Good Night

I was sitting here in my big, manly, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in the living room, trying to explain to my Lady Wonder Wench why I absolutely must get a new and kind of expensive piece of navigation equipment for our little Piper airplane. She did that wifely moment of silence when something expensive comes up in a conversation, then she looked up at me, bit the corner of her lip, looked down and said "The biggest difference between men and boys is the size of their toys." But then she looked back up at me, and gave me one of those smiles that lights up the room... and she very quietly said something that explains why she has stayed with me for so long, even though by now she certainly knows that no matter how nicely she kisses me, I'm never going to turn into a prince. That's what this podcast is all about.

I am a typical Louie Louie Generation lad. That means in dog years I am dead. I am young at heart, but somewhat older in other places. In short, some of the butter has slipped off my pancakes. And I guess I must be living proof that evolution can go backwards... because when I saw a comment from Broadway star Lea DeLaria in this week's New York Magazine I immediately stopped stirring my coffee with my car keys, I quickly put the coffee cup down on the table next to my big, comfortable, manly, black leather poppa chair, and I stood up so fast that I felt weightless for a moment... and said something that sounded like Gezorninplatz. The comment was, and I quote, "Gender is so passe." Folks...no it's not. At least not for me.

I am beginning to lose my sex drive. I noticed it last night and twice this morning. But as Big Louie, the star of my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot always says, "Just because we no longer have the rock hard abs and perky breasts like the people in the TV beer commercials, there's no reason to let ourselves just give up and turn into hunks of luke warm meat." And so I think there is still hope.

Hope is pretty much the mission statement of our Louie Louie Generation. Big Louie always says "As long as you have some moving parts left, for crying out loud...move em." And he always reminds us that, "You never can tell when something wonderful is going to happen." Well...something wonderful seems to be happening. If you have been startled by the sound of your favorite song playing in an elevator, if you've been going to the beach to get some color and it turns out the color is blue...because you've been holding your belly in, if you've been lying about not only your age but your children's ages, if you've been getting speeding tickets because you have to hurry while you can still remember where you're going, if "getting any" now means sleep...there is now hope. Seriously.

While I was waiting for my Lady Wonder Wench to fix some of her very personal stuff that really doesn't really need fixing so we could go out to dinner, I was reading a national magazine called The Week. There's a big article in there that says there is serious research going on to double, triple or even forfull how long we live.

You know how a chunk of a song sometimes keeps going around and around in your head. The smart guys in the white lab coats call that an ear worm. I really wish they had called it something else, because that's not a nice picture. I have two of them going on right now. One of them is a once upon a time, a long time ago song called, "Little Things Mean A Lot." The part of the song that's going around in my head goes "...always and ever...now and forever...little things mean a lot."

Usually when a song gets stuck in your head like that, if you think about it, the lyric has something to do with what's going on in your life...and I'm trying to figure out the connection here. I know why the other song is going around in my head. It's a song from a movie that's so old the copy I have is on videotape. It's a movie that had a big impact on life for my Lady Wonder Wench and me.

I have a feeling that "Little Things Mean A lot" may be on my mind, because I'm finally coming to understand there's not much I can do about the "big things" in life. What's the government doing...or not doing...What if climate change is coming to get us...why are a lot of innocent kids are going to bed hungry. It is a long way from perfect world. Perfection is kind of tricky. Lots of people forget who they really are by always trying to be perfect.

The next time your hat pops off because your head is expanding to keep up with your ego, do one of three things. #1-Try telling some other guy's dog to roll over and play dead, #2- Walk down the beach trying to catch the attention of someone in a bikini while you're wearing your 40 or so year old Speedo. Or #-3 push the pedestrian crossing button to change the sign from don't walk to walk.

I have done #s 1 & 2 before several times, and today I hit the trifecta. I stood pushing the damn change the crossing sign button on a busy street, and I pushed and pushed, and pushed and it totally ignored me. I hate ignorance. I especially hated it this time because there was a lot of traffic, and I had to get across the street to a gas station that had a men's room. I mean I was starting to hop from one foot to the other. I really had to get across that street. By the way, I don't make a habit of hanging out in men's rooms, but I feel you might like to know there is a sign in the Denver airport's men's room that reads, "Don't forget to flush. L.A. needs the water." I know the sign is there because I saw Big Louie put it there last week.

Big Louie is the star of my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot. He devotes his life to helping us lead happier, healthier hotter and sometimes funnier lives. He's always saying stuff like, "If you have any moving parts left, for cryin' out loud move ‘em." And "Who needs tooth paste if your teeth aren't loose." And "If your kid wants to learn to drive, you should never stand in his way." I should have listened to him when he said, "Pedestrian crossing sign buttons are like computers. You must never let them know you're in a hurry."

I was having a wonderful erotic dream last night, when something went BUMP! I leaped out of bed, throwing my back out of whack, bit my upper lip so I wouldn't yell something the Lord wouldn't want to hear, hit my head on Mr. Floor which made my world spin backwards a couple of turns, and woke up my Lady Wonder Wench who said something that sounded like "Gezorninplatz" which I think might mean "It's 4 AM, what the hell are you doing?" I said, "shhhh" as I grabbed my 12 gauge, and stumbled out into the hall on prowler patrol. Remembering what my armed to the teeth buddy Al told me..."Just the sound of a shotgun clicking a round into the chamber will scare anybody off"...I clicked a round into the chamber as loud as I could, and eased my way out into the living room hoping I wouldn't see anybody. And I guess Al was right, I must have scared anybody off.

My Lady Wonder Wench said, "It's 4 AM what the hell are you doing?" I said "Something went bump just now, didn't you hear it?" She said "No." I un-chambered the shot gun, we took turns in the bathroom and she went back to sleep. I couldn't sleep, so I went out into the kitchen, grabbed a glass of good Puerto Rican rum, and started reading a magazine, and something went "Bump" again. Only this time I was awake enough to realize the bump wasn't coming from the living room, it was coming from between my own ears. It was just one of those middle of the night sounds that I figured must be part of the soundtrack of some dream. You know...something that goes bump in the night.

As I have mentioned, I am not in the dog house with my Lady Wonder Wench. I am, instead, sitting here in my big, comfortable, manly, black leather poppa chair in my living room. I am not in the dog house, because we don't have a dog. And at the possible cost of being placed on the neighborhood terrorist watch list, I don't want a dog...ever again.

I had a couple of very bad dog experiences, and I've never fully gotten over them. My buddy Al has a dog named Ike. He often says Ike is like one of the family. I know Al's family, and I don't know which one Ike is like. Ike is part boxer, which probably explains the fact that every time the doorbell rings, he trots over to the corner, sits down, and wags his tail. Ike, not Al.

Ike is overweight, but he doesn't like the diet pills al got from the vet so Al hides them in his ice cream. Ike's ice cream. My Lady Wonder Wench had a dog when I met her. Her dog was a Border Collie she called "Lady." Lady didn't like me because although Ms. Wench was a very attentive dog owner, she was an even more attentive Dick owner. That doesn't sound right. What I mean is my name is Dick, and...well you understand.

Pull up a chair, chillin, and lend an ear. I am really excited. I have just found out that I am intimately involved in one of the worlds' biggest bad decisions. Now there are different levels of very bad decisions. If you are a very curvy young lady, taking accordion lessons would be a very bad decision.

A different level bad decision was when the Japanese decided to bomb Pearl Harbor, although all our aircraft carriers were out to sea. That was a very bad decision. Taking a bite out of that apple was a bad decision on Adam's part.

When the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth's contract to the Yankees, that was also a bad decision, as was the 1971 trade that brought Jim Fregosi to the Mets for a pitcher. A pitcher by the name of Nolan Ryan.

Big Louie, his own bad self, the star of my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot says, "Giving another man the opportunity to make your woman smile is a very bad decision. Very bad." 12 publishers made the very bad decision to turn down "Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone." Big bad decisions. NBC and CBS were the NFL's choices for the rights to Monday Night Football. They both declined. Bad, bad, bad decision. ABC really cleaned up on that one. M&Ms passed up Steven Speilberg's request to use their candy in his movie, "ET." Reese's Pieces grabbed the chance and their sales immediately increased by 65%. Not smart, M&Ms. Bad decision. Napoleon decided to invade Russia in the winter. Very, very bad decision. The Trojans decided to accept that big wooden horse the Greeks made for them as a present. Whoops. Columbus landed in the Indies, thought he was in India, and figured he'd drop in on the guys he thought were Indians. Bad mistake for Columbus, very bad decision by the Indians.

And I just found out the other night that I was intimately involved in a decision that was at least comparable to some of these, big bad decisions. I am now, Big, Bad, Boo-Boo Daddy.

Follow your dreams...that's what all the great thinkers tell us. And I think you should follow your dreams, except for that one where you're naked at work. If you don't follow your dreams you'll spend your life sitting in some corner gathering dust like the Dreary Drones in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot.

I followed one of my dreams a long time ago, when a major record label hired me to do an album of some of the lovin touch stories I told on the radio. I thought it was a dream come true but it turned out to be a nightmare. It was a Hollywood based record company and they assigned a typical Hollywood director to the session. He must have been a gifted child, because no mother in her right mind would have paid for him. He was the kind of guy who, if we had texting back then, and you told him he was texting too much, he would have just tilted his head to one side and smiled. I think he slipped into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn't watching. But he was a big time Hollywood director, and I was just a young guy on the radio. So I did my stories his way.

My only excuse is that it was a long time ago, and I was just emerging from my Pimple Person stage, so I hadn't yet figured out that the first step in following your dream is figuring out exactly what your dream is all about. I wanted to make a connection with people by telling my stories. He wanted to sell records. It doesn't matter now, because I fixed the stories. I did them my way on the CDs at www.DickSummer.com.

I am an attention sponge. We all want a little attention. Some achtung! There are three little words that'll get a lot of guys attention... "My husband's home." That'll do it every time. There are four little words that will also get a guy's attention... "You've got a raise." That statement has several different meanings of course. It means one thing if your smiling boss says it, and it's another thing if your smiling wife or girlfriend says it.

"Once upon a time" are four little words that get lots of everybody's attention. Tell me a story time. Good story tellers always get plenty of attention. Christ was a great story teller. So was Mohammed, Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, and my mom and dad. Dad used to tell me stories about knights in armor, and "hit in the clutch ballplayers" like Duke Snider. Mom used to read me poem stories like "The Highwayman." I recorded that for my radio show once upon a time, a long time ago. That long ago recording goes like this.