Good Night

I was just standing by my front door admiring the lights I just put in on my driveway, when all of a sudden I was on the floor. I assumed the push up position, and pushed, but Mr. Floor didn't budge. Very embarrassing.

There are some things we simply never admit. For example, when you get a phone call on Saturday morning at 2 AM...and you think, "Oh my God I hope this is a wrong number," but it turns out it's a friend who immediately says, "I didn't wake you did I?" You never admit you were sleeping. You don't admit that your idiot friend woke you just when you had a dream going about Catherine Zeta Jones and her twin sister Desire. No sir. When your friend says, "I didn't wake you did I" you say something like, "No I was just sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair reading the bible."

It's just one of those harmless lies that keep best friends from taking after Caine and Abel....especially when it comes to politics. That leads me to wonder if there is really anything like a harmless lie. Next time I'm reading the bible, I'll check out the 10 Commandments, and see if I can find any appropriate loopholes. By the way, the first time I looked in the bible, which was a long time ago, I found something that if I tell you about it, I will get into a lot of trouble. The most violently religious among you may even seek an immediate return to the custom of human sacrifice, with me as the honor-ee. But most of you don't know where I live, so I think I'll tell you anyway.

A bunch of guys in powdered wigs and funny hats carrying flintlocks got it right all those years ago. Some of them didn't like each other very much, but they understood the value of E Pluribus Unum. Roughly translated that means "Teamwork." We're yelling at each other a lot these days, but I'm glad to see that we still take time out from screaming to enjoy our fireworks, hot dogs, baseball and beer together. I got a lesson about that a while ago at a baseball game. It was a shot in the gut that made me feel so good, so proud that I wrote about it in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot. It happened at a New York Mets game when the PA announcer asked everyone to "stand and honor America, as eight year-old Grace [somebody] sings our national anthem." I don't remember her last name. I wish I did. Because she was amazing.

The softest nights of the year are making us comfortable right now. Soft Summer nights. They have special sounds. Can you imagine all the "hooking up" that's taking place with all the crickets and fire flies, and whatever creatures are making those Summer night sounds? I recorded tonight's soft Summer sounds and I'm going to use it to spin some friends heads around on New Year's Eve.

Oh my gosh what I found in the wash! It's an ancient T shirt from my WNBC radio days. It says, "The Dick Summer Holy City Of Brooklyn Stick Ball Championship and Doo Wop Festival Extravaganza!" And it still fits. As a matter of fact it looks a little chesty. I called Brooklyn the "Holy City" because I was born there. "What" you might say "was the Dick Summer Holy City Of Brooklyn Stick Ball Championship and Doo Wop Festival Extravaganza?" And that would be a reasonable question. It was FUN, that's what it was.

See, there was a time when we used to have fun on the radio. We didn't play as many songs as today's radio guys play, because fun takes some time. This particular hunk of fun was exactly what the title says. We made arrangements with the city to use the parking lot at Brooklyn's Riis Park, and we had a free fun day with our listeners. Doo Wop groups from all over town got to sing, and we had a stick ball home run derby. We had all kinds of Brooklyn food. Hot dogs from Nathans, cheese cakes from Juniors...all kinds of good stuff. Oh yeah. We did play a couple of songs too.

I don't hear a lot of fun on the radio any more. With some wonderful exceptions, almost every station I hear has either lots of songs repeated lots of times, or angry talk hosts encouraging everyone to form into mobs, grab stones and throw them at the government.

The flowers are so bright they're almost noisy. The hot dogs and beer taste best at the beach. The ladies are wearing their summer outfits. Vacations are getting close. Don't let the bad stuff that's going on in the news distract you from smelling the roses, enjoying the pretty ladies/handsome guys and walking around in the sunshine.

Bad morning this morning. I caught myself saying, "oooff" when I stood up this morning. And my feet hurt. And it felt like a bug carrying the dreaded "instant old virus" was buzzing around me, looking for a place to bite. So as I was drinking some coffee out of my cup that says "Dad" in big brown letters, I realized it was such a nasty morning, that if I didn't want to let it spoil my whole day, I'd better take a minute and think about a couple of ideas from my own book, Staying Happy Healthy And Hot.

Idea #1- As long as you have some moving parts left, for cryin' out loud, move 'em. And idea #2 - You can never tell when something wonderful is going to happen. Think about that one. So many people are afraid that you can never tell when something terrible is going to happen...but it's also true that you can never tell when something wonderful is going to happen. Haven't you found that to be true?

I was in a diner, talking with my Lady Wonder Wench when I got a sudden itch on the back of my hand. So I started scratching it with some of the stubble on my chin. That was just another reminder of how lucky I am to be a man. I can stubble scratch my hands, my arms, some of my shoulders and even parts of a leg if an itch alert happens. Women can't do that.

I like women, but they have a tough life. My lady recently had to take a mammogram. I don't even like the word, "mammogram." It sounds like the woman needs to squeeze her breasts into something like a pdf file, and email it to some doctor. Seriously, I got a fast lesson in how tough it must be to be a woman a long time ago, and I'll never forget it.

My Lady and I were going home from a concert, and we were walking a couple of blocks to where I'd parked our car. It was kind of a slow walk because I was on crutches after a knee operation. It was late at night, and it wasn't in the best part of Manhattan. All of a sudden I noticed three or four guys who had obviously been partaking of way over the limit amounts of adult beverages coming down the street towards us. They were being kind of noisy. I didn't know what to expect.

Now I'm not an especially big guy, but I'm strong, and I have some martial arts training, and I have always been very well able to take care of myself. But I was on crutches. I knew that if I lost a crutch in a fight I'd fall down. As it happened, the guys just kept walking past us. I don't think they even saw us. But at that moment I realized how vulnerable women must feel all the time. And I'll never forget how chilly my spine got. With some few exceptions, most men are simply bigger and stronger than most women. That means women in public almost always have to be on guard, because there are some nasty guys out there. I will never forget that chilly feeling, and it's one of the reasons I always hold my Lady's hand when we're walking together. Always. She says it makes her feel safe. Bingo.

You know on a long drive you start looking for out of state license plates with silly slogans, and strange advertising billboards, and other cars like yours or other cars that are just strange? My Lady Wonder Wench and I were on the road again, going to meet our tall son Eric and his Lady, Brenda halfway between their place in Virginia, and our place in Pennsylvania.

We saw plenty of cars that look like ours, and one that looked like nothing I've ever seen. It was a vintage red Mustang with something that looked like a jet plane intake on the hood. One of the advertising signs was so clever I wrote it down. It was a home cleaning service called "One girl and her bucket." Pretty neat. There was a billboard advertising a moving company called, "Two guys and a truck."

And you know how you sometimes kid around with each other to pass the time? I remembered an old bit that I tried on my Lady Wonder Wench. It goes like this: What color is snow. What color are clouds. What color is whipped cream. What color are polar bears. Most people say snow and clouds and whipped cream and polar bears are white. Then you ask, What do cows drink." Most people say cows drink milk, because you've set them up thinking about white stuff. The right answer of course is that cows drink water. To show you the kind of mind my Lady Wonder Wench uses to do battle with life, here's how she answered the questions: Snow is yellowish grey, but sometimes it's white. Clouds are all the colors of the rainbow. White underneath, but also yellow and pink. Polar bears are ugly. They're dirty yellow. And cows drink...water. Of course. That's why after God made man, he stepped back, looked at us, and said I can do better than that, and he made women.

I'm sitting here in my big, comfortable, manly, black leather poppa chair in my living room, with a big smile on my face because I have just thoroughly scratched a hard to reach itch on my back. Oooh that feels good. Scratching an itch into surrender is exceeded in pleasure only by certain sexual celebrations too graphic to describe here. Most itches you can scratch all by yourself, but some itches attack in what I call the Zone of Despair.

The Zone of Despair is on your back. It's only about two inches wide. But you can't reach it with either hand. Certainly not if you reach for it over your shoulder. But even if you reach for it from below it's just out of your reach. About fifty percent of you are trying it right now...the male fifty percent. The feminine fifty percent are just rolling their eyes out loud, because they've already discovered this for themselves.

Sometimes you can reach the Zone of Despair with a fork, but that's something you'll always remember doing every time you eat with that fork. That fork will always make your steak taste a little different.

There are really only a couple of ways of dealing with the Zone of Despair.

#1- You can rub against the nearest wall while nobody is watching.

#2- You can get into a relationship with someone with great fingernails who is willing to use them on your Zone of Despair.

#3- You can buy a back scratcher.

Actually, even in the best relationships there are moments of great silences, in which the scratching of your back is not going to happen. So if you don't want to wear out your wall paper, you should buy a back scratcher. A guy can get pretty close to his back scratcher. Both a human one and the kind you buy. And the fact is, the kind of back scratchers you buy have certain advantages for guys. They don't sulk when you describe Catherine Zeta Jones with excessive enthusiasm. They don't get headaches, and they don't wish you were George Clooney.