L.A. Publishing & Printing

I’ve never put much credence in a political solution to my problems. The government was sort of “over there” somewhere building drones and spending billions.

But, this last election cycle brought out a cynicism in me I didn’t think existed.

And my wife did not appreciate it.

For six months during the election season, I groused, mumbled and moaned nearly every evening… the only audience being her.

And she really did not appreciate it.

“Oh, the country is screwed,” I said.
“What are you talking about? Where were you today?”
“We are doomed. It’s time to move?”
“What? Where?”
“Abu Dhabi!”
“Abu what?!”
“Abu Dhabi. You know: “Ah-boo Daaa-beee!”
“Have you been listening to talk radio again?”
“Well…I was in the car most of the day…”
“Give me the keys, I’m having your car stereo pulled out,” she said.

I’m uber-Libertarian and that rubs 98% of my friends the wrong way.

So, when I’m with my Republican buddies, I bitch about the economy, but with my Democrat friends, it’s all about prosecuting corporate titans, rescinding drug laws and pulling out of the 150 countries where we’re currently meddling away militarily.

It’s a tough position to be in, as sometimes you get bushwhacked at a pleasant dinner with friends. Like last night.

“Al, What do you think of sequestration?” my friend says.
“Ahhh, I know that can be rough on a woman,” I respond.
“Well, don’t you think it will be rough on everyone!?!?”
“Well, I really don’t have to go through that once a month…You know, being a man and all.”
“What are you talking about?” he says.

But around my business buddies, it’s all about economics. The son of Depression-era parents, my siblings and I were taught the value of thrift. Throwing money at a problem was never a great solution, especially if it was just printed yesterday and you were gonna have to pay 46 cents interest on every dollar.

Speaking of cents, I can’t seem to convince my wife that any of this makes sense:

“We can’t just go on spending, spending, spending,” I say to my wife.
“What are you talking about? I just said you either need to wash those pants or go buy a new pair,” she says.
“Do you know how much a pair of pants cost with inflation at a de facto rate of 10% per year?”
“So, de facto wash them.”
“If I wash them, they’ll fade and I’ll have to buy a new pair before the allotted shelf-life expires.”
“I’m getting you a job in thrift store. This is ridiculous,” she says.

After the 2008 election, I was optimistic. This time I’m forming an Austrian-School-of-Economics book club and talking about moving to an underground bunker in Bermuda.

My wife came home the other day to find me watching my third movie in the “Faith and Spirituality” genre on Netflix. Next thing you know, I’ll be forming a hipster Tea Party group downtown.

Ron Paul rocks, Sarah Palin rolls, Joe Biden has to pick shoes that easily fit into his mouth, and I’m running for a spot on my condo association board.

Uhhh…I just remembered that one of my neighbors won’t speak to me, and she’s the most pushy person at the meetings.

Never mind that idea.

I’ve got a coupla Achilles’ Heels. Two things that I just can’t seem to control.

First, I can’t pay attention. Seriously.

If you’ve ever been to a dude ranch and rented a horse, you know the experience of sitting on a nag that just u-turns back to the barn. You walk the mare a few feet and she does a 180. You’re sitting there in front of a hay bale going nowhere.

That’s me – one minute staring at Gmail on my phone, the next minute attention fixed on Gmail on my laptop, and the next minute responding to chatter from my wife with a fake “Uh, huh,” while I check on the latest post on one of five sites that my mouse-hand gets pulled to…every 7 minutes or so. Oh, and then there’s Gmail on my iPad.

She’s starts testing me:

“What did I just say?”

“I’m working, I didn’t hear you. You can’t keep disturbing me. I’m very busy. My life is hard. I have to bring home the bacon,” I say.

“Bacon? Wait a minute. You’ve been checking Rotten Tomatoes for the last 45 minutes. How difficult is that?”

“Sylvester Stallone has a new movie. I’m watching a promo video of him making pasta. I’m Italian and that’s important. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re correct – I don’t understand. What you missed was that your kids are coming over tonight!”

“Why didn’t you tell me!?” I say.

The computer screens are sort of like Richard Pryor’s crack pipe – he could never get too far away without it issuing soothing appeals to light up. It was like Ulysses and the Sirens of Lesbos – they had to tie him to the mast to keep him from steering onto the rocks.

So, my wife tells me that my cousin, a Manhattan 911 firefighter, is getting married in Brooklyn and we’re invited. I’m struck with fear because my three screens don’t want to leave L.A. for the unfamiliar – New York. I know because the cell phone whispers this to me.

After an impressive two-month sales job (mostly she pounded away at me), I finally agreed to go.

New York is cold and wonderful and we’re walking everywhere, occasionally taking a subway and trying to act cool like locals.

But wait, what’s my second obsession?

My figure.

While most men covet 6-pack abs and a concrete chest, I wanna look like Twiggy – super heroin-chic.

All my friends are into organic food-combining sans dairy and gluten. I, on the other hand, skip everything on the label but the calorie count…and the number of servings – because now those bastards are trying to disguise the calories by doubling up on the servings. A soft drink says “60 calories per serving,” but there’s 4 servings in the can!

Normally laissez-faire, I strongly backed Mayor Bloomberg when he enforced the 16-ounce soda rule in New York City.

And I love the fact that restaurant chains have to stick calorie estimates on their menus. It makes you think twice when you realize your “short” latte is a whopping 780 calories long.

With these two neuroses converging on a Brooklyn Italian Wedding banquet, surely I was headed for the perfect storm.

To complicate matters my sister and her husband join us. Not content to see a few Broadway shows and Christmas with the Radio City Rockettes, she tracks down a massive Manhattan clothing sale and loads up on bargains…all stuff she’s going to have to cart back to California. Then she starts her full court press for a ride to the wedding in our sub-compact rental car.

Event day, we have to drive to Brooklyn in a Ford Focus filled to the ceiling with our own suitcases, and my sister hoping for a ride. (Of course, my wife is all about, “Why take a suitcase when you can take three?”)

We pull up to their hotel and I show my brother-in-law the backseat and offer to lie down on the luggage, even though I’ll only have 3 inches of breathing room.

They end up renting a van, and we caravan to the heartland: Brooklyn, NYC.

The wedding is wonderful. Really heartfelt. Lots of firefighters, lots of Italians. Lots of Brooklyn.

The Reception is where it all fell apart. As we hiked up the long-terraced entryway and entered the first ballroom, we cast our eyes on 20 servers standing at attention, one every 3 tables. Chafing dishes full of Italian delicacies flowed as far as the eye could see. The first item on my plate was the Beef Bragiole, or Bra-jole if you’re a fan of Silver Linings Playbook. It’s a steak with ricotta cheese and other goodies rolled in.

One of these was a meal.

There were 60 more dishes waiting for me…on the west wall, with even more on the north and east walls. My girlish figure was toast.

After the Bragiole, there was the Chicken Scarpariello, the Veal Spiedini, the Eggplant Rollatini, the Chicken Rafael and the Broccoli Rabe. Then the stuffed pork with prosciutto bread crumbs.

I even tried some of the Tripa al Romana – cow stomach.

Then, musta been a tribute to Marco Polo, we had a Chinese table with ginger pork and spare ribs, followed by clams, mussels and calamari.

Turn the corner and you had twenty feet of antipasto bar with giardiniera (pickled vegetables), bruschetta, and some glorious caponata (sort of vegetables in tomato sauce), and escarole with canole beans.

Turn right, and we had a custom pasta bar: they’re making any style of noodle or gnocchi right in front of you.

Finally, the piece de resistance, a caviar table.

I embarrassed myself apologizing to all the servers pleading for “just a tiny piece” of this and a smidge of that. Still I’m standing there holding up two full plates.

It was like a trek through catering heaven that took 20 minutes to finally get back to the table.

In spite of pacing myself, I’m full after about 4 bites, but manners and mommy dictate I must clean my plate.

I look around the room and men’s belts are being loosened. Women are fanning themselves. The place is stuffed.

There’s talk of a jumpin’ dance band, but who can get out of their seats, weighed down by so much wonderful food.

Then, like a scene from a horror film where you’re lulled into a false sense of security only to find yourself trapped in a closet with the chainsaw dude…the door to the main ballroom swings open and a maitre d’-looking-guy-from-hell-appears. Out of his mouth comes those 3 deadly words:

“Dinner is served.”

Our culture seems obsessed with raising the perfect child. Folks shoving fads at their kids. Everything from gluten-free bacon to cello lessons at nine months. By the time he’s 10, a guy’s already on the corporate fast-track at Facebook.

Fifteen years ago, I watched a news segment featuring Japanese parents wailing in front of a public billboard. The sign displayed all the kids who made the cut into a high-ranking school. The winning moms were delighted, the losers looked more like old, mustachioed Sicilian grandmas at a funeral for Tony Soprano’s dad. Wah, Wah!

The kicker? It was a kindergarten class.

I’m OK with all of this…except not really.

Just let the kids do what they want, then make them pay for it. The first time the moocher comes in at 10 PM on a school night, next morning they’re up with the chickens looking for a job. Simple.

My parents grew up in the Depression and had the good sense to later appreciate the privilege of owning a new car, or having pancakes at a real restaurant one day a week, no more.

Living in a one-room farm house and eating from the same sack of potatoes three-meals-a-day did more to raise my mom and dad than any education available in a school house. You went to school and then you worked. You carried 50 lb. trays of apricots to the drying shed, and you milked the cows in the morning, even though eau de cow hung around you like bees around a hive.

You know how sex before marriage was so unpopular back then? Not really, they were just too f*-ing tired from milking the cow that morning!

OK, I know you don’t want me lecturing you about all this crud.

My concern isn’t so much how my parents raised me.

No, no.

It’s about how my kids handle me when I’m 97 and I’ve got an 88 year old “trophy wife” boyfriend. Look, I’m not gay, but if I wanna do that, I want my kids to just deal with it!

I told my son: “You can start meddling on the day you walk into my house and I ask, ‘Who are you and which way is it to Detroit?’”

Even then, if you’re not there to change my diaper, please back off.

And don’t take the car away if I’m not hitting fire hydrants or backing up into my garage door. No! No!

I raised your silly butts and did the worst job I could, so cut me much, much slack. I’d rather be homeless than haunted by solicitous children.

My wife rags on me sometimes when I start bumbling like an oldster:

“I’m warning you, twenty years from now, you start nagging and I will walk out that door and hitch a ride to Seattle. You’ll never see me again!” I say.

“Where will you be in Seattle?” she says.

“Seattle’s Finest Coffee Shop.”

“How about Starbucks?”

“OK.”

“How about the one around the corner in Little Tokyo? That way, I can walk over and get you,” she says.

“Well, OK, if you must.” I say.

My social demographic hasn’t changed as much as my age. But it’s odd showing up to a party and realizing that your friends could actually be your grand-friends.

Frankly, haven’t felt this introverted since my 6th grade sock hop.

And the hair is a dead giveaway. Sorta dirty silver next to all those reds, greens and blues.

Feeling a bit self-conscious about that, also.

I can no longer blend in. If for no other reason than my lack of tattoos. No sleeves, nothing on my neck, no penitentiary ”tears” flowing down my cheeks. I’m a canvas waiting for color…albeit a wrinkly one.

I can’t get myself drunk enough to end up in a Sunset Strip parlor one early Saturday AM. I might not wake up the next morning.

Plus, I’m told it hurts…like crazy. And if you’re not drunk before, you’ll want to get drunk afterward. Either way, you walk in wanting a tiny butterfly on your ankle, and you’re walking out with 3-square feet of Pit Bull on your chest.

…I’m not sure I’d date a gal with that much ink on her breast.

A 50+ friend had a midlife urge, did some Renaissance research and covered his arms with Botticelli-esque color.

Not me. At family gatherings, I’d have to cover the “sleeves” with shirtsleeves. After mixing a little olio d’oliva into the Italian vegetables, I’d roll ‘em up to wash my hands and Pappa would bust me.

“What’s that junk on your arm?” he’d say.

“Oh, it’s all in vogue.” I’d say.

“Who raised you?!”

As a surgeon, he sometimes did removals…the old fashion way: He cut them out.

Years ago, my bros and I were chatting it up about all the tattoos we were gonna get as grownups. My father overheard:

“Oh, you kids want some tattoos?” he said.

“Um, not really, Dad,” we lied.

“Well, you wanna know how I take ‘em off?”

“What do you mean, ‘Take them off’?” we said.

“You know how you guys read a comic book, then throw it away?”

“Yeah,” we say in unison.

“Well, a tattoo’s the same: After you’ve had it a couple of months, you get tired of it and wanna get rid of it.”

“Uh, huh.”

“So you come and see me and I cut a little strip out of it and sew it up.”

“Uh, huh!”

“Then I have you come back 6 weeks later and I cut another strip out and sew it up.”

“And then?” we said.

“After a bunch of visits, you’ve got a big scar…”

“Uh, huh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“But at least the tattoo’s off,” he said.

At my age, “Early to bed” seems a bit more sensible than “Party hardy!” (And don’t get into a public debate with me about “hardy” versus “hearty.”)

Plus, with my aging prostate, I hate showing up for a dinner party, having to use the bathroom fourteen times, then having to dry off with the family bath towel.

Always wonder if the towel soaked up the water off someone’s sparkling clean cookie that morning.

Did you vote?

I did and 47% of you are going to key my car when I tell you who for.

I was a 60’s musician and my peeps were part of the great unwashed mass of Boomers determined to embarrass our parents by dropping acid and standing too close to Grateful Dead PA speakers.

My dad countered by showing up at almost every gig my band played. He’d drive 70 miles to see us perform in some John Steinbeck farming town around Salinas. Not very “tough love” of him, but it sure earned my respect.

And we played a lot.

How could I rebel? By refusing to say grace at the dinner table, growing a motley mess of patchy hair on my face, a smattering of hallucinogenic experiments and other little digs until he’d finally had enough. One day shy of my 18th, he read the riot act. I blew out the back door, showed up at a closeted friend’s house for some moral support and then somehow found a place to stay near San Jose State. I was free…I guess.

A week later, my mom called and politely asked for the car back. I was homeless, car-less and carefree.

I wonder if I ever even filed a tax return, or if she just snuck into the apartment after hours, stealing receipts from dirty jeans so she could fill out my 1040.

To this day, I swear fairies snuck in and did my laundry.

When the band’s drummer got busted “holding” grass at Disneyland, my parents came to my downtown commune, my little brothers in tow, and woke me from a pot-induced nap. 

I decided to confess to every substance — a litany of obscure sounding Defense Department Drugs that included STP, Owsley Acid and, of course, marijuana. (For you counter culture novices, Owsley was a Dead Head groupie that was rumored to have mass produced an army-grade of LSD. You never accepted a drink from Jerry Garcia at a Dead Concert. And you didn’t drink from a river in Vietnam, either. Unless you wanted to see space aliens.)

My dad pointed to la famiglia and said, “Well, this is your family,” directing everyone out the door.
A week later, he took me to dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant and we didn’t discuss any of it. I was his son, he was my dad. It would work itself out.

At 5’ 11” and 120, I wasn’t the most well-fed guy, so I’d show up for my mom’s Italian cooking after a night of performing followed by a Robitussin overdose — we’d hold our noses and down a bottle of the cherry-flavor cough syrup. A meal of her cold spaghetti, straight from the refrigerator at 10 AM in the morning and I was truly at home and happy.

Four years of pot smoking and it was time to quit. I’d developed an aversion to the lethargy caused by weed and would react back with the vacuum, cleaning every nook and cranny. It was exhausting.

Although I was very vocal in my opposition to “The Establishment,” I didn’t vote until age 40.
In 2008, there was hope. Disillusioned in 2012, I’m tempted to print a bumper sticker: “My generation had the good sense to rebel against both parties.”

At 63, things are changing rapidly. The budget deficit and its accompanying national debt bug the shit out of me, and prove that this election will surely mean the end of life on earth as we know it. (Surely a sign of old age, and the subconscious knowledge that when I pass, I’ll inherit this mess next lifetime. So, please let’s have the least mess possible!)

My wife will have none of it:

“I don’t want to hear about the awful Fed injecting 40 billion into mortgaged-backed securities when I’m in bed reading!” she says.

“But…” I say from my side of the bed.

“You need to put down the iPad and read a romance!”

“But what about Benghazi?”

“If you need Bengay, put some on your lower back and go to sleep!”

Now, I’m hearing that Germany will have its budget balanced by 2016…and they’ve got universal health care and a Greek bailout to boot! And we can’t stop the spiraling national debt?

I’m investing $500 in a Rosetta Stone German immersion course. Berlin here I come! Plus, they won’t make me eat the oil from Roundup* resistant rapeseed without making sure the package is labeled “GMO.” (Roundup is a Monsanto pesticide. Rapeseed includes canola beans.)

Oh, and who did I vote for? My dad, of course.

Almost all my work is rush. It’s the one thing I resisted and, of course, it’s the only thing I seem to get. But I guess I must be freakin’ good at it, because people in deadline trouble seem to home in on me. And I’m too guilty to charge for the rush, and too caring not to check every detail.

That said, I used to be wound a little tight (my wife would dispute the “used to be” part). And frankly, I’d lose sleep over every little thing. Now I just quietly shake…a little.

I was busy emailing away and cc:ed my wife on one of many daily missives. Three hours later, I got an email pointing out my misuse of the word “Your.”

Yes, I typed “You’re,” when I should have said, “Your.”

(I’d have thought my wife would have forgiven me by now, but she may have other fish to fry and apparently this was the last straw.)

The email was minor, but I’ve seen $150,000 catalog printing projects come to me with typos on every page. Not minor.

Most people are smart enough to know better, they just start mentally skipping over their copy as they read-and-read-and-read it, over and over.

A simple solution that works: NEVER BE A FINAL PROOFREAD ON YOUR OWN COPY! (Hey! I used “your” correctly!)
Secondly, ALWAYS LET SOMEONE ELSE PROOFREAD IT, PREFERABLY 2 OTHERS, AND PREFERABLY SOMEONE NOT CONNECTED TO THE PROJECT.

(If you absolutely, positively have to proofread your own copy, try and wait a few days and let the dust clear. You’ll notice errors you didn’t notice when you were in the thick of it.)

You’d expect me to now say, “And it’s on!”

But it’s not.

Actually, it’s off.

I asked her to clean up before I came home. She said, “Yup” without lifting her level gaze up from the computer monitor.

There won’t be much to discuss tonight.

KISSING A FUTURE DEAD WOMAN

I can remember staring at myself in the bathroom mirror — zeroing in on all the smooth skin on my 18-year old face. I’d spend hours mentally etching an imprint of my youthful features for the purpose of reviewing it at some distant future date…when I was an aged 30 or so. Sort of a mental time capsule.

The memory’s as fresh as yesterday. Today, I’m 60.

You know you’re at death’s door when you go to parties and start to hear the choruses of:
“You look great!”
“I would have never guessed.”
“You look 10 years younger!”
“You’re so young for your age.”
“You hardly have any gray hair!”

I have this urge to reply: “Yeah, that’s because all the brown hair moved away a long, long time ago and left nothing in it’s place!”

But I don’t.

My wife has practically hired a PR agency to push this point home to me:

“I’m so old,” I moan on a Sunday morning after a trip to the mirror.
“Yes, we’re doomed,” she jauntily responds.
“What are you talking about!? Where did that come from?” I say.
“We’ll be dead soon,” she says, very matter of factly.
“Wow, we better get busy and have breakfast. I don’t wanna go on an empty stomach.”

Or she’ll start this next-lifetime diatribe:

“Next lifetime, I’m going to be born half-Asian, half-African American. That’s such a gorgeous combination.

“And I’m going to live in Connecticut and go to college.

“No, maybe Colorado. Wait! England might be my true spiritual home!”

“What?” I say. “Is this happening tomorrow morning or something? Have you already bought a ticket to Hartford?”

Well, we’re not gone yet, so for now we’ve moved to Downtown L.A., into a loft that’s loaded with newly minted 30-year old “adults.” They’re all young professionals, producers and working artists, fresh out of their vacillating 20’s — ambitious, able and still awake at midnight.

Unlike me who’s pleading for a pillow at 9:30. In fact, I’ve got to hold myself vertical at 9:00 PM or risk a tongue lashing from my wife: “You are NOT going to bed at 8:30. Next thing you know, the early-bird special will be considered a wild night out.”

Last Saturday, we’re at our friend’s 30th. He’s a corporate lawyer out of USC and lives a few doors down the hall. I immediately gravitate to our gay friends from the first floor, the only other people in the loft who aren’t half my age. We’re yukking it up, talking about 1962, the Madmen TV show, and fitting into that one last suit in your closet so you can show up at the Golden Globe Awards.

The first to the leave, Lyn and I are excusing our yawns, and slow-stepping down to our apartment.

My wife chuckles:
“What’s so funny?” I say.
“Remember when you were talking to Bob and Russell?”
“Yeah, you know how we like to chat it up. So?”
“The people at the table were referring to you guys as the Silver Foxes,” she says.
“You mean they were referring to Bob and Russell as Silver Foxes? Yeah, I see what you mean, with all that gray hair.”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” she says.

It’s true: I’m doomed.