it’s just a cup of coffee

This is what I saw and heard in the Starbucks drive through line this morning. The car in front of me pulled up to the window and handed over her Starbucks card.

Baristette:  Your coffee is $4.74 and you have $3.17 left on your card. So your balance is $1.57.

Customer: I have at least $10.00 left on that card.

Baristette: I’m sorry ma’am, the computer shows you only have $3.17 left.

Customer: I know I have at least $10.00 on that card, I was just here yesterday

Baristette:  Are you sure it was this card?

Customer:  Of course it’s that card, do you think I’m stupid?

Me (to myself as the line behind me grows): Yes I do

Baristette: no ma’am, but the system only shows a balance of $3.17 on this card

Customer: Well the system is wrong, let me get my receipt from yesterday (who keeps their Starbucks receipts anyway?)

Customer obviously rummaging through purse, car seats, car floor. Drive through line continues to grow.

Customer: Well I can’t find it but I know it has $10.00 on it. Let me talk to your manager.

Manager: Yes ma’am, can I help you.

Customer: I told this girl there’s at least $10.00 on this card but she insists I owe her $1.57.

Manager: Yes ma’am. The system does show a balance of $3.17.

Line continues to grow, horns begin to sound.

Customer: (picks up iPhone, I assume to check her balance in her Starbucks app) Well this is wrong and I’m not giving you any more money.

Manager: (horns blaring) Yes ma’am. Tell you what, please accept this coffee on the house for the inconvenience, if you’d like to come into the store we’ll straighten this right out. Or you can stop by any other time and we’ll get this fixed.

Customer: (more horns blaring) I don’t have time for this…

Manager:  (types into register): yes ma’am. Here’s your coffee, and I’ve got a $10.00 gift card for you for any inconvenience.

Customer : (grabs coffee) Well it’s about time!

Customer pulls away from pickup window

Baristette: (leans out pickup window, waves, hollers) Ma’am, you left your gift cards! Ma’am!

Customer: drives off, free coffee in hand.

Baristette:  (as I pull up to the window) Bitch! It’s just a cup of coffee!

Me:  (laughing)

Baristette: Oh, I’m so sorry sir, I didn’t mean to curse at you.

Me: No, no – she is a bitch.

Baristette: (laughs)

Me: (drops $2.00 tip for the entertainment. )

borrowing a meme – dumb shit i did when i was young

Yesterday I commented on a blog post by Ryoku861 entitled “Dumb Shit I did When I was Young.” Her post was funny as hell, and she asked readers to comment on their dumb shit moments. You’d hope this would be relatively difficult, you’d think you didn’t really do too much dumb shit, you’d think even if you did some dumb shit you wouldn’t want to brag about it. You think you’d have wiped those dumb shit moments from your memory. Judging by how many replies she got and how quickly I could think of so many I had trouble picking one you’d be thinking wrong.

And… Coming off a long Christmas vacation no longer a burnt out corporate drone I was looking for a spur back into blogging, and commenting on her post was fun, so let’s see how long I last this time. In the meantime, here’s the short version of the story I posted on her blog “Me, Myself, and I.” As did most of my adventures with brother Mikie, the long version entails so much juvenile violence, profanity, sibling rivalry, animal cruelty (the ants, the ants, chill out PETA members), parental perception, and overall stupidity it deserves a post of its’ own someday. In the meantime thanks Ryoku861 for the prod, and here’s my reply to her post.

We had a tree stump in the back yard that had been taken over by red ants, which sucked because when you got too close they attacked and man they stung! Before the ants showed up that stump was 3rd base in our wiffle ball field, and we wanted it back as spring was getting really close, and with it wiffle ball season. We’d heard my father say we’d have to burn the ants out so we figured we’d help him out. We borrowed the new power mower gas can from the garage and soaked that sucker down!. Brother Mikie had some matches, we got up real close to make sure we could flick a lit match INTO the stump and FWOOOOPH!!!… or something like that….. 10 foot fireball . Luckily we had planned ahead and the garden hose was close by… but we hadn’t turned on the water. After a short fight about whose fault this one was gonna be one of us, I can’t remember which, turned on the water and we managed to keep the fire from spreading. Killed all the damn ants though.

Thought we had it made til we went in the house for supper and Mom and Dad just sat there staring at us. We had no idea why til my father, eyes narrowed in suspicion looked at me, looked at my mother, looked at brother Mikie, looked at my mother, looked at both of us together and quietly and ominously said…”the two a ya’s, what the hell happened to your eyebrows?” Singed em all clean off!

one down, one to go

My oldest son is counting down to the day he moves out of our house supposedly,  hopefully, for the last time. He’s completed his education, graduating from two of the top culinary programs in the country at Johnson & Wales University earning 2 degrees. He’s a credentialed and very talented pastry and culinary chef. Later this month he leaves for a job and apprenticeship at the oh so upper crusty and tony Harker School in San Jose CA. This is how the first fledgling leaves the nest.

I love my son, and I’m extremely proud of what he’s accomplished so far and how relatively normal his head is screwed on. But it’s way past time he moved out. So while I’m excited for him as he starts down the bumpy road of adult life I’m excited and happy for myself as well. From now on there will be…

One less very large mouth to feed

One less very large body jamming up and trashing the one bathroom the males in our family are allowed to use (for some reason my wife has sole proprietorship of the one attached to the master bedroom). Net result?
- less biological distress from waiting for the room to clear
- a better chance I get to take hot showers… if I can beat Matt in there 
- fewer unflushed surprises found in the toilet
- much less blood loss from shaving cuts due to him shaving his scalp with my razor 
- dry towels

A spare room I can turn BACK into my office – this is a HUGE deal because I telecommute a lot

Room for my Jeep in the driveway 

At the same time there won’t be…

A very large body to help take care of the physical labor around the house

as big an audience for Pops’ life lessons… as I call them

Three of us  to watch the Yankees games

Anyone to share my books and movies with – Matt’s got different interests

My first boy living in my house

For the past 24 years I’ve had 3 jobs. One is being a good husband to my wife. the second is to make a living for the family. The third, and my personal favorite, being Pops for Charlie and Matt. So it’s a bittersweet thing to be giving up part of that job. Charlie’s heading to California. I think I’ve taught him what he needs to know to make his way in the world, to take some chances while he can, to follow his passion, and to make sure he finds fun in whatever he does.  I hope I’ve taught him that no matter what happens, I’ve got his back.

So I’ll enjoy my new/old office, luxuriate in the hot shower (if Matt doesn’t get there first), save money on band-aids and razor blades, not worry about getting my shoes muddy anymore, and probably bug the shit out of Matt because now there’s only one target.. But every morning, walking into that office, I’ll miss my son. Safe travels Charlie, enjoy the ride.

sometimes there really is no other explanation

A facebook friend posted this and I laughed my ass off. And then it hit me that this pretty much sums up the explanation for the success of my marriage. I can’t think of any other reasons.

Teardrops on the City – God Bless Clarence Clemons

This is actually a repost from last year – but now more than then….

The Best 2-1/2 minutes in Rock & Roll

There have been endless “greatest rock & roll song ever ” lists  published in magazines and blogs everywhere, and anyone can argue for any song not on the list. Of course, you don’t see many people arguing for “Sugar, Sugar” by “The Archies” (apparently you CAN find almost anything on YouTube). Obviously what you choose depends on the music you grew up with and my greatest songs probably aren’t yours. But rather than debate the merits of “Freebird” vs “I want to Hold Your Hand” I’d rather talk about the best music of the rock and roll era. There’s a difference of course. A song is the combination of music and lyric, and each can stand alone. For me the best rock & roll music ever written and performed is the saxophone break in Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s “Jungleland” played of course by Clarence Clemons.

Springsteen excels in writing epic stories, with evocative, often poetic lyrics. And as he’s proven over the years he can turn those stories into incredible songs with almost any band behind him. But to create his masterpieces he needs The E Street Band. While he “led” the other band of Human Touch/Lucky Town and The Sessions Band, he plays alongside E Street. It’s no coincidence that his best music comes with E Street. He trusts them with his most valued possession,  his songs, and they seemingly never fail him. But he trusts no one more than Clarence.

Almost from the beginning (and I actually did see some of the beginning, sneaking into Jersey bars and clubs in ‘74 and ‘75 with fake ids, and twice catching Bruce before Born to Run was released), it’s been clear that Bruce needed Clarence to make the music special. There couldn’t be “Kitty’s Back”, “Rosalita”, or “Born to Run”, at least as they’re instantly recognized now, without Clarence. But the two outdid themselves with “Jungleland”.

The roller coaster tragedy runs from the exhilaration of youthful expectations to the depths of despair in failure to escape, or even survive the gritty streets of the city and shore towns of the Rat and the Barefoot Girl. Operas out on the Turnpike fade to soft surrender, and it’s the saxophone that takes everyone from the rock & roll celebration of youth in the streets to the dark uncertainty  of a dark bedroom as reality crashes in on the Rat, the Girl, and the rest of the midnight gang.

The emotion of the story is captured completely and elegantly by the Big Man. The long opening wail assembles the gangs under the Exxon sign. The sultry melody, at first tentative and then seductive sets the stage for romance to play out in a slow dance on Flamingo Lane. The bands explode in the night as Clarence takes everyone higher and higher, straining, reaching for success, escape, love. Your heart pounds in expectation, soaring with each note! But it’s all just out of reach, and the mournful closing of the break returns everyone to the tragedy of realization of failure.

If you go to a Springsteen show try and watch the crowd if Jungleland is played.  For any other sax player in any other band you’d expect the crowd to celebrate wildly as the solo ends. But Clarence and his horn have ripped the guts out of everyone, their faces sad, strained, almost exhausted, caught up in the emotion and unable to celebrate. It remains for Bruce to clean it up and tell us the details of how it turned out. But we don’t need the words, we already know. Clarence took us on a 2 and half minute ride that wrings everything out of you with just his horn, his talent, and the music. I can’t think of any other piece of rock & roll music that can do that.

The Winner of American Idol 2011 will be…..

Scott McCreery. Or Alfred E Newman. I get them confused.

they’re killing off Cap’n Crunch!

C’mon man stop it already! Cap’n Crunch was my favorite breakfast cereal ever! Not the kind with the CrunchBerries, not the Peanut Butter Crunch, the original Cap’n Crunch. Every single morning for about 8 years I started my day with a bowl full of Crunch. I’d pack baggies of dry Crunch in my lunch bag and eat it as a snack during the day. Ma would try and make me eat something better for me, like Cheerios – before they were heart healthy, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes (not to be confused with the unhealthy Frosted Flakes) or, god help me, Grape Nuts. I don’t know about you, but there was no way I was ever eating Grape Nuts. First of all there was Eull Gibbons, who I remember as a creepy old guy on TV who ate pine trees. Every Saturday morning there he was asking “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” Who the hell eats trees? And who would eat a cereal  named nuts that tasted like “wild Hickory nuts”. And why was he obsessed with nuts anyway? Let’s see – creepy looking old guy, obsessed with nuts, I had just discovered my nuts, he was trying to get me to eat something… I was on the cusp of puberty, there was no way I was touching Grape Nuts, his nuts, or anyone else’s nuts.

Full disclosure – while in the Navy I ate a whole lot of Grape Nuts – it beat the hell out of powdered eggs and canned potatoes. I still don’t know what wild hickory nuts are like.

Anyway – ma sometimes refused to buy my Cap’n Crunch, bringing home one of the healthy alternatives I discussed a minute ago. Actually she brought home the store brand substitute for those cereals. Ever try Foodtown Flakes of Corn? They couldn’t call them Corn Flakes because 1) Corn Flakes was trademarked and 2) bad as Corn Flakes were the Foodtown version was more like soggy cardboard. Same with the other off name versions – they tasted awful, they absorbed milk, and they sank to the bottom of the bowl before turning into cold beige mush.  To top it off we used a lot of powdered milk in our house, so breakfast came to look like the gruel they served to the London orphans in “Oliver”. Cold, pasty, gray looking sludge that if you didn’t get it all out of the bowl would solidify by lunchtime. When that happened you had to throw the bowl away with the cereal, it was impossible to get the petrified remains out without breaking the bowl. And if you broke a bowl ma broke your ass, so eat hearty, eat quickly, and for damn sure wash out your bowl.

Nobody was asking “Please ma, can I have some more?”

Mornings we had 3 choices. we could eat the cereal, we could eat half a grapefruit, or we could go to school hungry. Actually, going hungry wasn’t an option because ma believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and you weren’t leaving that house until you finished your breakfast. And if you screwed around long enough with breakfast that you were late for school well, when you got to school you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a while. So it was grapefruit or sludge – gag!.

Seriously – gag! Over time I developed a very real gag reflex when faced with grapefruit or sludge. I could barely get it into my mouth, never mind swallow it. Ma never believed that I couldn’t help it, and many many days I went to school and stood in the back of the room because it just took too damn long to force down my breakfast. So to literally save my ass I had to find some solution to this dilemma, and before long I did – sugar.

Kids can and will eat almost anything if it has enough sugar in or on it. Ma really didn’t care that we put sugar on our breakfast to make it edible, mostly because she rarely saw how much sugar we did put on it. Grapefruit was a 3 teaspoon minimum. Sludge was 3 or 4 to start. If we could put more in it than that without causing the whole bowl to crystallize into chunky rock candy we would have. You wonder where kids get their energy? I got mine from doctoring my breakfast.

We made such a production every time ma brought home generic cereal she eventually caved and brought the Cap’n home. I think the real reason was that she didn’t want to spank us anymore. That or her arm was just too tired by the time she finished with all of us. In exchange for the real deal cereal we quit bitching about the powdered milk. We had reached breakfast detente.

Now the food nazis have decided that cereals like Cap’n Crunch, Frosted Flakes, Count Chocula, Cocoa Crispies, Sugar Smacks, Lucky Charms, and Froot Loops have too much sugar in them and are bad for kids. Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Life (“He likes it! Hey Mikie”), Cheerios, and Shredded Wheat are what they should be eating. Fine, buy your kids your healthy cereal. Just make sure you hide the sugar bowl

In the meantime – Fair winds and following seas Caption Horatio Magellan Crunch, Alfie, Brunhilde, Dave, Carlyle and Sea Dog. Even you Jean Lafoote you barefoot pirate you. The good ship Guppy sails off on eternal patrol.

we’re gonna keep saying it til you believe it!

Despite my best efforts to ignore signs of my approaching seniority, at times it appears the world is trying to make the point more emphatically every day. Gray hair/beard/moustache – paahh! My father started going gray in his early 30s, at least I still have hair. Chronic back pain? nuh-uh! If anyone else did all the weird shit I did to make a living their back would hurt all the time too.  Highly invasive medical screenings performed by physicians with abnormally long fingers? Hey, it’s better to know than not am I right? I can ignore, or at least rationalize almost anything that I can pretend to have some level of control over. But I can’t do anything about the onslaught of hints, allegations, and things left unsaid but suggested by younger generations that might as well scream HEY GRANDPA, GET OFF THE FUCKING ROAD WOULD YA? LET US THROUGH!

I keep in touch with a lot of my family through Facebook, especially my Jersey based relations. But also my sons and nephews, all still mostly local. For whatever reason they won’t talk to me, but they’re perfectly willing to trade posts on each of our walls. My youngest nephew, shiny new freshman at the University of Alabama, posted the other day that he hated waking up at 6 am, but a least the classic TV shows were on, like Saved by the Bell. Since when is any Nickelodeon show a classic? The show that gave us Screech and his sex tape? The show that launched the careers of Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley??  No SBTB, no “Showgirls”. Which by the way is much better when viewed as a silent movie. Never in documented TV history has SBTB been called a classic, but my smart ass comment to his post drew scorn for me and much support for him. I suppose classic in this case is used as a synonym for old, if your point of reference is if it was new when you were young that makes it classic. By that logic New Coke can be considered Coke Classic, but I still don’t want to drink it. Ok, so tastes in entertainment have changed over the years, I suppose I can live with that. BUT…

BUT…

BUT…

The other night I caught part of “American Idol”. My wife told me it was Beatles night and I was curious to see how the contestants would deal with true classics. Many of them struggled, some of them were very good indeed, but most seemingly had no clue to what the Beatles and their music were all about. During many of the “interviews” explaining their performance one after the other offered up some version of “I’m not that familiar this music” or to my absolute horror -  “I’ve never heard a Beatles song IN MY LIFE before today”.

Most of these kids claim to make at least part of their living as singers. They all swear allegiance to Rock & Roll. But they haven’t heard a Beatles song?!?!? Did they spend their musical formative years in the cone of silence? Or were they just trying to make themselves look better – claiming ignorance to show their mastery? How can anyone over the age of 8 not know Beatles songs? Even if only through commercials? I turned to my sons, 23 and 21 respectively, and owners of the entire Beatles catalog, for enlightenment.

I was informed that the only reason they know about the Beatles is because I played it while they were growing up. I also played them Springsteen, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin, so they know that classic music is not just old music. They also told me that their friends think they’re decidedly weird for listening to that old timer music, and that no one they know listens to the Beatles. Finally they asked  me “what did you expect, that’s old music”. When I pointed out that Beatles music is just about as old as I am they each tilted their head, looked at me sideways and said “Yeah well you’re pretty old too Pops”.

I really don’t care that I’m on the other side of 50, I’m shocked I’ve made it this far with all the original parts still working. I just don’t want to be reminded all the time.

Like sands through the hourglass…

I generally try to adhere to the philosophy of “Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional” as I make my way through the funhouse of life. I refuse to dwell on my actual age, or the oh so slow degradation of what my body parts will or won’t do, or what they’ll still do but now it hurts like a sonofabitch later on. I can play for hours on end with a real Slinky, or pass an afternoon with a set of buckyballs. I own a working set of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. And I’d much rather spend a day playing pinball than learning the intricacies of “the cloud” (which by the way is how I make my living). So I’m occasionally blindsided by current events and progress. For example, I had no idea until the other day that scientists can grow you a new bladder in the lab, using materials from pigs.  Or that they could make new blood vessels using cotton candy. That kind of stuff is interesting, but tends to roll off into the seemingly humongous store of useless information I carry around. But every once in a while a milepost event happens that makes me sit up and realize “shit! I really am getting old”.

It wasn’t when my sons turned 21, nor when I realized that if it ever came down to it they could kick my ass if they wanted to. It wasn’t when I received my AARP card. It wasn’t when my wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. It wasn’t when my orthopedist, only a little older than I, suddenly died. You’d think the fact that I HAVE (or had) an orthopedist would be a clue. It wasn’t even the day I realized that I was setting my alarm clock 15 minutes earlier than I used to, basically because I do have  an orthopedist and it takes a while to get everything working right in the morning.  Nope, it was the death of the car cassette deck that did it

An article in the New York Times notes the passing of the factory installed car cassette deck. For the first time in over 40 years you will not be able to buy, anywhere, from any dealer,  a new car with a cassette deck in it. I didn’t know you still could, but now you can’t anyway so I didn’t really miss anything there huh? BUT….

Was it that long ago that I took a job just so I could install one in my car?

The car cost 200 bucks, the cassette deck?

$300, but it was replacing an 8 track and worth every penny.

How many copies of “Born to Run” did I wear out because Bruce is the fucking Boss god damn it and I’ll play it every day if I want to!

How many mix tapes did I make to try and persuade the girl of the moment to help me with the clasps on her bra, or at least let me touch it…please?

A lot of people I know have never seen a car cassette deck, having grown up with CD players, mp3 players, and satellite radio. I haven’t seen one in over 15 years. Haven’t seen a cassette either, except at flea markets 5 for a dollar. As I read that Times article my knees creaked just a little bit more, my vision blurred just a little bit more, and I had to turn the volume on the mp3 player up just a little bit more. I thought about picking up some “Just for Men Gel” for my increasingly white beard and moustache. And I wondered if it might be getting time to have “that” conversation with my doctor, the one about the little blue pill. Though apparently that’s really my wife’s call.

Thankfully, before I called to make the appointment I realized that yeah, I used to have a cassette deck in my car, and that was a long time ago and yeah I’m getting old. But I still have my slinky, was reading that Times article on a Kindle, was listening to The Gaslight Anthem, don’t own any neckties or slippers, and just the other day I knocked my son’s block off in Rock em Sock em Robots. Maybe they can take me, but they’ve got to sleep sometime (and they’re sleeping in my house.) If AARP wants to help me buy stuff cheaper and cut ahead in lines who am I to argue. I have a voice controlled mp3 player in my car, the stereo is worth twice what the car is, and Tuesday nights are bowling night…

XBox 360 Kinect bowling.

Now if you’ll please excuse me, I dropped my Buckyballs and I’ve got a Roadrunner cartoon marathon on tap for the evening.

I know a guy….

More on that a little later.

My mother forwarded this to me the other day, I laughed my ass off.

Sure it reinforces a stereotype a lot of people don’t appreciate. But if you grew up in an Italian family in certain parts of Jersey then you grew up around some of ‘dese guys’. One thing all of them could do and did was laugh at themselves, at least around people they knew. So fucking laugh and get over it, if nothing else it adds color to family gatherings.