Uncle Al, Observations, Pathological Liars

The other night I watched “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman) on Turner Classic Movies. To be honest, not a good movie, but I love TCM. If you, the modern viewer, can watch these old films with an open mind and allow that it was a different time, that the standards and mores were different, that relatively tame things now really were risqué back then, that old notions of beauty and style were once truly beautiful and stylish, and that people really talked that way and so on, if you can accept all that, you can easily get hooked on TCM. When I watch those old movies I think of my Uncle Al, who, when we visited him and my aunt back in the sixties, always had his TV tuned to a movie station. He could identify all the old movie stars and knew everything about them. “That’s Randolph Scott!” or “Errol Flynn! He had it all but got mixed up in drugs. The ladies loved him.” And later: “Maureen O’Hara!”

You could say Uncle Al was a “character.” Usually when people call someone a character, that’s code for a strong, difficult personality, someone with charm, who can be funny and entertaining, but in the long run hard to get along with. They’re “handfuls.” We had an Aunt Harriet who must have loved the endearing side of this character she married, but she eventually found Uncle Al too much of a handful and they got divorced in the late sixties. He could be blunt and tactless, prone to saying disagreeable things. He could hold a grudge for forty years. He was one of those types who could never sit still, always itchy, always impatient, a little too quick to take offense, insistent on the last word. I think everyone knows the kind of person I’m talking about. Easy to like but not easy to take. He had a nervous stomach and kept a large glass bowl of antacid tablets on the coffee table which we kids first mistook for candy, because they looked like candy and he ate them like candy.

My father’s and uncle’s mother, my grandmother, lived in Syracuse, New York. My uncle lived in neighboring Dewitt and we lived in a suburb of Boston, five hours away; so geography dictated that the responsibility for keeping an eye on Grandma rested mainly on Uncle Al. By this time, the time I’m talking about, I was in junior high, still a preteen and not particularly aware of all that went on in the opaque and mysterious grownup world. I didn’t know about the effects that loneliness, disappointment, the stresses of a career and financial worries could have on someone in midlife. I hadn’t yet realized that grownups were in essence merely bigger versions of my friends and myself, and who, though better equipped to handle the bewildering complications and problems of life by themselves, were still kids on the inside and were just as susceptible to petty jealousies and unreasonableness and hurt feelings as we were. It never entered my head to worry about Uncle Al’s state of mind, what it must have been like to find himself a bachelor again, all alone in an empty house, dealing with an elderly parent who was herself a bit of a “handful.”

After the divorce, the entire family stopped taking trips out to Syracuse to visit my grandmother and uncle because it would have been too much to host all of us at once. Instead, just my father and I would make occasional weekend excursions to see them. The plan was to stay at my uncle’s house and make visits to my grandmother so she wouldn’t have to deal with overnight guests. Nowadays, as a meditation exercise, I sometimes mentally tour her house, starting at the reception area with the too high coat rack (a winter coat always hanging there), into the living room past the sofa that felt itchy to sit on, the framed photographs, the loud ticking mantel clock, on through the dining room, where each footstep on the wood floor created vibrations that made the joints of furniture and stacked dinnerware and glasses in cabinets creak and clatter, past the old fashioned telephone table and chair, into the cardamum spice smell of the kitchen. 

On one particular visit I could sense a discord between my father and uncle right away. We did all the usual things. We arrived customarily early in the evening, and, as my father went straight to the bathroom, Uncle Al quizzed me on the length of our drive and which routes we took (I had no idea; I never paid attention to highway numbers). Later he broiled us up a few steaks for dinner and we sat down, my father and uncle each with a Manhattan and I with a tall glass of apple cider. As the night progressed and we retired to the living room, more drinks were mixed and faces reddened. I really didn’t pay attention to the specifics of their conversation, but I could follow the general drift as one can watching a foreign language film without subtitles. It had to do with the care of my grandmother, something about my uncle considering her mentally incompetent and no longer able to live by herself, and how she insisted on renting the apartment upstairs but couldn’t handle the tenants, and that he was constantly being dragged in to settle disputes and his nerves couldn’t take it anymore. He became more and more animated in his remarks, and my father countered these with placating words meant to deflect increasingly pointed comments that, if challenged, could easily lead to an argument with no quick resolution. Eventually I was sent to bed upstairs.

After an hour or so, my uncles’s and father’s voices, muffled at first, grew louder and louder; suddenly, the two voices erupted violently into an argument that sounded exactly like two big dogs barking. It was a scary thing for a boy to hear. This went on for a minute. Then I heard the door downstairs open and my father came up to my room. He told me to get up, change out of my pajamas and gather up my things.

“What?” I said disbelievingly.

“We’re leaving. Let’s go.”

My father waited for me downstairs, his overcoat on. There was no talking between them now. A grenade had gone off and this was the eerie stillness that followed the blast. I saw my uncle in the living room. He was definitely drunk, looking unsteady and a little sheepish and diminished, seemingly at loss to either stand or sit or say something or shut up. But what he didn’t look like was apologetic. Nothing conciliatory would come from that quarter.

We got into the station wagon and I asked my father where we were going. He said the motel down the street. I knew the one he was talking about, the Dewitt Motel on the corner that had a crudely animated neon sign of a women in bathing cap and swimwear taking a dive into their advertised heated pool.

Before we reached the motel my father pulled the car over and stopped. “You know, your uncle had too much to drink tonight and he said some awful things. And I said some things. But if we leave him like this, I don’t know what he’ll do. I think we should go back. Don’t you think so?”

And so we did. Uncle Al received my father warmly at the front door. They shook hands. They hugged. My uncle said he knew my father would come back and kept calling him “brother.” “Johnny,” he said to me, “you’re my nephew and I love you, but this is my brother.” And my father said, “All right, Al. All right.”

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What I learned from the 11-hour grilling of Hillary over the Benghazi incident: Republicans are humorless high school principals out to crush fun; Democrats are cool guidance counselors who keep guitars in their offices.

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I resent the implication you see in television commercials that we need all these electronic devices to effectively navigate life.

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I like TV’s “The Blacklist,” but doesn’t the FBI need to do something about their office lighting? It’s way too dim. No wonder Whitey Bulger was on the loose for so long. They couldn’t see what they were doing.

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NFL commissioner Goodell just won’t let “Deflategate” die its natural death. This pettiest of crimes, if there ever really was one, does not warrant such as a mindless, relentless pursuit of justice. In this sense he reminds me of Javert, the monomaniacal police inspector in “Les Miserables.”

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I used to work with a pathological liar. Realizing he was a pathological liar happened in slow stages because of my long-held assumption that everyone I meet basically tells the truth. There was the stage when I thought he kind of sounded like a bullshit artist. Then I thought he liked to exaggerate to make things sound more interesting. Then I thought he might occasionally outright lie to cover his ass like many of us would when put in a tight spot. It actually took several years to realize that you couldn’t accept anything he said; if he told you water was wet, you’d better check to be sure. It was like lying was his hobby. It was easier for him to lie than to tell the truth, because he lied about so many things that he really didn’t need to lie about. Lying to him was like breathing to most people.

Wikipedia: “Lying is the act of both knowingly and intentionally/willfully making a false statement. Most people do so out of fear. Normal lies are defensive, and are told to avoid the consequences of truth telling. They are often white lies that spare another's feelings, reflect a pro-social attitude, and make civilized human contact possible. Pathological lying is considered a mental illness, because it takes over rational judgment and progresses into the fantasy world and back. Pathological lying can be described as a habituation of lying. It is when an individual consistently lies for no personal gain. The lies are commonly transparent and often seem rather pointless.”

Also: “There are many consequences of being a pathological liar. Due to lack of trust, most pathological liars' relationships and friendships fail.”

I have witnessed that last part. The entire time I knew him, his private life was a mess. Two wives divorced him, and largely due to trust issues he was finally fired. I think he believed lying somehow worked, and to this day has no idea what the damage of being caught in a lie does to one’s reputation.

From what I have read and observed, pathological liars are like method actors in that they immerse themselves into the lie, and they may actually, on some level, believe their own fabricated stories. It’s not uncommon for pathological liars to have had chaotic home lives when growing up and that they think their lives may not be interesting enough. Also, because there is no known medication to combat this illness, the only effective treatment is talk therapy.

The shame of it is, he is actually a nice guy, genuinely friendly and eager to please, and if you met him at a party, you’d be impressed with his (apparent) breadth of knowledge and would probably want to get to know him better. He is very glib. I liked him, but he exasperated me constantly, endlessly. In time I showed little respect toward him and took as a personal affront the small regard he had for my intelligence when telling me some of the things he thought I’d be stupid enough to believe. Sometimes I tried to summon sympathy, knowing that he is damaged and is his own worst enemy. But my sympathy can only go so far. Maybe I can’t blame him for this very unfortunate personality defect that has marked his life, but I do blame him for not seeking treatment for it.  

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That is all.

The Friday Round-Up: 10.23.2015

The city of Boston offers a finite number of medallions for cabs, 1,825 to be exact. They are bought and sold much like houses, with house-size prices and purchased with house-size loans. Last year, the average medallion went for $666,547. This year, one got auctioned off at foreclosure for $310,000 — less than half of last year’s average —because, like houses, they are going underwater and, much like distressed homeowners, the poor cabbies can’t afford to make the mortgage payments anymore. And why are medallions losing value and why can’t the cabbies make their mortgage payments? Because of Uber and Lyft! Those ride-sharing services are killing the hacks! Am I the only one who thinks that eventually regulatory agencies will get mediaeval on Uber’s ass? Do you really think this will last?

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Because the public and the media have a duty to keep Donald Trump’s publicity expenses to a minimum, the Halloween craze this year is Trumpkins! That’s right, pumpkins made to look like the Donald. Halloween just got a little less scary and a little more . . . wait, maybe that’s scarier.

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I thought I heard a rumor recently that they’re bringing back “Fantasy Island,” the 1970s TV show. The other day I stumbled upon an original “Fantasy Island” episode and watched it until my remote’s safety feature sent a distress signal to my brain ordering me to shut the TV down before my cerebral cortex turned into Cheez Whiz. Did “Fantasy Island” ever do a crossover episode with “The Love Boat”? A cruise offering an excursion to Fantasy Island? That would’ve made sense, right? Also, was it ever mentioned how much one of those fantasies cost? And what would today’s virtual reality technology do to Mr. Roarke’s business?

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Completely on my own I noticed the “Hamlet” parallels present in the “Sons of Anarchy” series (finding out later, of course, that that’s supposed to be general knowledge). It took me several seasons to make this observation, and I probably should have figured it out sooner, but at least I did it without anyone’s help. My high school English teacher would’ve been proud.

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I’m reading “The Blind Assassin,” by Margaret Atwood, another flea market acquisition. Her writing blows me away. I do just enough writing of my own to appreciate how hard writing is, and can recognize unusual talent when it’s placed right in front of me. I’ll read a passage and imagine how pleased I’d be with myself if I wrote it. She is one of those authors I categorize as “poets writing prose” (other examples of prose-writing poets being F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Updike). I will miss this book when I’m done.

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Just back from the future, everybody! SPOILER ALERT! The Republican ticket turns out to be Jeb! and Carly. Democratic ticket: Hillary and O’Malley. Hillary and O’Malley win the general election. Next Friday, I’ll tell you who’s in the cabinet.

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“Jeb!” translated into Spanish is “¡Jeb!”

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My favorite season is autumn. Usually when the weather starts to get crisp around mid-September I get kind of excited, like there’s an adventure in the offing. I think this is because I associate fall with the beginning of a new school year; even after all this time the feeling still kicks in. I wasn’t a good student back then, I suppose you could even say I was a bad student, but those first few days were always a blast, seeing my classmates again, finding out who my new teachers were. The magic wore off quickly though.

Everybody must remember their first day of kindergarten. On my first day, it rained. My friend’s mother drove us in his family’s faux wood-paneled station wagon even though it was a short walk to the school. My mother dressed me up in a stiff yellow rain coat with a hood that never quite lined up with my face. One of the marvels that awaited me in the classroom that day were giant blocks you could step on. We were warned that misbehaving students would have to sit in a corner wearing a ridiculous hat with ribbons. A long display of the alphabet showing both upper and lower cases dominated one wall. “Holy cow,” I thought. “That’s a lot of letters!”

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred that fall. It was explained to me by a well-informed classmate that President Kennedy was doing everything he could to keep columns of fanatical Russian soldiers from marching down my street with rifles bright and pointy with bayonets, and loud, clinking clanking, smoke belching tanks from tracking up our lawns. We imagined JFK and Nikita Kruschev duking it out while Castro, the big phony, egged Kruschev on. Why couldn’t the Russians just leave us alone?

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Most evenings when I get home from work I ride a stationary bike while watching DVD movies in half hour installments. Right now I’m watching “The King of Comedy,” a black comedy of sorts starring Robert DeNiro, Sandra Bernhard and Jerry Lewis. The last time I saw this movie was when it came out back in the early eighties and I remember feeling very uncomfortable and embarrassed watching it: the delusional DeNiro character, Rupert Pupkin, crossed many lines and I more cringed than laughed. Maybe because I’ve changed, or maybe because I now know what to expect, but I am completely enjoying this very strange movie, and, quite honestly, I think it’s one of Martin Scorsese’s best.

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“Playboy” is going non-nude! That’s means I can openly buy a Playboy and bring it home! For the articles.

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That is all.

The Friday Round-Up: 10.16.2015

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, responding to a question about his stance on gun control in the wake of the Oregon school shooting, said, “I would ask everybody to attack the gunman because he can only shoot one of us at a time. That way, we don't all wind up dead.” Yes, he’s a total ass. Yes, his remark was insensitive. Yes, his arguments against gun control are stupid. Yes, running for president is clearly not brain surgery. But would it make sense to drill students from middle school on up on some basic self defense techniques designed to rush and disable a gunman? Maybe train them to use things commonly found in a classroom, such as chairs that can act as shields and weapons? I hate to say it, but I don’t think these indiscriminate mass shootings are going to go away. What would be your first reaction in such a situation? I would probably freeze or cower or attempt to run away. My last instinct would be to run toward a shooter. But what if it’s inculcated from a young age that your first reaction should be to use strength in numbers to overwhelm a single nut job blasting away with a gun, and teach that your odds of survival will actually improve if you choose fight over flight? This could possibly (a) save lives and (b) discourage the fringe types from trying it in the first place.

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I’ve noticed over the past several years that the new way of saying “dead” in the news is “unresponsive.” Oh, all right, perhaps in a few exceptions a faint vital sign might still flutter or there’s a coma at first, and the person in question might not be quite dead yet. But I feel there’s a reluctance to come right out and say “dead” in these breaking news reports, opting instead for the more clinical and safe “unresponsive.” It’s really saying the same thing, although you can argue that “unresponsive” has an invisible ellipsis after it while “dead” is followed by a period. “Unresponsive” means “still warm,” while “dead” means “stiff and cold.” In practical usage, “unresponsive” can never replace “dead.” There will be no movie entitled “Unresponsive Man Walking.” And I’ll never ask myself how many years has it been now since Grandpa stopped responding.

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Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh commonly known as “King Tut,” was found unresponsive in his golden sarcophagus in 1922. He is now believed to be dead.

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The Associated Press puts the tally of deaths caused by the stampede of pilgrims near Mecca last month at 1,453 people. These deadly stampedes seem to occur every year. For some reason I automatically associate this annual tragedy with the running of the bulls in Spain. The first is supposed to be a life-affirming act, the second death-defying. Yet between the two I like the chances with the bulls better.

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Speaking of death, whenever a notable figure in Boston dies, out come the bagpipes. Bagpipes! Always with the bagpipes!

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I’m nearly 60 years old, which means I only have 50 years left. There are a lot of good books, movies, and TV series out there with more being produced all the time, so I have to be choosy about what kind of entertainment I commit to. I just watched the pilot to “The Good Wife” on Hulu. It was a good first date, I think we hit it off and I’m willing to see it again. But I’ve been burned before. I have to be careful.

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If you grew up in a soundproof glass house and no one ever explained wind to you, you might think trees randomly get agitated or excited.

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I think people who drive slow in the passing lane should donate their brains to science so we can find a cure.

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Someday I hope to open a shop selling fishing tackle and electrical supplies. I'll call it The Bait ’n’ Switch.

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I believe we are all to some degree racist. It's a human condition we can't avoid, or so my belief goes. Every day I catch myself making assumptions about someone based on race. Intellectually, I realize that what I just thought was a load of crap, but influences during my upbringing, maybe stupid stuff I heard my grandfather say when I was five, keep the crap coming back. In general, this is what goes on in my head when my guard is down: "All [particular ethnic group] are [popular negative stereotype] except for the ones I know."

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I am a lucky winner of the 4G Birth Lottery. There are many other winners just like me. And what does “4G” stand for? Genetics, gender, gentrification and geography. I’m white, I’m male, I’ve never had to worry about money or social standing, and I’m a citizen of a powerful, western-style democracy. Purely by accident I started life out ahead. So many people in the world, so many people right here in this country, wish they had it like me. They think I have it made, and they’re right, I do. Is it fair? Christ no.

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Combining the subjects of racism and the arbitrariness of birth (and at some risk of offending people), here is a strange thought that sometimes enters my head: what if I, the person that I am, as morally predisposed as I imagine myself to be, was born into the aristocracy of the antebellum South, heir to a huge plantation? To put it more bluntly, what kind of slaveowner would I be? Using historical fiction as my guide, and rejecting the sanitized “Gone with the Wind” version of the Old South in favor of the South's portrayal in “Roots,” I think even subjected to the cultural indoctrination of the times I would likely have a pretty good (or good enough) understanding of slavery to recognize the utter degradation, injustice and hopelessness humans suffer under such a system. And I have to believe that even back then genteel Southern society must have known deep down in their bones that it was inherently evil and wrong to own human beings, and had to do some serious mental gymnastics to maintain good opinions of themselves. But here I am, essentially myself, all my inborn qualities good and bad, my innate moral rectitude ready to go, but a product of the South, a plantation owner. Would I recognize that slavery was wrong and find a way to free the people under my charge, whose lives I control? Or would wish I could if only it was economically feasible, choosing instead to be as kind and fair as possible? Or would only the bottom line concern me? Would I break up families? Would I see them as chattel instead as fellow humans? Would I be cruel? 

My answer? Although I’d like to say that I’d wake up one morning ready to be the hero abolitionist, the famous plantation owner the history books say bucked the system and endured the scorn of his caste, I know how I'm constituted (a little bit lazy, a little bit deferential, not immune to peer pressure) and fear that at best I'd wind up like Thomas Jefferson, the so-called good master, who held onto his slaves until after he died. It's an easy way to salve one's conscience without any personal sacrifice. In school we were taught that Jefferson freeing his slaves after he died was supposed to be a magnanimous gesture, and for that reason the stink of slavery didn't stick to him. Of course, I'll never know, I could be better or I could be worse (would I take advantage of the women like he did? would I turn a blind eye to the overseers?), and it's not a very pleasant line of inquiry or subject for polite discussion, but I think it's an interesting question for anyone to ask.

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The democratic presidential debate delivered! Hillary was unflappable and had an answer for everything. Bernie made his case and for a while made me forget that I could never trust this old man to live out a first term of office. Chafee scared the hell out of me with his ventriloquist’s dummy, frozen-smile face and strange retorts (you’re looking at a block of granite! it was my first day!). Webb, a bulldog stuffed in a suit, was constantly miffed about the rules and the type of questions he was getting. O’Malley, central casting’s idea of a politician, tap danced around those Baltimore questions and not a bad speech at the end. Great theater, very entertaining. However, I am looking forward to when it’s down to just Hillary and Bernie and the debates start having themes (foreign policy, domestic policy, economic policy). As far as a winner goes, Bernie people will say Bernie won and Hillary people will say Hillary won. So I think Hillary won.

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I have just watched the first two episodes of “Rick and Morty,” the Adult Swim cartoon. My whole life has shaped me for this moment. I’m home.

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That is all.

The Friday Round-Up: 10.09.2015

As it turned out, the northeast did not catch the full wrath of Hurricane Joaquin. Here in Boston it was cloudy, raw and windy, some rainfall, but we escaped unharmed. It got me thinking, though, about the way we name hurricanes. When I was a wee lad, my mother explained to me that hurricanes were named after women, because women, like hurricanes, were unpredictable. That made sense, because women back then actually were unpredictable . . . unlike today, where every woman I’ve met for the last 30 years has been unvaryingly reasonable and easy to anticipate, a shift that occurred right around when men started to be wrong all the time. In the seventies, a women’s rights activist named Roxcy Bolton pushed for a less sexist hurricane nomenclature (she actually liked to call them “himmicanes”), and, due largely to her efforts, male names have been equally mixed in since 1979.

My question is, why can’t we name hurricanes like we do boats or racehorses? Or better yet, sell the naming rights like they do with sports stadiums and college bowls? For as long as a hurricane and its after-effects last, your brand could be right out there. Hurricane Google or Hurricane IKEA. The money for the naming rights (let’s put the value at the cost of fifteen minutes of Super Bowl advertising) could go directly to the recovery.

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Pope Francis has made it clear that during his US visit did he not grant a private audience to Kim Davis, the thrice-divorced town clerk who refused to grant wedding licenses to same-sex couples because she’s a good Christian and thinks marriage should only apply to traditional heterosexual couples (who, by the way, stand a robust 50 percent chance of parting unto death). In fact, he doesn’t even want to get mixed up in her whole dog and pony show, so all the progressive-types who have been hating on the pope for that reason can stand down. Of course, he hasn’t reversed every Catholic rule they don’t agree with yet, so these people still aren’t happy. I am not religious, nor was I raised a Catholic, but the pope by definition is, and because he’s the pope he believes in a lot of the stuff that has been dogma for centuries. Otherwise I don’t think he could be pope. But it’s apparent that Pope Francis is at least willing to bend and listen and reach out to, say, gay people, or women who have had abortions, or victims of disgraced clergy, and so on. I like this pope, I think he’s a good man and doing the best he can, but I’ll never be surprised or dismayed that he’s Catholic.

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Planet Fitness, the gym that charges ridiculously low monthly payments in the hopes that not all their members will show up at once on any given day, has the slogan “Judgement Free Zone.” I want the record to show that, first, I hate how they spell “judgment,” and, second, I would like to point out the irony of their slogan because it makes me judge them. Technically, the extraneous “e” doesn’t mean a misspelling, but it irks this typist nonetheless. And it brings to mind a rant my coworkers have endured from me for years: if enough ignorant people do something ignorant long enough, their ignorant acts become convention and they’re recast as rebels or iconoclasts. To take a recent example, remember “Web site”? The rule stated that it was two words with the first word capped. But enough people wrote it as “website” long enough and they won. I remember being taught in second grade that the plural of “bus” was “buses,” and if you wrote it out as “busses,” you were talking about more than one kiss. Well, the number of my brain cells assigned to store that information went wasted because apparently you can now write it both ways. And all those nouns that have morphed into verbs, like “dialogue” and “office”? Don’t get me started. Mark my words, the day will come when the contraction “they’re” and the possessive “their” will each be allowed the alternate spelling of “there.” U w8 & c.

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I recently read Ian Fleming’s “From Russia With Love,” a book I picked up at a flea market (where I get most of my reading material). I knew that the James Bond in the books differs from the James Bond in the movies, but I didn’t expect the quality of Fleming’s writing to be so good. The book opens by acquainting the reader with the super badass bad guy, the ultimate highly-skilled, cold blooded assassin, in the kind of slow, richly descriptive way you usually don’t find in action stories, more like studying a tableau. The storyline itself is only okay (or so it seems to this modern reader), and the Russian villains are the soulless, bloodless, calculating automatons one expects from 1950s Cold War era central casting, but the measured approach the author takes to every scene, especially those revealing the thoughts of a very human Bond (who doesn’t make his first appearance until well into the book), make it a pleasurable experience. 

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In a moment of uncharacteristic whimsy, I actually sought out a music station the other day instead of the usual talk or news. I landed upon the local oldies/classic hits station, and, as I enjoyed an eighties pop standard that I may have once danced to in a Members Only jacket, I tried to recollect the day when WZLX first went on the air. Before I had time to determine exactly when that was, the DJ came on to announce that 2015 marks the station’s thirtieth year. While processing this sobering reminder of the passage of time, it then occurred to me that the song I just heard couldn’t have been played on that glorious day thirty years ago because it would have been, well, brand new. A moment of quiet reflection ensued.

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I have decided that when time travel becomes possible I will bring my grandfather as he was in the 1940s back to this era. Of the many new experiences I’ll expose him to, last on the list will be Caitlin Jenner and the Kardashians. I just don’t think I could adequately answer any of his questions.

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Buffalo Bills players love their coach, Rex Ryan, because he “lets them be themselves.” Last Sunday, the free-spirited Bills drew 17 penalties with one negating a touchdown. They lost the game, yet Rex is proud of the way they played.

Related: NFL sources indicate that the Patriots win games because they’re mean and don’t care how other teams feel. Maybe Patriots players are pissed because Coach Bill Belichick won’t let them be themselves.

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Another Yahoo editor snoozing while on duty. This is a line from a news article about a shocking child rape: “Their lawyer, Thomas R. Kline, noted that Regusters inferred others were involved but failed to name them when she had her chance Monday.” The word you’re looking for is “implied,” Yahoo. 

Here’s another one: Yahoo was “a little worried when Disney and Pixar announced they would be adding a fourth chapter to the Toy Story trilogy.” So it’s not a trilogy.

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Hillary nailed that sketch on SNL.

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“Sometimes you gotta go back to actually move forward.” — Confucius or Matthew McConaughey. Or Plato. I need to track down the philosopher who said that.

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I recently went to the bike shop to buy a tire. When the kid behind the counter rang me up, he asked me if I needed anything else. I said, “Oh, I’ll be back. I’m starting with this tire, but I’ll eventually build an entire bike around it.” He just kind of looked at me. No one gets my jokes anymore.

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I hate the word “smarmy.” Get rid of it. “Snarky” bothers me, too.

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There was an interesting article on leftovers in “The Atlantic Monthly.” Throughout the 20th century, as the percentage of a family’s income spent on food dropped with increased food production and lower prices, keeping and reusing leftovers became more of a burden than a necessary economic measure. Nowadays, Americans spend just 10 percent of their income on food, as opposed to 40 percent in the early 1900s. But leftovers are making a comeback because people are becoming more aware of what goes into food production and are more appreciative of the resources being used. Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve always been a leftover guy . . . which, incidentally, proves once again that by steadfastly keeping behind the curve I come out ahead of it. The 15-year-old Tupperware container I use for my lunches each day is often crammed with strange combinations. Today it’s a mix of some kind of spicy pasta dish, rice, fried sweet potatoes, saag paneer and bits of fish. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

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There’s a new Peter Pan movie coming out. It’s called “Pan.” I’ve seen the commercials. It’s loaded with action and special effects and Hugh Jackman and big movie studio bucks. It can’t possibly be good.

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That is all.

The Friday Round-Up

So I went out to the garage, chased away the raccoons, threw off the tarp, jiggered with a few things under the hood and started up the old blog. Right now she’s running a little rough, but in time I hope to have this baby humming every Friday. We’ll see.

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We all have our closet likes. I’m going to be brave and tell you one of mine: “Dancing with the Stars.” I know, sorry, that may have been hard to read. It began when Heather Mills entered the dance contest five or six years ago. I was curious because the ex-Mrs. Sir Paul has a prosthetic leg and I wondered how well she would do. As it turns out, she did pretty well, but what I didn’t expect was that DWTS would become my wife’s and my show for a long time.

Unfortunately, “Dancing with the Stars” (which really has never boasted of very many real stars) has officially sunk too low for even me to watch. They’ve fiddled with the format too much, the irascible judge Len Goodman, who gave DWTS a certain measure of credibility, has left, they replaced co-host Brooke Burke with Erin Andrews for no good reason, and this time around the only “stars” I can identify are Paula Deen and Gary Busey, both of whom are mainly famous for self-detonating their careers and are maybe the hardest-to-watch celebrities this side of TMZ. So, despite the appreciation for dance I gained from having watched the show, I’m out.

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Watching Donald Trump is like swimming right after eating. You know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway. In the latter case, chances are good you won’t cramp up and drown. In the former, chances are equally good that indulging in a morbid fascination won’t lead you to take him seriously and actually vote the guy into office. But why take the risk? 

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Why is every adult film actor a “porn star”? How can you differentiate if they’re all stars?

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We watched “Black Mass” last Sunday. A pretty good movie despite the bad Boston accents that regrettably reduced some characters into caricatures. Every actor in the film tried to affect a Boston accent. Someone should tell Hollywood that not everybody in Boston talks that way. I don’t, my kids don’t, the people I work with don’t. 

In other news, Johnny Depp’s head made up to look like Whitey Bulger reminded me of an old illustration of Humpty Dumpty. Not the effect they were looking for, I think. 

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Another movie I saw last weekend was “Pawn Sacrifice,” the story of Bobby Fischer winning the world chess championship. I was explaining to my much younger co-workers what that was like (after first explaining who Bobby Fischer was). Bobby Fischer in 1971 was a rock star. For a short period of time, the whole country went chess crazy. He was idiosyncratic, demanding, unreasonable, a total diva, but he was the best at chess the way Muhammed Ali was the best at boxing. Channel 2, the Boston public broadcasting station, very briefly hit a ratings bonanza by following the match with a panel of chess experts who discussed the moves in real time as displayed on a giant, wall-mounted chessboard. I was in the sixth or seventh grade and didn’t understand any of it, but it was fun to watch anyways. Much later in life I started playing chess with a friend during lunch breaks and had to agree that chess, especially with a clock, is the one of the most exciting games in the world.

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What’s big and red and a mile long? A Boston University bus . . . in this case, a double bus that stalks the rush hour traffic up and down Commonwealth Avenue with malicious intent, making abrupt pick-up stops to the right and hair-raising lurching shove-offs to the left. Last Tuesday this bus, this Moby Dick to my Ahab, nearly smeared me into a line of parked cars as I rode my bike home from work; this infinitely long, moving red wall of steel and hurt kept me trapped in the narrowest of spaces for twenty Mississippi’s until it finally cleared past me. I later caught up to the driver at a red light. With the door closed, all she could really see was an angry cyclist yelling something maybe in English and demonstrating with his hands what six inches looks like. Then she drove away wondering what the hell was that all about.

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Yesterday was my father’s birthday. He would have been 96. Dad died last New Year’s Eve day, concluding a very long, happy, successful and well-lived life. He had just spent Christmas with the entire family the week before and, although in recent years he had become quite limited, Dad seemed very content to enjoy the comfort of his home, the company and care of my mother, and the frequent visits from his children and grandkids. We should all be so lucky.

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Cindy Crawford recently said, “I decided that, rather than run and hide from the fact that I'm turning 50, I would embrace it.” Wow. That took a lot of courage. In the spirit of Cindy’s brave decision, I have decided to not run and hide from turning 60, a milestone scheduled to occur this coming February. I’m already grooming myself for it. If my age ever comes up in conversation, I now say, “I’m nearly 60,” or, “60 is right around the corner.” But the truth is, I don’t feel 60. In fact, I don’t consider myself 60 like my father was 60. I’m still a kid, really, a kid with a few aches and pains and wrinkles. No gray hair though. Not yet.

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That is all.