Tom Bodett's Blog

Underpants Never Strike Twice

2009-12-28T08:48:00.006-05:00

If the foiled terrorist on flight 253 had tried to light his underpants on fire during the middle part of the trip, I wonder if they'd now be making us stay in our seats with our hands in our laps for that hour? In eight-and-a-half years of watching our crack security professionals' attempts to keep from happening the thing that just happened this one wins the prize. Some guy fiddles in his lap with some odds and ends he brought on board and nearly detonates explosives sewn into his underpants. If this were truly a viable way to bring down an airplane you'd think that people who are paid to sit around and think about these things would have thought that might be a possibility and put these restrictions in place before somebody actually tried it. It's not like it was a brilliant or unlikely scenario. Here's a not-so-brilliant and likely guess at how that conversation went at the TSA:

"Somebody could hide this powder in their underpants and detonate it on their approach into a major US airport."

"Yea, we know. Let's wait until it happens and then then make sure it doesn't happen again. At least not on the approach"

"What if someone tries it at the beginning of a flight?"

"We'll deal with that when it happens. It's not our job to prevent these specific things. It's our job to prevent these specific things from happening twice in a row. Relax. Have donut."

So now we'll all sit with our hands folded neatly over our throbbing bladders like a bunch of school kids for the last hour of a flight for no good reason except to demonstrate with what precision the people in charge of our safety can recognize what it was they missed the first time. Speaking strictly for myself this does not make me feel safer. This makes me feel like the people we're counting on to watch our backs have no idea what they're doing, or where this thing is heading next.

Travel well. And safe.

Let it Snow

2009-12-19T09:08:00.004-05:00

A classic Nor'easter is bearing down on New England. Unlike our urban brethren to the east and south who listen to the grave tones of their weathercasters' voices and crouch behind their snow shovels, Vermonters like this sort of thing. Kids dust off the sleds, skis get fresh wax, chairlifts lurch into action across the Green Mountains and town road crews start adding up the overtime. The only disappointment we're likely to feel in this most recent "historic event" is that the really big accumulations will peter out before they get here leaving us with a measly six or ten inches.

The downside is that my older son comes home from Seattle tomorrow via a series of eastern airports all likely to be closed by midnight tonight. That part's not so great, but he's young and resilient and I know I'll see him soon -- even if he does have the patterns of airport seating etched into his lovely face.

This week leading up to Christmas is always one of tender domestics and nostalgia. Cooking smells and rustling garland will conjure childhood memories thought lost. More innocent times project from every colored light. This is why it's called a season of joy and this is also why people get depressed at this time of year. Here's to more of the former and less of the last.

I will part with some shameless commerce. 'Tis the season, I suppose. Just in time for Christmas my publisher has released a new retrospective collection of mine called, It's Just Like I Told You; 25 Years of Comments and Comic Pieces. You can read about it on the home page, or just go buy and download it at any number of online sellers: iTunes, audible.com, Random House Audio and others. Thanks for coming around like this. I enjoy these little chats of ours.

Zhumbies

2009-11-27T12:08:00.005-05:00

Living as I do, and perhaps always have, on the far fringes of American consumer culture it is difficult for me to get my arms around the Black Friday madness. Especially the crazed appetite for these mechanical hamsters called Zhu Zhus. Why a synthetic surrogate for what is already a surrogate? Hamsters, it seems to me, are the pet we give to our children in order to avoid getting them a dog or a cat. "Prove to us you can handle the responsibility of a pet and we'll talk about a dog," goes the traditional refrain. Of course the whole thing is a set-up. Hamsters are about the least durable living species, if my experience is any measure. Step on one - dead. Let them escape into the walls - dead, stink. Put them in a Lincoln Log fort then bomb with D-batteries - mortally injured, soon dead. Take to fourth grade show-and-tell -- MIA, presumed dead.

If by some miracle a hamster survives and breeds, children are treated to the horrors of hamster moms eating their young. In other words, hamster ownership usually puts an end to any further talk of pets for several glorious years. A Zhu Zhu will not accomplish this. A Zhu Zhu, like its real-life counterpart, is unlikely to see the sun set on Christmas Day. But there will be nothing learned. It simply becomes another piece of junk in the toy box with battery juice leaking out of the underbelly. No horror. No shame. No somber funeral in the backyard. You might as well go pick out that stupid dog now.

My advice to holiday Zhu Zhu fanatics (zhumbies?) is to head directly to the pet store and surprise the little tykes with the real deal. Lie to them and claim it is a Zhu Zhu brought to life by Santa's magic, and look, it doesn't even need batteries!

Soon you'll be holding their little shoulders in the backyard saying last rodent rites and looking forward to two or three more pet-free years. Get 'em while they're hot! Or at least still warm.

(The author pre-emptively acknowledges that the torment or destruction of helpless animals is wrong and to leverage such cruelty in order to advance some twisted notions of entertainment is just as wrong and he feels as terrible about it as he did in the fourth grade.)

Don't Do It For Me, Oprah

2009-11-21T09:06:00.004-05:00

Now I feel bad. My previous confessional post about my Oprah regrets appears to have prompted her to throw in the towel completely. I knew as a big-hearted person that she would feel terrible about the circumstances behind my decision to decline an invitation to appear on her show, but O, taking it off the air? Entirely uncalled for. I'm fine. Really. It all worked out. In retrospect -- and at this point in my life I am all about retrospect -- not going on the Oprah show was one of the best moves I ever made.

Had I appeared on Oprah that spring of 1996 the book I'd just released might well have taken off and become something. Maybe not, but let's say for argument it did. That would have prompted publishers to line up with large cash offers for another book I didn't have in me, but would have committed to because I would have gotten all wrapped-up in the money and attention. Guaranteed. The resulting book deal would have demanded a fast-track turnaround to capitalize on all the buzz and would have derailed my life for a solid year. The book would have sucked and so would my standing as a father, husband and friend. I would have spent the money on a better boat and a larger woodshop I wouldn't have had time to use. Panned by the press, resented by my family, and distanced from my friends I would have bobbed in the bay alone on my better boat and wished I'd simply said no to Oprah. Which in fact I did.

So there, O. Happy ending. You like those, right? You know how and when to leave a stage and I -- in my little dim rim of the limelight -- did too. So, I won't feel bad about you canceling your show for me if you won't feel bad about me canceling your show for me.

Making It Right with Oprah

2009-11-13T11:26:00.006-05:00

Sarah Palin finally said yes to Oprah. Every time Oprah is in the news, which is nearly everyday, I suffer a cringe of shame and regret. Why? -- you might rightfully ask if you cared one whit about my regrets. A badly ended affair? An unpaid loan? A business deal gone south? No. I'm afraid much worse than any of that. To get this monkey off my back once and for all I will confess to you here and now that I once said no to Oprah. I shall give you a moment to collect yourself.

It was the spring of 1996. I had been on a three week publicity tour for my book The Free Fall of Webster Cummings followed by a two week roving television shoot for the PBS series Travels on America's Historic Trails. I was exhausted and homesick. My 11-year-old son and my fiance -- now my wife -- back in Alaska were on my mind constantly. I promised them the minute I got home we'd load up the boat and head across to the wild side of Kachemak Bay for a few days of being just us. There had been delays and schedule changes and they seemed dubious. I promised them I would not mess it up again.

The day I arrived home I went immediately to the garage and started getting gear together. God it was good to be home. The phone rang and a very nice producer from Oprah informed me in a congratulatory tone that Oprah wanted me on her show. I had a fishing pole in one hand the phone in the other. Oprah was a kingmaker even then. My book wasn't doing so well and certainly needed the juice. I let too much time pass, but finally asked, "When?"

"The day after tomorrow!"

"Where?"

"Here in Chicago. We'll pay all your travel expenses and have a flight booked for you in the morning."

It didn't seem like such a hard decision to make at the time. I'd promised my family. I was exhausted. I could taste the bay from where I stood.

"Is there another day we could do it?"

"No." She said, without ambivalence.

"Now or never?" says I.

"Never."

I heard later that no one says no to Oprah. And if you do you are dead to her. Or at least dead to her show. I don't know if that's the least bit true. I do know that book sold fewer copies than any of my titles before or since. It was remaindered only a couple years later without even appearing in soft cover. I still have about twenty cases of them in my basement.

So every time I hear her name my Oprah Shame Spiral begins to churn. Like today. And I work through it the same way I always do -- I remember three wonderful spring days across the bay with my family. Sure, there were plenty of those at many other times and only one Oprah, but that one needed to happen. More than Oprah did. That's true even now as I sit here actually in Chicago on my way west to see that same son. He's now 24 and I get as homesick for him now as I ever did.

We're going to have dinner tonight and I'll have to ask him if he remembers that one trip to the cabin. I'll bet he remembers it more than Oprah remembers me saying no to her. Ain't that right, O?

John Adams Calls Us Out

2009-11-06T14:54:00.003-05:00

I'm guessing most of you don't stop by this blog for erudition, but let me try this out anyway. I was sifting through some old notes today looking for something else and turned up this quote from John Adams which I'd scribbled down who-knows-when:

We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.

That the great man saw this coming is no great comfort to me.

Dream Big

2009-10-11T09:48:00.004-04:00

People who share their dreams on blogs deserve a special kind of hell. What I have to say to those people is, move over. This one I cannot refuse.

Last night I was on a commercial fishing boat somewhere in a foreign sea off the coast of a Kyrgyzstanny kind of place. Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me was the skipper. The rest of the crew was made up of production staffers Michael Danforth, Ian Chillag, Eva Wolchover and Emily Ecton. My wife was on board as well but she was not my wife although I had a painful crush on her. As we were cautiously making our way through heavy fog in calm seas to make port Peter said, "Watch for dead floating Jews. They can be a problem here." They turned out not to be a problem for us. We made our way into the harbor of what we assumed would be a hostile and anti-Semitic village, but turned out to be exceedingly generous. They spoke English, accepted American dollars, and gave us rides to and from town to gather groceries. The local specialty was a gallon-sized square box made of raw salmon that you filled with vegetables and potatoes and then baked. We were all crazy about the idea and enthusiastically gathered ingredients from the local market. A local boy, about 12-years-old, fell in love with my-wife-who-was-not-my-wife at first sight and wrote a love ballad to her in the time it took me to buy potatoes. I bent down and told him to back off, while silencing his guitar with my hand, then realized I'd just risked turning the whole village against us. I went back to the harbor where everyone was gathered around an impossibly large swordfish lying on the dock in need of butchering. I produced a filet knife as big as a machete and peeled off a long, beautiful slab of swordfish. My-wife-who-wasn't-my-wife beamed at me. Take that, guitar playing love-struck local boy.

Calling Dr. Jung...

On the Couch

2009-08-29T13:12:00.002-04:00

I'm starting to think I have this blog to avoid seeing a therapist. I look at my last four or five posts and they are all in one way or another excuses and apologies for not blogging more.

I joke about being a lazy writer as if I'm not a lazy writer because in fact I am a lazy writer. Although I am not a lazy person. Quite the opposite. My life consists of a long complicated list of things to do that I will never get done. Literally. I carry a list in my pocket every single day and have since my early twenties. On the list today, for example, I am to pick up the dry cleaning, begin thinking about remarks for fundraiser next month, call Claude, hang chin-up bar for my wife, fix outdoor light switch, see Inglorious Basterds, work on Jeff's table and, oh look - update blog.

Obviously these things go in no particular order. Items like dry cleaning I don't even bother to cross off because it seems there is always dry cleaning to be picked up or dropped off and by the time I get around to actually doing it, it is there to be done. Things like begin thinking about.... are simply there to nag. I will never finish this list. I add tasks at half again the rate I cross them off and will certainly die with lots and lots of things left undone. I am guaranteed to die a failure in my own eyes. Neat trick, isn't it? For those of you wondering, yes, I was raised Catholic.

Probably because of this list I have a very unhealthy relationship with time and money. I know when I die it is quite possible I will have a few dollars leftover somewhere, but I am absolutely certain I will be out of time. Even if I know gas is ten cents cheaper at a station on the other side of town I will not go there because the two dollar difference on a tank of gas is not worth my time. And the sooner I fill my tank the sooner I can cross off get gas on my list. It has never occurred to me to put save money on the list. It seems so counter-productive and probably bad for the economy.

Of course it's just as likely that some day I will be out of money before I'm out of time and my list might say things like steal bread and rummage through dumpster. Go live with children is a possibility for future lists as is sell memoir, cheap. That will lead to the inevitable remember to write memoir and my life list will finally have reached its absurd and unavoidable conclusion.

Thanks Doc. See you next week.

Dog Days

2009-08-18T08:22:00.006-04:00

Why am I not posting more often? Because I am lazy. Lazy and hot. Lazy and hot and damp. We are in the dog days of summer and I am panting. One must think of things in order to sufficiently construct a blog entry and I cannot think of anything except: it's hot. The hazy air surrounding my house and hanging stagnant inside it is aggressively still this morning. Not only does it not move, but it resists being moved. These are precisely the conditions that existed at the dawn of time when a simple one-celled critter from a space rock began dividing and multiplying and evolving into swine flu, gladiolas and Justin Timberlake.

I feel like heading in the other direction. I am heading in the other direction. In an effort to cool itself my body has shut down all unnecessary functions and I am writing this using only my brain stem and a stick.

As they say down yonder -- It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

Napping Saves Lives. And Fingers

2009-07-31T08:34:00.002-04:00

I was pleased to read in the New York Times yesterday that napping is okay. Not that anyone ever doubted it. Every year or two some major news outlet feels compelled to run a story about this obvious truth. I think the only people who denigrate the napper are those who can't nap themselves -- or won't allow themselves to. I've denied myself many a needed siesta for the sake of a deadline or some sense of higher purpose when, in fact, no purpose is ever served by a groggy servant. If I look back on just the last few years and count the accidents or near-misses I've had -- lacerated nerve on the bandsaw, rolled tractor, smashed thumb in hitch -- all of them took place at the time of day when I usually nap. I'd be far better off today if I had, and that's the way I look at each nap I take. I don't know on any given day what horrible thing I've spared myself as I tuck into my office sofa, but I can drift into a happy sleep ticking them off in my head: compound leg fracture, punctured eyeball, torn rotator cuff, write something really stupid in a blog and post it...

Zzzzzzzzz

Updating the Dated

2009-07-25T12:50:00.006-04:00

Many of you have sent me kind notes over the past many months requesting that my earlier audio programs be released on CD and in down loadable formats. We've been working on that and if you go to the Bookshelf page of this website you'll see that The Free Fall of Webster Cummings has recently made the transition as well as The End of the Road. My publisher and I have made the decision to release my first two books of commentary, As Far As You Can Go Without A Passport and Small Comforts, as a one volume compilation to be titled It's Just Like I Told You: Twenty-Five Years of Comments and Comic Pieces. Most of this material appeared originally as commentary on NPR's All Things Considered starting in 1984.

It has been interesting if not entirely excruciating to go back over this material. I'm reading it again with an eye toward culling some of the stuff that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place and some of the stuff that was appropriate at the time, but reads as dated and naive now. It's a squirmy task. Everything in those books was heartfelt once, but like the the sentiments you might find in your old high school literary magazines, it's not necessarily something you want to share with the world -- again. I also plan to add some commentary I've done since my All Things Considered years to demonstrate, I suppose, that I did learn a little something about something since 1984. Or at least since high school. Definitely since high school.

Technical Foul

2009-07-19T11:01:00.010-04:00

Okay. I've been faking it for awhile. Our server issues were cleared up over a week ago, but I somehow found it easy to stay out of this space. Pretend I wasn't home. Peek out the window to see who's at the door. This happens to me from time to time. I suppose it's a form of depression, but not the clinical kind. I think of it more as a technical depression, as in technological. In other words, sometimes all of this technology depresses me.

I have a complicated relationship with my high tech stuff. To be perfectly truthful I find it all irresistible. In addition to the standard fare of phones, DVD players, flat-screens, and iPods I own three computers all capable of mind-bending feats of art, organization, and calculation. I use them to type on for the most part. Sort family photos. Shop for used tools on eBay and Craigslist. There's nothing I use these computers for that I couldn't and didn't do before I had them. The difference is that it is so much faster and easier to do now. This ought to put time back into my life but it doesn't. It's so fast and easy I just do more of it.

And every once in awhile it all breaks down and I have to stop. That's what happened for a couple of days two weeks ago. My website went down. My blog crashed. My email server became unavailable. My excellent web guy and I spent way too much time on the phone with customer service people in exotic foreign locations. There were accounts to be verified. Passwords recalled. Indecipherable series of numbers and decimals appeared in my phone notes. I dropped my iPhone in the sink and the sounds stopped working. We think an electrical storm took out our WiFi router. By the time it was all fixed I was broken.

I took a trip with my 3-year-old to see my 24-year-old. I didn't take a laptop. I mowed the lower field -- finally. I started cutting the frame for the arbor to go over the pergola out back. I laid out a new fence line along the east side. I sharpened all my hand planes and scrapers to get back to work on a table for good friends that is six months overdue. I picked some raspberries.

And now I'm back feeling much better, thank you. I'll never lie to you again.*

*[asterisk denotes unidentified caveat to be named later]

Everybody Gotta Server Somebody

2009-07-07T11:55:00.003-04:00

My web host is going through some sort of mid-life crisis -- or perhaps a teen hormonal surge --and has stopped taking my calls. It has jazzed up its controls and protocols and left us here at bodett.com scratching our heads, trying to understand, and seeking counsel. We've lost some previous posts on this blog, and we're having trouble uploading new ones. Check back often, we'll get to the bottom of it soon.

Thanks

Tom

A Michael Jackson Kind of Day

2009-06-26T23:15:00.011-04:00

I was in my hotel room in Chicago yesterday afternoon force-feeding myself with breathless cable news stories in preparation for last evening’s taping of WWDTM. There wasn’t much hard news on. Every channel was focusing on the sad but not unexpected death of Farrah Fawcett from cancer. I turned off the TV and took a short nap. When I woke up and turned the set back on Farah Fawcett was nowhere to be seen. I don’t want to say it was as if she never lived, but it was certainly as if she never died. Now, the day belonged to Michael Jackson. And today does too, and probably tomorrow and it will go on until we’re so tired of hearing about Michael Jackson we’ll wish he weren’t dead. Plenty do already, I know, and for pure good reasons.

He was an exceptional talent, no doubt about it. My wife who is younger than me has shown me enough videos and played enough MJ songs today to remind me of that. I was a little out of his demographic to really feel the loss of him in the way she does. When John Lennon died I felt it. Elvis, not so much. The Beatles were part of my soundtrack on the way up. Elvis was just before that. Michael Jackson just after. I guess the people who make the music we listen to when we first start being affected by music are the ones we bond with. If I outlive Bob Dylan it will be a very bad day for me when he goes. Neil Young, same deal. These guys wrote my youth. Michael Jackson – he did that for a lot of other people.

I expect it will take about three weeks before people start spotting him in shopping malls or in blurry beach photos from Tahiti. Michael Lives! will scream from the tabloids as you reach for your Tic-Tacs at the grocery store. A woman in San Antonio will see his face in a tortilla. Previously unreleased singles and outtakes of videos will sell millions. When artists die they lose control over all the material that wasn’t good enough for them. The really great ones know how to edit and cull. And, I suppose, they know when it's time to exit.

One happy thought to this whole thing: Jenny Sanford and her four sons. That big dumb media eyeball has swung away to brighter lights. One last good deed from the Gloved One. I’m sure Mrs. Sanford has given a prayer of thanks for that tonight.

We've Been Framed

2009-06-14T10:45:00.007-04:00

There is a strange and beautiful tradition here in Vermont. If you were to mill a pile of logs into heavy timbers, cut them into components of a structure of some kind, and let the word out that you're going to put it all together on a particular day -- a bunch of good people show up to help you do it. That's what happened here yesterday. The photo above shows about a third of those who came by. We're standing in front of the nearly finished product, which at that moment was lashed together with straps and come-alongs awaiting adjustment and timber pegs. On top from left to right are Neill, Gabe, Adam, and Nathan -- Adam, Gabe and Neill did all the cutting on and off over the past couple of months in the barn. On the ground is Jared who did the stone work, myself, and neighbors Claude, Chad and Andy.

Putting up a heavy frame by hand is an oddly satisfying sport. This is the second time we've done this here. The first time was for the barn you see in the right background in the picture above. Nine or ten pairs of hands guiding a few hundred pounds of hardwood into a place with tolerances of less than a sixteenth of an inch. It can be tricky. It can also be a real finger pincher.

The devil and the payoff is in the details. Every part in these pictures was figured, cut, and shaped over the course of weeks. They slid together with an Ikea-like grace with only a few diplomatically applied hammer blows.

And, as with all good things. The proof is in the pudding. What is it?

We'll build an arbor frame over top and encourage a bunch of leafy stuff (not the technical horticultural term) to grow over it. In effect, this is a very elaborate shady spot in the backyard built with goodwill and good people. There is no better place to sit in three states.

Black Locust Bloom

2009-06-01T20:24:00.006-04:00

The black locust trees are in bloom this week. The air is sweet with it. They are the last trees around here to bud and leaf out. They are a confounded tree top to bottom. The wood is so impervious to rot and pests that it can be used as if it were chemically treated. Better than creosote many claim. It is the preferred wood for fences and posts of all kinds and there are lots of popular bromides about it. "Locust lasts one year longer than rock". "A locust post will last longer than the hole you put it in." I especially like that one. Shortly after we bought this land I went looking for the property corners to properly mark them. Like surveyors. Not like dogs. The survey for the place was made in the 1880's and the boundaries mostly followed an old stone wall. All except one corner. The map said it was marked by a locust post. I looked and looked all through the bramble and brush and gave up day after day. But I was determined to find it and went down one last time vowing not to return until I found the post. And I did -- laying on the ground sound as a dollar and with no hole in sight. Lasted longer than the hole they put it in.

I spend half my time in our woods admiring the locust and the other half trying to kill it. It spreads in a variety of hideous ways and for the first many years of a black locust's life it is covered with nasty thorns. Clearing locust is blood sport. I have a six inch cut across my belly where one particularly tough customer tried to fight me off. I bested it in the end, but there is a scar. Locust will spread by sending out roots that pop up anywhere they please. Cut it off and it sends a different one somewhere else. Black locust will even hide in your luggage and take root in the cracks of sidewalks at your next airport. Okay, I made that part up, but it wouldn't surprise me to see a locust shoot coming at me from under the taxi stand at O'Hare on Thursday.

Where was I going with all this? Oh yeah. The locust trees are in bloom this week. It's a very pretty smell. And it will outlive me.

Take Five

2009-05-28T21:30:00.003-04:00

I heard somewhere that if any five people guess the weight of any individual they will always be right if they pool their answers and average them. Always. I want to find out more about this. Did they find that four people wasn't quite enough? Six too many? How steeply does the effect fall off? Can five people be collectively clever about matters other than body weight? We know that once you get into the 500's -- the size of the US Congress, for example -- the net wisdom is equivalent to that of a box of round rocks. In fact, it seems there comes a point when a group goes from wise to normal to flawed to aggressively stupid. Not only wrong, but destructively so. So if five is wise and 535 is destructive -- there must be some gradations in between. The Supreme Court is nine people, but perhaps this is because in any 5-4 decision we can be confident that the majority of five has nailed it. Our founding fathers were anything but stupid about such things. How many FF's were there, by the way? Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington...hmm.

I happen to serve on the five member board that governs our little town here in Vermont. We're pretty good together. We've never tried to guess anybody's weight, but I think we'd do okay at it. We come up with sound solutions for things like bridge decking, gravel crushing, and employee insurance plans. I think we could do more if given the chance. It might be interesting to try. What if the federal government simply jobbed out a couple of its more nagging issues to five member selectboards around Vermont and New Hampshire? Let's say here in Dummerston we look at the North Korea issue on Wednesday night after the new dump truck bids are opened. Maybe Newfane could take a crack at the Guantanamo thing. How could they possibly make it worse? Lebanon, NH would be perfect for health care reform. They have a hospital there and everything. Climate change? Toss that bone to the farmers up in Rutland. They know their weather. Illegal immigration? St. Albans up on the border -- our front line against the Canadian horde. Education reform? -- look no further than any Vermont town with a school in it. You could bankrupt forty-nine states (not counting California, that's a gimme) with the sheer complexity of Vermont's education funding formula. We know how to overthink education up here and any five of us could fix it. Right after we find Osama. And guess his weight.

Reform You Can Believe In

2009-05-20T22:49:00.001-04:00

I got an email today from the president asking me to help him out of a jam. Specifically, he said, “Tom I need your voice on health care.” I was kind of busy, but decided to take a cue from Governor Huntsman and do for my country what the president asks just because he asks. It’s the kind of American I want to be. No matter that I know nothing about health care reform and have nothing to add to the debate. That hasn’t stopped anybody else. So, Mr. President, here’s my voice.

The biggest thing people seem to fear about health care reform is that the government is going to get involved in our medical decisions and mess everything up. Step back and think about this for a minute. Our current health care system is unwieldy, mismanaged, unfair, expensive and inefficient. In other words it essentially is a government program already. We could make the switch over a weekend and nobody would even notice. Instead of calling some 25 year old business graduate at your HMO and arguing with her over the prescriptions your doctor thinks you should have but she doesn’t, you could be calling some 25 year old social science graduate in a government agency doing the same thing.

Insurance companies give a six inch thick manual to all the people who answer their phones. It’s called The Big Book of No. Somewhere in it is a reason to decline any request whether trivial or life-threatening. Sort of like the IRS or FEMA. Putting incompetent people into key decision making positions – a public sector specialty – would not fix any of the problems, but it would finally provide an understandable reason for them.

If you annoy your insurance company they can simply drop your coverage and stop taking your calls. What is a government run health care program going to do if you tweak them off – deport you? If you get a particularly surly government account manager or health care provider you can always write an angry letter to your senator or congressman. [I just had a moment of clarity about why the House and Senate aren’t wild about health care reform. You really are all alone out there on this. No wonder you wrote to me.]

In short, and in conclusion, Mr. President, nationalizing our health care system will accomplish one huge and unlikely thing. It will take all the fear, loathing and anxiety now directed in a hundred scattered directions around our health care world and focus it on one person: You, sir. But if you can take, I’ll do my best as well. It’s just the kind of American I am.

I hope this did some good, Mr. President. If you ever need me for anything else you have my email address.

Something's Bugging Me

2009-05-14T06:52:00.002-04:00

The brain, they say, is a muscle that can and should be exercised. Think meathead. To this end I've decided to think about one thing every day I've never thought about before. Today it's going to be the bugs on my windshield. Now that summer looms here in the country I have noticed an ever expanding sample of bug guts between me and the road ahead. It gets more difficult to avoid thinking about them. My early musings about these splatters led me to a question I can't answer or shake -- Where are the rest of these bugs? I see the soft insides, but with rare exceptions there are no crunchy parts. This leads one to the inevitable conclusion that our roads and highways are littered with bug bodies. Many millions of ecto-empties. For birds and other critters that live on these bugs it must be a depressing sight. Perhaps it is the lowest form of bird that works its way down the shoulders poking through bug shells like beer cans hoping for one little swig here and there.

This is what I have been thinking about, and now this is what you are thinking about. Don't thank me, but do let me know if you think of something new. We meatheads must help one another.

Pilates Appointment in Samarra

2009-05-05T09:37:00.008-04:00

I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in Vermont composing a blog entry on my MacBook. I have a cup of Free Trade Panamanian coffee on one side of my gleaming laptop and an iPhone on the other. My hat bears some indecipherable indigenous symbol from Guatemala. I'm wearing Blundstones -- the only shoes I ever wear -- and a Patagonia SPF-50 hiking shirt. I'm suddenly transported to an April day in 1975 in East Lansing, Michigan. I was hanging out in an off- campus beer pub at midday in my Roman sandals, bell-bottoms, flannel shirt and ponytail reading the collected indecipherable works of Ezra Pound when it suddenly occurred to me that I was an idiotic and embarrassing cliche. I made immediate emergency plans to drop out of college, hitchhike Out West, and become a hard-drinking-hippie-redneck-vagabond-itinerant-worker-Neal Cassady-Jack London-Woody Guthrie-anti-literary-working-class-hero. Cliche that you popular culture bozos!

My how time wounds all heels. As I sit here mortally re-infected with main stream cultural sensibility and style I realize there is no place to run this time. At least no place I'm willing to go. I'm reminded of the parable passed along by W. Somerset Maugham that John O'Hara used to title his novel Appointment in Samarra. This is all there is to say about that.

A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant's horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

Watch Your Back, Ashton

2009-04-19T09:19:00.009-04:00

Check your rear view mirror Ashton Kutcher. You may have crossed the magic million follower mark on Twitter and already racked up a couple hundred thousand more, but little reported was the addition of my one-thousandth Twitter follower and twenty-five more after that. Twenty-six now. Twenty-seven. Feeling the heat A.K? I also notice you are following eighty people and I am not among them. Your loss, buster. You'll never know what airport I'm flying out of, or what the weather is like around my place. You'd give up all of that just to keep me from having one more measly follower? [I don't mean to imply that you or any of my followers are measly. Although I suppose you could be if you did not have measles as a child.]

Anyhow. I have you in my sights. I'm not sure what you do, but I understand you are very popular from your work on That Seventies Show. I'll tell you what, I was that Seventies show. I had actual pimples in the early Seventies. I had friends who wore platform shoes with bib overalls. I had tinted lenses in my glasses. A girlfriend once sewed paisley corduroy into the seams of my bell bottoms. And this wasn't something I left with the wardrobe department at the end of the day. I went back to my dorm and slept in them. I carry these and other humiliations with what passes for grace and dignity around my house. You wouldn't know about that, but you could. Make me your eighty-first and my world becomes your world. Only without all the money and adoration.

Oh Peeps, We Hardly Knew Ye!

2009-04-13T22:05:00.005-04:00

This is a picture of perfectly good Peeps in the garbage. It wasn't my idea. I found them like this. Minding my own business, I opened up the drawer to discard a tissue and there they were staring up at me with those two little black eyes. Not as shocking as finding a live baby in a dumpster, not even in that ballpark, maybe not even in that solar system -- but at least sharing a galaxy. So innocent and helpless. Little bundles of marshmallow, food dye and joy. You'd thing they could at least be recycled. Maybe not. These are not a Hindu confection. They are born of a Christian Holy Day. They are not destined to come back in some higher form, such as a Snickers, then a Cadbury, then a chocolate mousse until Nirvana when at last they achieve real chickenhood. No, these little peeps get but one shot at it. Dead is dead. Gone is gone. Even the Rapture, I fear, cannot save these little preservative laden souls. They may rise, but they will still be weird marshmallow confections that are eaten at only one specific time of year in celebration of the Resurrection. And not one day later. Obviously.

Not Dead. Yet.

2009-04-05T10:22:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I received the following two emails about four hours apart:

Tom:

I'm not kidding. Some time in the last two years both my wife and I swear that we heard on the news that you died. I guess that's not true, huh?

Rick xxxxxx

St Louis, MO

Awhile ago I heard you passed away. I was very sad. I am glad that you are still alive. I always loved your Motel 6 commercials. Take care Mr. Bodett, and again, I'm glad you're alive.
Steve

Fresno, CA

This raises two immediate questions -- 1) Who is telling people I'm dead? 2) What happened yesterday to indicate I wasn't? More important, I suppose, than the answers to those are the concerns it raises for the dearly not-so departed. For example, should I get a publicist? I have never been much of a self-promoter and always assumed I was just as famous as I deserved to be whether up or down. But, I never figured I'd be one of those "I thought you were dead" guys. Granted, my professional output is down during these child-rearing years, but it's not like I'm, well, dead.

I suppose it's possible my publisher or a speculative bookseller [there's a redundancy] started spreading the rumor of my death in the hope of stimulating book sales. They severely underestimate my fans. If you, dear reader, were to learn of my death most certainly you'd figure my back list of titles would be out of print within a year and you would be able to pick them up at discount booksellers for twenty cents on the dollar. That's what I like about you.

Motel 6 might keep my death a secret for awhile; propping me up in the radio saddle like Attila the Hun until the whole thing started to smell. That scenario does raise the question of whether AFTRA and SAG require producer pension contributions for deceased performers.

I could go on and on about this, but it's Sunday and I have a lot of chores to do around the house. The trash needs hauling. The perennial beds need to be raked. The tractor needs grease. I've no time to be dead. In fact, to save time I've already composed a list of Last Words and today could be my lucky day. My favorite so far: "That jack looks a little wobbly".

Sleeping Off Those Extra Pounds

2009-04-02T07:12:00.003-04:00

I've recently become concerned about my weight. Not so much that I'm getting fat -- just the expected middle-age "thickening". My pants size hasn't changed in thirty years, but it's trying to and I refuse to budge. "Never give a inch" [sic] was the Hank Stamper family motto in Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. I'm going to hang that in my bathroom. But, more of a concern to me than my actual weight is the wildly fluctuating readings on our bathroom scale. It's a pretty good one and has always agreed with the big butcher's scale at the doc's office. So why then does my weight vary up to five pounds in a single day? A couple pounds here and there would account for meals and water, but five? I've set a goal for myself of ten pounds, so having a margin of error of 50% is taking the fun right out of not eating ice cream and every other damn thing I want.

I wake up three to five pounds lighter than I was when I laid down. I can lose half the weight I want by sleeping for seven hours. Now there's a diet program you could sell! I then gain it back by working like a dog for eight hours. Shop work. Woods work. Office work. No matter. Here's those five pounds back. Theoretically I could meet my goal by skipping work and sleeping for two days. I'm not sure I could sell that plan around the house, but it's worth a try.

John Hope Franklin

2009-03-25T23:16:00.003-04:00

The prominent historian John Hope Franklin passed away today at the age of 94. He was a black intellectual who never compromised his dignity or his scholarship to fit some 'place' others thought he should be in. He often said that the racial slurs and slights he suffered never cut too deep with him because, "I knew something they didn't -- I was as good as they were."

My wife and I had the honor of sharing a meal with Mr. Franklin while he was visiting in our area. He sat next to me and spoke softly of fly fishing and Southern summers and how he doesn't like the cold anymore. I didn't really know very much about him then. I sensed he knew that, and I think it pleased him. He took an evening off from being John Hope Franklin the prominent black historian and got to be an aged fly fisherman talking weather with a rube.

A moment of silence, please, for the Professor. John Hope Franklin, they are all Southern summers now.