Hobba Lobba Da (Let Me Explain)

My brain said Happy Holidays.

My mouth said Hobba Lobba Da.

My acquaintance -- passing me in the mall -- was a little confused. I just kept walking. Once you throw something like that at a person, there's no recovery. Just keep on trucking.

Recently, I did it again. 

This time, it was only a word, just one goddamn word, that changed everything. One wrong word caused so much more damage than an innocent little Hobba Lobba Da.

In my gardening column for Charleston's Post and Courier, I wrote about Japanese beetles. They're an invasive species that causes oodles of damage on trees and shrubs. Here's what happened.

My brain wrote: "They eat everything, especially roses."

My stupid fingers wrote: "They eat everything, except roses."

Ouch. 

There's no taking that back. There's no stopping my friend in the mall and saying, "Oh, hey, Carl... yeah, sorry about that weird thing I just said, I don't know what happened. Maybe I'm having a stroke. Anyway, what I MEANT to say was Japanese beetles eat everything ESPECIALLY ROSES!!!!!!"

No, I wrote it and now it's out there. Forever and ever. 

Those in the know, horticulturists and such, will read it. They'll laugh, cut my picture out, and throw dirt at my dumb face because everyone, EVERYONE, knows that Japanese beetles LOVE ROSES!!!!!!!!!!!

So I'll run an explanation in my next column. I'll tell my readers that I had a stroke and that things are okay now. 

And then I'll write that the world is flat.

Death by Pink Dobber

Bingo. It's not for kids.

It was a large room divided by a dingy plexiglass wall. On one side, smoking. The other side, second-hand smoking.

We bought packets of bingo boards and colorful dobbers to blot out the numbers. We caught dirty looks as we found seats next to a wrinkled old woman. She was 120 years old and double-fisted with dobbers and 36 bingo boards.

No lie.

She will kill you.

The number caller was up in a boxed in podium left over from a 1970s skating rink DJ booth. He would lip the mic and his words sounded like Alexander Graham Bell's first phone call. He spit something through the speakers and the old woman's hands were a blur. WHAPWHAP!

Dobber ink everywhere.

"Ahaharigh, ahright, nexx game, next game... posgaestam... postetsemagp."

Did he say postage stamp?

SSHHHHHH! 

I whispered, What's postage--

"Firsnumb, firsnmber B5B5."

WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP!

Next game, same thing. And the one after that. We got shooshed 10 times. And then it happened. It was game four that one of us hit. BINGO!!!!!!!

A short wrinkled man (they were all wrinkled) counted out the money in his hand while a cigarette teetered between his lips. We high-fived. But it was all hate from the rest of the room. It beamed through the plexiglass wall like a smoky heatwave. The old woman looked up, then stabbed her card with pink dobbers like a contract killer. 

We took the money and ran.

When Cubs Lose

2000 miles, we flew.

2000 miles to watch the Chicago Cubs lose three games in classic Chicago Cubs style.

Ugly baseball. Sloppy, busch league mistakes. The regular season hasn't even started and Cubs fans were already chanting "WAIT 'TILL NEXT YEAR!"

But Chicago Cubs baseball isn't about baseball. At least not on this trip.

In somewhat of a semi-annual event, I've met family to watch the lovable losers drop one meaningless spring training game after another while we sit in the stands soaking up the Arizona sun and foamy cups of overpriced beer.

We gamble dollar bills on dropped fly balls.

We burn through boxes of cigars.

We suffer cramps from laughing.

5 Bertauskis.

And we leave on Sunday, boarding planes that fly in different directions, anxious for the next trip and remembering next year, ALWAYS NEXT YEAR, we could be world champs.

But my father and uncle are near 70. My brother and I near 40. My cousin, 33.

How many next years are there?

It doesn't matter. Cubs baseball isn't about winning. It's about everything else.

Can't wait 'till next year.

29029 Feet of Pain

Mt. Everest. The highest point in the world. And people climb it. They lose fingers and toes, spend days without sleep and an oxygen-deprived brain. Why?

George Mallory once gave a succinct answer. "Because it's there."

That doesn't do it for me.

No one ever described Everest as "fun".

I live a life of relative comfort. House, wife, kids, dogs, cars, food. Toothache, I got a dentist. Stomachache, I got CVS. Boredom, I got Netflix.

Somewhere along the way, though, there can be an underlying sense of wanting... more. That there's got to be more to life than living the dream. There's got to be more to it than house-wife-food. And so begins the search. Be it spiritual or otherwise, an attempt to get more meaning.

Great teachers have many quotes that capture the folly of our struggle. Occasionally, one will pop into mind when the time is right. When I read about some crazy bastard climbing 29029' into the sky, I remembered one such quote.

Your life is not about you. 

Maybe there's some sense to these mountain climbers. Maybe it's their search. There's a purpose to allowing discomfort in order to seek higher meaning. How good and comfortable and yummy something feels should not necessarily be our compass. Peace, joy, and virtue can reside in the pain and suffering as well as rapture.

Many have said that the truth can be found at home, at centers of worship, in the garden. Can be found 29029' in the air. Some claim the truth is elusive, that it might be easier to find on top the mountain than our everyday life. Nonetheless, it's there. Always there.

I hope so. Because I'm not climbing Everest.

The Amazon BreakDOWN Award

Thank you, Amazon.

Thank you for showing me what a stooge I am.

Amazon does this contest every year called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. ABNA, for those in the know. It's for all the millions of cold novelists left shivering outside of traditional publishing. You got a novel, you say? Well, be one of the first 5000 to enter and you could win a publishing contract and a $15,000 advance.

15 large, folks.

15 big.



Like most writers, I'm not after the money even though I would spend it with a smile. I'm more interested in jump-starting my (for the most part) unknown work. You know, something to get the freight train of money rolling. (Okay, I want the money.)

Last year, my novel The Discovery of Socket Greeny made it to the quarterfinals. This year, though, this year I was going all the way. The Annihilation of Foreverland is off to a great start with great reviews. I wasn't worried about the first round, from 5000 entries to 1000. In fact, I was so confident that the voice in my head sounded a little like Thurston Howell, III.

I just need to get this EASY first round out of the way. It's almost a waste of my time to search the list but, you know, just to see my name. It's going to be much harder when I get to the second and third round--

No name.

I checked it again. And again. Again.

I read all the names, all 5000, just in case it wasn't in order. Then I checked all the novel titles, in case they mixed my name up with someone else. Then I checked a different list, in case they put me in the wrong contest.

Total times reading the list: 12.

This includes the time I checked it two days later. That was yesterday.

I guess that means I'm out.

When the Candyhouse is Rocking

My sister-in-law's family is uber-athletic.

Three kids that eat, sleep and breathe baseball, softball and football. Their rooms are decorated with fatheads of Albert Pujols and shelves of shiny, metal awards. They throw like polished athletes. They own two state championships and only one of them is old enough to drive.

Two. State. Championships. And they're not driving.

Yeah.

We're the artsy-fartsy family. We dance, write, design, skateboard and ride horses. We've hit no homeruns, scored zero touchdowns, and never struck out. Our shelves have never seen a trophy. But we can make one mean candyhouse.

We were challenged to a gingerbread house contest. Two families. Two kits. Add any materials you want, as long as they're edible.

You have 90 minutes.

Go.

Behold.

A State Champion.

Left: Pretzel horse with broccoli pasture and chocolate chip dookie

Center: Fruit rollup halfpipe and pretzel stick framing

Right: Graham cracker outhouse with chocolate "filling"

Corners of house: Lifesaver rainbarrels and pretzel stick firewood

Roof: Broccoli green roof with MMs

 Starburst sidewalk

Broccoli shrubbery

INSIDE

Pretzel wood floor

MM dance floor

Candy cane "exercise" pole.

A trophy, at last.

Two mustaches. One Plane.

I was 22. That was the first time I flew in a plane.

As the jet ascended into the clouds, I had a thought. I need to jump.


Two months later, I talk a buddy into parachuting with me. We spend most of a Saturday learning how to jump and what to expect. Most of that time we're signing documents that clear their ass. In case something went wrong, it was our fault. Not the instructors.

So me and my buddy, each with our cheesy 22 year old mustaches, climb into a small plane with a Jump Master. We have on jumpsuits and helmets. The Jump Master wears shorts and flip-flops. At 3000 feet, we jump out of a perfectly good plane. My buddy goes first.

When the door opens, he turns the color of bleached snow and moves like rigor mortis. It takes a steady hand from the Jump Master to get him out on the wing. He stands just outside the door and looks back.

And then, whooosh.

I go next. This insanity is my idea. I put my foot on the small platform, slightly wider than  my boot. I grab the strut beneath the wing. And, like I was instructed after signing my life away, I step off the platform so that I'm dangling from the wing. I look back at the Jump Master.

Thumbs up.

Release.

The static line crashes my chute open. And I'm drifting. Thousands of feet above the ground. I can see for miles.

Slowly, I fall.

Fall to the ground.

If only I could fall that gracefully every moment of my life.