The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for September 2010

I Got My Ass Kicked at Dancing With The Stars

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I had no idea that a trip to see Dancing With The Stars could make life so interesting. No idea that a few hours that were supposed to be devoted to Foxtrots and Waltzes and Paso Dobles would lead to being handcuffed next to a beautiful woman. Yes, I said handcuffed next to- not handcuffed to a beautiful woman.

And to be clear in different circumstances it would have been great to have been handcuffed to a beautiful woman.  Like in a private room where it was just the two of us with some wine, a fine meal and maybe some soft music. Let’s be honest Mighty Jack has some game, but it is severely hampered by sitting in the back of a squad car because for some odd reason women don’t find the idea of getting it on in the same place as the crackheads, rapists and murderers. Why that is I’ll never know. I just classify it as one of life’s mysteries.

But I digress. I suppose that some background is necessary. My friend Michael called and invited us to go with him and a few people to watch an episode of  Dancing With The Stars be taped. Truth is that I really didn’t want to go but I haven’t had time to hang out with Mikey in a while so I figured why not.

Thanks to LA traffic and DWTS policies we had to leave several hours ahead of the time the show was supposed to start taping. I sometimes wonder if the universe speaks to me, you know, if there are signs that are given to us to read. I can’t say for certain whether there are or not- but I can tell you that traffic was so nasty I almost turned around. So maybe that was a sign. Maybe my guardian angel tried to warn me. Maybe he/she/it thought that turning a 25 minute commute into 90 minutes would be enough to dissuade me.

They were wrong. Maybe they thought that making parking a mighty pain I would have gotten fed up and turned around. They were wrong.  For future reference I ask that any messages that are sent are done so in a fashion that is easily understood, like smoke signals, Western Union or the beating of war drums.

Though it took a while we made it to the taping and joined the line of people waiting to get in. Did I mention the joy that I felt knowing that two hours after leaving my house I would be given the pleasure of standing in the 90 degree weather for god only knows how long. No, well then let me assure you that the smile on my face resembled The Joker.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but we were finally there and since we had time on our hands I figured it would be a good time to try and catch up with Mike. But people plan and G-d laughs and if you didn’t know, he laughs harder at me than most.

We hadn’t been there for much more than 15 minutes when a group of six or seven people came up and tried to cut in line just ahead of me. It seems that the contestant from the Jersey Shore has an entourage. Don’t know if they were fans, friends or cousins and I don’t care. You can’t walk up and cut in line and expect no one to say anything. I have been around this town long enough to know that VIPs are given real VIP treatment. They don’t leave you standing in line. So when the kid looked at me and said that they were VIPs I laughed and told him that the VIP line started just behind me.

He ignored me and turned around to face his friends. And this is where things took a turn….for the worst. I don’t really care about this stupid show and have no interest in fighting about who gets to see Bristol Palin trip close up and personal. But I guess that when he turned his back on me I glared or shook my head. It doesn’t really matter what I did, it was enough to catch the attention of one of the other boys in the group ahead of me.

He stared back and started talking, told me that there would be consequences if I didn’t turn around. Actually he used far more colorful terms than that, but this is a family blog so I can’t include them here. Being a shy and demure fellow I responded by explaining that if he engaged me he would lose the ability to use his right arm and probably be forced into eating baby food for several months.

Well it turns out that the Jersey Shore crowd has spent too much time watching The Sopranos because seconds later two of them were bumping chests with me. Had common sense prevailed this probably would have been the time to just walk away and find security. Although with the luck I had that day I probably would have found the guys from the Jerry Springer show so maybe there was no way to avoid what came next.

The guy standing in front of me pushed me. It wasn’t a hard push. It was the kind you give when you are trying to either intimidate  or work up the nerve to actually hit the other guy. But I wasn’t having it. You can’t intimidate me and I am not going to wait for you to feel tough enough to take a swing. I stepped forward and headbutted the guy who pushed me. As he crumpled I jumped on top of the guy next to him.

There were too many guys. I never believed that I could take all of them, but I figured that if I moved quickly I could handle the situation long enough for security to arrive. At least that was the plan, but like I said earlier god laughs hard at me so things don’t always work out the way we want.

As I wrestled with the guy beneath me I felt teeth in my shoulder. Yes, teeth. I didn’t find out until later that the “beautiful woman” who I was sitting next to me had been the person who bit me. The guys had a field day with that one- can’t count the number of times they said I was lucky it was my shoulder that she bit.

Anyway, in between, before or right after someone kicked me in the ass. Yep, took a fight in butt, or perhaps the more appropriate description is that I got my ass kicked at Dancing With The Stars. Maybe I should have paid more attention to those Buns of Steel videos I used to see around the house.

At some point two sets of arms pulled me off of the guy on the ground. I stood up and spun around to face the new threat. I am told that the tape shows that as I did I hit three different people. I didn’t look like Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali- but they all took home some unexpected memories.

Had they been part of the studio audience on the Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune they would have received the home version of the game. Instead they got a broken nose, serious contusion on the side of their head and one hell of a bruise on their back. Would have been great if they had actually been a part of the fight, but they weren’t.

One of them was a security guard and the other two were just bystanders who got far too close to the action. As I sat their in the back of the cop car I couldn’t help but think of Charles Dickens- “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

And the worst part of it all was that I didn’t even get to see the show. It was an elimination episode and I don’t know who got sent home. And that my friends is a tragedy.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

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comfort

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

This has become one of my favorite quotes. I have turned it into a bit of a mantra. It is a reminder that the man in the mirror is responsible my success or lack thereof. It is a reminder that I must always hold myself accountable for my actions.

Accountable and responsible for what I have or don’t have. Accountable and responsible to placing stumbling blocks before myself and determining how to remove them. It is not always easy to do. Not always easy to look in the mirror and accept my role in how things play- but necessary.

Necessary because my acceptance of playing a part in things gone wrong also necessitates my accepting credit for good things. It is not always easy. I am very hard on myself and have always been so. If you read through the ramblings here you will see what I have said about being good enough.

I don’t like it. I am good enough to get by in a million different areas. Smart enough, strong enough, athletic enough etc. That is fine and good- but it doesn’t provide the sort of satisfaction that I want. I don’t want to become complacent and simply accept whatever it is I have because I can do more and have more.

When I refer to having more it is not material possessions that I am discussing. I want more than I have but I don’t necessarily need more. What I need is more peace of mind. What I need is more satisfaction and happiness in specific areas.

I am on a quest for those things. I have a mental checklist that I run through. I know where I am on that list and where it is I am heading. It is important to me so I stay on top of it.

As a father I work on all of these areas so that I can be a better parent. I work on teaching the kids to be accountable because the only people we can control are me, myself and I. If we take care of ourselves many of the little details fall into place.

It is not always easy to take on the burden of accepting responsibility for our actions. Sometimes there are things that are out of control. People aren’t logical. They do stupid things and sometimes we react to them. Sometimes we are screwed by others. Sometimes we are mistreated and we take a hit. Life isn’t fair. It never was and it never will be.

But if you worry about yourself you can do things to help prevent falling into the holes, traps and pitfalls that are otherwise presented.

Somewhere out there in the universe is a person that I’d like to talk to about this. Somewhere out there they walk and wonder as do I. Maybe they claim otherwise. Maybe they say that they don’t wonder but I don’t buy it and I don’t really think that they do either.

If life were fair I wouldn’t be writing about it. If life were fair this wouldn’t be a topic- but it is not fair and I am writing. And I am making it clear to the universe that I am open and asking for help for this cause because it is worth doing.

At the end of the day all you can do is try hard. All you can do is go out and be responsible for yourself. And though I have sometimes found myself to be the victim of my own sabotage I think that ultimately I will get what I am looking because I am willing to do the work to make it happen.

In the interim I am working on doing what I can not to stand in my own sunshine.

Jack The Fireman

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She called it Grief Revisited and it made me think about a bunch of things such as saying goodbye to my grandmother earlier this year. A few years ago I still had three grandparents and now I only have one. Grandma’s voice is saved on my voicemail. It is a short message with her and grandpa singing happy birthday to me.

Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht.- That is Yiddish for Man plans and God Laughs. And if ever there was a time where I understood that to be true it is now. I called this post Jack The Fireman because that is what I am doing-putting out fires.

Got a million things going on that all require my attention and it feels like half of them are things that have to be dealt with yesterday.

If this was an action movie I’d be the hero that is driving the car on the freeway. We’re doing well over a 100 MPH except we are going the wrong way. Horns honk and fists are being shaken at me. The other drivers think I am crazy and maybe I am. But that is immaterial now because for better or for worse I am stuck.

Because this is the chase scene and my task is to get away from or capture the bad guys. I am moving with purpose. I didn’t choose to do it this way, but this is how it is. Part of me feels alive. Part of me loves the challenge of dancing in the flames trying not to get burned. It is a test and I don’t fail tests.

But I don’t really want to just barely pass either. A satisfactory grade isn’t going to make me smile. So I do what I need to do. I hit the radio and turn on some driving music and tune out the distractions. The horns and fists of the other drivers are seen but not acknowledged. I am focused on what lies immediately ahead of me but keeping an eye out for the exit that must lay just a little bit ahead.

The plans I made so that none of this would happen didn’t exactly pan out. Some of them worked and others…well they just didn’t happen. My grandfather, the self proclaimed atheist has had a very difficult time with the holidays. The first set without grandma. He leans on me for support and talks to me about life. He starts to cry and tries to hide the tears from me.

Looks at me and tells me that when you love someone as deeply as he loved grandma life feels empty without them. Asks me what I would do if I spent 85 years living with the most beautiful woman ever. Tells me that at 96 it is too hard to start over and that he won’t. I nod and smile and tell him that we’ll have to talk about it when I am 96. I’ll let him know if he is right.

He laughs and says that he is working on making it to 100. The kids run by and he laughs watching them play. Tells me that my six year-old nephew asked him what he does now that grandma is dead. Oy, sometimes the kids are a bit less empathetic than we would like.

I listen to his stories and do my best to file them away. As he talks about grandma I think about how she would have appreciated my telling her that I am a fireman. Grandma didn’t complain- she did. She just took on whatever came and handled it.

There is a checklist of things to do sitting next to me. I am running down the list and crossing them off as I go. The plan wasn’t to have all of this come down at once. The plan was to deal with all of these things in bite size pieces- not chunks that threaten to choke me.

I can hear my other grandfather speaking to me. Can hear him tell me that all you can do is try your best. Can hear him tell me that you can only play the cards that you are dealt. It is 4.5 years since we lost him but I carry him with me. Can still see the twinkle in those blue eyes. I remember the firetruck that he gave me when I was little.

Wonder if he would be surprised to see me playing fireman now. Doesn’t matter because the one thing that I know for certain is that whatever I did/do grandpa had my back. And with that it is time to stop reminiscing- got to focus on the highway and do what I can to avoid that tractor trailer that is dead ahead of me….

Fragments of Fiction Update

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If you are one of the 17 long time readers you know that when I am not pretending to be a daddy blogger I am working on one of my 39 unpublished novels. Here in cyberspace you get to pull up a cyber seat and read the mutterings, utterings and musings of a half crazy mad man named Jack.

Consider for a moment that one day I could be a published author of 39 books who managed to sell a grand total of 8-31-68-5-9-69 books.  What, you say that I didn’t include a real number there. Well brother if you hang around long enough you might get the chance to read a story called The Return of The Shmata Queen or how one man tamed the crazy clevelander turned Texan. Also known as “I told you that LeBron would never stay with the Cavs”

It is tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury- signifying nothing. Oops, just plagiarized Shakespeare.

So here is the real purpose of this post. I am trying to collect all of the inserts for Fragments of Fiction. The goal is to eventually take them and turn them into the book and or movie I keep talking about. If you are interested in reading them you can find quite a few of them over here and here.

Dad The Hero

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“Dad, I need to write about my hero, so I am going to write about you.” Those are the words that my son shared with me yesterday morning. Words that thrilled and terrified me. He looked up at me with a sparkle in his eyes and a huge smile on his face.

I smiled and put my hand on his shoulder. There were so many things that I wanted to say and yet no words came out of my mouth. I looked at him and understood the feeling and where it comes from. I feel that same way about my father, but he has earned it. Me, I am not sure if I really have. Can’t help but wonder what he would think if he really knew all that there was to know about me.

It is sort of a silly thought because at almost ten years-old there is no reason to have that kind of knowledge. He doesn’t really need it. No reason for him to worry or be concerned about some of the things that occupy my mind. No reason for him to know about the insomnia, headaches and stomachaches that have helped remove some of the hair on my head.

Some of the challenges are a direct result of my own actions and some of them have nothing to do with me. The deaths and the illnesses are out of my control. I may kid around about being the Angel of Death but I am not him/her/it. It is probably a good thing- at least for the people who cut me off on the freeway.

I want to own the title. I want to wear the crown that he has placed upon my head with comfort, but at the moment I can’t. Too much is happening. Too many changes coming at me too quickly. I know exactly what is going on. I am completely aware of every challenge and what is required to overcome them.

And that is part of the problem. Some of them are beyond my control. Some of the challenges are things that for lack of a better example can be compared to forces of nature. Call me a sailor who has to deal with storms and waves. The ship is being battered and tossed around a bit. I can scream at the sky and threaten the universe.

It wouldn’t be the first time and it probably won’t be the last. But the thing is that it really doesn’t matter whether I shout, scream, cry or remain silent. What is coming cannot be avoided. So the best thing to do is hit it head on and figure out the easiest way to navigate our way through.

I am cautiously optimistic. No matter what happens I always land on my feet. The real question is how many blows will I have to take in the process. Can’t say that it is all that different from what other parents deal with. Some of you have more difficult challenges and others have less. Either way those are yours and not mine to deal with. I am cool with that.

For now all I want to do is try to earn that title the kid bestowed upon me. If you compare life to a poker game, well- I haven’t played my last card yet so there is still a long way to go.