Tom Bodett's Blog

A Michael Jackson Kind of Day

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:15:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:45:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:24:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:49:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:52:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:37:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:19:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:05:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:22:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:12:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:16:00 +0000

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.

You Been Pwned. Woot. Woot.

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:58:00 +0000

Awhile back we did a Motel 6 radio spot having some fun with the online gaming culture. In it I use the term "pwned", pronounced "powned", meaning "owned", or decisively defeated. I'd never heard the word before or since until yesterday. Ken Nichols, the co-creator and producer/director of AskANinja.com wrote to me very excited about this so I sent him the spot, which you can hear on his website. I gather this is really funny for some gamers, and probably excruciating for others. It would be like when your dad started saying "far out" and "mellow" in the early Seventies. As soon as that happened we knew those words were dead to us. Sorry, gamers. You just got pwned.

Preemptive Apology

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:03:00 +0000

In today's show I referred to my elected position as a member of "The Board of Selectmen". This is the outdated though-still-official name in most towns of the local governing body now commonly referred to as the gender-neutral "Selectboard" We are no longer Selectmen. We are Selectboard members. I suppose it sounded quainter and weightier and funnier for me to use the archaic form in the show. Apologies to all my fine female fellow (fellow?) Selectboard members.

All a twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:17:00 +0000

I have joined my fellow Twits at Twitter and while I'm enjoying following the posts of my friends Peter Sagal, Paula Poundstone, Kyrie O'Connor, Scott Simon and others, I've yet to fully understand the medium. I can barely keep up with this blog of mine. Most of the reason for that is brevity has never been my strength. I'd rather take a beating than made to write a 100 word commentary. My regular email correspondents -- fewer all the time -- will testify that my replies often go "below the fold", and I'm confident many of my missives are opened, groaned at, and closed unread.

Twitter may cure me of this. You are only allowed 140 characters -- about as long as this paragraph. My twitter handle is TomBodett. Check it ou...

Democracy As We Know It

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:56:00 +0000

I received an anonymous comment to my blog about our White House visit that went something like this, Wow! You can tell your children you were there to see the man who ended Democracy forever. That is a once in a lifetime event! I've avoided inserting politics into this otherwise pointless blog, but I can't resist addressing this sentiment. It seems to me these were the very kinds of statements being made by the Left when Bush was in office, by the Right when Clinton was in office, by the Left again when Reagan was in office...oh, and by the Right again when Carter was in office, and let's not forget Richard Nixon... Can we please stop this? Just because your choice is not in the White House does not mean the end of democracy as we know it. It only ends the government you exactly want for awhile. We can thank our Constitution and human nature for the continued existence of a petulant and self-interested Congress, an independent Judiciary and a free if underfunded press. Not to mention free and fair presidential elections every four years when we can work hard and vote to get people into the White House who do govern like we want it for awhile. That sure looks like democracy to me.

Being There

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:41:00 +0000

We brought the boys to Washington DC for their first of what I hope will be many visits, and it couldn't have been a better reception. We were walking in front of the White House and spotted Paul Begala outside one of the gates talking on his cell phone. As we walked by I overheard him say these exact words "...the efficacy of progressive action..." I believe I'm not revealing anything out-of-turn. It was just a scrap of political gobleteygook from a professional Washington insider, but it was live political gobletygook. Be still my heart.

Then, something else we couldn't have planned in a hundred years. As we wandered across the Ellipse behind the White House the perimeter security noticeably tightened. A small helicopter swooped in low around the area, circled the Washington Monument and left. You could see staff and press forming up on the White House lawn and the suddenly out of the west came three Marine helicopters in tight formation. They turn toward the White House, fly right over our heads, then the middle one peels off and lands. We saw the President for about three-fifths of a second as he strode toward the West Wing. Everyone in the small knot of people around us were crowing with our good fortune. Us too. Without the boys on hand it might have been one of those notable cell phone camera moments you tell a few friends about. But this is one for family files.

An Open Letter to the President

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:36:00 +0000

Dear President Obama,

As you no doubt know, my offer to now former Governor Blagojevich to accept the appointment to your old seat in the US Senate went unheeded. This was an error in the governor's judgement that I'm sure you would not want to emulate. Therefore, I am giving you the opportunity to name me to that vacancy in your cabinet you can't seem to fill to save your life. I would make a terrific Commerce Secretary. For one thing, there is little chance I will find myself in ideological opposition to your policies as Senator Gregg did. The very term "ideological" implies the presence of ideas and I can say with confidence there is none of that going on here. I also pay my taxes fully and on time and have done so for several years in a row.

Of course, taking a position in your administration would create a vacancy on the Selectboard of our little town in Vermont, which would have to be filled by appointment, and I suppose I would have to give up my office as a Justice of the Peace. None of this should affect the political tides in Vermont. This place is totally in the tank for you. Giving up the Justice of the Peace title will be a personal loss so I'm wondering if, when appointed, I could still bring the shotgun and badge and saddle coat to your cabinet meetings? It really is a terrific look on me and might help you in 2012 with the western vote.

In preparation for my new roll on your team I have spent the last several hours reviewing US trade policy. It has been enlightening. All this time it seems I have had NAFTA and Napster confused. It all makes much more sense now. I also notice we do an awful lot of trade with China. A mean, A LOT. They gotta be rolling in dough over there. Have you ever given any thought to borrowing some of it back?

As you see, I am a quick study. I mean there's not that much to me at all. Your vetting team should be done by lunch tomorrow and I can catch the Amtrak to DC on Monday. Let me know as soon as possible so that we can begin to manage expectations downward.

Your Devoted Servant,

Tom Bodett

Justice of the Peace

Presumptive Selectman

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:27:00 +0000

This blog has a reader ironically named, Anonymous, with an existential remark in response to my last post. The reader says that with his or her consulting contract recently cancelled, he or she is out of work but not included in the unemployment statistics. Hence, I assume, the Anonymous. It begs the classic question -- If a person loses his job and nobody notices, is he still broke? My guess is, yes. Somebody should call the government. Anonymously.

Nagging Anxieties

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0000

In an email to a colleague the other day I had occasion to disclose some of the items in my Nagging Anxieties file, which lies between Immediate Concerns and Don't Worry About It. It felt therapeutic and I thought the effect might be enhanced by revealing them here as well. So in no particular order: Colon cancer. Vladimir Putin. The Furnace filter. My lapsed Catholicism.

Mix and match! Add your own!

National Day of Norsemanship

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:29:00 +0000

It is a strange time of year. This leg of winter is always a haul. The holiday spirits sag, the only other holiday in sight with even the slightest bit of fun factor is Super Sunday, which is not really a holiday or even a sporting event so much as a marketing extravaganza. I've always found it the most American of all of our national holidays in this way. For MLK Day we all summon our better angels for a few minutes in the car if the radio happens to replay the "I Have a Dream" speech. At least if you're a person of paleness. I've never once had a white guy say to me, "Happy Martin Luther King Day" or "Keep the Dream". It's probably a very different experience in African American communities, but I live in Vermont. I wouldn't know about that.

Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day...let's admit it; for most Americans these represent three day weekends. We might hang out a flag here and there. Get misty-eyed during the closing credits of a rerun of The Fighting Seabees on TMC, but mostly we barbecue and take care of our yards. It's not that we shouldn't care more. We just don't. (Note to indignant readers: I'm making a cultural observation here not a scientific one. Plenty of people care deeply about the meaning of these holidays. Just not most people.)

Super Bowl Sunday, on the other hand, is made for the Anglo-Saxon race which has been, and for at least the next few weeks, will be the dominant influence on American culture. Super Sunday is all about violence and consumption. This is what the Norsemen were all about too: pillage, grab some women, pop the top on the local food stores, and kick back. This sounds an awful lot like the 4/4 broadcast beat of the Super Bowl -- 1) Shot of play action including grunts and flying spit. 2) Cut to cheerleaders, then scan the crowd for loonies and hotties. 3) Go to commercial for pillage. 4) Repeat. All of the same glands are firing which motivated the vikings (not the NFL team) as they sacked ancient London. By the end of the day we're likely to be wearing horns or cheese on our heads. For those of northern European descent this is as close to a day of ancestral observance as we get.

For the rest of us there is always the Sacred Riddle. This year it is XLIII. Any ideas?

Change is Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:41:00 +0000

Wow. Obama has been in office less than 24 hours and already my back feels better and my coffee is staying hot longer. Funny, he never mentioned these benefits during the campaign.

In honor of our new president I am commencing on some changes around this website. It's not really in honor of him. I was going to do it anyway, but 'tis the season.

You may notice this website over the next several weeks getting better and more up-to-date. Come to think of it, you may notice our federal government doing the same thing. But they truly are unrelated. I'm going to be moving this blog up to the homepage and plan to get more responsible about updating this and the commentary on the site so that if you happen to come back over and over and over and over and over, which of course you will, you might actually see something new.

Also, many of you are requesting CD or digital downloads of some of my older recorded works. Some of these are available now and those links will be appearing soon. The rest of it we're working on. There are a lot of archaic and nuisance rights and things involved in this. It all takes time and agents and sometimes lawyers to work out. In the meantime we're going to be marginalizing those audio works that are only available on cassette as that is for all intents and purposes a dead medium. Will it make a comeback someday like vinyl? Being that there is no audio advantage to it and the tape itself ages and becomes brittle, probably not. If you are one of the six dozen people still listening to cassettes, I hear Circuit City is having a heck of a sale on CD and mp3 players.

So don't be a stranger. I'll be doing Wait-Wait this weekend, and will fill you in on all the scrumptious back-stage details including who designed PJ O'Rourke's gown.

News from Jupiter

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:45:00 +0000

Here is a news bulletin -- They've completely run out of things to worry about in Jupiter, FL. We should all move there. Twice in two days I've received emails asking if I am the voice behind a recurring sound bite on a local radio station that says, "Ya know sometimes I just like to strip down butt naked and jump into a pool of chocolate." They say it sounds like me. They did not say it sounds like something I'd say, let alone record, but one can make the leap -- so to speak.

I could formally deny it here and now, but this would give the teeming Jupiter, FL press corps the excuse to print, Bodett denies jumping into a vat of chocolate butt naked. I might as well have done it, if you see what I mean. If I did ever say it I was drunk. And I haven't been drunk in a very very long time. If I didn't say it, you're drunk, Jupiter, FL.

So, kind residents of Jupiter, go back to your lives. There's nothing to see here. Besides, the very thought of being in the same vat of chocolate as my butt is, in the words of my youngest son, icky.

Masterminding Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Lake Superior State University recently published it's annual list of words and phrases that should be banned from use. This year's batch is well-chosen and I agree that "Going Green", "Carbon Footprint", "Bailout", and "Wall Street/Main Street - among thirty others - have been used and abused beyond their ability to communicate anything. I have a couple of my own I'd like to add.

Revelers -- News stories over this past New Years weekend were filled with stories of drunks, idiots, and cretins wreaking havoc on polite society. But instead of referring to them as drunks, idiots, and cretins -- who did everything from drive snow machines into oak trees at 70 miles per hour to mooning and attacking reporters to critically burning two girls in New Hampshire by throwing white gas on a bonfire -- they were uniformly described as "revelers". I'm sorry, but a reveler is someone who blows a plastic horn with bucket on his head and kisses pretty strangers in Times Square at midnight. Someone who throws white gas on a bonfire in a crowd full of young people is a drunk or an idiot or both. These stories would have much more punch and deterrent affect if they told the truth. "Last night in upstate New York two drunken morons killed themselves when their stolen snow machine collided with a two hundred-year-old oak at the edge of Lake Such-and-Such." Or. "Sloppy drunks in Lake Tahoe bared their big white hind ends and slobbered on a female television reporter attempting to do a feel-good piece on local celebrations." Wouldn't you love to see that just once?

Mastermind -- This one has bothered me for years. Psychotic and scheming criminals of all stripes, if they manage to pull off a caper more complex than what a six-year-old could imagine, are universally anointed "masterminds". They are psychotics, sociopaths, schemers, scammers, sick puppies, even monsters. They are not masterminds. That title should be reserved for those among us who pull off the truly great works of our time. The Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, masterminded the user-friendly computer which became the Mac. Bill Gates masterminded affordable software packages that became ubiquitous and changed the way the world works. Nelson Mandela masterminded the end of apartheid. Warren Buffet is the mastermind of Berkshire Hathaway. Bruce Springsteen was the mastermind behind the E Street Band. Political genius, LBJ, masterminded the final passage of the Civil Rights Act. Barack Obama masterminded the most improbable ascent to the Presidency in our nation's history. These are truly master minds at work. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is not in that league. He is the sick bastard who thought up the idea of flying passenger jets into buildings full of innocents. How smart do you have to be to read an airline schedule and give a couple dozen psychopaths box cutters? Were the business people behind the predatory lending practices and toxic securities bundles of the past ten years masterminds, or greed-driven short-sighted deluded gamblers? Let's call a scoundrel a scoundrel and get on with masterminding a way out of this mess.

That would be something to revel about.

I Had a Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bodett) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:07:00 +0000

When I was a house builder I would occasionally have epic dreams about building houses that would leave me dazed and tired in the morning. Those have dried up over the years and been replaced by a panoply of the usual fare: melting telephones, missed airplane connections, my old high school filled with images from Abu Ghraib (never mind). But last night I had my first product spokesperson dream. You'd think after 23 years of pitching Motel 6 that this would have happened sooner. I guess you don't really dream about the things you are comfortable with.

The only reason I mention it is because the dream was very real and very funny. I was standing in a recording studio reading the script off the side of a cardboard shipping carton. Not my usual studio technique. The product was Royanne Hardware. The tag-line, and punchline of the dream, was "Royanne. When you really need a screw."

For some reason this cracks me up. Not the line itself. It is not too far-fetched to imagine some local or regional ad agency coming up with that kind of jokey vulgarism for a hardware client. What's so funny is that my ungoverned sleeping self would fire valuable and declining synapses to think of it.

Of course, the next question someone of a quasi-spiritual/psychiatric nature might ask is, What does it mean? I googled Royanne and only came up with a town in the Alpine region of France. Might be some past life stuff going on here, you think? Some of my ancestors came from France, but a completely different part of it. Could one of them have taken a trip to Royanne needing a screw? Is there an entire unrecognized branch of the Bodett (Baudet, Beaudette, Bodette) tree out there seeking contact? Do they still live in the Alps? Are they rich?

This is what passes for visions of sugar plums dancing around in my head. Happy Christmas. Dream big.