Time Capsule

The idea that this blog could potentially sit here in cyberspace for decades intrigues me.

A lot.

I think of my grandkids reading it.

How cool is that? The ability to read family history first-hand?

How I would have loved for my ancestors to have had this ability.

My father's father was a master at telling stories, but so many of them now are blurry in my memory.

There was some tale he loved to tell about taking the train to the Jersey Shore and departing for home on the same railway, toting a bag of live crabs caught in the bay. Apparently, the bag wasn't secured, and the crustaceans escaped, crawling among the passengers with clicky-clacky indifference to the mayhem they created.

It wasn't Snakes on a Plane but, rather, Crabs on a Train. Coming soon to a theater near you.

But the details are gone, taken with him.

Same with his story about getting a ticket down the shore for appearing on the beach without a shirt on.

And his recollection of the common practice of renting a bathing suit when he'd go on a day trip. Not only was hygiene not much of a consideration then, but neither, apparently, was comfort. I remember him telling us these suits were wool and that they never quite dried out from the swimming activities of the prior occupant.

Ick.

But the thing I find cool is that unless this whole interwebs thing collapses in a heap of 3G junk, my words will stretch forward into history.

An electronic message in a bottle.

So hello, Weckerly grandkids. Enjoy the year 2050. I'll be 87, Lord willing. I may ramble with my stories by then. Or I may be gone altogether. But they'll be here. Waiting for you. Stop by and listen to my voice.

Before you hop in your flying car.

...lucky stiffs!

 
 

Title, Please

Movie-geek hat is on again today, folks.

I love a movie that will grab me from the very titles. If a filmmaker has taken the time and expended the artistry to come up with a memorable title sequence, I'm all in.

Here are some of my favorites:

One Hundred and One Dalmatians. I think this was the opening of my eyes to what a title sequence could be. The marriage of imagery and content (colorists' names are brought on with a wash of color, etc.) was first brought home to me here, and I've been paying attention ever since.

Pink Panther series' titles were also clever and funny.

One of my dad's favorite films of all time was the mega-comedy It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. The credits are terrific. Thank you, Saul Bass.

 

Beetlejuice has the advantage of a great Danny Elfman score playing underneath. The spider gag at the conclusion surprised and delighted me when I first saw it.

Speaking of great themes to accompany a movie's opening, I've always loved the Mancini score to Charade. Again, take a bow, Mr. Saul Bass.

 A clip does not seem to exist on YouTube, but The Adventures of Tintin have a sequence something like that for One Hundred and One Dalmatians. I like the John Williams score, too.

Here's a recent favorite, The Adventures of Tintin.

And last, for pure laughs, here's The Naked Gun 33 1/3, The Final Insult. Artful silliness.

  

And as far as end credits go, The Incredibles takes the cake.

 

Decade of Destiny

I'm almost through the six episodes of CNN's The Sixties, finding it an incredible trip through a watershed decade that I barely remember.

Having been born in late 1962 (very late, December 27), my recollections are understandably fuzzy. I was in the crib when JFK was assassinated and only heard the stories of that day from my mother, who reportedly wept at the ironing board as she watched the wall-to-wall coverage.

Vietnam was played out for me more in 1970s color than 1960s B&W, with Walter Cronkite telling my parents just how bad it really was.

And as far as civil unrest, I remember seeing coverage of what I've come to learn was the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. As a five year old, the sight of fire hoses and teeth-baring dogs was frighteningly beyond my understanding.

The CNN retrospective, however, has filled in a lot of gaps. The details of Dallas were known to me, especially after I visited Dealey Plaza on a business trip, and found it an amazingly small crucible for such a sea change in America. (Side note: The Texas School Book Depository Museum, however, is highly recommended.) But somehow, seeing the reports of that weekend strung together in an unbroken thread of disbelief made the impact more palpable, especially when insult met injury in the killing of Oswald.

I'd also obviously studied the civil rights movement and again benefited from the first-hand experience, having visited Memphis, again on a business trip. The preserved room of the Lorraine Motel and the attached National Civil Rights Museum told me a lot about the struggle. But the CNN coverage underlined the violence and hatred and reminded me that the quest for freedom almost always involves the payment of a huge price.

The remainder of The Sixties involved the British Invasion (which, passed me by, too, as I remember more of the druggy Beatles than the moptop Beatles) and television, which did catch, for obvious reasons, in my consciousness. Lost in Space, Batman, I Dream of Jeannie, My Three Sons, and others of their ilk are common threads in my childhood, either first-run or in syndication.

As the upheaval of the 1960s was fully dawning on me in my teen years, I remember asking my mother: "With all the horrible things going on, the assassination of President Kennedy, of Martin Luther King Jr., of Bobby Kennedy; with the seemingly non-sensical war in Vietnam; with the race riots and burning cities... how did you hold it together? How did you not go running into the streets screaming?"

I'll never forget her response:

"Many of us did."

 

All Comes Out in the Wash

I recently had the pleasure -- and by pleasure, I mean responsibility, and by responsibility, I mean soul-crushing duty -- of needing the services of a laundromat.

Our dryer went on strike. The drum would still tumble, but the motion was accompanied by a metallic shriek that echoed through the entire house and scared the dog.

Thinking that discretion was the better part of valor, we pulled the plug.

But in a house with three girls who can't seem to wear an outfit for more than 10 minutes without tossing it into the wash, and a Labrador Retriever who has an affinity for slopping into rain puddles, causing a steady rotation of towels through the laundry, doing without was not an option.

And for some reason, my idea to string a clothes line across the backyard and let Old Sol do the heavy work was met with equal measures of scorn and laughter.

Go green my eye!

So for about two weeks, the drill was to send the clothes through the washer (still operational, thank you), load the damp output into laundry baskets and shlepp it to the laundromat for the industrial-sized dryers there.

I am not unfamiliar with the charm of the local laundromat, unfortunately.

About a year ago, our washer went on the fritz, and for the same reasons noted above, deferring laundry for any length of time had to be avoided at all costs. So armed with a fistful of quarters taken from my coin-saving jar (which always seems to get raided, despite my assertions to the family that it is to be used only to collect coins that we will someday redeem on a trip to Walt Disney World), I entered the magical world of do-it-yourself commercial clothes cleaning.

It's a weird place, especially for a male. I got a lot of stares. And side-glances. And smiles from women I didn't know or want to know. Kids were bouncing around, and I was reminded about what a lousy place a laundromat is for kids.

A claim I make from experience.

You see, beyond my recent exposure, I've got history with laundromats.

Back in the Stone Age, when our family vacation consisted of two weeks in a crackerbox of an apartment in Ocean City, NJ, Mom would schedule one day -- and one day only -- for a trip to the laundromat. Among the amenities our seaside palatial estate did not have (air conditioning, post-1953 furniture, more than one bathroom), laundry facilities were one of the most dearly missed. We were promised year after year by our landlord that they were "...coming next year for sure!" But they never arrived.

So the jaunt to the laundromat at the shore was a yearly ritual.

It was also hell on earth.

And why I was roped into this particular chore, I'm not really sure. Without fail, the designated day sported outside temperatures and humidity levels in the triple digits. So entering a cramped room where dozens of hot air dryers were humming in unison made comfort impossible.

Mom would stake her claim, and I remember a lot of jostling and elbows, getting two machines next to each other. She'd fill the drum, jam in her change, toss in soap and shoot the slot home.

My recollection is that the machinery was spacious, but achingly slow. Processing a week's worth of laundry for a family of five took the better part of an entire morning. I remember being placated by the purchase of a few comic books from a grocery store next door, but not even that pacifier was really sufficient, as the stock seemed to comprise nothing but that wimpy Richie Rich brat.

 Dump. Sort. Wash. Dry. Fold. Repeat.

It was dull at the shore.

And it's even duller at home, where there was no promise of "hitting the beach" when finished.

Luckily, our dryer at home has been repaired, thanks to an able fix-it guy who replaced a melted ball bearing. 

So we're now back in fluffy operation under our own roof.

And my change-jar is again safe.

Unless, of course, I get a sudden urge to revisit Richie Rich comic books.

 

Faithing Tough Questions

Cradle-Catholic here.

Born and raised in the faith. Somewhere between the GOD IS WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE, READY TO DAMN YOU TO HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY of the 1950s and the HEY, MAN, GOD'S COOL vibe of the 1970s.

And so, in the name of all things midlife-crises, I'm questioning everything.

No, it's not along the lines of Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen to Good People... I get it. Parents die. So do pets. And it sucks for a while, but then the memories turn more sweet than stinging and the tears subside.

I'm currently struggling with God's love.

I'm told over and over that God loves me. But the concept is hard to grasp. Love. Love is a human emotion. God's not human; He's superhuman. So is He capable of human emotion, given that he's not human? And can He exhibit a feeling that he was powerful enough to create?

I can write a book. But can I be a book?

And if God is capable of the human emotion of love, is He capable of other human emotions?

Can He hate? Can he be bored? Depressed? Manic? 

We're told our God is a jealous God. Jealousy is another emotion. In fact, jealousy is a vice, isn't it? So God is capable of some green-eyed envy?

Isn't that weird? Do we want a God who is jealous?

"Hey, Mohammad, I wish I had half your followers. Dang."

"Geez, Christians, look at all the folks into Buddha. <kicks a stray planet with His toe> Wish I had some of that..."

Heaven is another puzzle to me. God created us. He loves us. He wants us to be with him for all eternity, having created a place for us. Which always sounded like the prizes on The Newleywed Game, whose announcer always informed winning couples that they'd been chosen "...just for you."

But to get the "prize," you need to approach God for judgment, where He'll assess your life and either reward your steadfastness against sin or send you down the chute to live in the basement.

Meanwhile, the world sets up so many obstacles that sin seems inevitable. And when God created us Himself, he made us weak in constitution and prone to temptation.

Not exactly worthy tools with which to combat our way into Heaven, are they?

So it all comes off to me like this: Stripped naked, we're set before a forest of brambles. And the challenge is this: Run through it without getting a single nick on your skin. Ready? GO. And if you emerge from the other side with just one scratch -- just one! -- you're through. So solly Cholly.

I know we're reliant on His mercy. But it still seems so... poorly thought out.

I end up picturing heaven as either full of people I know. Or completely devoid of people I know.

Heaven also seems, forgive me, boring. I'm worried about heaven being dull. No chance for an invigorating bike ride. No scrumbling a dog's coat with my fingers. No chance to drink from a long, tall glass of iced tea that is so cool, the moisture on the outside of the glass dribbles to the bottom. No gorgeous sunsets to see. No bracing swim in the ocean.

Just the "bliss" of looking into the face of God all day.

Hmm...

What if he's cranky that day?

 

Humor Me

I am, I believe, the beneficiary of a sense of humor honed by both sets of parents. My mother, ever-proud of her Irish heritage, had the gift of Blarney and instilled in me a sense of how to tell a story.

She was also a voracious reader and a deep lover of words. She taught me all about puns and double meanings and wordplay.

My dad. half-Irish, had an extremely dry sense of humor. He was, by nature, quieter (the other half of his genealogical cocktail was German), but he had a large, infectious laugh and could cut a room in half with a quick observation.

His comedic viewpoint was shaped by the movies. Dad loved W.C. Fields (master of the withering remark), The Marx Brothers, and the Blake Edwards Panther films involving Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. He adored It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and A Christmas Story, and there was not a time they appeared on television that he didn't tune in.

So my first exposure to funny was seen through those lenses. I remember cutting my teeth on the knockabout comedy of the Stooges and the silliness of the Little Rascals, both on a steady rotation of weekday UHF channels. Bugs Bunny emerged as a sort of animated Groucho Marx, and the multiple layers of those Warner Bros. shorts began to reveal themselves. As did the sophisticated humor of Rocky and Bullwinkle (The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam, anyone?).

I migrated to Abbott and Costello and still enjoy their routines, even when they get tired. The 1940s vibe of their filmography appeals, and their best work, to me, is in Who Done It?

Guilty pleasures:

• SCTV, which, in its heyday, was funnier to me than SNL. The problem became when the series exploded in popularity and, IMHO, lost its edge (I don't think it ever really recovered from the S2 loss of Harold Ramis [RIP]). 

• Whose Line Is It Anyway? I've found this show funny since its first appearance on our shores from its home in Great Britain (Clive Anderson host). Drew Carey almost killed it, thinking that he was as funny as his cast -- he wasn't -- but it somehow survived. And it's back.

 I'm now surfing comedy on the Interwebs. The YouTube series Kid Snippets has had me in stitches most recently, but I'm finding a point of diminishing returns, where overexposure is lessening comedic impact.

Anyway, as a sampling, here are some of my comedy favorites from across the ages of funnydom:

Taxi!

I know it's curmudgeonly of me, but I've got a major gripe regarding the Younger Generation in general.

Or maybe it's just my kids specifically.

But what is it with them being picked up in the car?

First off, it's constant. Amanda, our eldest, is driving, so she's pretty much off our radar. Claire, our middle-button, just got her license (causing me to almost wear out my rosary while teaching her), but she has limited access to wheels, so she's still in I-need-to-be-driven mode.

And then there's Kristin, the 13 year-old, who pretty much needs to be ferried to/from everywhere.

I know I'm speaking prehistorically, but when I was 13, I was either on my bike or hoofing it to whatever activities I needed to attend. But that was pre-Stranger Danger days when kids could dare leave their front doors and not immediately be swept away by a drug-addled molester and never seen again except on the side of a milk carton.

And I recognize those days are over. Our neighborhood is pretty isolated, and the roadways nearby are choked with traffic and drivers who aren't paying attention. Frankly, I'd worry about any of my kids commuting on them on bicycles or on foot. I know how dangerous they can be just from walking Parker twice daily. Just this morning, a pinhead driver blew by me going at least 45 in a 25 zone. God forbid one of these pea-brains behind the wheel is under the influence of alcohol, email, texts, Facebook or Google.

But when I did need to be picked up, back in the day, the rules were quite simple: If mom or dad was coming at 2 p.m. to get me, I darned well better be waiting at the corner (or outside the store, or sitting on the stoop or whatever) of the designated spot. As Dad would say, "You wait for me. I don't wait for you."

The implication was clear: Be late and be warned. Dad's leaving without you. Find your own way home, Tommy Tardy.

Part of it comes from being raised by a Navy man. Early for Dad was on time. And on time for Dad was late. And that maxim held for doctor appointments, church start-times, baseball practices, dinners, and party invitations.

So we were never late for a pickup. Never!

The cellphone has changed all of that. "Text me when you get here," is ubiquitous in our house, meaning that a study session or playdate need not end until the phone jangles the signal that the young'uns' ride is awaiting.

There's just something a little too Princess Cinderella about all that for me: "Oh, M'lady. Your carriage awaits..." "Thank you, Mr. Footman. We shall depart for the ball posthaste, I take it?"

Grr...

So I've started pre-loading the conversation. When I leave for an appointed pickup, I will text the passenger: "I'm on my way."

And once again when I arrive: "I'm here."

The trouble is, the warnings are ignored, and I'm left at the curbside, flashers blinking, traffic angrily sliding around me, while my blood pressure builds.

The worst part is that none of my passengers seem to get the reason for my displeasure: "What's the big deal, Dad? I wasn't ready..."

Oy.