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73

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#73. I read in waves, mostly science fact and science fiction.

Okay, when I say I read in ‘waves’, I don’t mean that I read on a boat. Or on a raft, or even in the bathtub. What do I look like, Dr. Frickin’ Seuss, over here?

What I mean is, I read compulsively, for weeks at a time, to the exclusion of just about everything else. I read book after book — anything that makes me think. Science fiction is good, because anything is possible. Non-fiction science works, too — things like brain research and quantum physics and astronomy. Philosphy, logic, conjecture, essays… anything that fills up my brain with potentials and synergies and eye-opening wow-ness. I don’t always understand what the hell these people are writing about, mind you. But I get bits and pieces, and try to fit it into the other crap that’s whizzing through my head. Sometimes these literary binges last for a week or so; sometimes it’s closer to a month.

And then it stops. And I go back to watching baseball and playing video games and I don’t even want to see a book, much less read one. I have no idea why. I get all knowledge-thirsty, and I drink for a while, and then I guess I decide I’ve had enough and want to go back to real drinking. Like, beer. And watching South Park and the Simpsons and organizing my CD collection. And eventually, I get tired of that, and go through the cycle again.

I get the same way with puzzles. Sometimes, I can’t get enough — crosswords and cryptics and logic puzzles and cryptograms, whatever I can find. And that’s all I’ll do in my spare time. Just analyze, and figure, and ponder. And then, I’m done. I won’t touch a puzzle book for weeks. I’ll be off on some other kick, engrossed in a video game, or books, or just floating by, in between obsessions. It’s quite a way to live, let me tell you.

So, anyway, that’s how it is. Looking back over this, there’s not a helluva lot of humor in this one. Damn. It’s a pity, really. After all, if you can’t manicially and uncontrollably giggle about your own whackjob obsessive tendencies, then whose whackjob obsessive tendencies can you maniacally and uncontrollably giggle about, hmmm? No, really, tell me. I’m up for giggling at someone. Really. Tell me; I’m serious.

72

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#72. I would much rather be too cold than too hot.

This is in stark contrast to my wife’s preference. Sometimes I think she’d rather stand on the surface of the sun than endure temperatures lower than seventy degrees.

(Okay, okay, that’s not fair. Let’s say ‘surface of Mercury’ and ‘sixty’. Yeah, that’s about right.)

But I have to admit, I don’t understand my wife, nor people like her.

(Well, okay, to be fair once again, she’s a woman, which I’m not equipped to understand in the first place, since I:

A. have a penis, last time I checked (though she may have taken custody of other various dangly bits of mine)

2. don’t seem to have those ‘feelings’ or ’emotions’ thingies that crop up in all the movies on Lifetime and Oxygen

Okay, so maybe I have some feelings, deep down somewhere. Just not the ones in those movies. Where do they grow those people, anyway?)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, hot and cold.

So, I really don’t get people like my wife, who’d rather be too hot. Just think about it. If you’re too cold, you can always do something about it. If you’re naked, put on some damned underpants. If you’re in your undies, throw on a shirt, and maybe some shorts. Still cold? Grab some jeans or sweatpants, and then a rugby, and a jacket, and shoes, and a coat, and boots, and a parka, and mukluks, and on and on and on until you finally get warm enough. Easy, right? There’s a sliding scale of warmthhood, so you start near the bottom, and work your way up until you’re comfortable. And if the clothes don’t do it for you, there are always sheets and blankets and covers and dead animal skins to pull over your shivering body until you’re nice and toasty. Seems obvious enough to me.

But no. The other view is that cold is bad somehow, and should be avoided at all costs. At the first mere hint of a shiver, the windows slam shut and the sweaters come out, and the entire surrounding area is promptly saunafied. Which is fine, I suppose, if you’re a friggin’ Eskimo. I expect these people to want to be warm, though they’re probably on my side, since they’re used to it by now. But my wife grew up in Kentucky. Kentucky! Why the hell should they have an irrational fear of goosebumps? Was there a vicious cold snap in ’79 that I don’t know about? Was she locked in a freezer as a child? What the hell happened?

See, the way I look at it, my way makes more sense. First of all, it’s ‘just in time’ adjustment, which is all the rage in the programming field these days. So that’s cool. But also, my way leaves limitless possibilities — there’s always something else you can cover yourself with, or some other warm thing you can snuggle next to or blow toward yourself or wrap up in. There’s a near-infinite series of warming options, and you’re guaranteed to warm up before you hit the end of the line.

But how about the hot-to-cold route? What if you get yourself all sweaty and sticky, and then decide you’re too hot? What then? See, there’s a very limited set of ways you can help yourself. If you’re in public, you’re obligated to leave a couple of layers of clothes on, at least around all the important (and therefore sweatiest, stickiest, and most in need of being cooled) bits. Sure, you can turn on a fan, or even an air conditioner, if you’re lucky enough to have one, but short of that, you’re pretty much stuck.

And being in private’s not much better. Yeah, you can get naked and plop your butt on a shelf in the freezer, but if it’s really hot outside, that’s not gonna get it done. The ass-in-the-freezer trick is effective up to about at heat index of ninety, maybe ninety-five. After that, you’re barely gonna feel it. (Until you try to stand up and find that your ass is now stuck to the shelf, of course. Oh, you’re gonna feel that, let me tell you. Especially you hairy folks out there. Believe it.)

So, after that, you’re pretty much out of options. Especially if you’re like me, in a house with no air conditioning and just a few piddly window fans. (And a fairly hairy ass, if you must know. Though not as hairy, or as, um, skinny, if you know what I’m sayin’, as it used to be. It was a hot summer here, folks. Hot and painful.) And so, I submit that ‘coolth’ is the way to go (as opposed to ‘warmth’, of course. Why can’t ‘cool’ have its own weird word?)

Of course, there’s no convincing my wife. She just hates to be cold. What are you gonna do? I try to convince her, and talk reason to her, but nothing’s worked so far. And I’m sure she’s getting tired of coming home and bandaging up my now-balding butt cheeks. But it’s the only way I can survive in this heat. Fall simply can’t come fast enough for me. Or my roasting rump. But a word to the wise — if you come to our house, and we offer you a drink, don’t ask for ice. Really. You don’t wanna know where the ice trays have been, and some of the cubes are still pretty hairy. Just so you know.

71

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#71. I am hard to impress, but easy to please.

Okay, so this is a good example of why I should think about these friggin’ things before I write them down. What the hell am I supposed to say about this?

It’s true enough, I suppose. I don’t get caught up in fame and glitz, and I don’t really give a damn about people’s titles, or their rich families, or whether they’ve been on TV. None of that really tells you anything about who they are, in my book.

And, at the same time, I don’t really have expensive or complicated tastes myself. I’m happy to watch some baseball on the tube, and sit on my couch, and maybe go play softball once in a while, and have a couple of beers and some macaroni and cheese with my wife. I don’t really need fancy trips or toys or antique furniture to be happy. Oh, sure, I enjoy the occasional plaything — TiVo kicks ass, and our new grill is pretty damned sweet. But those aren’t exactly ‘big ticket’ items, either. I’m not installing Jacuzzis or flitting around on the Concorde or anything like that.

And that’s the way I like it, frankly. I like life to be simple. (Outside of the myriad of ways I find to make it difficult, of course. But I don’t want anyone else to put obstacles in my way.) And money and fame and power and all that just tend to complicate things, from what I understand. How can you sit down with a beer and watch the Simpsons when you’ve got a scene to shoot, or a company or city or country to run? Honestly, I don’t have time for all of that.

No, I’d much rather hang here, and leave the stars and starlets, the pols and pollets, and the pigs and piglets, to do their own thing. None of their glitz and glamour and cash really do much for me in the first place. If anything, most of these well-to-do weenies serve as a reminder that I wouldn’t ever want to be rich, myself. Sure, it’d be nice to pay off the mortgage, and maybe buy some new speakers, but real money? Frankly, I’m just not interested.

You see, from what I can tell, big, big money and fabulous prizes seem to turn people into smarmy assholes. (And yes, assholelets.) Not universally, mind you — there are cool, down-to-earth rich people out there. I can’t actually name any off the top of my head, but I’m sure they exist. Somewhere. But chances are, the wads of dough will go to your head, and you’ll end up in a mansion, trying to build enough tennis courts to keep up with the Joneses (or the Rockefellers, or the Gateses), and you’ll go to black-tie affairs and polo matches charity balls, and you’ll never get back to those simple pleasures of watching football on a Sunday afternoon with your buds.

So, anyway, that’s how I feel. Maybe I’m missing out on a life of luxury and pampering, but I simply can’t risk losing the sweet thing my wife and I have got going right now. So we’ll make that house payment every month, and the car payment, and we’ll scrape up enough dough to buy those speakers, and in the meantime, we’ll laugh and giggle and cheer on our favorite teams. This is my American dream, folks, and there’s not a bit of tinsel or a sequined gown in sight. Or stacks of money and gold, for that matter. But I wouldn’t change a thing. Not one damned thing.

70

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#70. I’m a huge fan of Syracuse University sports, for no logical reason whatsoever.

It all started back in 1987. I was sixteen years old, and generally cheered for the local university team. But they were pretty hit and miss, and not even Division I at the time in football, so my allegiance wasn’t really all that strong. Besides, why cheer for a team, just because you were born near where they play? Where’s the logic in that? I wasn’t going to go to this school. I didn’t know anyone that took classes there. My parents weren’t alumni or anything. And the cheerleaders weren’t particularly hot. So why not find another team I liked, for a real reason.

It was about this time that I started watching college basketball. I was a late bloomer in that regard — since I was so horrifically bad at playing hoops, it took me a little longer than most to get into watching it. Plus, I liked the pros better at the time. Don’t ask me why now — it doesn’t make any damned sense to me, either. I was a kid, all right?

So, anyway, I started watching the NCAA tournament that year. And I learned two things. One, I hated Indiana. Bobby Knight was an ass, all their players were white-bread corn-fed crew-cut gym monkeys, and they played boring, slow basketball. Snoozers. And two, Syracuse had a pretty exciting team. Sherman Douglas, Derrick Coleman, even goofy-looking Rony Seikaly. They had flair, and pizzazz, and style. I started cheering for them — and two or three other cool teams — in the first or second round.

But the other teams lost — their weaknesses were exposed, and they fell out of the tourney. (Our local team, who probably got me watching in the first place, lost in the first round.) But the Orangemen kept on winning, and playing close, entertaining games. Leading up to the Final Four, three of their four wins were by six points or less. This is what basketball was supposed to be about!

Meanwhile, those harpy Hoosiers kept winning, too. They squeaked past UNLV — another team I was pretty fond of at the time — in the semifinals. Syracuse handled Providence fairly handily, and moved on to meet Indiana in the final game. Well, that was it. Bobby Knight was the antichrist as far as I was concerned. It was up to the white knights from upstate New York to take this loudmouth petulant prick down a peg or three. I was behind Syracuse one hundred and ten percent.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be. After an exciting, back and forth game, Keith Smart — Keith fucking Smart, of all people — launched a prayer, falling out of bounds along the baseline with a hand in his face, with time running out. It hung in the air forever, and then slipped through the hoop. Good guys 73, Assholes 74. Game over.

So, I guess the whole three-week tourney experience gave me a taste for the sport, as played by teenagers still in school. And I had my team. Screw the locals; any schmuck can emerge from the womb and ‘rah-rah‘ for the geographically closest team. Where’s the personality in that? The originality, the balls? Nah. Too easy. Me, I was an Orangeman fan, and I have been ever since. No matter that if they hadn’t met Indiana that year, I’d have probably forgotten about them. Or if UNLV had won in the semis, they might have been my new team. And forget the fact that I lived a thousand miles away from New York state, and had never been anywhere near Syracuse. (I did go to Buffalo later that spring, but that’s as close as I got. I still haven’t been, which is starting to feel more and more like an issue I should take care of soon.)

And eventually, I realized that the ‘cuse had a pretty good football team, too. Marvin Harrison came out of there, and Gary Anderson (though he was before my time), and later I watched Donovan McNabb and Keith Bulluck and Qadry Ismail and Olindo Mare and Kevin Johnson and James Mungro and a couple of dozen other players launch successful NFL careers on the heels of their Orangemen triumphs. Plus, Jim Brown played there. Jim Legendary Brown. How fuckin’ cool is that?

So, that’s how it happened. More chance than anything, but once I made up my mind, I stuck with it. I took shit for four years of college, and even today, people ask, ‘Did you go to school there?‘ No. ‘Did your parents go there?‘ No. ‘Grow up near there?‘ No. ‘Visit the school? Have a friend there? Pick them in an office pool one year?‘ No, no, and no. Well, okay, yes to the last one, but that was after I became a fan. So, people find it hard to understand. But it’s very simple — I decided to choose my team, based on the style of play I like, and the personality of the team, and the evil teams that they strive to vanquish. So how did you pick yours? Oh, you were born in the hospital thirty miles away from the stadium. Oh, well, yeah. That makes perfect sense. Right.

69

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#69. My honeymoon was in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

My gorgeous new bride and I stayed for a week in a resort called Ciboney Ocho Rios, now defunct. (And taken over by Sandals, I think. Are those guys the McDamnedDonalds of luxury spas, or what? Would you leave just one independently-managed, quirky little place for those of us who don’t appreciate your ‘activities managers’ and watered-down mixed drinks? Pretty please?)

Anyway, we had the time of our lives. Our honeymoon was everything it was supposed to be, right down to staying in the upper floor of a two-story cabana with it’s own pool… and having no downstairs tenants that week. Private swimming hole — rrrraaawwwrrr. And the resort was spectacular — four restaurants, two enormous pools (with swim-up bars, no less), a stretch of sandy beach, semi-private jacuzzis, and an office where we could go, anytime we wanted, to book events outside the spa. We’re pretty low-key kinds of honeymooners, it turns out, but we did go on an afternoon horseback ride, and took a trip to Dunn’s River Falls. And both were wonderful.

Now, if you’re planning a honeymoon or romantic vacation of your own, I can give you this piece of advice: go the all-inclusive route. Ciboney was all-inclusive (other than the two jaunts outside the grounds), and it was the best decision we ever made. Want food? Pick a restaurant, sit down, and eat. Thirsty? Hit a bar, a swim-up bar, or raid the bottomless fridge in your room. Want something else? Um, well, there’s probably someone to help you with that, too. Honestly, I only remember eating and drinking that week, as far as the free shit goes. We’re not a high-maintenance couple.

I only hope we can do it again someday. (If there’s anything but Sandals left by the time we’re ready, that is.) I don’t do a lot of things well, folks, but flopping around in the sun with a drink in my hand, eating three meals of tropical delicacies a day, and having moonlit midnight swims with my honey are three things that I could get very good at, if only I could get the practice. And ordering drinks at a swim-up bar? Oh, yeah. I could be world-class at that. A regular guru.

Anyway, that honeymoon was absolutely the best week of my life. I wanted for nothing, I had no responsibilities, and I couldn’t be late, because I had nowhere to be. My wife and I spent the entire week in a thick musky fog of love, hot sun, and cheap Jamaican liquor. I can’t imagine a better time.

Well, okay, except for one tiny exception. The part of the resort by the beach was separatr from the cabana area. So we had to take a bus from one site to the other. That wasn’t the problem, though. The busses ran regularly, and we had no particular scheudule to adhere to, anyway. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the resort next to our beach, with all the loud drunken assholes and annoying teenie-bop music. It was a Sandals, of course. Unbelievable. Can no one stop the spread of this wretched blight?