem. The three of us got out of the car, and with some excitement, walked up onto the boardwalk for a view of the beach and dark expanse of ocean. It was choppy and windy and couldn’t have been more unimpressive. We stood there for maybe three minutes. Then my roommate said something like, “That’s it huh”. And,,, we left.

It was fairly late in the evening and I was too tired to drive back. Besides, we had kind of planned on spending the night somewhere. I drove all around town looking for an out of the way place to park and sleep. Finally we settled on a quiet residential street. We all stretched out as much as you can stretch in an Accord. I might have mentioned that it was cold out. It only took twenty minutes or so for the windows of that car to steam up like two people were having quite a rendezvous inside. I slept fitfully, worried that at any minute a police officer was going to knock on the window and say, “Hey what’s going on in there?” I would have to respond with something like, “It’s just us three dudes, officer, sir.” Luckily, no one bothered us. The next morning we headed back to school, sore from sleeping in contorted positions.

I know you may be like, “you guys didn’t even have enough money for a Motel 6 or something”. Look, we were all very thrifty (cheap).  And no good story ever ended with, “And then we checked into the Motel 6 and got a good nights sleep.”

When you become a parent, you join a club of sorts. You learn a surprising thing upon your entry into this club. All the other members are winging it, just like you are. Sure, there are plenty of books on parenting, but no one except for the most annoying overachievers actually reads them.   Lots of people buy these books. Lots of people read the first chapter of these books and then fall asleep. The book then goes on a shelf in a visible spot, so when visitors come over, they will see said parenting book and think, “Oh, what responsible parents.”

I have two boys. I would like to pass on some of the most important parenting lessons that I have learned. Here’s to everyone else who’s winging it, just like me.

•  When you teach your boys that trees are convenient places to relieve themselves, be aware that it will become the preferred relief location.  You may then receive emails from your sons school, informing you that you need to have a talk with your son about appropriate places to go to the bathroom.
• When your son watches “The World At War” with his grandpa, he will remember every country from the allied and axis powers.  In the future, if he meets anyone from a country that was an adversary of ours in World War II, it will create a super embarrassing situation.
• When your son is small, he will launch himself at your head and neck without warning.  Boys love to wrestle.  Wrestling matches can start at any time.
• Reading to your kids is one of the most important things you can do.
• No two kids are the same.  For example, you will have one kid that eats like a ravenous viking, and you will have one that doesn’t like the different foods on his plate to touch each other.
• Small children are basically parrots with a devious sense of humor.  If you listen to questionable music around them, I guarantee you that they will bust out into song at the worst possible time.  (And they will remember every lyric)  I’m fully expecting to have an Uptown Funk moment any day now.

LINKS

• These photos and videos of the world’s largest cave are pretty awesome.
• Here are 62 things to appreciate about everyday life.
• A Batman hotel suite.  Because,,,,,,, just because.
• Cool extreme weather photos.

My wife is my favorite person to travel with. She’s pretty much up for anything. That works well for me because I like to travel by the seat of my pants. I’m not an all-inclusive resort or a cruise ship kind of person. Travel should be an adventure, not a prepackaged, happy meal, strip mall kind of thing.

When my wife was three months pregnant with our first son, and I was long-haired and chubby, we took a trip to Costa Rica. We booked a flight and a rental SUV, and had a general idea of where we were headed. When the time came, we flew into San Jose, picked up our vehicle, and drove to Fortuna where we stayed in a lodge that used to be a Smithsonian research station for the Arenal volcano.  After being there for several days, we moved on to the Pacific coast where we stayed in a cabin that smelled like hippies.   The place was beautiful, but it gave off an unclean vibe.  My wife felt like the beach town was too much like Wildwood New Jersey, so we left the next day. That was all well and good, because I was scared of catching some kind of new age lice from the patchouli smelling bed in the cabin.   Our next stop was Santa Elena, a town in the mountains near the Monteverde cloud forests. We ended up staying in a simple, plywood walled building, made up of three one-room apartments. It was quiet, clean, and it had hot water. It was perfect. As a side bonus, the lady who ran the place invited us over for breakfast, and to feed the monkeys that came out of the forest every morning. We hiked every day while we were there. My wife swears she saw a black panther. I only caught a glimpse of it, but I believe her.  It is best to always believe her.  Argue at your own risk.

The experience that best summed up the whole trip, happened on our last day. We had already hit the main attractions in the area, and were looking for something to do. My wife saw a sign for a waterfall that had the same name as her dad. Okay. To get there, I drove our rental several miles down a dirt road and through a couple streams to a farmer’s house. The trail to the falls ran through the man’s property. To get access to the trail, you had to yell until you got his attention, and then pay him a few bucks each. We threw on our daypacks and headed out. Because I am a true gentleman, I walked through the tall grass in front of my pregnant wife. That way, if we ran into any one of Costa Rica’s 17 different variety of poisonous snakes, I would get bit, fall on the ground, and say something heroic like, “Save yourself, it’s too late for me, go, just go.” The trail eventually joined the river and crossed it a couple times on footbridges that were tied off to large trees so that when flash floods came, they wouldn’t get washed downstream. Then it rained torrentially. An hour later, we stood at the bottom of a waterfall that was nearly two hundred and fifty feet tall. Just the two of us, in the middle of the Costa Rican rain forest.

I’ll never forget that moment. My first son is going on ten years old now, and I no longer have long hair, and I’m a lot less chubby. It’s almost time to go back and have some new adventures.

 

 

Okay, so it’s no secret that our government at the state and federal level wastes more money than my wife could ever spend on shoes. And that’s a lot. Everyone talks about cutting spending but it never happens. We have to start somewhere, so I have a suggestion. In 2011 each toll collector cost the state of New Jersey 100,000 dollars. That number is a little smaller now due to concessions that their union had to make to save jobs. It’s still too much money to pay someone who can be replaced by a white plastic basket. I have no love for toll collectors. Any time I’ve had to interact with them, I have come away with the impression that they would love to throw my change at me, one quarter at a time. It all started when……. (harp music for flashback). I was headed into Philadelphia to meet my wife at work, and I had to cross the Walt Whitman Bridge. When you cross the Whitman and enter Pennsylvania you have to pay the toll on the downside of the bridge. Halfway across, I realized I had little cash. (no, I didn’t have an ez-pass) This had never happened to me before. I started to dig for change and swerve around on the bridge. The toll at this time was three dollars. I was able to dig up around 2.53. I pulled into the toll booth, smiled at the guy and showed him my change, “this is all I’ve got”. No smile, in fact, no human reaction at all. “Pull over to left and wait for the police sir. And STAY THERE.” Because that’s what I was going to do, make a run for it. I was not going to be able to leave New Jersey. They returned me to the Garden State with a police escort. This was pretty much my worst nightmare, being forced to stay in the state of New Jersey by armed officers of the law.

My suggestion, trained monkeys at the toll booths. You don’t have to pay them. Except maybe in bananas. Just pay several trainers. There are multiple benefits to this system. People would be afraid of the monkeys. This would result in more e-z passes sold, and therefore traffic would move better. You would never have to sit behind that person trying to ask the toll collector for directions. Of course, you may have the occasional incident where the monkeys try to tear someone’s arm or face off, but hey, we would post warning signs. So, the state saves money, traffic moves better, and everyone is happy. Because, oh, YOU’RE GONNA pay the monkey.

 LINKS

• Here is a video of a nutty guy riding his bike on a cliff side in Arizona.
• For all you arachnophobes out there.
• In New Mexico, today is Pluto Planet Day.  There is a whole website dedicated to Pluto’s planet worthiness.
• I love the movie Point Break.  The fact that they are doing a remake is offensive.  Here are ten reasons why the remake is a bad idea.  (This was written before Gerard Butler dropped out of the film, but most of it still applies)

Parking in the city is about as enjoyable as going to the dentist. I try to avoid both of those things. I probably do need to go to the dentist soon, or the hockey player/hillbilly look may be in my future. The fact that my last dentist was cross-eyed did not help. A cross-eyed person standing over you and wearing a mask is unnerving.

My wife attended school at a university in Philly. Parking around the school was scarce, so whenever I would drop her off and pick her up, I would use the fifteen minute parking zones in an alley near the back of her building. I would sit and wait in those spots for an hour or more sometimes. Months went by and I got really comfortable using those spots whenever I needed to. I never had a problem leaving the car there, even when I stretched the time limit. So one Sunday my wife needed to make a quick trip into her lab. We drove in and parked the car in the alley.   I got out of the car with my wife and she looked at me questioningly. “Don’t worry about the car”, I said. “It’s Sunday, and I never have any problems here.” We went into the building and came back out an hour later. And,,,,,,,,, the car was gone. That was not a fun feeling. Three things went through my mind quickly. (Hey, I thought I parked right there. Somebody stole my car. Oh, I guess they do tow cars from those spots.) I had to find the surly security guard who could tell me what magical place my car had disappeared to.

Security- “Where did you park?”

Me- “The fifteen minute zone.”

Security- “How long were you there?”

Me- “An hour.”

Security- “Didn’t you see the signs?”

Me- “Yes,,,,, yes, I did.”

Now that I felt like a complete idiot, I gave the towing company a call and was informed that I had to pay for the tow and the “storage” of my car. My wife, who was nine months pregnant and not the least bit happy with me, called a cab so we could get to the yard where the car was. It was one of those days when things just weren’t going to go my way. Our taxi driver kept looking at me in the mirror.   Then this happened.

Driver- “You look like Corey Feldman.”

Me- (Not able to understand what he was saying) “What?”

Driver- You look like Corey Feldman.”

Me- “What?”

Driver- “You look like Corey Feldman.”

Me- “Oh…..”

Things really weren’t going my way.

 

I love time travel movies. They’re pretty much all good. Except for The Butterfly Effect. That’s a horrible film. From time to time I like to think about what I would do if I could travel back in time. Of course I would do the obvious things like invest in Apple, bet on sporting events, and attend Wrestlemania III to see Hulk Hogan take on Andre the Giant. Mostly, though, I think it would be fun to go back in time to mess with myself. Here are some times I would visit my past self.

• I would tell my college self to just pick a major.   I would also advise that self to avoid a class called Race and Gender in the Mass Media. Not only was it complete nonsense, I forgot to turn in a self evaluation, and got a bad grade.
• I would tell my high school self that his mullet is awesome, and that his future wife hates his British Knights.
• I would mess with my early twenties self for being cheap. I would tell him to break down and buy a new mattress. My wife claimed that the first mattress we owned after we were married, had actual hay in it. She said if you flipped it over, George Washington slept here was written on the tag.
• I would tell my eight year old self to not give up on the whole Navy fighter pilot thing. Yes, I loved Top Gun. I’d also tell him that climbing trees and riding bikes never really gets old.
• I would go back two weeks and tell myself that the biggest snowstorm of the season was still coming, and then watch how depressed my past self would get.
• I would travel back to when my past self was working in a crawlspace in Burlington, NJ, wait until that moment when he put his hand down on a dead squirrel and laugh at him.
• I would be tempted to visit the lumber mill where I worked alone at night, and then jump out from behind something to scare my past self, but it would be bad if my past self killed my future self.  So maybe not.
• I would be a guest at my own wedding, and congratulate myself, because I’m a really lucky guy.

  LINKS

• In case you missed it, here is a real photo of a baby weasel riding a woodpecker.
• Today is the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo where Davy Crockett, one of my childhood heroes, died.
• There is an animal in Australia called a quokka.  They are the happiest looking animals you will ever see, and lately people have been taking selfies with them.
• If you need any ideas for this years big adventure, look no further than Lonely Planet.

If you ever find yourself standing in front of a patch of poison ivy, wondering what it would feel like to get it all over your body,,,,,, STOP, don’t roll around in it. I’ve already had this life experience. I can tell you what it’s like.

I went to high school at a church boarding school. I know, you’re like, “boarding school, isn’t that for juvenile delinquents?” Well, yes, juvenile delinquents and church kids. We had both. The school sat on 342 acres in what I’m now told is referred to as the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. That seems rather grandiose. If you put the Poconos out near the Rockies, they would be considered the foothills of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. My dad worked for the church in New Jersey, and we lived on the campus of the school. I never had to board in the dorm, but I attended class with everyone else who did.

Much of the 342 acres that made up the property was forestland that rose up in the rolling hills behind the school. Logging roads ran everywhere through those hills. When I was a freshman or sophomore, my buddies and I decided that it would be a great place to go camping. One Saturday we packed up our backpacks and headed up into the woods with our pocket knives, bb guns, and sleeping bags. We left late in the day, so by the time we rolled out our bags and started looking for firewood, it was dark. This turned out to be of great importance. We started our fire, cooked up some food, and talked until we all got tired. The night was uneventful. The next morning we packed up our stuff and hiked back down to my house. I took a shower and settled in to spend a lazy Sunday in front of the TV. Then it started, an itch here, a scratch there. It got worse hour by hour. By the afternoon the rash started to show up. I had it everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Seems there was poison ivy where I was gathering my firewood. By evening it was driving me out of my mind. Instead of going to school on Monday morning, I went to the doctor’s office to get a shot. Then, on Tuesday, I spent a lot of time explaining why my face looked funny.

To sum it up.

PROS: I don’t know, maybe the morning off of school.

CONS: You itch like never before. You look funny for a week and a half. Nobody wants to spend that much time applying anti-itch cream.