Bob Crespo

That living legend, Mick jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones and one half of the legendary song writing team Jagger/Richards has agreed to sit down with bobcrespo.com for an interview. Mick has taken time out of his busy touring and recording schedule to grant this interview and for that I'm grateful. Along with his band mates Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood, Mick and the Stones have recently set a world record for the highest grossing tour by a rock and roll band ever. This an an amazing feat considering that The Rolling Stones have been on the scene since the early 1960's, somehow managing to do what no other band has done before; stay relevant and popular and continue to fill arenas all over the world for over forty years.

These guys have been around so long that their bass player Bill Wyman actually retired a few years ago, cashing in on the generous severance package provided by the most successful Rock & Roll band ever. Mr. Wyman, being several years older than the other band members, opted to take the pension and enjoy life, figuring he's pushing 70 and if something's going to kill him he'd rather it be trying to keep up with his teenaged wife than the rigors of touring. He'd already witnessed one of their original members Brian Jones die a young death and his replacement, guitarist Mick Taylor, leaving the band for fear of sharing Mr. Jones' fate. Having beaten the long odds, Wyman cashed in rather than crapping out.

Still the Stones soldier on, making great music and defying the odds by not only staying alive but getting better and better as a live act. Keith Richards is a marvel of good genetics and astounding luck, the only possible explanations for his continued survival after a lifetime of hard, wild living. He even survived falling out of a palm tree onto his head recently and rejoined the tour to play some of his most electrifying shows in a decade. Bill Watts, perhaps one of the two or three greatest Rock & Roll drummers ever, is starting to resemble somebody's Granny but he's still out there laying down the muscular beat that has always driven Rolling Stones songs. Ron Wood, their other guitarist who has been with them for more than twenty years now seems to be in a constant duel onstage with Keith Richards, not only with their guitars but with which of them is the uglier man. This fan calls that one a toss-up.

Mick Jagger keeps himself in great shape and is a still the epitome of a Rock & Roll lead singer, a dancing, whirling dervish and a consummate entertainer. He's all over the stage, dancing and interacting with the band and the audience and is still in fine voice. He arrived by limo at the offices of bobcrespo.com looking every inch the rock star, fit and tanned and dressed in a fire-engine red blazer, dungarees, sandals and a black t-shirt. He had a small entourage, a personal assistant who is the most beautiful woman I've ever met, and also a hairdresser and a make-up artist for the photographs they figured I'd be shooting, the second and third most beautiful women I've ever met. Damn! I knew I forgot something besides the refreshments. The batteries in my wife's digital camera are dead and I forgot to recharge them. The beautiful assistants seemed awfully disappointed. Well, nothing to be done about that now, so I'll just plow ahead with the interview.

BC: "Mr. Jagger, thank you for giving bobcrespo.com this interview. This should really put me on the map, er, I mean it's an honor and a pleasure, sir."

MJ: "Call me Mick, mate."

BC: "Thanks, Mick, you can call me Mr. Crespo. I've been a fan of yours since your first records and TV appearances in the early 60's…"

MJ: "Showing your age, Mr. Crespo."

BC: "Can I finish my intro here, pal? This is my first interview and I'm a little nervous…"

MJ: "You're first interview?"

BCDC: "Yep, now can you do me a huge and keep your trap shut? I have this whole big intro written out."

MJ: "Well, excyooose me!"

BC: "No problem, Mick. Well, here goes: In his first ever interview with a major website, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones has come to the offices of bobcrespo.com for an exclusive one-on-one with Bob Crespo. Mick and the Stones have just completed a record-breaking world tour and are currently reviewing tapes of their shows for a possible live album to be released in time for Christmas. Word has it that the Stones are so musically rejuvenated from their tour that Mick and Keith are collaborating on a new batch of songs that could land them in the studio for another album of originals in the very near future…."

MJ: "Who told you that rot? We're bloody exhausted after that tour. I've been lying around the Caribbean not doing much of any…"

BC: "Whoa, caviar-breath! I thought I asked you not to interrupt!

MJ: "But that's all nonsense, mate. You're making all this up!"

BC: "Hey, Mick, I've gotta tell my viewers something! It's not like your big shot Rolling Stones Incorporated Office provided me with a fact sheet or anything…"

MJ: "What viewers? I thought this a web site and you write a blog?

BC: "Well, I'm taping this for a possible pod-cast. It's not everyday that a Mick Jagger sits down and…"

MJ: "But there's no camera here!"

BC: "Guess again, pal. See this computer? It's an I-Mac and it has a video camera built right in. That's why you're sitting in that chair. Check it out!"

MJ: "But that mostly shows you!"

BC: "What, you haven't had enough publicity on your lifetime Mister Look-at-me-look-at-me-I'm-a-rock-star? Can't a guy get a break here?"

MJ: "This wasn't part of the deal, Bob! No broadcasts, or pod-casts or whatever it is that dinky James Bond spy camera does! You arranged for an interview and that's all! No one prepared me for a telly broadcast! Now get on with your questions, will you, and forget your barmy introduction or I walk out right now!"

BC: Okay, okay, no need to get so testy over here, Senor Sensitive. Alright then, here's my question: Mick Jagger, let me get this straight, you say it's only Rock & Roll but you like it?"

MJ: "What? That's it? That's your question?"

BC: "Should I repeat the question?"

MJ: "The answer's yes, you bloody idiot, it's only Rock & Roll but I like it! Next."

BC: "Next what?"

MJ: "Next question, of course."

BC: "But I don't have any."

MJ: "But that first one wasn't even a proper question!"

BC: "Too personal?"

MJ: "You mean to tell me you don't have any other questions you'd like to ask me? Nothing?

BC: "Well, Mick, now that you mention it I probably should have prepared a few more. I figured you're this big shot rock star with the exciting life and you'll just pull out some fascinating anecdotes and stuff…."

MJ: "That's not how interviews work, you bloody wanker! You ask me questions and I answer them. Got it?"

BC: "Hmmmm… Okay, here's a good one: Mick Jagger, did you ever manage to get any Satisfaction?"

MJ: "Okay that does, it, I'm out of here! Come on, people, this was one royal waste of an afternoon."

BC: "Hey, it's my first interview, give me a break here…"

MJ: "Take your dot com and stick it, you jackass!"

BC: "This is Bob Crespo, live at bobcrespo.com, thanking Mick Jagger for visiting our offices for his first ever internet interview, an exclusive for bob crespo dot co……"

"MJ: "This will not be broadcast or you'll be hearing from my attorneys, and shut that stupid thing off! And what bloody offices are you talking about? This is your bloody living room! Who arranged this interview? Whoever it is is fired! Out on their arse! Out, you hear me…"

That went well. I suppose Mick is right in suggesting that I need to tighten up my interviewing techniques a drop, maybe even do a little preparation next time. Well, live and learn, eh? But not bad for my first interview ever. It's not every day one gets visited by a superstar and his three beautiful assistants. I even have a photo of Mick and myself together that I managed to snap with the i-photo feature in the computer. Maybe I can do a little photo-shop retouching so he doesn't look so pissed off at me, maybe make that fist he's shaking at me look like a high-five. If not, no biggie. I still have many special memories to cherish for my whole life of the time I interviewed Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones in my very own home, I mean rather, that is… the offices of bobcrespo.com.

The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. of sailing ships and spools of yarn, of cabbages and kings.- Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

What do these two have in common, cabbages and kings? They both smell pretty rank right from day one. Most things take a while to start rotting away and stinking up the joint, but not those two. Foul from day one. The funny thing is though, that cabbage can make some pretty tasty things, sauerkraut for your hot dogs, stuffed cabbage, cole slaw and other savories. Kings, on the other hand, not only smell rancid but can't be made into anything palatable.

The United Nations just wrapped up its big shindig this week where the leaders of the nations of this world get together here in my hometown to celebrate I really don't know what, maybe the fact that they exist. It's called the General Assembly and snarls traffic once a year in order to celebrate themselves, kind of like the Academy Awards for countries. Good for you, Sierra Leone! Congratulations, Macedonia! There's 192 member nations of the U.N. these days, and more coming every year. Not that there's any new real estate being discovered or created, mind you, it's just that countries are constantly breaking apart, renaming themselves or swallowing up their neighbors. Keeps the map-makers gainfully employed.

Here we are at the dawn of the twenty-first century celebrating our numerous nationhoods, all brotherhood and good will. Right? Not quite. There's a whole lot of disunity at the inaptly named United Nations. There's always a lot of friction between the haves and have-nots, what with the haves looking to hold on to what they have and the have-nots looking to have something. There's also a lot of countries claiming to be the rightful owners of some other country, no shortage of those. So is Tibet still Tibet or is it China's newest province?

What's the deal with that New Jersey-sized strip of the Balkans once called Yugoslavia? How many countries did they split into, five or six? Are they still at each other's throats now that they've got a border between themselves and the vile scum of the earth they fought for centuries who look just like them? I wonder about these things. How about all those Ikstans surrounding Russia that used to part of the Soviet Union, plus alternate Russias like Belorus, Ukraine and Georgia? Does anyone think that the borders in those parts of the world ought to be written in anything other than chalk? Let's see what next year's General Assembly brings. I'll give any odds you'd care to lay that somebody's borders somewhere will be different than they are at the moment.

Kings used to be great at that sort of thing, mobilizing the masses to take over the neighboring nation's farms, seaports or silver mines. Seems that nobody ever laid claim to the other guy's deserts, that is unless there was oil underneath the sand. Then that desert automatically became the rightful ancestral homeland of the neighboring kingdom that has no oil below them. And the strangest thing is that ordinary people bought into that whole deal, like it was their sacred honor at stake if their king didn't get to be viewed as the light of the world and the richest son-of-a-bitch since Midas, and I don't mean the muffler guy.

Even though the wars the kings started didn't put an extra crust of bread on their subjects' dinner tables they willingly and passionately took up arms against the people their king said they ought to hate. But then again, it could be said that these wars made it easier for mothers to feed their families since inevitably there were fewer of them at the dinner table once the war drums started pounding. And if they lost the war they just bided their time until they were able to mount a new attack on these neighbors who had the unmitigated gall to exist, and the hatred went on for generations stretching into centuries. Very few kings were slain in these campaigns, by the way.

Today there's not so many kings as there used to be, but there's still some. There is however, no shortage of dictators, guys with all the powers of a king without the impediment of having to pretend to care about the welfare of their own people. We've got some real beauts out there, deiusional psychopaths bent on killing a goodly portion of the people within their own borders as well as attacking their closest neighbors to steal whatever's not nailed down and maybe even carting off a bunch of their citizens into slavery. And I'm not talking history here, but current events.

A lot of them got their start as dictators by getting themselves elected and then immediately abolishing the right to vote and executing all their political rivals who weren't swift enough to flee the country. Some of these political rivals do manage to survive and gather an army across the border and eventually topple the savage dictator. Then they proceed to replace his whole government with their own bloodthirsty regime, the only difference being the targets of ethnic cleansing this time around. Looking around the globe at these sorts of things, getting myself born in America looks like one of the better ideas I've ever come up with.

Not that free elections guarantees you a good leader. We've had our share of incompetents and bozos (like now) but they eventually go away and a smart guy gets elected to clean up their mess. Not a shot gets fired in the transition between one president and the next. And none of them are allowed to kill and enslave a portion of our population, at least not anymore. I'm not claiming any moral high ground on the rest of humanity considering our own background as slave holders and traders and indigenous people slaughterers, I'm just thankful that the laws of the Constitution finally kicked in after a somewhat shaky start.

America is still in the process of becoming America, a little more each decade with a few steps backwards every so often along the road that we need to overcome, like the current attacks on our Bill of Rights and our foolish insistence on posing as the Roman Empire. We never were all that good at foreign affairs in this country, and at the moment we're really pathetic at it. The high esteem in which the rest of the world held America until recently was in spite of our leaders and diplomats, not because of them. Even now when it's open season in the world forum for condemning the United States the speaker almost always goes out of his way to separate our government from the American people as the target for their vitriol, giving us a pass as good eggs who made the mistake of electing a bunch of dickheads. I'll buy that.

Which is not to say that I agree with every tinhorn psycho who's taking potshots at America. Far from it. It's hard to take some of these people seriously when you look at their own sorry records and the state of their nations. There's a lot of clowns out there more than willing to cast the first stone. But there are a lot of critics who make a good point, many of whom are Americans themselves. Not that there was much of that sort of thing this week at the U.N. General Assembly. It was more of a love fest for people who hate each other. After all, the cameras were rolling. Even sworn enemies were making generic speeches mostly praising themselves and speaking vaguely of "certain rogue states" in veiled references to places they've threatened to annihilate in other forums.

Our own president barely mentioned Iraq and Iran, or anywhere else in the Middle East for that matter, a region that's sort of the huge focal point of a lot of trouble for our nation these days. Instead he informed the assembled nations of the world that America is outraged by the behavior of Burma, which came as a surprise to most Americans, especially since Burma has been named The Myanmar Republic for the past two decades and precious few of us really knew just how outraged we were at this nation of which we are only marginally aware. I suppose we ought to be thankful that Dubya didn't call Iran Persia or Zimbabwe Rhodesia. After all, the British didn't call us The Colonies or refer to Canada as The Dominion of Canada.

Well, sure enough, two days later the papers and newscasts are full of the news of Myanmar, complete with mass protests against the brutal regime there, the beatings of monks (!) and soldiers firing on unarmed crowds. So I guess we're supposed to be duly outraged by this mess and hate the Myanmar bosses and generally take the focus off the fact that the Dubya administration just did pretty much the same thing to Iraq minus the pummeling of the monks (Iraq doesn't have any). While it's true that our soldiers didn't fire on crowds of unarmed protesters demonstrating peacefully in the streets, we sure as hell blew up a whole lot of men, women and children non-combatants with our not-as-smart-as-they-tell-you-they-are bombs and other formidable ordnance, a lot more than the Myanmar government is capable of doing to their people, and a lot more than Sadam Hussein ever killed. Good thing we saved the Iraqis from him, eh?

But instead of distracting Americans from their own vicious foreign policy and myriad domestics failures, the Bush Administration's public relations blitz to make Myanmar the nation's new bogey man instead reminds this American of the things that they actually do, not what they say. What they have done about the situation in Myanmar is absolutely nothing. Myanmar has been a repressive nightmare for its citizens for a very long time, as have a dozen or more nations on this globe and the Bush government has been silent about some very heinous acts of genocide and brutal tyranny. It might take something earth-shalking to get our government to notice conditions in these nations, like having some of our movie stars start adopting their war orphans. That ought to show 'em! That's what we did in Africa, by God! And then we… then we…we, um… well… that's pretty much all we did about African genocide.

Saudi Arabia for one is quite the brutal and repressive regime. Anybody in this government rattling any sabers at that oil spigot? And Saudi Arabia is run by a king and around five thousand princes. Life's pretty good for those jokers, not so good for the rest of the people there. Public executions are their idea of popular entertainment. Women aren't even allowed to drive cars or leave their homes unescorted and anybody who practices a different religion from their particular brand of Islam is liable to be the star of next week's public entertainment. All in all, a pretty sick and evil bunch of thugs in charge over there.

So how does our president treat people like this? No, he doesn't encourage movie stars to adopt their children. Too obvious. Instead he invites their ambassador to his ranch in Texas and hugs and kisses the guy in public and then walks around with him holding hands like a couple of high school sweethearts. Pretty creepy and embarrassing to watch and a lesson not lost on other oil-rich nations also of a mind to brutalize their own populations.

But maybe Bush is just softening them up, lulling them into thinking they're our friends. Maybe he's trying to find out just who in Saudi Arabia sent 15 Saudis of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 to attack us, following the money trail like any good investigator. Just maybe he's a lot sharper than he seems to be. Maybe he's willing to appear to be in the Saudi's pocket in order to get to the bottom of the whole thing and any day now will announce the arrest of the people who paid for those men's training and their phony passports and their expenses in Germany and America while they prepared their attack. Yeah, that's probably it. You think?

You've got to love the Internet. Of all the things people predicted about the future when I was a kid the Internet and World Wide Web (they're not the same thing) were not even figments of anybody's imagination outside of Hollywood. No inventor was trying to perfect them, no research and development teams in big scientific corporations were working feverishly to be the first to produce an instant communication and information-sharing global network. That was James Bond movie stuff, and the guy with the network was the Bond Villain bent on using it for world domination. Well it's dominating the world now all right but not for evil ends, as a matter of fact it's quite benevolent and democratic. The Internet just sort of sprang up on us out of nowhere it would seem as a versatile and faithful servant to Everyman but of course that's not the case.

It was actually started by the United States government as a response to the advanced technology demonstrated by our Cold War rivals The Soviet Union with their launch of mankind's first rocket into outer space carrying the famous Sputnik, the worlds first made-made sattellite. The Pentagon along with some prominent Universities developed primitive versions of the Web. Some scientists and communication companies got involved, the British Post Office put their two pence in, some more communication companies, universities, scientists, private companies and as always the U.S. and other governments added their input , silicon chips got invented, everybody bought a computer and bingo, the Internet evolved and burst forth as if newly hatched out of the ether it runs on to give us something to do with all those computers.

It's really a whole bunch of networks piled on top of each other, interweaving, tangled up, overlapping, shoving and elbowing the next guy and spilling doughnut crumbs and coffee on one another. Or something like that, it's pretty complicated. My eyes tend to glaze over when I'm reading technical manuals and scientific minutia. The info is out there if you're really interested in that sort of thing but the overview I got from good old Wilkopedia was plenty good enough for me. Some laws were passed authorizing the existence of a thing that was already in existence and it got the name Internet around 1988. If you're really intent on finding out all the nuts and bolts and exact origins of the thing, don't let me stop you. The information is available on the web, of course, so knock yourself out if you're of a mind to do so.

For myself though, it's enough to say that's it's another pretty amazing technical wonder that I get to take for granted, just like my cell phone, my computer and those boxes of tissues where the next one pops up automatically when you pull one out.
I never knew how any of those things work but I'm happy to have them handy when I need them. Unlike these other technical marvels, however, I don't pay a red cent to use the Internet. I use Yahoo for my e-mail, which is free, and from there I can get pretty much anywhere I want to go in Cyberspace. Why anyone would pay AOL or any other non-free hosting service is beyond me. I've tried AOL and there's not a dimes' difference between their service and the free guys, and paying a fee doesn't remove those annoying ads anymore that paying for Cable TV does. That's puzzling to me, like you decided to park your car at a meter instead of the free spot right next to it.

I often wonder if Internet access was meant to be free or is that just a detail that slipped through the cracks amid all that brain-busting science work. Okay by me, that's for sure. I've got enough monthly bills as it stands, thank you very much. Oh, I pay a small fee to a website hosting company to host bobcrespo.com but that's a business providing me a service for my business so that's pretty standard and I have to say, very reasonable. Considering that my site doesn't earn me any money yet I'm grateful that web business can be done on the cheap. My personal stuff is all free, though, so I put up with cutie pie names like Yahoo and Google who are after all billion dollar companies who provide great services for their non-fees. Who am I to tell them to get regular names?

How they make their billions also puzzles me. I'm guessing sheer volume. No, wait, that can't be! Ten million times zero is still zero. Oh, I know, it's the ads! That's the ticket, all those pop-ups and flashers and those nearly unnoticeable ads that are on every page you see on the net. I don't click on them myself but I guess enough people do to make it worth the advertiser's dollar. My son Rob who designed this site tells me that GoogleAds distributes billions annually to websites according to how many people visit the site and how many of them click on the advertisements placed on the sites.

So do me a favor, readers, click on the ad buttons on bobcrespo.com and buy something. I'm not sure what's on there at the moment but I'm sure they're quality products guaranteed to provide you with hours and hours of wholesome entertainment in the privacy of your own home or a lifetime of satisfactory performance, whichever one applies since the ads change all the time according to the whims of GoogleAds. Rob informs me that since I started my website this past August I've earned a whopping 79 or 80 cents. from the ads at the top of my home page. That check ought to put me over the top, eh?

So I suppose my site has a way to go to become one of those Internet powerhouses you're always reading about, where some twenty-seven year old guy named Parker for a first name lives in a Penthouse overlooking Central Park, has his own jet to visit his private Island in the Caribbean and his Chalet in France, owns a fleet of Maseratis and has a model wife named Coco.

That's not in the cards for me and wasn't my aim at all. I figured I'd put my songs up on the internet for people to enjoy and my stories too. The blog was Rob's idea, putting something new up on the site every time people come onboard and frankly, I'm enough of a windbag to enjoy it. And by the way, welcome to my humble little web site. Make yourself comfortable, stay awhile, unwind. Click on an ad and buy something. In a little while I plan to start selling my songs and some stories as well. Real cheap too. I'm in the process of recording some new music right now and should start posting them soon. Real good stuff, I promise you. They'd be right at home in your collection of i-tunes.

Maybe then I can make more than forty cents a month on the internet. You listening, GoogleAds? Maybe you can put one of those ads on my site for stuff that people actually buy. Is that too much to ask? How about an ad for toothpaste or something? Everyone buys that. Or cookies. Is there an internet aficionado anywhere who doesn't enjoy a tasty cookie every now and then? What about baseball caps? Seems like everyone and their sister is wearing them these days. Give a beginner a break here, GoogleAd guys and gals.

In the meantime I'll keeping slogging away, and blogging and singing my songs and posting my short stories. I can think of worse ways to not to make a living. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to browse around the site. You can look up old blogs if you like, read my tall tales, read my misleading bio or listen to the music or all of the above. You can even e-mail me if you're of a mind to, talk about anything that pops out of your skull. I find people fascinating. Stay as long as you like, take a nap on the couch if you feel like it and frankly I don't really care if you click on the ads and buy anything or not. Welcome .

We all know right from wrong. Mom took care of that little chore before we could read. Lying was usually pretty high on her list when it came to wrong things we ought never do. And for that we all should be eternally grateful to our mothers. They did their mightiest to shape our characters properly and darned few of us arrive at out majority without a thorough grounding in what's right and what's wrong. So here we are as adults running our own lives armed with that great store of moral lessons. Then life throws a few monkey wrenches our way in the form of moral dilemmas, or as I like to refer to them: Quandaries.

We all know that lying is wrong and pretty much everybody knows it's an actual crime sometimes, like lying under oath in a court of law, cheating on your taxes, filing false reports and the like. It is also a crime to lie to the police. Fine, who can argue with that? They're dealing with grave situations and discovering the truth is important so they can solve the various crimes and misdemeanors that is their lot in life to solve. Well, what if your wife or girlfriend is a police officer and she asks you if her uniform makes her butt look fat? That's what I call a quandary. And don't forget, she's armed with a nightstick, a can of mace and a pistol, maybe even a taser too.

Life's full of quandaries, and the neat little black and white lessons at Mom's knee don't seem quite up to the task sometimes. You get a new job and you like it and just as importantly you really need the money. Your boss seems like a nice guy but he's also a terrible comedian, constantly telling horrible jokes that everybody around you laughs at. You find his sense of humor crude and very unfunny. Do you laugh too? Or do you inform your immediate superior who holds the fate of your continued employment at this job in his hands that you don't care for his sense of humor and you'd appreciate it if he'd leave you off his joke telling list?

Or do you you simply not laugh and hope he'll take the hint. But maybe it turns out he's one of those guys who repeats the punch line several times louder and louder to those who don't laugh at his jokes, like you were deaf and he figures deaf people will respond if you simply jack up the decibels. Then what do you do? Laugh and hope he'll go away? What you want to say is that you heard him the first time, everyone within 200 yards heard him and the damned joke was simply not funny and pretty damned immature, but you hold your tongue so you can keep collecting your paycheck, maybe start checking out other job opportunities on your lunch hour. No matter how you react, the job you liked so much becomes one you don't like at all and short of murdering the guy you know it's not going to change. I'm pretty sure that murdering guys is one of the big things on Mom's list of no-nos. So until you get a new job or funny boy drops dead laughing at his own jokes what you've got is a quandary.

Then there's the sex deal.You're dating a real hottie, a girl or guy you're dying to get into bed. I don't know about you ladies but us guys will do or say just about anything for a sample of your lovely charms. I suspect it's pretty similar for the ladies when they want someone real bad. Me, I've even pretended to like cats and enjoy veggie burgers for a roll in the hay, two things I could well do without for the rest of my life. And I'm pretty sure a couple of girls who liked me pretended they gave a damn about baseball. Now probably all involved knew the other was full of it but these little accommodations with the truth went unmentioned, at least until the deed was done. Was all this dishonesty worth it? Hell, yeah! Sorry, Mom.

Of course once we got to know each other better our true natures became readily apparent, and then you either enjoyed each other's differences or drifted apart. And when the time came to pursue a new love, once again we ate stuff we didn't like, watched movies we hated and wholeheartedly agreed with statements we really didn't agree with just to get that sweet reward. Then one day you get married and a whole new of quandaries are plopped in our lap.

In a man's case, there's a whole bunch of things he's got to pretend to care about to maintain peace and harmony in his marital abode. Like say, what color the walls are, what kind of curtains hang in the windows, exactly how many and what type and color of decorative pillows should be strewn around the living room. Not that you'd ever be allowed to use one of them as an actual pillow, my friend. The operative word in decorative pillow is decorative, and your wife usually frowns on naps anyway, she's got al list of chores for you to do. And there's also the grim reality of having to make do with only about one fifth of the closet space available, no matter how big or small is your home. Which works out, really since the lovely wife usually starts throwing out most of your favorite clothes as soon as the honeymoon is over.

And say goodbye to that Elvis on black velvet and your dogs-playing-poker painting. Ditto your neon Heineken sign and your favorite recliner that was broken in just right. So what if it was a little threadbare and had a stain or two or ten? It was darned comfy. And be prepared to be assigned only a tiny portion of the medicine chest and make way for a dizzying variety of creams, ointments, powders and special soaps and a knitted kitten to put on your spare rolls of toilet paper.

Which again, is just fine. What have we got in the bathroom? There's your toothbrush, razor, shaving cream, some floss, mouthwash, your deodorant and cologne. Maybe some shampoo and a nail clipper and some hair goop, but that's about it. Before you know it, though, you'll have a louffa, a water pick, several kinds of soaps, skin and hair conditioners and body creams and some other stuff she assigns to you that you can't identify. You might even pour some of it out every so often so she thinks you're using it.

At least that's my dishonest solution. What's yours? And married guys, don't even try to tell me that you've made no accommodations in your marriage that go against your grain. At least I never bought a damned mini-van and tried to talk my friends into what good good sense it made into how practical they are. You've got to draw the line somewhere and that's mine. And what about big flower garden you're always messing around with on Saturday afternoons or that dainty latticework gazebo in your yard where your hammock used to be? Were those your ideas, Caveman? The same guy who had his TV and gigantic stereo propped up on cinderblock and unpainted plywood shelves and and a pool table in your kitchen since you lived only on take-out pizza, tacos and beer back in the day?

To be fair, married women also make their share of accommodating their true natures to the realities of being married to an insensitive brute (let's call a spade a spade here). They're just more honest and vocal about their displeasure at men's inclinations, that's all. For the most part they don't care who wins the pennant or the Super Bowl or who the greatest heavyweight champ was. They have little interest in the latest scientific advances in barbecue grills and certainly do mind if you forget to shave all weekend. They hate the TV shows and movies you love, the things you like to eat and your favorite hat too. They're not big fans of the squalor men live in when left to their own devices and spend an incredible portion of their life's energy trying to correct us with very little to show for their efforts outside of the gazebo he built in the vain hope that it would shut you up. Yet, for all these mental and emotional egg-shell dances we do around each other most married
couples love each other and would do it all over again in a flash. Go figure us humans.

Ah, the quandaries of life. Seems like it's mostly about sex but there's plenty of other grey areas in life where we have to make what we politely refer to as judgement calls. Ever get a refund check from the IRS you didn't deserve? Did you return it or cash it and hope they don't discover the discrepancy? Me, I cashed mine and played dumb six months later when one of their intrepid bean counters figured it out. Ever knick somebody's car in a parking lot? How many of you left a note on the dented car's windshield 'fessing up to your carelessness? Kudos to you if you did. How many of us have ever reported a broken parking meter? That would be approximately zero of us. Who hasn't "padded their resume" when seeking a job? Well, that's lying. Ask your Mom.

And what about when a friend gets very sick and looks like hell? The first thing most of us do is tell them how good they look when we both know it's bullshit. They've got cancer, not blindness, fool! Nobody hid their mirrors on them. I suspect that we're just uncomfortable because we know that this could be us, too. No reason we know of that it was them and not us. We're just whistling past the graveyard when we see our friends or relatives all messed up from chemotherapy and radiation.

When we go to funerals we all seem to go out of our way to say how good a dead body looks! What a load of crap! Can't we think of anything else to say? That's just friggin' morbid. We mumble about the deceased looking so peaceful and in "a better place". A better place? Hell, the better place would be home having dinner with your family, not stiff in a box with your friends saying untruthful things to your loved ones. To my way of thinking, any place is a better place than to be the star attraction at a wake. I'd almost rather drive a mini-van. But yet I've uttered my fair share of lies and empty platitudes at funerals and I'm fairly certain I'll do it again, that is of course, if I'm not next. We all have a date with the reaper, no exceptions. I hope when my time comes people say I look like a bleached mannequin with a bad make-up job and that it's a rotten twist of fate that put me in a pine box, but that's not going to happen. There's as much chance of that
happening as you telling your wife that she does indeed look fat as a house in that outfit.

(With a grateful nod to the late, great Rod Serling.)
The year: anytime soon. The place: the Capital of The Twilight Zone. The situation: Senator Dick Burns, senior senator from a large farming state in the Midwest has been summoned to the White House for a strategy session with President Batson Belfrey. Present at the meeting are President Belfrey's senior advisors, National Security Advisor Mike Hunt, White House Chief of Staff Roger Thatt, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Kayoss and Senior Political Advisor Anne Coldshoulder. They are meeting to discuss the latest crisis in America, a severe shortage of red-herring distractions to take the public focus off the actual performance and agenda of the Belfrey administration.

We now join the assembled leaders at their strategy session, a fly on the wall in the inner sanctums of power. Here, presented for you scrutiny are the men and women who reside in that most ethereal and elusive locality, TheTwilight Zone

"Gentlemen, Ms. Coldshoulder, my question is this: It it possible that Lincoln was right when he stated that you can''t fool all of the people all of the time?"

The assembled advisors exchanged uncomfortable glances and squirmed a bit before they realized it was a joke.

"No way, Mister President!" exclaimed Roger Thatt. The whole room burst into spontaneous laughter, considerably lightening the tense mood in the oval office.

Added Anne Coldshoulder: "Who's better than us at sleight of hand, Mister president? David Blaine is a rank amateur by comparison!"

"We could attack somebody again, sir," added General Kayoss. "We still have several battalions of National Guardsmen available and some stealth bombers ready to go at a moment's notice. That always gets the people's juices flowing. And then we could condemn those that criticize the attack as vile traitors, the good old giving aid and comfort to the enemy schtick."

"I would strongly advise against that, sir," said Senator Burns. "The mood in the Senate has been pretty surly since we attacked Switzerland, what with the Swiss having no real army and their long history of neutrality…"

"Did you expect us to bow down and surrender to those cheese-eating, yodeling secret bankers, Senator?" thundered Mike Hunt.

"Mike, Mike, give it a rest, you're preaching to the choir here…"

"Sorry Senator, old habits and all…"

"Good instincts, though, Hunt," added the president. "That's the kind of fire and brimstone we've got to recapture if we want to keep doing whatever we feel like. Constitution, Shmonstitution, I say. That piece of paper's got to be what, 80 or 90 years old by now? Old hat! Old hat!"

"Actually sir," said Ms. Coldshoulder, "the Constituion was written about 250 years ago."

"My point exactly, Annie girl! Old hat!"

"The country seems pretty attached to it, sir…"

"They only think they are. Isn't that what this meeting's all about? Doesn't the Bill of Rights say the president is always right?"

"Yes sir, it does!" said Mr. Thatt, "That is, of course, if we repeat that over and over and over until it becomes true. It's worked before."

"Yes, it has, many times…" The president grew wistful and his eyes were looking at a far-away place, a different time when the news media and a majority of citizens lapped up every pronouncement of the Batson Belfrey team, no matter how convoluted or far-fethched. Those halcyon days of fear mongering and gutting the Bill of Rights were a comforting memory.

"How about that hatchet job we did on the Pope?" beamed Mr. Thatt. "When we told the cable news networks he was getting paid under the table by the Asian slaves picking our oranges in Florida. Boy, that put the old windbag in his place…"

"Or how we managed to make a fool of that lady who had both her sons killed in our invasion of Iceland?" added General Kayoss. "The whole country was calling her 'Mother Surrender' and she even got arrested and sent to jail for a couple of months for disturbing the peace. What peace? We haven't been at peace for years and years!"

That got a big laugh from the assembled titans, but it soon subsided as the grim reality of the situation sunk in. Mike Hunt cracked the ensuing silence: "All well and good people, and I too could sit here all day and reminisce about our great public relations capers, but we're in serious trouble here. The newspapers are calling for our heads on a platter, there's mass demonstrations against us everywhere and even Congress finally found some backbone and wants us gone. And if you can believe it, Will O'Really is thinking of stepping down as our Cable TV Minister of Propaganda, and he's one guy who remained on board and stayed on message for years no matter what outrageous stunt we pulled. We need some ideas here, people! We're getting asked too many damned questions by reporters and citizens that we can't lie our way our of! And we call ourselves leaders? Suggestions, anybody?"

Another uncomfortable silence ensued. Finally, the president himself spoke.

"Mike, how about we admit some mistakes?"

"But sir!…" It was Roger Thatt, completely distraught that Batson Belfrey would even consider any admission of fallibility.

"No, no, hear me out. We don't admit any mistakes on big stuff, like letting the Brownwater mercenaries loot and pillage Zurich, burning Geneva to the ground or losing track of all that radioactive waste in that new desert we got in Oregon now, nothing like that. We can say we forgot to turn out the lights at night in the Federal Buildings and spent too much on our electric bills, admit that someone forgot to lock up at Fort Knox at closing time and it got robbed so that's why we've got those trillion dollar deficits. Or I can say I made a mistake by appointing O.J Simpson as our Attorney General."

"Well, sir, he did have extensive experience with our criminal justice system," chirped Roger Thatt.

"Exactly! You're getting my gist here, Roger. We say we were so impressed by his credentials that we regret his poor performance in office, stuff like that…"

"Of course he did kill several secretaries…"

"And there was that pardon you gave him…"

"Well, I'll take the heat for hiring him, but only admit I made the mistake of trusting such a fine and prominent American, make it look like the whole thing's his fault that he let me down, let the American people down, see? As far as the pardon goes, we just say it would send a bad message to the world community for America to lock up former political dignitaries like some third-world dictatorship. Ask anyone who criticizes us if they think we should open up a gulag for political prisoners. We'll pull out old Ronnie Reagan's red paint brush. Never, ever admit things are our fault, Roger. You admit a mistake in a way that places the blame square on the guy who had the nerve to question you. Get it?"

"Brilliant, sir!" thundered Roger Thatt.

"They don't call you Batson Belfrey for nothing, " echoed Anne Coldshoulder.

"This just might work, " said Mike Hunt. "Then we can go ahead quietly with annexing Western Canada and their oil fields and removing the impediment of taxation from our rich movers and shakers who keep the working class working, the lousy ingrates… the real business of this administration…"

"Yes, we've been stymied lately, that's for sure," said Ms. Coldshoulder. "Those creepy poor people are starting to cry about free medical care again, when only a year ago it was a dead issue when we almost got their food stamps taken away. If we had swung that one they'd be way too busy trying get some food to worry about stealing our country's medical services. Senator Burns, may I remind you that you promised to deliver the Senate on that one? "

"May I remind you, Miss Coldshoulder, that we came up only two votes short on a very unpopular issue? Lots of Senators feel that that we should at least feed these people because hungry people tend to get sick a lot and then who would mow our lawns or drive us around? You want to clean your own swimming pool, mix your own Martinis or carry your own golf clubs?"

"Senator Burns," she replied, "let's not get all sentimental about 3 meals a day for these slackers. Do you realize how many man hours are lost every day while these people eat lunch? You multiply that twenty-minute work stoppage by millions and millions of peons and the lost production is staggering! It's a scandal!"

"Well, a lot of these slackers vote…"

"Well, that's another item on our agenda we've been remiss about correcting," added Mike Hunt. "When this country started, only landowners got to vote. About time we enforce that. And not just any landowners this time around. We don''t need every Tom, Dick and Harry with a dime-sized yard, two jobs and a killer mortgage putting their two cents in. We've got to reduce the voter pool to people who have demonstrated that they have a firm grasp on the American dream and a bank account that reflects their dedication to our ideals."

"Amen to that," said Roger Thatt. "We wouldn't be in this pickle if the rabble didn't get to make decisions they aren't equipped to make."

"I've got another idea," said General Kayoss. "We could declare Marshal Law in America. I've always wanted to do that…"

"On what pretext?" demanded Mike Hunt.

"Don't ask me, that's your job as a political guy. I'm just a soldier, but all I know is that Marshal law is a Jim Dandy excuse to do anything you want and lock up anybody who doesn't go along with the program. Hell, we can even line up a bunch of people against walls and shoot 'em if we feel like! It's Marshal Law! It's real strict and no pesky judges get to interfere."

"But do we have enough troops still in the country to enforce it?" asked the president.

"No sir, we don't, but here's the beauty of it; you folks dream up some dire threat here at home and declare an unprecedented emergency so now we've go to end a couple of them wars we're running without having to build back up all the stuff we blew up. A lot of those place are in really bad shape but our emergency at home gives us just the excuse to just pull up stakes and leave. Let them worry about electricity and clean water and hospitals and the like."

"General Kayoss has a good point, Mr. President," said Ms Coldshoulder. "A lot of these places we've pretty much stripped bare of resources and treasure so at this point they're only an albatross around our neck. Why spend good money rebuilding these dumps when we can just leave? The UN can't cry about it because we say we desperately need our troops at home to fight the enemy here. You can use any excuse, say an influx of terrorists that snuck in here. We can blow some buildings up here and there, all over the map so that we can declare the whole country to be under Marshal Law. It's killing two birds with one stone, sir, getting out troops out of used-up countries and using them to straighten out this one."

"Can I suspend elections under Marshal Law?"

"Hell yeah, Mr. President," replied the general earnestly, "you can do anything you want; censor the news, ban all expressions of dissent, forbid unlawful assemblies, and you get to decide which assemblies are lawful or not. You can even kill your enemies and force people to work double shifts at reduced pay until the threat is defeated, and Marshal Law gets lifted only when you say the country's safe again. And that could be a very long time…"

"How about stifling that damned Internet, Kayoss?

"Consider it unplugged, sir. There are sedition clauses in Marshal Law…"

"Then we can finally get The World Wide Web into the hands of proper private ownership where it belongs," mused Mr. Hunt.

"Why not?" agreed Anne Coldshoulder. "Why should my writing have to compete with every leftist traitor out there with a laptop? Who do they think they are, tone of us? And the beauty of taking over the Internet is that everybody uses it these days. They'd be happy to pay a monthly bill to use it just like their phone and electric bills. A stockholder's dream. And we could control its content, too! No more slandering the men and women who make the sacrifices required to rule these insufferable crybabies."

"Damn, why didn't we think of this years ago?" said the president. " General, you're getting a big raise and a huge bonus! Now we're getting somewhere! I want all of you to get back to your offices right away and get to work on some domestic crisis. It's gotta be big, real big, so get all your best people on it pronto. We'll meet here again in three days time and I want some answers, some real keg of dynamite we can spring on everybody so they swallow it without question. It's never been done before so people will go along at first because of the huge fear factor that we'll build into it and by the time they wake up our troops will be back here putting the boot to some necks! Senator Burns, not a word of this to your colleagues! You play your cards right and you look to me like the ideal Emergency Governor of the the entire Midwest. Think you can handle that job, Dick?"

"I believe I can, sir, I believe I can. Of course I'l have full budgetary discretion and law enforcement powers?"

"Of course. You can decide on what the priorities will be in your sector and who are the troublemakers that need silencing, that sort of thing. That thorn in your side John Bertand who the polls say is a shoo-in to unseat you in the next election might just be a prime candidate for charges of high treason. And you can redistribute some wealth, if you know what I mean, just as long as my share keeps rolling in. Are we clear?"

As a bell, Mr. President, clear as a bell."

Than what are we waiting for? This meeting's adjourned. And remember, it's got to be one doozy of an emergency if we're to pull this off. Good day."

"Sir, if you don't mind me saying so," effused Roger Thatt, " that this day marks a great turning point in American History and I just want to go on record now by saying that I'm proud to be associated with Batson Belfrey!"

"Thank you, Roger, that means a great deal to me. Now get to work, men! Ms. Coldshoulder, you stick around. There's some political matters I need to discuss with you. "

The others returned to their respective offices and the president closed the door. Ms. Coldshoulder regarded her boss and asked: "Why do you keep that sniveling ass-kisser Roger Thatt around, sir?"

"He serves a purpose, Annie. He'd put his ill, widowed mother out in the street without a dime if I told him to. I'm thinking of doing just that. That'd be a kick."

"Sounds like my kind of fun, sir. Speaking of which, what sort of political advice will you be needing today, Mr. President?"

"Well, you know, Annie, I've been a very bad boy lately, a very, very bad boy who just might need a spanking."

"Yes sir, I do believe you have been very naughty…"

A unlikely scenario? Perhaps. Impossible? Never say never in the smoky back rooms in the Capital of The Twilight Zone.}

Salad shooters, anyone? Anybody buy one of those bad boys? If so, where are you keeping it nowadays? My guess would be in the storage room right next to your Bowflex. How about that Thigh Master you figured would give you an ideal set of legs with almost no effort on your part? Guess again. Or maybe you went with the Juicer, that wondrous machine that can make nutritious juice out of anything that grows, including wood pulp. My guess would be you’re back to buying juice in the a handy bottles and cans at your friendly local grocer and your Juicer is taking up valuable space that could be used for storing your brand new pasta maker.

What is it with us Americans? Is there any useless product or pill we won’t line up to buy? You’d think by now we’d be sophisticated enough to see through the transparent sales spiels promising us that such and such a product will change out lives for the better overnight. Fat guys will get automatically thin, bald guys will resemble Samson in no time. People who are in dangerous debt can spend some more or their hard earned with companies who tell them they can eliminate that debt. How? Short of hacking into your creditors’ computers and erasing your accounts you still owe what you owe, the bills you ran up are still there plus>/i> another big one to the guy he said he could fix the situation as easy as one-two-three. Yeah, right.

Ladies that have rear ends designed pretty much like they always were buy equipment that promises them “Buns of Steel.” Buns of Steel? Speaking as a man who really likes the way a woman’s bottom jiggles and how soft and smooth they are, I can’t think of anything less appealing than a rock-hard butt on my lady. Happily almost no one uses this apparatus more than a couple of times so we’re not plagued by a lot of women making loud clanging noises when they sit down. Most of them have stored these miracle devices with their Stair Masters, a device that simulates climbing stairs even though there’s no shortage of actual stairs anywhere you look that you can climb for free and get some valuable exercise while you’re headed to your destination. Of course most of us opt to take the elevator.

Looking around my own house I see all sorts of things I never use and never will that I paid good cash money to possess. Kitchen implements, tools, holders for God-knows-what that are holding other useless things I’ll never use. I have a rack in the garage to hold garden tools but I have no garden, having eliminated that work-intensive portion of my property with a judicious use of cement and marble chips. I bought a shed for the backyard to hold my patio furniture and barbecue grill in the wintertime, products designed to withstand four seasons worth of Mother Nature. So I suppose the shed will get filled with things like my George Foreman Grill that I never tried once and the outdoor shower that attaches to my hose that my wife thought would be indispensable in the summertime but seems to be quite dispensable indeed, having provided exactly no one with a supposedly refreshing cold shower in it’s brief career.

I guess having the shed is a good thing since it frees up space in the garage where a lot of our useless items were starting to crowd the car. I’m tempted to hold a garage sale and pass some of these things off to somebody else, maybe put a price sticker on each item reflecting how much I’m willing to pay someone to haul this piece of crap out of my life. I figure it’ll be worth the couple of hundred bucks to get rid of these thing that serve only as a reminder of how foolish I’ve been with my hard earned. Why do I own a wok? I do the lion’s share of the cooking here in Casa Crespo and can’t ever remember using the thing. I suspect it was a gift from somebody looking to free up space in their house. It’s a lot of hard work finding a place for all these labor-saving devices, most of which, like pasta makers and juicers, are actually labor-creating. and godawful mess-creating items Thanks, but…

I own three blenders, two food processors and a coffee grinder. I can’t for the life of me figure out why when the one really old blender that I have does just fine chopping up whatever I want chopped up. I have knife sharpeners that sharpen nothing, giant roasting pans that don’t fit into any oven I’ve ever had and a special rack hanging on the kitchen wall to hold cooking implements I can’t identify and I’m a cook. The lovely wife likes the way they look all shiny and important looking so she dusts and polishes them every so often. They’re in pretty good shape. Like new, even, not a scratch.

But I console myself with the fact that I’m not as dumb as some other people and never bought a rowing machine. One of my neighbors keeps offering me one for free but I’m waiting for a better offer. He’s the fool who took my treadmill off my hands for nothing. Now it’s his problem. I could have told him that it makes an excellent shoe rack, but why do the math for him? I know for a fact that he’’s never trod on the treadmill, never even plugged it in. But he does own a treadmill now, and a rowing machine and a Bowflex too so he can tell his wife that he’s quite serious about getting in shape. He’s just big-boned, that’s all. Real big boned.

Maybe he’s taking the wrong tack here. A cursory glance at TV and print ads tells us that there’s hundreds of easy diets and magic pills available that will melt away your excess weight and unclog your arteries of gunk in no time at all with no exertion on your part. And the food they send you for these diets is satisfying and darned tasty. too. The slim and attractive people who sell them say so and are all smiles and earnest enthusiasm. You’re not allowed to lie on TV, right? Lots of these diets and potions are endorsed by doctors, or at least guys who play doctors on TV. Isn’t that good enough? So what if the pills are really expensive and so is the special scientifically prepared food? You’ll be looking like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in only a few few short weeks!

After that goal is attained then presumably one can resume the bacon cheeseburger and potato chip regimen with no ill effects. After all, you’ll be at your ideal weight and enjoying unprecedented heart health, so what’s the harm in knowing back a few cold ones and slathering the butter on a big old tub of popcorn? You earned it with your sacrifice and will power. What’s that number again….1-800- FLIMFLAM? Let me get out the old credit card. To heck with all that nonsense about eating properly and getting plenty of exercise, these folks can fix me as easy as channel-surfing! My, oh my, what will they think of next?

Jack Hobbs here. My good friend Bob Crespo has been kind enough to let me use his blog again. As you may or may not know I got sent here this past September 3rd from the year 1937 and got stuck here in the future. Long story short, I met Bob and he saw I was legit and here I am. Bob's a real Square Joe, see, he wised me up to a lot of things, like how to look up the guy who sent me here in his time machine. That was old Doc Willoughby who died of a bum ticker shortly after I took my time trip here. More about him later and what a smart and decent Joe he was.

I know to you it's the present but to a Joe like me who thinks FDR is still president and Joe Louis is still the new Heavyweight Champ, believe you me, this is the future. In the seventy years I skipped over a lot has happened in this world no one saw coming back in '37. It still rubs me rough all over to say back in '37, like it was ancient history. To everyone else those 70 years passed one by one, taking their sweet time, but I got here in two shakes of a lamb's tail once the Doc's time machine finally worked. 1937 when I breathed in, 2007 when I breathed out. Didn't believe it myself at first since things where I landed in Brooklyn don't look all that different now than my day, but it wasn't long before the first guy I met, old Bob here, he showed me his copy of the Daily News and I showed him mine, and hocus-pocus, the same day, 70 years apart.

Well, it seems this Dubya guy's family starting with his Grandpa are great friends of the big muckty-mucks over there, call themselves kings and princes now instead of sheiks and emirs like they used to, well them being buddy-buddy with the Bush family seems to make the Saudis immune from getting a dose of the Marines landing there and shooting the guys who paid the hijackers to attack New York and Washington. That's as near as I can figure since i just found all this out. There's got to be a few pieces missing from this puzzle I don't know about. Bob says it's because of their oil and I wonder if Texas has run dry of the stuff and he tells me there's a lot of complicated history involved and I tell him the last guy who had the Middle East sorted out decently was King Solomon. I say we leave the whole sandy mess to the people who actually have to live there and let them figure it out. I don't think this Dubya guy is in Solomon's league anyway, not by a long shot.

And then Bob tells me that all the Arabs hate Israel and I say Israel who?? It seems the British once again decided that Palestine would make a good place to recreate a Biblical country last heard of two thousand years ago (Why not remake Babylon and Philistine while you're at it?) and because that Hitler buffoon murdered so many Jews they ought to get a nation of their own. I'm still shocked that this self-important little clown Hitler ever did anything but get laughed off the world stage but I'm told he started a war that wound up costing 50 million lives. Anyway, now we're big allies with this country Israel that doesn't practice separation of church and state but is a democracy if you're not an Arab living there under their thumb. Or something like that. It's pretty confusing, starting with the fact that they gave the Jewish people a country only about the size of Delaware on a good day surrounded by a billion Arabs that hate them for some reason. Hey, I'm from Brooklyn
and we got no shortage of Jews here and they're good people, very decent Americans for the most part. I'm wondering why they act differently in Israel than over here. Must be a different bunch than the folks I know.

So after Israel gets invented, the Arabs not only hate them but also start to imitate them by making their own countries revolve around their religion, Mohammedism as I was taught in school, but they call it Islam now. I'll tell you one thing, we sure had a bunch of sharp Founding Fathers in the good old USA to insist on strict separation of church and state. Sure saved us a lot of grief when you look at the Mideast today or the Crusades back in history. Seems like it's always a bloody mess when men of God get to run countries and control armies. You'd think the world would learn that by now like our Founding Fathers did. And you'd think America would learn from history that creating countries is a dicey business at best. Some guys on TV are talking about re-drawing the borders Britain made for Iraq and making 3 different countries out of it. Why don't they ask the people living there? Maybe they're tired of having other folks decide what's what for them. I can't say it
enough, there's just no following the logic of the high and mighty. Don't make a lick of sense.

Back to America, I'm wondering when teenagers got to be so important and if President Presley passed a law to that effect. I remember being a teenager and nobody cared what we thought was important or tried to imitate the clothes we wore or the crazy lingo we used. It was all kid stuff and just for fun and the world at large was for grownups who ran the show and decided what's what culture-wise. I mean, of all the crazy people to ask to be cultural trend-setters why pick teenagers? I got nothing against them, see, but any dope knows that 's a pretty unstable time of life for all of us, all pimples and raging hormones (very busy palm pilots, all of us guys then, if you catch my drift) and not knowing much but thinking you know it all. Well, joining the Marine Corps right after High School sure wised me up in a hurry about how much I really knew. Learned and saw and did some things I sometimes wished I didn't but that's all water under the bridge now. But I say let teenagers be
teenagers and let grown men and women run the show.

I also found out that smoking is no good for you, the government says so, even though it makes more dough off the sale of cigarettes than any ten tobacco companies combined. So it's a bad thing they tell you but we're cashing in on it just the same. I guess their reasoning is like the whole gambling takeover they did, figuring if they can't stop people from having fun they'll at least make a pile of dough off them. They've always done that with booze except for those dozen or so years when some Puritans got together and made it illegal. Didn't take long to see what a boondoggle that was. Beats me why they haven't legalized and taxed the oldest profession yet. I understand a whole lot of big deal politicians are excellent customers of prostitutes, a pretty dizzying variety of them too. Outside of being against the law prostitution is a very honest trade, a classic supply and demand situation.

Why not just make it legal and avoid the crazy headlines and generate some tax revenues while you're at it? Why draw the line at gambling, drinking and smoking? And drugs too, while they're at it. I understand that jazz musicians aren't the only ones enjoying the narcotics these days and the government has been fighting a war on drugs for forty years now and losing it big time. What strikes me right off the bat is that you got a bunch of big time gangsters pushing the drugs just like when I was a kid, only they were pushing booze, guys like Al Capone and Dutch Schulz, a bunch of vicious, greedy small timers who never would have made such a big splash if the government didn't outlaw booze in the first place.

I mean, Capone got kicked out of Brooklyn by the mobsters here because he was such a dunce before he landed on his feet in Chicago and murdered his way to the top. These goons got rich as Rockefeller thanks to Prohibition and caused a lot of death and misery. Once you make something illegal, it gets real expensive and is sold by only the lowest of the low so what you wind up with is a bunch of wealthy thugs killing each other and anyone else unlucky enough to get in their way.

I can tell them first hand since I lived through Prohibition that you can't stop people from drinking and I guess drugs is pretty much the same deal so why not make it legal and tax it like everything else?This way it gets packaged right there on the shelf just like old Johnny Walker and the government gets its cut and the gangsters ain't shooting up the streets anymore. The government showed they 're willing to do this already by muscling in on the gambling so why not take away the drug trade too from the gangsters? Don't want to condone junkies? What about drunks? There's a lot more of them around than dope fiends but nobody sends drunks to jail unless they commit a crime.

I'm thinking this government wants it both ways, just like they did in the Thirties, when they let drunks be drunks but locked up the hop heads as if they did something worse when it's really the same kind of sorry act. It's a pretty rough way to go either way if you ask me, but adults can choose to be what they are, like it or no. If a guy wants to ruin himself he's going to do it, period. I understand that doctors discovered that this kind of behavior is a legit disease like diabetes or cancer or any of them, which kind of explains the troubles of some otherwise sharp people I've known who can do all sorts of impressive things in life and are real smart but can't seem to kick their addictive habits. So if everyone agrees these days that addiction is a disease, how come some addicts get sent to jail and not to a doctor when their only crime was possession of drugs? What good is learning this new bit of information if you still treat sick people like criminals? Am I missing
something here?

Actually I feel like I'm missing a whole lot of things and a couple of weeks here in the future has only given me enough information to confuse the heck out of me. I don't want to sound like I disapprove of life around here because there's a lot of stuff that's a big improvement over 1937. Like that whole Civil Rights deal, which you would think should have been automatic in America when you read The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights but but it wasn't. I remember going down south for Marine boot camp when I was 18 and that was an eye-opener, believe you me. Colored folks had it pretty bad down there, worse than in New York where only some nightclubs and neighborhoods were off-limits to them, which is pretty foul to begin with if you ask me.

But down in the Jim Crow south colored people couldn't vote, get a decent job, sit down on the bus where they wanted to or even drink from a white man's water fountain and got arrested for no reason or even lynched by crazy red necks in white robes on a regular basis. Very un-American stuff, let me tell you, and I saw this with my own eyes. And the crazy thing was that colored people stayed a very decent bunch of people. If that shoe was on my foot I can't really say that I'd behave so good, as a matter of fact I know I'd blow a gasket. So why my county was keeping down some of our best citizens always rankled me and made me ask a lot of sticky questions about human nature and whether all of us Americans were on board with the statement that started this country, really the whole idea of America, that "All men are created equal."

Well it looks like we're finally getting there although it's a national shame that it took so long and that it took some laws to be passed to implement what the Founding Fathers saw was so obviously "self evident." Actually they said that "we take these truths to be self evident." For way too long the those "truths" only applied to white people. And to my way of thinking Jim Crow not only screwed the colored people but the whites too. America is a lot about seeing how good you can be in a bad world, that was the whole thing in a nutshell, what an individual can make if himself with his own sweat and moxie, see. Well, how can you ever know what you're made of if you're not competing with all the people? And how can you feel like an American if you only get to be an American at the expense of somebody else? That's the easy way out and not the road a man takes, or a woman for that matter, but the way of a spoiled child.

If America's supposed to level the playing field so everyone gets an even break, how can you feel like a success when a lot of your potential competition is tossed out of the game before the bell rings for Round 1? A guy who makes it big now at least knows he made it big against everybody out there, not just the hand-picked group of people. When we got rid of the European royalty I don't think the idea was to create American royalty. The only titles here are Mr. and Mrs., or Ms. as Bob tells me, a catch-all title for all women nowadays and that's okay by me. Mister sure doesn't tell anyone who's married so why should a lady's title spill the beans if she don't want it to?

Anyway, looking around this block where I'm living thanks to old Bob, I can see all kinds of neighbors of different skin colors and national backgrounds, pretty decent Joes and Janes the lot of them and it smells more like America to me than my Brooklyn where neighborhood lines were pretty strict as to who could live where. So even without the Dodgers, Brooklyn is better now than it was then, although having the Dodgers still here would have been some sweet icing on the cake. I get the feeling that losing the Dodgers to Hollywood will always bother me, no matter how long I live. Some things are very hard to let go of.

So what do I do with myself all day? I try to learn and catch up with all that's happened in 70 years. I have a computer and a library card, although the Brooklyn Public Library insisted on issuing me a new one since they thought the one in my wallet was some kind of fake. Why would anyone forge a library card when they lend you books for free? Anyway, I've been reading a lot and doing research on the computer and even watching some television, most of which I still don't get at all.

This internet though, now that's a real handy thing, the biggest reference library ever, and also full of some real puzzling nonsense but I skip over that stuff and go for the sites that you can learn from since I'm on a mission to figure stuff out. Bob tells me I'm a natural on the computer and can run it better than him already. Must be my background as a teletype man. You had to be very quick on the uptake in that job and dead accurate. That and the fact that from 1929 on you had to be pretty adaptable to whatever kind of work came your way. Every fourth guy was out of work so there was a lot of competition for every job and you had to be sharp as a tack to put bread on your table on a regular basis. So I tackled learning the computer hard since I saw right away that this world now runs on these machines and not being savvy to them would be like not being savvy to cars and telephones.

I know Bob's always calling one of his sons to help him out of one jam or another he gets himself into when messing with his computer or trying to upload things to his website. He also uses his computer for a recording studio but he's pretty good at that sort of thing, being a musician and all. So I don't feel so bad about not being so savvy to all the technical stuff around these days. Seems there's lots of folks like old Bob here who have a hard time keeping up with the Jones' computer-wise and they were born in this era.

What strikes me about the internet is that nobody owns it or controls it, it just sort of exists and gets added to by whoever feels like it, just like I'm doing right now and I don't need anyone's permission. How did those fatcats in the boardrooms let this baby slip thought their fingers? Well, I for one am glad they did. I've been trying to look up my family and I have a couple of good leads. I'll fill you in about them when I find out more and Bob lends me his blog again.

I was going to tell you more about Doctor Warren Willoughby too, the sweet old professor who sent me here in his time machine but that will have to wait until my next go-round in these pages. The fact that he died shortly after I came here is why I'm stuck in the future and why I have to play catch-up ball. It's just starting to sink in, to really hit me smack in the kisser that I'm the only time traveller that ever was, and maybe I should start letting people know it. I want folks to know what it's like to skip over a few generations. Bob tells me that my initial impressions are very valuable, a set of fresh eyes from another time in America and that I ought to write them down. I'm taking his advice and trying to do that while at the same time learning as much as I can about this future, or as it is to me now I suppose, this present. You'll be hearing more from this Thirties Guy, folks. I'm not going anywhere, not again.}

Remember when Jesus freaks were nuts? I do. Thirty five years ago, they were considered raving lunatics, mostly traumatized former druggies or severe control freaks with a new Jones: Christ. They acted like they had discovered him personally and spoke on his behalf. They’d tell you how they decided to accept Jesus as their personal savior. Nice of them I suppose, but it left a lot of people wondering and asking questions.

Can I get some of that too or are you going to hog him all to yourself? Who exactly were the other candidates you interviewed to be your own personal vessel of salvation? Just where in the Gospels is it written down that you have to eat only bean sprouts and get to sit in judgment of the rest of us?

Everybody knew a Jesus freak back then and mostly studiously avoided them. Even if they were old friends whose company you once enjoyed, once they became Jesus freaks they were somehow rendered incapable of holding ordinary conversations or maintaining normal relationships. Every encounter became a confrontation, even when no one challenged them. No subject was immune from an interjection of off-the-wall preaching. With the vast majority of them it all happened so suddenly that by definition no serious study at all could have been undertaken by them. To hear these very young fools speak so authoritatively on such a complex subject as faith was laughable, only these guys sure didn’t laugh much anymore. They were a dour lot, a bunch of killjoys frowning on just about everything and everybody but themselves and their own “heightened consciousness.”

And it was always all about them, their ideas, their personal piety, their superior habits, their better minds, blah, blah, blah. It was never about you except for the fact that you just didn’t measure up or the other guy, because he too was a woeful sinner bound for eternal hell fire if he didn’t straighten up and pay strict attention to them. The very antithesis of Christ’s message, their bizarre theology bore little resemblance to the actual Scriptures about the life and spiritual message of Jesus Christ.

The only times these Jesus freaks were amusing was when you got two of them together and watched them trying to out-Jesus the other guy. They hated each other because there was no one to openly belittle, but strove mightily to conceal that fact. The harder they tried to mask their animosity the more apparent it became. It was a lot of fun watching them try to insult one another subtly. Subtlety is never the strong suit of a deranged mind and often they’d blow their cover and get quite loud and positively un-Christian with each other over who was more of a Jesus freak. Now that was funny. When it came to blows it was a riot, and also quite illuminating. Their furious aggression showed us exactly who they really are, confirming our suspicions.

Now I’m not talking about religious people here, serious Christians of any sort, or simply students of Christ’s message and ministry, or any other religion for that matter. Nor do I refer to what America has always called its Bible Belt, that stretch of the South and Midwest famous for its humble, hard working and God-fearing Christians of various denominations whose faith was their rock in a stormy world. They were and remain among our finest citizens and one of the backbones of our diverse nation. They never were a bunch bent on self-glorification or the vilification of others. True believers know what a hard world this is and don’t demonize those who fall. Instead they offer their hand in love and compassion, recognizing the weakness and human frailty that we all share. Forgiveness and selfless charity are their calling cards.

I’m talking about a certain breed of clowns back in the day who were rightfully called Jesus freaks, those Johnny-come-lately types whose faith seems to spring from self-interest and whose preaching is riddled with self-justification. Back then there was a war on and a military draft. There was a lot of resistance to the war, not the least of which was among us young males of draft age. The Vietnam War was the first war in America in which a great many young men refused to serve. Every war has had its share of legitimate conscientious objectors but the Vietnam War was widely viewed by a growing segment of the population as an unjust and immoral war.

Many men went to great lengths to avoid being drafted into such a war, dodging the draft, faking insanity at their induction physicals, fleeing to Canada or becoming a bona fide Jesus freak. I myself was lucky enough to have a high number in the draft lottery and so was never called, thankfully spared the whole ordeal (I sure as hell wasn’t going to burn my draft card, that’s the ID that enabled me to buy beer.). Of all the various ways to get out of being drafted the most successful way was mine, having the dumb luck to have the right birthday.

Many Jesus freaks, however, got out of being drafted not because of their brand new religious convictions but because the U.S. Army saw right away these guys were completely nuts. Not exactly what they had in mind but at least they didn’t have to go in the service and maybe get killed or maimed in Vietnam like a lot of other neighborhood guys. They basically just went about their business of being annoying Jesus freaks and faded from the scene. Right?

Right?

Not quite. Fast forward to today and these guys are actually trying to run the country.What? Yep, those annoying judgmental jerkoffs who couldn’t even control themselves bided their time and somehow got together politically and are attempting to hijack America. While the rest of us were basically living our lives and being Americans and doing our own thing like our Bill of Rights tells us we can, these clowns saw a nation doing the very thing that annoys them more than anything: enjoying ourselves. They also saw most of their fellow Americans as the most evil sort of people possible: those that don’t agree with them.

Somehow all these lunatics forged out of their disparate oddball creeds a loose sort of theology that they insist reflects Jesus’ wishes. As a person who reads the Gospels and is a big fan of the message of Christ, I wonder exactly where some of their rhetoric and beliefs came from. For instance, they all seem to be war mongers these days, now that their righteous heinies are decades removed from the specter of the Draft and potential carnage done to their own person. My bible must have that page missing where Christ advocates sending others to fight your war.

The Modern Jesus Freak also declares that the righteous will grow rich. What ever happened to the rich man passing into the kingdom of heaven as easily as a camel passes through the eye of the needle? Didn’t Jesus say that? Also consider the passage “Judge Ye Not.” Is that an ambiguous statement? Maybe someone else’s Bible has a page missing. Why else would they buy politicians and try to legislate the morality of the rest of us?

These people are just as seriously nuts as they were back in the day but they’ve got some real power now. Why else would all the candidates for president deign to answer their stupid litmus-test questions? Why do some of them get to sit on nationally televised newscasts and have the anchor people pretend to take them seriously and ask them to comment on events of the day as if they were rational beings? Quite simply because they are afraid of these people, and perhaps with just cause.

No one is more vindictive than a crazy person, especially a crazy person who suspects you know he’s crazy. Now that these lunatics are organized, they’re voting and they’re raising a lot of money for candidates and lobbying groups. They’re invading our schools and running Bible camps for youngsters that resemble nothing so much as the jihadi training grounds, trying to get teenagers to swear off sex (good luck with that one) and mounting massive public relations campaigns to force public schools to teach Creationism as a science (might as well throw in the Flat Earth Theory while you’re at it). All this from people we used to cross the street to avoid.

Who thought we’d see the day when great American institutions would have to answer to lunatics? Didn’t the world suffer enough under religious nuts when the Catholic Church held all the power for centuries? Inquisitions, anyone? Who’s up for a crusade, guys? Shall we burn a scientific book today? Oh yes, and what say we burn the author at the stake while we’re at it? Good idea! Or are you too busy expelling the Jews and torturing heretics at the moment? And there’s always that pocket of non-believers down the road we really ought to smite, oughtn’t we? Absolutely! This is such fun!

Well, the Catholic Church suffered the challenge of a traumatic reformation and the loss of untold members and most of their political clout before it finally got around to doing actual good works. Make no mistake; for all its flaws and its oppressive history, the Catholic Church has done a lot of good in this world and if they can get their rogue priests to leave the altar boys alone they might regain some respect as a force for good and a source of higher moral authority in this world. But they will never again enjoy unchallenged political authority, and that’s as it should be. They have to render unto Caesar just like everyone else.

This is why America’s Founding Fathers mandated a separation of church and state. They saw what it did to Europe for all these centuries. Look at today’s religious states, mostly of the Muslim variety. See many reasonable people running them? Notice a lot of prosperity and contentment there? Does anyone seriously believe their populations like such governments, what with all the public stonings, whippings, chopping off of heads and hands and the indiscriminate issuance of fatwahs (death warrants) against those who disagree even slightly? Is that who the Jesus freaks want America to emulate? I don’t see a dime’s difference between them and the mullahs. Maybe they’re still pissed off that we dismissed them as nuts and crossed the street to avoid their ego-driven tedium all those years ago. Another thing madmen have is long memories.

Whatever candidate has the nerve to tell these creeps to stick it where the sun shineth not, that’s the person I’ll not only vote for, but campaign for too. To me they’re still a bunch of maladjusted control freaks mightily pissed off that the world won’t behave the way they insist it should. I don’t care how much money they have these days, how many voting blocs they control or on how many TV shows they get to showcase their ignorance and venality, to me they’re still nutty Jesus freaks trying to justify themselves and don’t care who they hurt in the process. Screw ‘em.

Did you know that Jews celebrated the new year 5768 this past week? Where do the millennia go?

Did you know the Chinese year we're enjoying until February is called The Year of The Pig? I suppose it's better than the Year of the Rat, but not by much. I much prefer the Year of the Tiger or the Dragon myself.

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy and John F. Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln? Let's see what the conspiracy theorists can do with that. And how did the History Channel miss making a boring hour long show on that meaningless fact?

Did you know that Paris Hilton is so named because she was conceived at the Paris Hilton? Good thing that's not a trend. There'd be a lot of us named Buickbackseat or Sleazymotel if it were.

Are you aware that the Moon creeps an inch or so further from the Earth every year? I guess it didn't think we'd notice, but our intrepid scientists sure did. So if you feel a little less manic with every full moon, that's the reason. I wonder where's it going in not such a big rush?

Did you know that Vincent Van Gogh actually did sell some paintings in his lifetime, contrary to earlier accounts that he sold none of his work? I'm sure he didn't get anything like the $96 million some Japanese guy paid for his "Sunflowers," but he made close to a hundred Francs on a few of them, a pretty penny in 1890's France. Enough to buy more oil paints, a decent easel and some ear muffs, anyway.

The largest land carnivore, the Polar Bear, lives in the most barren tracts of land and ice on Earth, the frozen north. He must be one industrious son of a gun.

The largest carnivore in Earth's oceans, the Killer Whale, also does a lot of hunting in the seas of the frozen north. So I suppose that seals and walrus ought to rethink their strategy of living in the frozen wastes to avoid predators. Doesn't seem to be working out when that strategy has produced the two largest meat-eaters of land and sea. This also tells me me that a seal must be one nutritious meal.

Speaking of diets, did you know that there's a radical new diet plan that calls for people to eat only food raised within thirty miles of their home? At one time on Earth that was pretty much everybody's diet, before we got around to inventing cities and roads and eighteen-wheelers and the like. Back in the day people's life spans averaged around forty measly years, and no wonder. They didn't get to eat shrimp or Mexican food. Not much to look forward to, so forty years seemed like plenty long enough to live. Boy, I'd be in trouble if I went with that plan. I live in Brooklyn, New York City and I can't think of much food at all being raised within thirty miles of here. How much pigeon can you eat?

Did you know that a woodchuck can't chuck any wood at all? Who named that animal, an aficionado of tongue- twisters?

Did it escape your careful scrutiny that not all Roses are red, and that Violets are actually purple and not blue? Hence the name Violet, a shade of purple. Well, I missed that one, that's for sure. My bad.

Did you know that VCR's, CD and DVD players, personal computers, coaxial cable and flat screen TV's were all invented in America but virtually none of them are actually built here? This I-Mac computer I'm typing on was built in Shanghai, China. Apparently we also forgot how to make sweatshirts, baseball caps and underwear and must rely on the Chinese to provide them for us as well.

Did you know that the human body replaces all its cells every seven years? Small wonder I don't feel like the man I used to be, I've been replaced almost eight times already (I'm 54. Do the math). My question for the human body would be: Why do you replace my perfectly good cells with old-guy cells? And also, why did you start skipping the part about replacing the hair on my head cells about ten years ago? Are you as lazy and haphazard as I am? Hope you don't start forgetting to replace something important on the next go-round, like my finger cells or kidney cells or something.

Did you know that State Governments all over the United States have muscled in on The Mob's business over the last thirty or so years? Well, they did, and without going to the mattresses or even having a sit-down to hash out territorial disputes. They took over the daily numbers racket and even lowered the payoff to winners from 600 to 1 to 500 to 1. Said governments used to put gangsters in jail for this activity, a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. To avoid all this nasty business they simply nationalized the industry. What's next, State-run truck hijacking rings and State loan shark offices in every town? Who would be the leg-breakers when you don't pay, city councilmen? Meter Maids?

Are you aware that ten percent of the people consumes ninety percent of all alcoholic beverages? Apparently there's a lot of over-achievers out there in the imbibing department.

Did you know that the Titanic had a sister ship? It was called the Invincible or some similarly ridiculous name and also sank on its maiden voyage. Not a triumph of naval engineering, those two.

Have you heard that Marc Ecko, the guy who bought Barry Bonds, 756th home run ball for three quarters of a million dollars isn't going to keep it? He's either going to donate it to the Baseball Hall of Fame as it is or to the Hall of Fame Museum with an asterisk branded onto it or (get this!); launch the baseball into space on a rocket ship. He's offering the public a chance to vote on the fate of the ball on a web site, www.vote756.com. This guy's got a rocket ship? My vote is for launching the ball to the stars, my only reason being to remind NASA how it's done. Here's another Did You Know?: Mr. Ecko (no , I never heard of him either) made his dough as a "hip-hop fashion mogul" according to the New York Post (so there's an outside chance that this could be true). Hip hop dudes have a fashion mogul other than Sean John (alias Puff Daddy alias P Diddy)? Dressing guys in sweat suits, jewelry, sneakers and baseball caps earns you a spare 750 grand and your own own space ship? Go figure. Must be all the dough he saved by having his stuff made In China.

ATTENTION READERS: Got any oddball facts floating around your skull not doing much of anything? Share them with this website and I'll publish them in the next "Did You Know?" blog, with full credit of course. Doesn't matter what the subject as long as it's true. Actually, the weirder and more obscure, the better. Just click on the contact section of this site and e-mail me your odd facts. -Bob Crespo

I'm a homeowner, sort of. I bought Casa Crespo with my lovely wife Louise a bit over four years ago. On a thirty year mortgage we've barely paId any of the vig as of yet, the vig being Brooklynese for interest, so Chase Manhattan is still the majority owner here by a long shot. So how come they don't kick in their share when I spend a good chunk of my hard-earned for the endless repairs a house requires? They're the senior partners here but I'm the one shelling out all the Benjamins for supplies. Seems like we've been fixing this joint since the day we closed the deal.

A lifelong renter, buying a house was a big step for me and seemed to make the lovely wife happy. It sure did. Happy to bug me into fixing all sorts of things that seemed just fine to me. Happy to find our furniture woefully inadequate and happier still to replace said furniture. Happy to cajole me into replacing the kitchen, even though I'm the cook in this outfit and thought the kitchen was okay.

A lot I knew. Turns out it was the worst kitchen ever so we started ripping stuff out and pricing cabinets. Wow, as they say. Guess who's building the new cabinets'Me. I used to be good at that sort of thing, did it for a living many moons ago. Hope i didn't forget how. Step one was relocating the washer and dryer into the garage, so of course now we needed a door from the kitchen into the garage. Not just any door, naturally, but a steel fireproof door as per building regulations and one that's well insulated too. Garages are not noted for being overly warm in the winter and even though we recently replaced out heating system we didn't put any radiators in the garage, letting the car fend for itself .

As my usual luck would have it the only logical spot to put the door had four (count 'em) pipes running through it so we had to hire a plumber to to move them. I don't do complicated plumbing jobs, especially those involving natural gas lines due to my admittedly unnatural aversion to fiery explosions. While all this was going on Louise decided to point the house since the bricks leaked a bit here and there (Translation: quite a bit.). Pointing involves chipping out the loose mortar between the bricks and replacing it. We priced contractors who specialize in brick pointing and guess who's doing the pointing? No, not me but the lovely Louise, who's becoming quite the expert at it. Our house is finally as dry as a James Bond martini, not a leak to be found. But now I've got to paint the bricks with a special brick paint, a light beige for the mortar and a brick-orange for the orange bricks.

Now I've got to leave my halfway ripped-out kitchen remain as it is for a while and paint the house since the weather will be changing soon and you have to use this special (and expensive) paint when it's mild outside. That's okay by me since I'm taking my sweet time building the cabinets. I happen to be a world-class procrastinator and I'm long past the target date for finishing the kitchen. Not that it was my target date, mind you. I'm in no rush to finish the kitchen since that will likely mean that it's time to tackle another big job I wasn't aware was so pressing. And in the meantime I have to work and earn money, write this blog, play my music and write my songs and stories.

As you might well imagine, life's been kind of full of late around Casa Crespo. And we're doing all this for practically no money since we happen to be in possession of practically no money so that works out pretty well. I've spent my whole life working without a net, but this is really getting hairy, like my tightrope is suddenly suspended over the Grand Canyon and the Grand Canyon is full of molten lava. Good thing I'm not a worrier or I'd be worried.

Funny, for all the work we've done in four years the house looks pretty much the same except for the new door and the torn up kitchen. As I paint the bricks they still look like bricks, only really nice bricks. The new heating system we installed doesn't change the look of the place one bit. To be honest, when I finish the kitchen it's not going to be startlingly different from the old one, the only change being a bit more counter work space for me. The entrance door still leads into it and the room is still the size it was before, period. Our house is attached on both sides to identical houses in a long row so it's not like I can knock out walls and build extensions or anything like that, for which I suppose I ought to be eternally grateful. But it does seem to me that we've done so much labor in the joint that it ought to resemble the Taj Mahal by now instead of the nice little brick row house it happens to be.

I'm told these are the things homeowners must do. And do and do and keep on doing until you drop dead from so much doing. Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained to me exactly why homeowners must keep doing these things, only that's it's part of the deal and one of the grave responsibilities of being a landlord. Never gave it much thought before. I guess I was so happy doing the things that I enjoy when I was a mere renter that I just didn't realize how miserable I was not owning my own home. Back then I'd finish my work and then have the rest of the day to not work. I was under the mistaken impression that I liked that arrangement: you work, then you're done working. Silly me. I stand corrected. Now I work and … do more work! Great…

I shouldn't complain since I don't do a couple of things most homeowners do all the time and that's mow the lawn and tend the garden. Don't have those. I replaced the lawn in my back yard right off the bat with pretty white stones and cemented the rest of the small yard. I grow nothing. Hence I mow nothing, dig up nothing, weed or water or fertilize nothing. I love my backyard. Love it so much i did the same in the front of the house too. Maintenance-free, it is. As a matter of fact, everything I do around here is done with an eye towards not having to do much at all. I have things I like to do with my life other than monkey around this little house with tools and ladders and paint brushes constantly looking for where I left my tape measure.

Towards that end, everything I do I sort of overdo so I never have to do it again. Case in Point: There was a crack in the base of the foundation so I poured a few tons of cement into the form I built around the offending foundation wall. It would take a major earthquake to budge the foundation now, which is fine by me. Not being a spider, I dislike going down into the crawl space and now don't have to. When I build my cabinets they're also going to be overbuilt; simple, functional and strong as hell so I'll never have to deal with them again except to fetch food and utensils out of them. If I could line the house with plastic laminate I would. That stuff lasts forever. I just wish it wasn't such hard work to be lazy.