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"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

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Archives for November 2010

Johnny’s Thanksgiving

November 24, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

There were moments where Johnny thought that one of the great tragedies of his life was his inability to sing or play an instrument. He was a man of passion and intensity who had known tragedy and triumph. He believed wholeheartedly that he had stumbled onto one of the great loves, if not the great love of his life. Fear and uncertainty had taken her from him and that was something that he had been unable to reconcile with himself.

For a long while he had foundered between anger and sadness. Most of that was directed inwards, which if you knew him was to be expected because he had no bigger critic than himself. There had been more than one occasion upon which he sat in the dark and stared into the black wondering what if. It was an easy trap for him to fall into albeit a foolish path for him to tread upon.

It was easy because hindsight made it clear that there had been a better way to do things. It was easy because looking backwards he could see the path that he should have taken and he didn’t know how not to hold himself accountable. It didn’t mean that June held no stake in this or that she wasn’t culpable because no relationship is completely one sided.

But Johnny always saw himself as her hero. It was what he wanted to be and he suspected so did she. In fact he was certain that it was how she had seen him. So he shouldered the burden of expectations that may not have been completely reasonable and did his best to try to understand how it was he had fallen from the mountaintop that he had once walked upon.

His pain was significant and in many ways far worse than it would have been had it been of a physical nature. A broken bone would have ached and stung but there was medication that one could take to numb it all or to at least take the edge off of it. There was no such salve for a broken heart. You couldn’t drink or smoke it away all that you could do was try to live through it.

She wasn’t the first woman to break his heart but she was the first to shatter it. For a long while he was convinced that there would never be a time where it would feel better. It made him angry and bitter. There were moments where he wondered if it was worth it. Moments where he thought that when he didn’t know that June existed he was happier.

But Johnny if was nothing else, he was a fighter. He didn’t walk away from battles or give up just because things got hard. In his younger years he would have approached this as a war that could be won via brute strength. His stamina and tolerance for pain were considerable and he would spent a significant amount of time attacking the problem from that angle alone.

However Johnny was no longer a young man who was led solely by emotion. Time and life experience had provided him with a certain amount of wisdom, enough to make him sit down and consider his situation. And in this case one could be confident that he had spent many hours examining this from all sides. One could be certain that he had taken the time to consider whether this was best left to rest or if the situation was something that could be salvaged and if so, how.

And so it came to pass that he found himself laughing at the absurdity of it all. Laughing because for the longest time he and June had argued over whether one could apply logic and reason to relationships. She had often maintained that she was both and he had laughed. He took great pleasure in teasing her about it and told her that logic/reason had a tenuous grip upon affairs of the heart.

Yet, here he was groping for strands of logic and reason that he could weave into a tapestry that made sense. If he wasn’t careful he would suddenly proclaim his love for Barry Manilow and calculus. The thought made him laugh harder and had you seen him you might have described it as gales of laughter emanating from him. And for the first time in a great while he felt joy and happiness.

He still loved that crazy woman. He loved her with the same fierce intensity as he had. She was still the woman he never knew he wanted or needed but this time he had developed a new understanding and appreciation for her.

It was easy to admit that he loved her but frightening to realize that he had no control over anything but himself. Easy to admit that he wanted her back and kind of thrilling to think of the future. Terrifying to realize that it might never happen and that he would just have to find a way to fill the hole.

Yet he couldn’t help but believe that she felt it too. Couldn’t help but believe that they weren’t done yet and that there was more than a little magic left. Couldn’t help but believe that maybe this time apart was what they needed and that it was going to be a key ingredient in helping them to forge a bond that was deeper than before.

And that made his heart pound. The two of them had loved each other more deeply than any other. They had gone to a place that few couples reach and thought that they had reached the top of the mountain. It almost seemed crazy to consider that they could get closer than they had before. Crazy because they weren’t together not by any definition of the term- not to mention that it seemed silly to tempt fate by suggesting such a thing out loud.

But relationships aren’t based solely upon the heart any more than just logic and reason. Rather they are a meld of all of that- a magical alloy that you can’t find listed in the periodic table. Call it the 107th element.

Johnny stretched his arms above his head and smiled broadly. Still smilingly he grabbed a coat and stepped out into the cold dark night. Alone with his thoughts he looked up at the moon and sent out thoughts of love and joy into the night. With care and great effort he directed them to find a woman working in a kitchen far from his.

He didn’t have to call, email or text her to know that she was working hard to prepare a Thanksgiving meal. Didn’t have to close his eyes to see her move gracefully from refrigerator to stove or to picture how good her food would smell.

There beneath the moon he thought again about how he wished that he could play an instrument and or sing. The two of them were living a silent symphony and he wanted to sing or play it for her. Still he couldn’t help but smile because he knew that she could hear the song of his heart and that was more than most.

Happy Thanksgiving June- I will see you on the other side.

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

Cookie Monster Auditions for Saturday Night Live

November 23, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment


Here at the Shack we are huge fans of Cookie. You may recall that we included a post about how he cures writer’s block and Cookiegate among others.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Search For Answers About Our Ourselves

November 23, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Churchill taught

One of the things that I love about blogging is the opportunity it affords to search for answers about the questions that bother me. The web is filled with similar blogs, thousands of souls like mine searching cyberspace a communal quest to find that thing or thing that provides fulfillment.

Some are looking for something to fill the empty space in their beds, some in their hearts and others are not quite sure what they are looking for, they just are.

I have had my heart broken several times. It was ripped out from behind my ribs and my chest was sown back up, devoid of the thing that made me human, or so I thought. I grew accustomed to being sad, to looking at others with a longing to just be normal again, to wonder how they could laugh and how they could still see a world full of colors.

And then one day I woke up and realized that I had lost a companion, a old familiar

It was a terrible experience and like many things, I made it worse, I complicated the issues and made my own life more difficult than it had to be. But in some ways it was wonderful. It helped to teach me that I was tougher than I thought I was. My will and desire were like iron and would not break. (Can you tell that I think in very graphic terms.) I knew that if I let myself, if I gave myself permission to be happy and whole I would heal again and I did.

Since then I have been through some terrible moments, times in which I wondered why I had ever allowed myself to feel for anyone again. I considered myself a fool and there are some people out there who unfairly bore the brunt of my anger and my sorrow. But I never did fall back into the same hole that I had initially been in. I learned from each experience, added knowledge and scar tissue to my being and kept moving.

And if there is one thing that I did take from everything it was to stop beating myself up over not knowing the answers. I don’t know why some things happen. I don’t know why some women loved me and others could not or would not. I don’t know why so many friends and acquaintances have died at such a young age. I don’t like not knowing, but I don’t have to know everything because sometimes you cannot. And if you allow yourself to foster unhealthy ambition for too long there are consequences.

So what I have found is that by easing back on the throttle I am a happier man and many of the answers I seek have come to me. I don’t always like them or find them to be incredibly satisfying, but they are answers.

Here is what I know for certain…..Nothing and everything. I know that I have friends and family whom I would die for. I have known and know love that burns so fiercely it leaves me gasping for breath. I have experienced passion that leaves a sharp a pain in my side and a burning feeling that does not diminish with time.

What I know for certain is that I am alive. I feel it and I live it. What else can a man ask for.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Is Social Media Making You Anti-Social

November 22, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Social Media has made it de rigueur to talk to people in ways that once were considered rude or inappropriate. We no longer encourage eye contact because that removes our ability to check our email, tweet, blog or update our Facebook status.

It has gotten so bad in my house that I once made my 6.5 year old daughter scream in terror. You see, I walked into her bedroom and told her that if she didn’t clean up her room she wasn’t going to be able to go on her playdate. It seemed like a rather innocuous request and certainly not one that was going to make her scream.

However I had forgotten that she no longer recognizes my face and consequently was frightened because she thought that a strange man had broken into her house. Fortunately I am quick witted so I whipped out my BlackBerry and looked down at my screen. Having become intimately familiar with the top of my head she immediately calmed down and requested that I never scare her like that again.

Still I was concerned so I made a point of sitting next to her on the bed so that I could show her pictures of her daddy. Apparently that was the wrong thing to do because she immediately screamed and said that the stranger was back. Fortunately she could smell my cologne (Polo) and recognized my hands as belonging to daddy.

Ok, this story is a bit of an exaggeration. She screamed because discovered that the puppy had chewed up one of her dolls and not because she didn’t recognize me. But that doesn’t change the question/comment about how social media can make us all antisocial.

Humans are social creatures and we need to interact with others. If you don’t believe me I recommend that you take a moment to think about the psych class you took in college. You know the one, it was that lower division course that you had to take as an elective to fulfill your general ed requirements.

So it makes plenty of sense that we would be interested in using tools and applications that provide a method for that interaction. I love to write and would do so even if no one read or commented on these posts. But I gain far more pleasure out of it when there is interaction. I use Facebook to stay in touch with friends I might not otherwise speak with.

But I also make a point to try and talk to my friends. Call me a dinosaur but I prefer verbal communication. I am not satisfied with just text. It is nice to see photos on Facebook, but I want to hear about the trip too. Yet what happens with increasing frequency is that verbal communication is becoming infrequent. It is often not the norm and instead of social media fostering interaction it is helping to build little cocoons of technology.

We are becoming a world of “boys in the bubble” where we don’t sit through a meal without checking our email or tweeting about how good our steak is. There is nothing profound about this. I am not the first person to complain/comment nor will I be the last.

The world we are creating is what makes it possible for a woman to spend to engage in a social media experiment where for 30 days her interaction with people will be limited to that which is provided by technology.

As a father I wonder and worry about this. Though I have had a cellphone for more than ten years and a computer for far longer I know what life is like without it. I remember the time when I wasn’t constantly connected. It is a world that my children have never seen and that concerns me.

It is not always good to be so connected. I say that as someone who constantly is. Work requires me to be at my computer throughout the day and when I am not tethered to it I have a BlackBerry that helps out. The BlackBerry is a great tool. I love how it makes it possible for me to have more mobility. I love being able to go sit on a beach or hang out at a park and work.

Yet it is also an electronic leash. Those people who know I have it expect immediate or semi-immediate replies to their calls/emails/texts. Instant gratitude leads to instant impatience.

So I have made a point of turning it off. I have made a point of disconnecting from that bells, beeps, whistles and dings because I have been trained to respond just like Pavlov’s dog. Even when my phone is off the sound of an alert in my general vicinity makes me reach for my pocket.

And though I would very much like to share more with you I have found that I cannot. Because I haven’t updated my Facebook status in hours nor have I tweeted about what I had for lunch. So ciao for now, social media is calling my name.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Monday Morning Music Thanksgiving Week

November 22, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Under Pressure-Queen & David Bowie
Sympathy For The Devil-The Rolling Stones
The Night Is Still Young– Billy Joel
Resistance– Muse
I’ll Have to Say I Love You In A Song– Jim Croce
We Can Work It Out– The Beatles
Prodigal Blues– Billy Idol
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door– Bob Dylan
The Fire Inside– Bob Seger
Baby, I Love You– Aretha Franklin
Do You Wanna Hold Me?-Bow Wow Wow
Mud On the Tires-Brad Paisley
Telephone Line – ELO

Filed Under: Music

I Hate The Holiday Season

November 22, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Yes that is right. I hate the holiday season. 

  • I hate being told to be of good cheer.
  • I hate reading about the fake war on Xmas.
  • I hate being assaulted by all of the crass commercialism.
  • I hate being told that we should be nicer now than during the rest of the year.
  • I hate emails that are blindly sent out without regard for whether the message is of interest to all of the recipients.
  • I hate all of the stupid decorations. Gaudy is not cool and I don’t care if they are Jewish or Xtian. I dislike them all.
  • I hate fighting crowds at the mall.
  • I hate reading about knuckleheads shooting each other over a video game system.
  • I hate the stupid elves that try and get my children to take a picture on Santa’s lap. Don’t they know that I wished Death upon Santa.
  • I hate knowing that my cousin the Grinch rolled over and gave in.
  • I hate most Elmo toys. That little red fiend’s voice grates on my nerves.
  • I hate all of these stupid battery operated toys that beep, squawk and whistle. The next person who gives my kids one of those toys is going to wake up to the sound of a marching band outside their home.
  • I hate the stupid holiday music. If I could I’d kick that little drummer boy right in the ass. And that kid who made that dreidel out of clay can bite me too. What the hell is up with a clay dreidel, the best are made out of wood.
  • I hate fake snow. I don’t like the real stuff, but the fake crap is even worse. I live in California for a reason. If you need snow to feel like you are a part of the season get the hell out of here. There is too much traffic anyway.
  • I hate, I hate, I hate.

Phew. I feel better now.

(originally posted here.)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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