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 2013

9-11 Because Memory Is Not Silent

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911

We knew our childhood days were done
And I watched my friends go off to war
What do they keep on fighting for? Lenningrad- Billy Joel

I remember the day I signed up for Selective Service. It was a sunny day in May of ’87, might have been my birthday or maybe a few days afterwards, I don’t really remember.

Some of the boys and I kidded around about whether we’d have to fight those Commie Bastards and talked about how our grandfathers had helped to kick Hitler’s ass and told Japan to go suck it.

Hindsight and age makes it easier to look back and say that part of me was nervous. I didn’t really expect to be called up and sent off to war but I was certain if I did I would go fight the Russians because the Cold War was still in effect and we knew the Soviet Union was our biggest threat.

We remembered the joy of beating the Russians in ’80 and hearing the stories about how Reagan wasn’t going to take any crap from Brezhnev.

School Yard Memories

My parents were registered democrats which is why in first grade I voted for Carter over Ford. Can’t say that I remember them saying much about Reagan beating Carter but I definitely remember talk about the Hostage crisis and a conversation we had when John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan.

My dad worked for L.A. County for 38 years. Mom stayed home until my baby sisters went to kindergarten and then she went back to work.

Dad didn’t serve in Vietnam. He was in the Peace Corps, came home, got married, started grad school and when I showed up became a father.

Dad sat me down in kindergarten and told me that I had to stand up for myself and that if another boy hit me I was allowed to hit them back.

There were two rules:

  1. They had to hit me first.
  2. If I chose to hit them back I was to hit them as hard as I could.

He made it clear that he wanted me to avoid getting into fights but that if I couldn’t I was to defend myself.

You’re Cannon Fodder

I am about almost 20 and I am thinking about enlisting in the Marines. Girlfriend has broken up with me, college seems endless and I am restless.

Dad catches wind of this and tells me that boys my age are cannon fodder and talks about how the people who control wars aren’t the ones out on the battlefield.

I am furious for a million reasons not the least of which is I don’t like being told I am a boy. I am a college student and have spent so many hours in the gym I am all muscle.

I choose not to enlist because I don’t want some 18 year-old boy screaming at me. I don’t tell dad his words are bouncing around my head.

Not so long afterwards I attend more than a few goodbye parties for guys who are going off to fight the first Gulf War.

September 11, 2001

I have blogged about this many times. My son is ten months old and is playing with blocks. He builds towers and knocks them down.

In the background we watch the planes fly into the Towers and see them collapse. It takes the news a moment to stop showing the people jumping out of the building but there is no doubt that things are bad.

There is no doubt in my mind that in the very near future the U.S. is going to go to war, but I don’t wonder if I’ll go. I am 31, it is not going to be me this time.

I look down at the boy playing at my feet and hope that by the time he is 18 things have calmed down.

September 2013

Iraq isn’t completely settled down and Afghanistan is still hot. Syria is using chemical weapons on its own people and the world can’t decide what to do about it.

I spent a chunk of Tuesday night helping my son with his Bar Mitzvah lessons and working on 7th grade homework. He told me about his day and made me laugh.

We’re two hours ahead of L.A. here in Texas so 9/11 has started and I can’t help but think about the day. Like I said, I have blogged about it plenty of times so I am not going to rehash it all today.

But what I know is tomorrow evening an almost 13 year-old boy will call me and ask questions about what it all means and what I think. And I’ll have answers for him, but I won’t share everything I think, wonder or worry about.

A lot can happen in five years, but that is what I said when he was a just a baby playing with blocks 12 years ago.

The Greatest Dad Blogger Of Them All Part Deux

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dadblogs

The joy is in the journey but we don’t always recognize those moments as they occur. We want to, we hope to but we are often too busy with life to slow down and notice what is happening.

Too busy raising our kids, working, relating in our relationships and trying to find time to keep that piece of who we were or think we want to be.

Sometimes I think that SEO is killing writers. Sometimes I think our need to wonder and worry about how to promote our words in a way that ensures they aren’t given short shrift is wreaking havoc on our creativity.

One of my non-patented secrets for writing is that I am 298.5 pounds of child. That curly haired boy with the green eyes and olive skin called Jack never grew up completely. He got a little bit bigger and his hair got a bit less curly but he didn’t disappear. He just became a father and learned how to  tune out the child inside. The Greatest Dad Blogger

Almost Ten Thousand Posts

There are almost ten thousand posts here and that is part of why I sometimes quote myself. I want new readers to be exposed to old posts and I want to tap into those old posts to see if my thoughts/ideas/feelings have changed.

I teach the children to think critically and ask themselves why they believe what they do. I teach them to not be afraid to change their minds and to be willing to say they have changed their mind because upon reflection it made sense to do so.

People aren’t logical and we frequently make decisions based upon emotion and without real thought. I am not exempt from that and I don’t like admitting I was wrong, but if I am going to be a good dad it is just part of the process.

That is because learning never stops for the kids or for me.

And that is all tied into why I like reading What I Meant To Say and A Letter To The Universe.

Silly Yet Effective Blogging Tricks

I am quite serious about What Happens When No One Reads Your Best Work? It is something I think about because posts like And The Rocket’s Red Glare are far more important to me than The 25 Most Annoying Bloggers & Why You Can’t Sleep With Them.

But if I had posted them at the same time there would be no doubt in my mind which one would generate more traffic and shares.

If you asked me to tell you which posts were my best I am not certain which ones I would point you to. I might ask you to provide more details about what you are looking for. Are you interested in my fiction, tales about my family/parenting or business advice.

It would help if you gave me more details but if you didn’t I am not sure which ones I would refer you to because these posts are similar to my children. I love them equally even though they are the same yet different.

Look at my About Jack page and you’ll see a wide variety of posts.

Been thinking about these things again because some potential writing gigs popped up and I was asked to show off my portfolio which leads me into guest post drama.

Guest Post Challenges

I have written quite a few guest posts, used to do them on a regular basis because I figured it was a great way to build relationships and meet new people.

Except two challenges crept up from doing these:

  1. I bill hourly for business and am very conscious of how much time I put in and I discovered the return wasn’t what I wanted it to be.
  2. Some of the blogs I wrote for shut down and the link juice was lost and since I didn’t know they were closing up shop it left me with some broken links. Not the biggest problem, but…

Anyhoo, I don’t have anything close to the time I used to have so it became more important to me to focus upon writing for my blogs. Dad’s Most Important Job is taking care of my children and part of doing that is figuring out how to allocate my time more effectively.

It is tied into why I like linkz like this one, like Just Writing because it is fun to just let go and to see where the words take me.

The 25 Most Annoying Bloggers & Why You Can’t Sleep With Them

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Hungry

Someone needs to help that lion find a new hairdresser because there is nothing intimidating about that mane, dude looks like he uses the same barber as Moe from the Three Stooges.

If you are chasing Curly, Larry or Shemp that hair style might work for you, because the boys are intimidated by Moe, but the rest of us…not so much.

Really, if that lion roared at me I’d laugh and then poke him him in the eyes. And then when he covered his eyes with his paws I’d kick him in the butt–so much for being king of the jungle.

The 25 Most Annoying Bloggers & Why You Can’t Sleep With Them

If you are new to the blog you might wonder if I am going to provide you with a list and if you are not new you might wonder if I am going to provide you with a list.

That is because I am unfiltered, fearless and willing to tell you who I think is a schmuck but I also make fun these of lists so it is not uncommon for me to respond by producing a headline like the one you just read.

A headline that many people will tell you is wrong because it is misleading and could be considered link bait. Well let me tell you not long ago I received an email from a man who complained about the headline and I broke my mama’s rule not to speak unless I had something nice to say.

I told him that after he removed the giant stick in his ass he needed to find a woman who was willing to service him because he clearly is in dire need of servicing. I said I know they say there is someone for everyone but in your case someone might only be found in a brothel and even then your shining personality might cause her to decide to use her teeth upon you.

In fact, I hope she does. I hope she gets you hot and bothered and then chews upon your manhood as if it were the best Coney Island hot dog she had ever found.

And then I signed it:

Love,

Seth Godin

I Am Not Seth Godin

I am not Seth Godin and I am not sure he would appreciate my signing his name to my letter but since it came from my email address I am pretty confident that we’ll be ok.

I am also fairly certain that Seth Godin doesn’t know who I am and will probably never read this blog.

I almost signed it Chris Brogan but Chris has been here before and commented. Is that a logical reason to sign or not sign someone else’s name to that kind of letter?

Probably not, but since the letter writer and I had exchanged several emails I figured he would know that I was the one who wrote it even though I signed it as Seth Godin.

And just in case he didn’t I attached an invoice for reading the blog and told him about the blog cancellation fees.

Blog Cancellation Fees- The Easy Way To Monetize

I am an innovator and I can assure you the easiest way to monetize your blog is to charge a cancellation fee. It is a really simple system.

The hard part about this system is sometimes people don’t want to pay the fee so they don’t cancel so what you do is sign them up for your list.

You do have a list, right? Everyone tells you the money is in the list.

Anyhoo when you sign them up for the list you can charge advertisers chunks of change to promote their products/services to the people on the list or you can sell your own worthless valuable products/services to them

And if you are really lucky they pay for your crap, cancel and then have to pay again so you make twice as much as you would have.

How To Get A Mom/Dad Blogger To Sleep With You

Some people will tell you the easiest way to get a mom or dad blogger to sleep with you is to offer them swag, but that is not true. All you need to do is marry them.

And now for my monthly or maybe it is weekly proclamation that I have been blogging for almost ten years now and that is part of why I am a bit crazed.

The damn echo chamber. So many people go for the low hanging fruit in blogging and write the same crap over and over, same old stupid blogging tips.

And some of the parent bloggers (I am one too) kill me because they start writing about how cool it is to find all these new and nifty dad bloggers.

You remind me of Columbus discovering America or what the Native Americans must have thought when they heard they had been discovered.

WTF.

And that my friends is all I have to say for now. I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

What Happens When No One Reads Your Best Work?

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Sometimes I wonder if the best writing has to come from a place of emotion. Could be anger, happiness, sadness or some sort of mix of angst.

And sometimes I wonder what happens if no one reads our best stuff. Does it really matter? I often say I write first for me and then for you but I notice when no one remarks on my work and so I wonder if I am lying to myself because that is the worst kind of lie.

Ask my children and they will tell you I know of no greater betrayal than lying to yourself. Since I am a thinker, a seeker and a spelunker of the mind I have to dig deeper inside my own head to figure out if I have committed this sin because there is none greater.

I Am Not Upset Now

Don’t know what vibe you are getting from these words but I am not sad now, mostly happy. Curious about this and so many other things.

A bit torqued about a question of whether white men have privilege, might blog about it because I think it is bullshit. It is a ridiculous argument that ignores a million factors such as whether people have access to education and money.

Won’t spend more time than that last sentence and a comment about the impact of class on privilege and then we’ll save the rest for a later day.

Back to the question of what happens when no one reads your best work. To be clear, I am not certain what posts I would include as being among my best work, but if I had to point out something recent I would say read An Empty Place At The Table. I am particularly proud of that one.

More Words

Stumbled onto This Was Our Song and liked a lot of what I read. Noticed it doesn’t have a picture, should add one because that would help.

Read the words in the blockquote below and smiled because there is so much in them that is meaningful to me.

“Don’t know whether to walk, no run the other direction as fast I can so that I can try to forget. But here is the deal, life is nothing but a series of moments in time set against the backdrop of the people who share them.

We did more than share a moment. We built an entire universe and lived a thousand lives inside our secret world. We loved and we lived. Man loves woman and girl loves boy.

I don’t have to ask your permission to love you and I don’t have to live in the past. I can pretend that once was is just a memory and I can move on past the moment. That is the beauty of choice and free will. But I can also admit, accept and acknowledge that something more is going on and I can follow the signs through the mist and blaze a trail through the fog.

I can see if that helps that which once was morph into that which is and that is what I intend to do. Life is short and our grip is tenuous. So I will do what I do best and dance in the fire and dare the flames to burn me. I will climb the hills and walk through the valleys because that was the promise I made to you and I will hold myself to it.

And I will do what is required so that I can determine whether the ghosts I see are the spirits of the future or the shades of the past. And in the midst of it all I will continue to hold out my hand so that you can take it. Because I never stopped being your hero and I never gave up.”

Why Is It Meaningful?

That excerpt comes from Fragments of Fiction but the message about never giving up, about recognizing that life is short and that all we are guaranteed is today is me.

It is what I teach my children and how I try to live my life.

This is important because when I am doing this spelunking of the mind I am working out whether it is important to be read and why because if I understand it better I can adjust what I am doing so that it is in sync with my larger goals.

Because when you sing a song alone or with another sometimes it just becomes better, stronger, longer and more powerful when you understand all the nuances.

And because I think the truth is there is a part of me, a little boy who lives inside that hopes somewhere among the readers is the agent/producer/magician who will read these words and offer me a gazillion dollars to just write.

Could quote Lennon and being a dreamer or I could just say this past year has proven that sometimes dreams come true and I am willing to keep fighting for more.

An Empty Place At The Table

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Champagne for everyone!

There is a huge, gaping hole at the table that will never be filled because the people that once sat there are gone.

They aren’t out of town, on vacation, sick or taking a nap. They are gone, moved to wherever it is we go after our time here and I can’t ever sit at a holiday meal and not notice their absence.

Can’t sit down and forget about what they added to our lives, the things they said and did and thus I sometimes find myself lost in thought about them.

The Passing Of The Baton

In most cases it is normal and natural. At the moment I am thinking about all of my grandparents, almost all of whom lived long and full lives.

My children will never have the relationship with my grandparents that my siblings and I did. I am ok with it, it is natural too.

But I see them developing it with their own grandparents and that makes me smile. I see them building a bond that reminds me of the one I have and I hope that one day many decades from now they will feel the same hole I feel now because the hurt is proof of the positivity and good of those relationships.

The passing of the baton from one generation to the next makes sense to me. I may not like it, but it makes sense.

Band Of Brothers

Some years ago my paternal grandfather and I started watching Band of Brothers together. I very much enjoyed doing so and remember some of the stories he shared with me.

World War II meant something very different to him and his generation than to others. I appreciate it and am grateful for the sacrifices but let’s face it, I can’t relate the same way to something that they lived through and I didn’t.

I don’t know why, but for some reason he and I didn’t get through all ten episodes. I think he might have gotten sick in the middle and been hospitalized, but I really don’t recall.

A week ago I decided it was time for me to revisit and finish the series. I dove into it because I enjoyed it, found it interesting and because that connection remains.

Watched and thought about how I view the “Greatest Generation” and wondered about differences and distinctions between then and now.

Tonight In Los Angeles

I won’t be able to go home for the holiday. Tonight in Los Angeles the family will gather and there will be another empty seat where I would normally be.

Tonight I won’t wonder if my family is the loudest one around. My kids won’t whisper to me about how their aunts and uncles should turn on their hearing aids.

Won’t hear any complaints about the mean older/younger brother/sister or have conversations with my sisters about what our kids are doing now and how funny it is to us that they think grandpa is the nicest guy ever.

Dad has always been a nice guy, but the grandchildren have no idea what they get away with and how soft he has become. The kids can blow the Shofar in his ear and he’ll just laugh, but if I did it…

Change Is A Part Of Life

This past year has been different in almost every way. Some of it has been hard but so much of it has been good.

Picked up the phone more than once to call my grandparents and check in. Was ready to call them and tell them about life and ask them for their thoughts on a few things but that time has gone.

Cellphones don’t reach them anymore.

I still hear their voices and see them. I hear them talking about how we can rely upon the good and bad time to change. Can hear them sharing stories and see their eyes go distant as they talked about their childhood and grandparents.

And I remember being the little boy who sat on their lap who couldn’t ever imagine them being young. Couldn’t picture them ever being children or anything other than old.

And I laugh because back then they were younger than my parents are now.

And now, well now I don’t have trouble picturing them as young people any more. Not because of the pictures, but because I have lived enough to understand things in a way I never could before.