Bluebird Singing in the Dead of Night

I’m going with the Broncos. I just believe that if everything Tim Tebow says is true, they take care of business.

It doesn’t have to make sense. I just believe it.

Killed Bin Laden.
Out of Iraq.
Saved the auto industry.
Handled Libya and Egypt.
Played a bitch to Congress.

I digress…

Here’s the thing…and I wish my liberal friends would embrace this…it’s been a brilliant three years.  He needs a campaign where people are voting AGAINST him for dumb shit reasons. And they sound stupid doing it. The Republicans all sound bat-crazy because this guy is actually really good at keeping his nose clean, killing terrorists, and employing economic policies they have recently endorsed.

But here’s what’s interesting…if he wins, he’ll never run for anything again as long as he lives and be like Reagan and Clinton in their second terms and really get an agenda going.

I’m writing this as a stream, just because I woke up thinking about it…it’s just some notes…but since I haven’t written on the blog in a while, I thought I’d just pen them here…

I love Portland, Oregon. Love it.

My entire life, I have gone to the greater PDX area to visit close relatives, great friends, and shop without paying sales tax. Nothing but great memories.

But I have read several commentaries lately that Portland has become “the new, hipper Seattle.” (Or to that affect.)

After living near and working in Seattle for years and years, frankly, I think that’s getting it wrong. Seattle grew up. And most of these commentators skip right over the breeding ground that was my area of influence.

And I can tell you exactly the moment Seattle realized that it didn’t want to be…wait, let me go back…

Seattle isn’t the birthplace of grunge. Roughly an area from Spanaway to Aberdeen, including Tacoma and Olympia, was the birthplace of “grunge” and the whole casual world that the rest of the country thinks of as grunge. I mean, I can’t drive 15 minutes south and not pass the Sleater-Kinney (Ahem, “Portlandia”) exit. This was true in our attitudes and music and style and priorities. That was in the late 1980s. We all looked like loggers but had aspirations bigger than our fathers. But we really could beat the hell out of anyone, and there was a lot of other funky stuff. Giant swath. No gigantic military influence, no hard drugs, and lots of fights. But in the morning, you brushed yourself off and went to school. Wearing whatever. We were dressed like Spicoli, facing Mr. Hand with attitude, with the work ethic of loggers. Scrappy and slothy, but hard working and talented.

You have to remember, that this same area that brought you Chet Atkins and The Ventures…one changed country guitar licks and the other changed electric guitar period. Both ended up in halls of fame. This was the brew.

So, that’s all important three-minute background…

You had an entire culture that was a few decades old, had a vibe and an attitude, and was pretty damned cool.

Hello, Seattle!!!! One record label (Sub Pop) just killed it by signing all of these bands from the South Sound and Southwest Washington. Just nailed it. It was brilliant. Suddenly, everyone we heard in high school was getting famous by college graduation in 1993. We were hip and cool and “grunge” was the new thing. (Whatever.) But we needed jobs and needed to grow up and get a life. To the people that grew up around here, we were thinking about marriage and kids and acting like adults. To various degrees, we were still well educated, talented, and wore the same crap we did in 1988, but…

And this is important…we realized we needed real jobs to earn real money. But now, Wall Street was on board with Grunge…along with the major labels and Madison Avenue. It was the most super cool thing ever to have a job in a high rise and go to a garage Pearl Jam concert that night.  It was the hippest place. It really was nirvana to be 20-something in 1990s Seattle. Making a great living, being hip, acting flip…and then…

W.
T.
O.

1999.

Buzz kill.

All of the people that seemed to have been drawn to Seattle for all of the correct reasons turned on the city itself. And we all got old…fast.

(I’m getting to why Seattle is better than Portland in the next part. I just want to read it after a night’s sleep and decide if I like it so far.)

So I got rocked out of bed this morning with a giant bomb going off in the middle of the night as the local military base sounded the super all clear out of Iraq. I’m mixed on this whole idea.

First of all, I have to admit, every time they do these “Hooah Bombs,” I get a little tingle because I love the concept. They do them when everyone from a particular combat group stationed at the base is cleared and out of there into Germany or Kuwait. The one tonight was extra super big. Loved it even if it knocked me out of bed.

But I worry about whether it’s really over. I have serious concerns. Are we getting rid of combat troops just to appease people like me that never thought it should have happened in the first place? Because, if that’s the thinking, I would sound like the biggest dumbshit voter ever…I hated the Iraq war, I want to see it end, but I also want to back up the fact we fucked up with making sure that leaving doesn’t fuck it up even more. It’s the old thing of what do you do if your kid breaks a vase in the fancy ceramics store, you can’t just say, “I didn’t do it; not my fault, blame little Tommy two-year-old” and then scamper out and pretend it didn’t happen.

But here’s the thing…I give President Obama the gonads award for TRYING to make having all of those combat troops home by Christmas actually happen. I trust that even though those troops being saluted by that giant bomb this morning are all clear, we’re not really “done” helping with the clean up and we get that whole part of Geor…er, Tommy’s little mess.

You can be the biggest liberal or conservative in the world right now, but you have to admit, the military is in better hands under Obama/Hillary than it was before.

So here’s my point…I would run the Obama campaign this year by using a mix of the scare tactics of the Republicans in 1984 and 2008. Ronald Reagan asked in 1984: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” In 2008, it was all about the fear that the world would collapse with the junior Senator from Illinois being elected POTUS.

So, here is the question that President Obama should pose to get around the economy crap…

“Do you feel safer than you did four years ago?”

Think about it. Just a flat out challenge. He can say that he knows the economy is blah bah blah…but he was a better war POTUS than any of the yahoos could hope to be at this point. He had two giant messes, and security of the country trumps job growth and Wall Street.

OK, I get there are big flaws in that, but you have to admit…do you feel safer than you did four years ago with us doing what we said we’d do and getting out of Iraq, most of the major commanders of Al Quida dead, diplomacy in the the Pacific making China squirm, our allies in Europe needing us more than ever to cover their asses?

Pick any of the front runners in on the Republican side, and their is no way Obama doesn’t win that question. And then they can try to bring it back to the economy, and if I were POTUS Obama, I’d say “It’s your economy, stupids.”

So, yeah, I got rocked out of bed by a giant firecracker. And yes, I worry about whether it’s too soon or what’s going to happen, but I have to admit…”HOOAH!” That war is over. And I feel a little safer because of it.

I’ve been really busy the last couple of months with work and travel. But I made a Thanksgiving vow to re-dedicate myself to blogging.

There’s not a lot that I am hip on in the world, but one thing I do well is write during a presidential election year. I’ve been a political wonk ever since I was  Jesse Jackson delegate from Washington in 1988 and even made it one of my majors in college. Of course, my other thing is sports. (And actually, technically, I have a BS in Speech Therapy that has resulted in nothing more than cool words playing Scrabble.)

Anyway, this is kicking off the year of Eric being political and fun on this blog with some sports mixed in.

For a brief while, I was using Twitter and Facebook to throw very short thoughts around about some of this stuff, and then that experiment wilted on the vine because I write too long and it feels intrusive on my 45 friends and followers. So screw that…

The other thing that tripped me up was getting my life moved over to being Apple-centric for work and pleasure. Let’s just say that I lost a bunch of passwords and bookmarks, and I felt much less hip than I deserved to feel after biting the Apple.

So, in the next week, there is going to be what can be considered sort of a re-launch of Bluebirdsinging.com.

I know when I do write regularly, people read it…I can tell by reading all of the comments that I don’t moderate which aren’t spam.  But I also have learned something from my social network experiments…it’s kind of fun to have people make comments. Which leads to a little more work if I want to take it seriously.

The other thing that I have been really interested in is doing an audio podcast. I would be a really good podcast host. We’ll see…my first priority to to try and set aside regular times to actually write.

Speaking of which…

I LOVE the idea that a muslim who was born in Pakistan is buying the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team! A city in Florida is going to be held hostage by a Pakistani Muslim from Chicago over moving the team to Los Angeles. It’s got to be one of the most beautiful story arcs that could possibly play out over the next couple of years!

Best part of it all of was that the Jags owner said he purposely sold to someone with “no ties to L.A.” HAHAHAHAHA! You know what is the tie to LA and football for every single billionaire in the United States?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

This is so much like how the NBA Sonics ended up in OKC that it’s not funny or even entertaining.

But let’s get back to the fun in the whole thing…the guy from Pakistan, a muslim, is going to be holding all of the cards in one of the most bible belt Florida cities in the entire universe of right-wind Christian zealots. I’m interested just to watch the train wreck when he starts making demands for stadium changes/improvements, blah blah blah…

Speaking of demands…Herman Cain demanded that the women prove he did ANYTHING. I actually watched that interview live with Wolf Blitzer, and I thought, “Oh, shit, he just pulled a Gary Heart. Poor Herm.”

Now we know what it meant to his campaign and should be a lesson to all politicians: Don’t piss off the decade-long mistress by acting like their accusations are their problems, not yours.

Gary Heart challenged the media to follow him all the way to “Monkey Business.” (Just as an aside…Gary Heart actually, probably, would have been a very Clinton-like guy eight years early. He was a wonk, a ladies’ man, and young and brash.)

So what should have Cain done?

Uh, probably not much. He might be doing the correct thing and ending this book tour early. If I were a good campaign wonk for hire, I wouldn’t touch him with a 38-and-a-half-foot pole even if he won Iowa and New Hampshire and went down south. He’s toast.

I’ll save Newt and Mitt for later.

But I really want to make it clear. I look at running for POTUS like playing a combined game of Risk and Monopoly. If you check in here every few days or once a week, I won’t be railing on things from a left or right bent, per se. I am a pretty conservative liberal. A good old fashioned Rockefeller Republican from when that meant something, I suppose. Or maybe a Johnson Democrat. I’m old school. I don’t think any side has any moral or writ authority to be superior.

So here’s what I promise during the next year…lots of sports and politics. I will try and be very regular with posts and dutifully cary my laptop and camera around. (Speaking of which, I need to learn this new version of WordPress, and how to upload stuff.) You’ll also get some funny little stories about things that happen to me along the way.

I’m also going to try and manage comments and play with that. (This is actually gigantic on my part…I’m admitting I am a writer, and I write a lot, and it’s ok that other people discuss what I write.)

Give me a week or two. To get the beat figured out of how it all works.

-e

I keep referring to it like it’s a “mid-life crisis.”

But I think there is something about it that makes it different.

Hmmm…how to put this in a context and background in less than 25,000 words…

My wife wants to have another kid. We have tried for 10 years and it’s produced nada. And I am kind of beyond caring or wanting that at this point. Accidents can happen, but I am not planning my life around it or doing anything to really try, per se. Wife is not happy with this approach.

At the same time, my job stuff is really sucking. (Can I just put a giant blow up symbol over that?)

But we both have itches. She wants a second child; I want a more secure job. It’s a chicken and egg problem. (Which is actually funny if you think about it. Ova and…oh, never mind.)

So, I was thinking…what am I best at? I am best at getting elected to something and managing it. Seriously…I am really, really good at politics. Whether it’s high school, or college, or the airport, or a foundation…I can get elected, manage, and get out before anyone thinks poorly/greatly about the fact I did stuff they loved and hated…but I have left everything better than I found it.

So that’s MY itch.

If my wife’s itch is another kid, mine is running for a bigger office. These are the great equalizers. She does not want to help me run at this point, and I’m not sure I want to help raise another kid from scratch.  We both have itches that aren’t getting scratched.

Here’s the thing: I think we’re both coming at each itch with the same resolve and I bet that she, as a mom, would be a rockstar to a new baby. I also think I’d be great as an elected official. But maybe that’s just not in the cards. Or maybe it is. That’s the weird time in our lives right now. We have to face the moment of “what are we now that we’re grown up?”

It’s kind of the dog catching the bumper in life and marriage.

(See, that’s funny, too, because the dog would catch the car, lick his balls, and scratch an itch.)

Everyone assumes that if I was going to do a two-week Panama coast-to-coast cruise, I would do it with my wife.

Let me explain this as well as I can…she wasn’t interested in how I was doing it for all the years I pushed for it. Frankly, I just wanted an inside cabin and I would eat buffet food for two weeks. I was not picky.

She wanted nothing to do with cruising at all. It involves eight “sea days,” for one…in the volatile part of the spring. I don’t think this a big deal, but it kept coming up and it kept coming up.

So, a few years ago, Pilar said she was fine if I found somebody else to do it with. And me, taking that literally, sent out an e-mail to about 200 people just asking if “anybody” wanted to split the costs of going through the Panama Canal with me. I only got one bite…my wife.

She looked at the e-mail list and started naming people that under no circumstances I was going to live with on a cruise ship for two weeks (female), or that she trusted would actually bring me home alive (male). So it was back to the drawing boards…and waiting another year.

The next time, I had her approve a list of people that I could ask to do it with me. And I got her to approve a budget.

Nothing. I couldn’t find anyone.

Because of work and travel and stuff, a couple of more years went by, and I said, “How about if you go on a cruise and see that you really have nothing to worry about because of how little time you spend in the room and when you do, even after a week, they get on your nerves.

This was basically the “Hey, you won’t even want to spend two weeks with me when you see the whole set up, and understand more about how cruising works because there is so much else to do. Let’s go to Alaska.” She agreed, and the next year (July 2011), we did it.

Only I ran into three snags by the end of that trip:

(1) We got an upgrade to a two-bedroom suite that was HUGE. So much for living together with three of us in close quarters. We even had a butler and steak for breakfast every morning with a private pool. That, THAT, is not how I picture cruising. But that wasn’t my big problem…

(2) She saw how small the regular staterooms were and got freaked out that I would ever share that size of a room with any other woman, no matter how many beds it had. So I needed a new tact and needed to negotiated more and fast. While she still liked the cruise and also had an opinion…and I could buy a downpayment in the lobby for Panama at the cut rate.

(3)…well…before we get to three…

I asked her: “Would you ever go on a two-week cruise either in April or September with me the next two years?”

“No.”

“Can I go on a two-week cruise in the next two years because it’s been bugging me for more than 20 years and I really want to do it?”

(Insert many quick things that make me a good husband because I never do them, and husbands of people we know have for a lot sillier reasons.)

“Yes.”

“Should I just go by myself?”

“No, that wouldn’t make sense for safety.”

(Breakthrough moment.) (Hiding being internally suddenly giddy.)

“So can I ask anyone that you know, male or female, to go with me?”

“As long as you have two rooms and it’s the same as what we’re in now.”

BINGO!!!!!!

That was the last Friday night of our Alaska cruise.

Now, I have this idea that people who climb mountains or run marathons have this complete sense of purpose when they “break through the wall” of exhaustion vs. purpose. I had that for the next 48 hours.

Now, here’s the thing…I needed to get this figured out and sealed quickly, because you can’t get the cool rate once your cruise is over. I knew more about who I didn’t want to ask than who I did. So I started doing mad e-mails to my friends, pleading a case again. The problem was, I did them all from my cell phone to save money, and for 36 hours, I had no idea none of the e-mails had gone through until we got to Victoria for four hours.

DOH!

I needed somebody Pilar wouldn’t flip out about, but who wanted to do it — I mean was really motivated for it because, ummm, it is a pretty epic trip — and who I was pretty sure I’d known long enough that we could like each other and hate each other and it wouldn’t ever matter much during the two weeks because there was a bigger purpose.

So, I’m sitting there in a coffee shop on a Saturday late afternoon, thinking “Who?” I have about an hour left, knowing that if I don’t have something soon, my Panama Canal trip is at six to eight years away. (I am not exaggerating on that.) I could taste coffee in Cartegena. But NOBODY was responding as I started trying to send a second batch of e-mails.

And, here was the thing: I couldn’t just mass e-mail because I was in pretty please mode! I needed to personalize this and really almost beg.

I pretty much gave up.

So I logged onto FB just to see what had happened in the week I had been gone…

And this is how stupid I am. Or how non-FB I am. Or was. Or something. DOH! DUH! FB! I have friends on FB!

Fifteen minutes before I really needed to be walking super fast to the dock from The Empress for the last leg to Seattle…

So I made a very quick list in my head of which people were my FB friends that I would bet on having a good time for two weeks sharing a cabin one cruise through the Panama Canal. (I am a super lucky guy, because, basically, almost everyone of my 40-some-odd friends was on that list. Sorry sister-in-law and et al that are either pregnant  or have kids less than one, etc.) Once I had the list figured out…

I started staring at the screen. I was the only one on FB. I decided I was going to just ask as they pop up in order.

And I did. First my brother-in-law…whom I have cruised with before. No dice. “Too long.”

Second, my friend Brian. “No, I have to be around for the kids and school.”

Five minutes to go…

Kim’s name popped up. So I am thinking…

I’ve know her 20+ years. I like her. We have fought in the past. We have a weird synergy of shared pasts. She’s friends with Pilar on FB. We probably would like the same things on shore. She drinks so there is none of that caring about how many beers I have when we’re at sea. She’s probably smarter than I am.

I mostly just had Canal Fever. I was being infected by the same thing that has crawled into the heads of French engineers, American Presidents, West Indians, Panamanians…I just wanted to get through the damned canal. Screw all the reasoning. I was fighting my own ismuth and I have been since I was 10…

So, I asked.

She said yes.

(3) I DID NOT SEE THAT ONE COMING WITH TWO MINUTES TO GO! Shit.

Kim and I finalized all the pleasantries and then I was, uh, to say the least, panicked. I needed to get a room for the cruise so when I told Pilar back on board I had a plan and it fit all of her criteria, and now I am going to go swim laps in the pool because I’m so happy…see you in Seattle…and don’t ask me any more questions and I really am trying to look like it’s no big deal…

Here’s something I hadn’t thought of until this very moment

There were no rooms with two bedrooms available for that cruise at the moment.

OMG! None. Well, there was, but it was like $25,000 or something.

Shit. Again.

So I am briskly walking back to the Norwegian Pearl. I can see it getting closer and closer.

My legs are kind of rubbery. I know Kim’s good for it. And I have a simple part of the criteria I can’t deliver on at the moment for Pilar, but I pretty much had someone who was going to do it with me and help pay. Whattodowhattodowhattodo…

I am not very proud of this next thing. And I hope everyone that reads this understands it takes a big man to admit it. I came up with a plan to stall. And maybe lie just a little, tiny bit.

I hate the fact I did this. The next thing I told Pilar was technically not true when I told it to her back on the ship: “It’s all set and it meets your criteria exactly.”

And maybe the other two or three times I said it in the last month while I called every day waiting for someone to cancel.

The thing is, I had an out in my head…maybe…if a two-bedroom didn’t show up soon: I would just cut Kim to the wind and eat my airfare to Miami out of my personal budget. (Sorry, Kim, but that’s what was the plan in my head walking up the gangplank….er, ramp, to the ship.)

I feel bad about that…but sometimes you can’t be literal. And you get Canal Fever and you start thinking of a plan before you walk up to the dock…

Here was what I thought I’d do…

(1) Tell Pilar that it was all set that we would have the exact same cabin with two bedrooms. (Now (a) I had no freaking idea how much that would cost or (b) if one would even become available.)

(2) Get the airplane tickets to Miami bought and paid for because, for both Pilar and Kim, I could make the “good money after bad” argument if the cabin I got wasn’t up to par for either of them.

(3) Get some cabin that had a whole bunch of beds and some privacy. Any cabin that sounded like it was big. (Seriously, I am walking to the dock and this is my plan. Feverish. I was seeing tsetse flies.)

(4) Buy the first two bedroom cabin I can get my hands on when it happens.

(That was a month ago. The next installment will be about reactions to the overall plan in the meantime.)

But I am true to my word…finally, Saturday night, a two-bedroom suite became available and I got it. The only little white lie I ever told to Pilar was that I had the room a month before I had the room. It just took a month longer. But I apologized profusely and came clean about that, too. I think I will be forgiven…I wouldn’t be doing this if my wife didn’t know, over the course of the last 20 years, I push the envelop at times. About a lot of stuff.)

Canal Fever. It has made men do stupid things for almost 150 years.

The high school football team I played for, the Bethel Braves (Spanaway, WA), are playing the Permian Panthers on Friday night September 2 in Odessa, TX.

I want to go. I have never seen the movie or an episode of the TV show. But I read the book 20 years ago…and I played for the team that’s playing them, and I am kind of primed up at the thought.

You know how you get a question out of the blue and you just answer it like there is some impulse to give an answer?

The classic for me was when someone asked me what my first car was and I said, without much hesitation, a 1966 Chrysler 300.

It solved the question and sounded reasonable. But it always nagged me because I know, it’s not really true. It was a 1979 Chevy Citation. I even knew it when I said it, but it disposed of the question.

So I was talking to a friend recently that I met through work and we were talking about Facebook and business contacts and friends. This woman is about half my age (aren’t they all) and she was curious about who I thought my “best friends” really were.

“When did you feel like you were meeting your best friends?”

(Can I just do an aside here…this woman born in the 1990s was talking to me like I was born in the 1940s or something. I’m not THAT old to be giving sage advice or anything. Grrrrr…)

I gave a 1966 Chrysler 300 answer and said, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” I LOVE that quote. She was not familiar, by the look on her face.

And I kind of do believe the quote sometimes. Like I think my 1966 Chrysler was my first real car; even though I know it’s not. It just easily quotes a simple pop culture answer, only “Stand By Me” references to an early 20-something ain’t pop culture.

But here’s the thing when I was thinking about it, as it nagged me: I do still have my 1966 Chrysler since I was 14 and I love it. I invest it in now. I tune it and tweak it and take it from place to place in my life. I have done that for 25+ years. But other cars have come along.

Now I was really thinking about this…this is all happening while she is thinking we are having a mild and casual conversation and I am wondering about the meaning of life.

When do I feel like I was meeting my best friends?

“Was it in high school or college or later?” she continued.

She was asking a fairly deep question there about growing up and aging and life that deserved some super deep answer. Or something better than me popping off a quote from Richard Dreyfus in a Spielberg movie about nostalgia and a dead body.

So I dug deep into a combination of memories:

I once asked my dad who his best friend was. And he said “Any of the ones that I like and can trust. Easier to just be equal.”

I know I was in elementary school because we were sitting in the parking lot in his Rambler after class at the junior high.

And, I thought of my grandpa who always got asked which of his thousands of cars was his favorite, and he always said, even to famous people, “They are like my grandchildren…I can’t just pick one.”

So, I thought, I was was being kind of sage when I said, “Aren’t you more grownup than needing a best friend?”

NAILED IT!

It didn’t really answer the question, per se, but it was a pretty pithy, suave answer. (I thought.)

On the inside…I was thinking about the fact that I have a piece of every car I have ever owned somewhere as a souvenir and I take them around in boxes and I have incredible memories about them all. I love my friends more than my cars…but the same holds true to everyone I have ever called a friend. I have a little piece of it all the time. They’re all my best friends.

I was thinking I had tossed it back perfectly…

And then she said…

“Well, isn’t your wife your best friend?”

Shit.

That’s a good comeback you smart-assed little whipper snapper.

(Pause for a moment where I realized I was pretty much having a marriage-type discussion and I didn’t even realize it. Crap. Yes…sweat is on the brow. I am trapped. I think the room is getting smaller. Rapid breathing and the water line is getting very high all of the sudden.)

It’s a great point, though.

My wife is not my “best friend,” if I really think about it. She’s something more important and on a super bigger duper scale than friendship. She’s my, ummm…wife. My spouse. We are not friends. We’ve been together more than 20 years…but we’re not friends we’re “us.”

Now my mind is racing. And the super pressure is on because, during this completely inappropriate work conversation other people are getting big ears. Remember…this ALL happened in about two minutes and I am so twisted by my own mid-life issues I can’t even remember what the original question was all about in the first place!

The co-worker smiled and said: “You really do love all your friends don’t you. You and your grandfather were a lot alike. But you love your family more. And your wife is different because she is more special.”

(Can we be on a sidebar conference here: There are arguments to be made about this and that in his 80+ years. For the record.)

I just nodded, though, and we went on with our business.

It’s been just over a month since Clarence Clemons died.

I was thinking about it today…what are you going to do?

But actually, I was thinking about how hard it all must be even four or five weeks later. You probably have no idea.

My suggestion…go acoustic and just pop up wherever.