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danleone at gmail dot com
Some posts just beg to be re-posted!
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I was breaking my lifelong commitment never to walk into a mall after Thanksgiving. My son and I were looking for a small gift for him because he earned his brown belt in karate. I came across this and I can, without a doubt, state that I don’t want to see this in my stocking!
Each house is a different channel on his remote control. Though most of what he watches are re-runs he has seen a million times before. The house on the corner has the elderly couple in it. The wife caring for her bed-ridden husband, who lies there, mouth opened as she feeds him dinner with a spoon. The TV is always on, but the volume is low. Dancing images creating dancing shadows on the yellowed walls.
The house directly across the street houses the college kids with their parties and dorm-room chic furniture. The dining room table is bar with two barstools. The small living room is completely engulfed in the light of some cinemaplex-sized television broadcasting ESPN through the night. He notices the feet of one of the myriad girls pressed up against the screen window and the beer bottles with beer swill left on the window sill from parties long since forgotten and probably never remembered.
The divorcee, or at least that is the life he had created for her, is alone again in the unassuming house diagonally across. He cannot help but notice that she is beautiful but utterly alone with popcorn or pretzels in a bowl on her lap. She is watching The Jeffersons. How awkward that a white 40-ish, possibly divorced, beautiful woman is watching a re-run of a show about the first successful images of a black family we ever saw on TV. He thinks he hears her laugh at the shenanigans of that crazy maid, because in the big picture, we laughed harder when black characters were acting like the black characters we envisioned in our heads.
As he passes each house, he does not stop. He never stops. Because that is the difference between being an observer and being a pervert. No one can call the police when all he is doing is walking. No one can tell him where to put his eyes. The windows are only 5 feet off the sidewalk. It would almost be physically impossible to not look into a window while walking.
But, he is not interested in the shadow of the girl taking off her bra in her bedroom. He would not dream to become excited by this. She is behind closed shades. In his mind, if the shades are up or the window cracked open, or if someone did not understand the concept of venetian blinds and angles, then they were giving him permission to look. But if you couldn’t afford light-blocking shades, or an air conditioner to keep you windows down, then he would not feel comfortable with the intrusion.
But today, he stops. Tonight he cannot turn away. Because though in one house, there is a couple snuggeld together on the couch as only non-married couples can do, in the house next to it, there is something that shocks him. He stops, without thinking. He looks, without blinking.
The movements alone tell him something is wrong. The hands flailing, bodies, bracing themselves against the other. The husband is being held back by his wife. She is pleading with him. He breaks through her feeble hold and enters the child’s bedroom. The boy, equally angry, but with the additional emotion of fear, jumps into his bed. A position he has probably assumed many times before. The bed as an oasis. The sheets as shield. The father hovers over the boy and with a hand like a bear claw, grabs the boys legs spinning him around, forcing his son to listen. The boy is crying, trying to find the courage to express his disgust at being manhandled, but never being able to match the sheer power of this enraged man. The father wags his finger in the boys face, spit flying from his mouth as he practically goes forehead-to-forehead with his son. The boy’s face showing only fear. The father screaming something that no one can hear. The boy turning away, fetal. The mom, unable to control the disaster unfolding in front of her can do nothing but pound on the father’s back. The father father, pounds his chest, silverback style, as he slams the door and leaves to go to another part of the house. The child launches himself into his mother’s arms and they collapse into a tear-filled and sweaty pile on the bed. She rubs his head and shhhh’s him. The father is probably in his room, nostrils flaring, but with a hint of guilt as the realization sets in.
He doesn’t like this channel, like some episode of Law and Order. He decides it is time to turn the TV off.
My "Coming Out" Party
Originally uploaded by danleone.
This is me on the day of my first road race in over 6 years. I ran the Race for the Cure in Boston this past weekend.
This is an important time for me as I have recently lost a bajilion pounds and being in running shape just validates the whole tortuous process for me.
The race was only 5K. But there were 9,000,000 runners which makes going fast almost impossible (unless I was in the top 10…not likely).
So please join me in congratulating me on a job well done.
Damn, I am bushy!
Oh, and yes, those two books behind my right ear are Al Franken’s. I apologize to my non-pinko-commie liberal readers….both of you.
World’s Biggest Eyes
Originally uploaded by danleone.
Have you EVER seen eyeballs like this on a human? This is CoCo on her first day of school.
Her long, straight red hair looked and felt like a blood-soaked dagger being withdrawn from his chest. He has only seen hair this red and this straight in one other place; his dreams. This was beyond a “thing” he had for red hair. This was the very reason for having this “thing” in the first place. Amidst the stacks of books at the Barnes and Noble, there she was; sitting with her legs crossed exactly as she used to cross them; at her ankles. Her posture was ballet-dancer upright and her neck was still as long and pale and utterly visible from every angle as he remembered it. She carried a handbag that revealed money was not an object because it was covered in someone else’s monogram. She was one of those women that knew what “season” she was and everything she wore reflected that. Her earthy browns and oranges could only look good on her transparent skin and flaming hair. She was reading a magazine that revealed nothing about her intellect. He remembered People magazines were neatly placed in the wicker basket next to her couch. She would always be a star-struck child that was as much interested in the latest Hollywood scandal as she was in Mozart. The Marriage of Figaro was her favorite….her favorite anything, and it became his too soon after they met. Whatever was in her head, he wanted to know it too. He read librettos and tried to quote Shakespeare with the same ease as she. He read non-fiction and eventually could spew off the Latin names of birds by merely listening to their calls as they walked through the woods together. All this was done for the woman sitting not twenty feet from him. A woman that he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. All this for the woman that loved someone else.
But fifteen years can and should change a face. The woman he was watching looked exactly like she did when they broke up in anger so long ago. It felt as if this was just a day after their explosive ending. He remembered the intensity, the screaming, the tears as he was being told in a million different ways that it was over. When she turned to leave, he knew that she didn’t mean it. She really loved him but it was clear that she was not going to get out of her situation for at least one of those million reasons. He couldn’t let that happen, but had no choice now. She drove away.
With S.W.A.T-like precision, he weaved around the stacks to get a better view. His heart beating into his throat as he wondered if there were cameras watching his actions. He noticed that she never looked up despite having tried a few times to cough out her name, “Jean!” while pretending to pull a book off the top shelf. She never blinked. But she didn’t look up because her name wasn’t Jean or that she didn’t hear him. No, Jean was always the ice princess. As cool as a frozen cucumber. For those very select few that were allowed into her ice castle, she was a normal human being with glimpses of a giddy child. For the rest of the world, she was the very definition of cold.
He played out the entire meeting in his head. He noticed that she still had her wedding ring on so either she was still married to him or she married someone else soon after their breakup. Whatever the case, this guy might still be in the store. He looked around at the magazine racks and noticed a few potential husbands. Possibly that guy trying to hide the fact, not very well, that he is reading a Playboy magazine. He tucked it facing the wrong way into the wrong section of the racks and turned around. He is pretty enough to be her husband and he definitely looks like she purchases his clothes.
Then, without notice, she stood up, tossing the magazine to the bench and began walking. Perhaps she did see her lurker and she was planning on getting away from her husband to meet in some obscure corner of the store. He was already beginning to think that the science fiction section was a good place to talk without being interruped. If even for a few seconds.
He raced around trying not to lose her. She walked, pretend-browsing style, making eye-contact with only book bindings. He was in the very next row and tried to follow her sound as it moved down the aisle. He rounded the corner and misjudged her proximity because she was rounding the corner at the same time. This was not the way he had dreamt about meeting her. They stood only a couple of feet apart from each other for only a few seconds but it seemed like an hour. Awkwardly, he said, “Jean?” and tried to smile. She stared some more, tilted her head and without blinking, said, “No.” Nothing else. “Oh, um, sorry,” he said as she walked past him and out of the store…alone.
I work in a corporate environment and I know that whatever job one has, it comes with its own language and jargon. Some of those words are necessary and specific to the profession. But what really sets me on edge is when I hear a barrage of business cliches that do nothing to move the conversation forward. My current pet peeve phrase is: “Getting our ducks in a row.” AAAARRRRGH! If I hear that one again, I am going to launch myself out the window!
Here is a repost of a post I wrote last year with even more terms. Remember, the list is based on a real presentation I attended. I was so side-tracked by the cliches that I had no idea what he was talking about.
Those annoying business cliches that people use when they have no idea what they are talking about! I went to a sales meeting in May and from a single presentation, here is what I heard:
“moving the needle”
“move this product through the gates”
“we have sharpened our pencils”
“we have to execute on all levels”
“we have pockets of success”
“we will use this as kind of an eye chart” - I don’t even know what that means!
“demographic or age buckets”
“forward thinking”
“penetrate the distribution and maximize the market”
“sell at the margin-enhanced price”
“the big uptick will be in….”
“everyone needs to be fully sampled”
“this is just a snapshot”
“look at the competive landscape”
“look at the metrics and incentivize…”
“sell the hot bag” - ????!!!!!
“gaining traction”
“going forward”
“as per…”and my all-time stomach turning favorite, “peeling the onion”
This is from one person during one presentation! Once he started speaking, I completely disregarded the purpose of the presentation and began copying everything down. My hands hurt.
I have been on a rampage at work against those generic, military-inspired cliches since that meeting. So, “as per” my previous post, “going forward” you will never hear me using these phrases!
This is going to be a rant; a rant about my Baby Goats. But please don’t get me wrong. My kids are each brilliant in their own special way. My 10 year old can beat me in a game of chess. My 6 year old is funnier than any comedian in Vegas. My 4 year old can disarm you with her eyes.
But this is where the benediction ends.
This weekend I realized that there are a whole bunch of basic things that ALL kids should know by now. Or there are things that I knew when I was growing up.
1. My goats can barely ride their bikes - When I was their age, I rode my bike as a form of transportation. It was how I got around. Living in the city and with all the risks of leaving kids alone, has made this virtually impossible nowadays. The two oldest are able to ride, but have not a stitch of common sense. They might as well be riding blind-folded.
2. The goats have no idea how to tie their own shoes…in a way that they stay tied. In an age of velcro shoes, it has become too easy for parents to merely buy velcro and forgo the hassles of bending down to tie a knot. Not to mention that when the kids do have tie shoes, the shoe laces these days stupidly and frustratingly refuse to stay tied. I must have told Michael 16 times to tie his shoes at his cousin’s birthday party over the weekend.
3. My 10 year old does not know long division or how to carry in subtraction. In fact, we as parents, were told to not teach those things to him by his teachers. We were told that would undermine the school’s attempt to teach. WTF?
4. How to respect their parents….I won’t even go there except to say when I was a baby goat, I NEVER EVER talked back to my parents!
5. How to play in the snow for more than 10 minutes without dying of frostbite. Each of the kids has North Face hats, Thinsulate gloves, L.L. Bean boots and Patagonia fleece-lined jackets, but after spending an hour getting them dressed, they walk outside and instantly complain that they are cold. All they want is to go back into the house, have some hot cocoa and play on the Game Cube. Whereas, when I was a baby goat, I had to wear those knit mittens that instantly soaked up water and froze to your skin and a pair of galoshes (by the way, my spell check does not even know what to do with the word “galoshes”!).
6. How to lose! In the days of “everyone is a winner,” we have bred a generation of kids completely ill-prepared to compete in the real world.
7. “Cursive” writing - Michael does not even know what that means!
Don’t get me wrong, there are a million things that they do better than I could ever do…even as an adult:
1. They can find an image of the Rosetta Stone on Google, copy it and then paste it into a Power Point presentation, include some transition effects and some animation…all in 20 seconds.
2. They know what the middle mouse button does.
3. Use chopsticks
4. Negotiate to the point of utter exhaustion and eventual capitulation.
5. Can locate every Family Guy video on YouTube
6. Use the Picture-in-picture feature on the TV
7. When faced with a coffee table filled with 4 remote controls, they don’t hesitate to reach for the one that will find the “Main Menu” for the DVD player.
8. Make fart sounds with at least 4 different body parts that are NOT their butts.
Whatever happened to the Number #1 pencil? We know the #2 is ubiquitous, but where did the #1 go?
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Why do flight attendants make you “place your seats to the full upright position” on takeoffs and landings? After all, the seats only move about 2 inches between the upright and the “reclined” positions . Are they afraid that you might sleep through the next crash?
I am sure that both of you missed my witty observations about life this past week, but I have been preparing for a trip to Vegas. I am here until Wednesday. I am giving a small presentation at a user’s conference here and then spending a lot of time watching people.
Here are a few brief observations that I have compiled over my last two visits here:
1. Why is nothing EVER as close as it seems? From Caesar’s Palace, where I am staying to the conference in the Venetian, it seems like it is always a half hour walk despite the fact that I can see the Venetian from my window. Not to mention that every hotel and casino is a city unto itself, I can spend thirty minutes just walking from my room to a bar in the casino. I don’t get it.
2. Dry heat is still heat…especially when it is over 100 degrees!
3. I don’t trust anything I see here. I feel like everything is painted on or somehow an illusion. I look out my window and I can see mountains, but I KNOW that they are fake and are really just painted on to my window. I have tried to scrape them off but that hasn’t worked yet.
4. I don’t understand how people can bring their children to Vegas. No matter the marketing people say, Vegas is not a family destination.
5. I do not believe I have seen a single sign of wildlife. I mean not even a bird, insect or squirrel. Where are they?
6. Though I have no concept of gambling, I can see the value in poker and blackjack, but why would ANYONE spend hours pushing a button on a slot machine?
7. I want to give myself an ammonia dip when I get home.
8. How much does it cost the fat, disgusting old man to walk around with three beautiful 20 year olds with their ultra-mini skirts so tight that I can see their tattoos.
9. If you are not a 20-something whose profession is to use their body, then do not, I repeat, do not walk around the casino in the aforementioned ultra-mini.
10. When I am outside, am I really outside? Or is that part of the illusion?
Thanks for listening!
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IMG_3619
Originally uploaded by danleone.
Here we are at Cold Spring Park in Newton. It looks like we are in the woods when the reality is that we are about 20 feet behind home plate at a baseball field. Trust me, my kids wouldn’t know what to do do with real nature.
The Grizzly Adams scruff on my face is my Weekend Warrior look.
World’s Dumbest Invention
Originally uploaded by danleone.
I was so proud of myself when I lost weight that I went to The Gap yesterday to buy myself a few new pairs of jeans. I found these on the clearance rack and was doubly happy that I got a good deal.
So take a pair of brand new button-flys and then throw 2 liters of water into my bladder and you can see that this is a recipe for disaster. I must have spent 5 minutes trying to unbutton myself. Luckily disaster was avoided…but barely. Now, I have been walking around with only two buttons buttoned….just in case!
On a side note: Check out those gorilla-knuckles!
