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 November 2012

I Hate Your Cat

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«Living in such a hot country isn't something nice for snow leopards!»

This post was going to be called “The Time I Got Caught With My Hand In My Pants” but then I stumbled onto three blogs filled with cat pictures and decided to go a different direction.

That is because I hate your cat and your pictures. Maybe it is because I am allergic and that furball makes my eyes water, my nose run and sneeze so hard I can feel it in my groin.

That is a hard sneeze. You do know you aren’t supposed to feel that sort of pull down there. Every time it happens it reminds me of the nurse in high school that used to give us our sports check up.

You really didn’t want her hands down there and that raspy voice that said “now cough.” Oy, just thinking about it brings back the sense of sandpaper hands and hair that smelled like cigarettes.

This Post is Part of NaBloPoMo

Try telling your doctor you have a bad case of NaBloPoMo  and see what happens. Just wait until they find out you are a mighty blogger who is well adjusted and practices good hygiene.

I took my son to see Skyfall today. We loved it. It was a lot of fun and well worth the grand old price of…free.

Yeah, someone gave me free tix a while back but I never managed to use them until now. It was a good movie and had I paid the price of admission I still would have been perfectly satisfied. Daniel Craig does a very fine job of portraying Bond.

If I had to rate my favorites I would say it is him, Connery and Brosnan.

Kind of funny because as a kid I loved Roger Moore but as a “grown up” I have reached a point where I can’t take that sort of cheesy approach to my favorite British spy.

I Am Not James Bond

Yeah, I know I wrote about how I told the teacher my name was James Bond but that is not me. It is not because I am not British or a commander in the Royal Navy.

Nor is it because I am afraid of a mixing it up. I like a good adventure and have always been good at living life like that.

No, the issue is that I am not suave, sophisticated and crystal cool.

I have a body built for demolition, a fire that burns in my belly and an intensity that never wavers. Bond has some of that, but he also brings about a certain style that just isn’t me.

Bond is suited for wearing a tux or suit and making look like the most comfortable thing in the world.

Me? Well I own multiple suits and tuxedos but I manage to make them look wrinkled and worn before I put them on. It is a talent that doesn’t pay all that well.

As an FYI, I understand that he is not real. I shouldn’t have to write that but if I don’t I guarantee someone will send me an email in which they try to make sure I understand I am talking about a fictional character and not a real person.

Go blog at cats and stop bothering me with that.

Real post coming soon. In the interim have fun in the comments.

He Tried To Break My Spirit

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40+117 Sucka Punch!

I am not a tough guy but I know how to take a punch. Been hit a million times in a million different places.

Head, gut, kidney, nose- you name it and I have had the pleasure of making its acquaintance. It being a fist meeting flesh and though I have never enjoyed it, I always took what was given and returned the favor.

It was my way of saying thank you.

Alone On The Soccer Fields

The kids played soccer today. Two games, in two different places. Two different age groups. Two different sets of parents.

Yet I was alone.

It wasn’t because I was excluded, shunned or told to stay away.

I was alone by choice and by need.

There are things going on. Stuff is happening and I am doing what I do when there isn’t quite as much magic in the moment as there is mud.

I am walking through it, trudging when necessary and upon occasion scooping up handfuls and flinging it at the walls, passerbys and whatever else is around me

Never know what it will stick to.

Life Has Its Moments

Sometimes life has its moments where you visit familiar places and think about things that have happened there. There are weekends at the lake when you reminisce about people who once shared those moments with you and wonder about this and that.

It is not a bad thing or at least I never see it as such, but I am given to moments of introspection. I enjoy them and when they come to visit I do my best to say hi and then send them on their way.

What is done is done and the past can’t be changed but the future remains to be altered and or adjusted.

Looking Back as I Look Forward

I carry very few regrets but those I have are monsters that sometimes rear their heads. One in particular has reappeared and he has tried to break my spirit.

Won’t happen. I have taken too many punches and gotten back up too many times to worry about not being able to do it.

But the blog requires brutal honesty and I will provide it. Here is the summary:

A situation arose and I did the best I could to manage it. I made mistakes along the way but I made a lot of smart decisions too. There is a price to be paid for all of our actions and I am concerned about the bill for this one.

I am worried because it is not just me who has to pay for it and I don’t know how it will all shake out.

Experience tells me it will work out because I will manage it and I will find a way, but that doesn’t negate the concern. It merely makes it manageable.

There is a clip and a quote from Field of Dreams that I have shared here before. It is a favorite of mine and one that resonates with me. I’ll leave you with it and the reminder that I am doing the 30 days of blogging deal that so many other bloggers are doing.

Yep, I am posting every day for 30 days, sometimes multiple times a day.

See you in the morning.

“We just don’t recognize life’s most significant moments while they’re happening. Back then I thought, “Well, there’ll be other days”. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.” Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham – Field of Dreams

How James Bond Almost Got Me Suspended

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English: James Bond films
English: James Bond films (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is fair to say my mouth has gotten me into trouble more than once and that sometimes I deserved it. It is also fair to say my attempt to use James Bond to keep me out of trouble didn’t work out as well as I would have liked it to.

The substitute teacher that showed up in class never should have been a teacher. Without her heels she was probably 3.5 feet tall, with them she was just about four, add in the beehive hairdo and maybe she was almost 4.5 feet.

It didn’t help that she had a funny accent or that she didn’t seem to catch on the antics of a room full of 14 year-old boys and girls.

My moment with her came during her second visit to the class. She asked me my name and I said I was James Bond and that the guy on my left was Pussy Galore.

Pussy!!!!!!!

The class roared with laughter and my friend told her that his name was Pussy Galore, but she never heard it.

That was because just hearing Pussy Galore made her turn purple with rage and squeal PUSSY!!!! I don’t think it was because she was jealous of Honor Blackman either.

“You get up and go outside!”

I stood up but I didn’t move. She walked over, looked up at me and waved a finger in my face.

“Out! I said out!”

I walked out of the room and sat down on a bench. Inside the room was in an uproar, she was wandering around the room muttering “Pussy, Pussy, Pussy” and my classmates were dying.

That funny accent combined with her odd appearance and our juvenile sense of humor blended together to create a teacher’s nightmare. She had no chance, but whether she recognized it or not I cannot say.

What Came Next

Since our sub had never instructed me to do more than go outside I didn’t bother going to the office. I basked in the sun and wondered how much time was left, surely the bell would ring soon and I could grab my stuff and go to the next class.

And then I saw the vice-principal and knew walking down the hall and got nervous. We had already enjoyed several visits in his office and I was certain he wouldn’t miss out on an opportunity to ask me why I wasn’t in class.

I stood up, turned my hat backwards and walked back into the classroom.

“Who are you?”

The question took me by surprise. I couldn’t believe she didn’t recognize me.

“I asked you a question. Who are you?

“Ma’am, I am a new student. I just transferred here. I am Vinnie Barbarino.”

Yes, I was a smart ass and I gave her that response because I was sure she was going to send me to the office. Instead she told me to take a seat and explained that I would have to give my paperwork to the regular teacher when she returned to school the next day.

All Hell Breaks Loose

I sit down at my desk and there is almost complete silence. No one can believe what they are seeing.  Just when things are settled the guy next to me says I can’t sit there because that desk belongs to James Bond.

“Yes, he is right. You can’t sit there because that is James’ chair, but we can share a seat.”

Now I am struggling not to lose it because the speaker is my friend with the feline name.

“Oh, thank you. what is your name,” I ask.

“I am Pussy Galore.”

And with that everyone loses it- it is madness inside the classroom and the poor sub throws all of us out. Yep, she tells every single student to get the hell out.

Sadly this happened within ear shot of our beloved vice principal who was forced not to return to his office to enjoy a powdered sugar donut and a cup of coffee so that he could figure out what happened to our normally quiet classroom.

Epilogue

I haven’t shared all of the details because some of them just wouldn’t be funny unless you had been there, but I can tell you that my buddy discovered that being nicknamed Pussy Galore wasn’t the kind of name that women found attractive.

For years he blamed me for his not being able to get a date, but I still think it is because he looked a lot like Arnold Horshack.

A Useful Plug-in + Bonus Talk About School

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listen to ‘A Useful Plug-in + Bonus Talk About School’ on Audioboo

Here is a link to the Jetpack plugin I mentioned in the podcast and a list of features. I don’t use all of them, but I use most.

What features does it have?

  • WordPress.com Stats: Simple, concise site stats with no additional load on your server.
  • Comments: enables your visitors to use WordPress.com, Twitter, or Facebook accounts when commenting on your site.
  • Subscriptions: Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments to receive a notification via email.
  • Contact Form: Easily insert a contact form any where on your site.
  • Sharing: The most super duper sharing tool on the interwebs. Share content with Facebook, Twitter, and many more.
  • Spelling and Grammar: Improve your spelling, style, and grammar with the After the Deadline Proofreading service.
  • Gravatar Hovercards: Show a pop-up business card of your users’ gravatar profiles in comments.
  • Shortcode Embeds: Easily embed videos and more from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare.
  • WP.me Shortlinks: Enable WP.me-powered shortlinks for all of your Posts and Pages for easier sharing.
  • Beautiful Math: Mark up your posts with the markup language, perfect for complex mathematical equations and other über-geekery.
  • Extra Sidebar Widgets: Easily add images, Twitter updates, and your site’s RSS links to your theme’s sidebar.
  • Enhanced Distribution: Share your public posts and comments to search engines and other services in real-time.
  • Custom CSS: Customize the appearance of your site using CSS but without modifying your theme.

Some of these features use the powerful WordPress.com cloud, others are popular features provided for the convenience of not having to install and manage several separate plugin installations.

Private Versus Public School

During the second part of the podcast I share some thoughts about my children and their move from private school into the public school system.

Overall it has been a smooth transition. Since I have children in both elementary and middle school I can speak with some authority about what I have observed.

There is a definite and distinct difference in access to resources. That is not surprising, disheartening in some ways, but not surprising.

More importantly I can say I am quite pleased with the quality of the teachers. My kids are still receiving an excellent education, but there are adjustments.

The public school teachers aren’t as accessible. It is frustrating. I am not the parent that constantly chases or tries to speak with teachers, but when I reach out I expect to receive an answer or at least be acknowledged in a timely basis. That hasn’t been as good as it could be.

My son put his heart and soul into a project this week and was devastated because he bombed it.

What I want to figure out is why it happened. He had all A’s and one B’ on his 10 week report card so I can’t say he isn’t keeping up. Nor am I going to say he is well ahead because I don’t see that either.

So I am waiting for a response from the teacher so that we can figure out who was responsible for this.

It is possible my kid blew it on all accounts, but I won’t point the finger until I know for certain.

Meanwhile I made a promise to myself to be in bed by midnight so this post ends right here.

Waiting For The Click- The Post You Won’t Read

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AGFA CLICK CLACK 

You can give partial credit to Julie and Brian for this post but don’t ask them to talk about it because they haven’t any idea that their words/stories sent me down this path.

Truth is I don’t know what pushed me here other than this overwhelming sense of waiting for the click. Not sure what to say or how to describe it other than I have this feeling that something is about to happen that is going to have significant impact upon me.

Maybe it is intuition or maybe it is just hunger pains, after all it is lunch time. I am opting to go for the woo woo end of things and to accept that something is about to happen. Whatever this click is, it is something that is good and that is coming from work I have done to reach this place.

I am looking at the songs I linked to in these posts and and rolling with the messages I hear. There are words, thoughts, ideas and images flowing through my mind at rapid fire pace.

If you were to step inside my head you might wonder if I was manic or just supercharged.

My Whole Body Aches

I played ball last night for 90 minutes and had one of the best nights I have had in months. It was the first time in months that my legs gave me the lift I have been looking for and my lungs were happy to cooperate too.

It was a joyous occasion for me because lately I have been wondering if the mileage had caught up with me. You can’t play as hard as I do without paying a price.

The physical pounding that comes with the game takes a toll. Don’t misunderstand, I am not complaining because I love this game.

I love the battle for the ball. So much of it is a question of will, not talent, but will.

Talent Without Will is Useless

Talent without will is useless. I hate seeing players with boat loads of talent waste it because they aren’t willing to work. I don’t have that talent. I am not tall enough to just turn and shoot over the other guys or take the ball from them.

My game is about grit. It is about desire. It is about muscle. It is about being willing to pound the ball into the post and to be fouled a dozen times when I put it back up.

I hear the clock ticking. I am not old, but you don’t see men my age playing this way for long because the body says “screw you.”

Waiting For The Click

Every time I look at my fiction I find myself writing the same two or three stories. It used to irk me because I can write about other things. I have done it and know I can do it again.

Except I haven’t.

I think it is because I have to cover these stories now. There is something there. There is something I have to do. I am waiting for the click.

Or maybe I am waiting to recognize the click.

I hate waiting. I like action. I am responsible and accountable for my life and my happiness.

Waiting feels like I am shirking that responsibility, but maybe I am not. Maybe it is just giving the lessons, moments and meanings a chance to catch up with a mind that moves a mile a minute.

People Don’t Comment When It Is About You

A reader sent me an email saying that people won’t comment when the posts are about me and not about you. There is some truth to that.

If my content isn’t something you can relate to you will be less likely to read and less likely to comment. It is worth asking What Is The Value Of Comment Sense?

It is also worth remembering that Writing Should Scare You.

Look Beneath The Surface

Last night I told my family I have grown completely intolerant of the inability and unwillingness of some people to let others talk. We don’t always know what someone is going to say so there isn’t a reason to just finish a sentence or to not pay attention because you know it all.

We don’t.

Look deeper.

That click I am waiting for is tied into all of these things. I am living my own Nashville and tied up in my own Walk The Line.

All we have is now. Today is our guarantee because tomorrow might not come or it could be very different.

That is why waiting for the click is killing me, yet I feel confident that it is all going to work out.

Life sure is peachy sometimes.

What do you think?

Writing Should Scare You

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Hole in the ground

Confession: All of my fiction contains elements of truth. When you ask me to tell you the back story behind An Uncertain Certainty and New Year’s Eve I intentionally refrain from telling you what is true and what is false because it is not your business.

But that doesn’t mean those things didn’t happen or that they did.

I am not trying to be coy or obnoxious about this because the point of this post isn’t whether those things happened or not. Nah, this is about writing and the process of trying to produce something remarkable and worth reading more than once.

Sometimes the best way to do that is to dig so deep inside that the words on the page scare you.

But There Are Boundaries in Blogging

There are boundaries in blogging. There are stories I don’t share because they aren’t mine to discuss with anyone beyond those who are directly involved in them. There are also those tales that veer into the land of TMI.

I know exactly where some of those lines are and haven’t a clue about the others. Blame it on having had the filters surgically removed from my mouth.

Yep, I am not afraid to say anything at any time or any place. Doesn’t mean that I will. My kids have heard me say many times that just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Dig Deeper and Push Harder

When people speak of sharing their own truth I am sometimes guilty of rolling my eyes. Don’t know why other than it sounds pretentious to me.

Won’t take the time to talk about whether that is right or wrong because I want to talk about fear and writing. Some of the best work I have ever done has come from writing about things that scare me.

Some of the best things I have ever written comes from tearing the scabs off of painful experiences and ripping down the walls that hide the past.

When I push harder and try to go deeper I find more depth and new layers. People respond to that raw honesty. They are attracted to it.

I won’t always publish those words. Sometimes it is because of the reasons I listed above and sometimes it is because I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Is It Ego or Is It Fear

I don’t know if it is ego or fear that prevents me from going there and sharing it with you. So sometimes I slip into my guise as a professional writer of works of fiction and put it together there.

The stories are taken from those experiences and adjusted so that no one can say I am writing about them alone. But the piece of me are obvious to myself. They jump off of the page and I sometimes wonder if others who know me recognize them.

What I want is to publish multiple books and to be paid to do nothing but write my stories and share my thoughts. There are multiple paths to reach this place, but I am betting that my way is going to get it done.

If I am write about writing and that it should scare us then good things will happen. And if I am wrong, well I’ll just try a different way to make it happen.

Without risk there is no reward.