SM Shrake: No, Facebook, What are YOU doing right now? You always ask me and I never ask you, Facebook! So, what’s up? You give us a status update.
December 2, 2008 at 5:31pm

Before everything goes fully a’Twitter (I never will), I want to immortalize the art of the Facebook status update.

Did you know you can keep going back and back with the “Older Posts” button on Facebook, all the way to the beginning? You can see your whole “wall” history. And maybe that would be a good thing for you to do, to see how boring you’ve been, how ashamed you should be…

The following are REAL-LIFE specimens of unfathomably lame-assed status updates I have seen on my Newsfeed, from people I can’t believe I call my friends. Actually, posting status updates like this gets you defriended quickly by me; this amounts to a collection of Facebook epitaphs for casualties of my defriending storms:

“[ ]… is at work trying to accomplish some tasks.” “[ ]… is getting stuff done.” “[ ]… is starving!” “[ ]… is glad to be done with work for the day.” “[ ]… is ready for the weekend.” “[ ]… is ready for this week to be over!!” “[ ]… is looking forward to Friday.” “[ ]… is getting coffee.” “[ ]… is disappointed.” “[ ]… is hoping that today is better than yesterday.” “[ ]… is thankful.” “[ ]… is predicting a crazy, if not unexpectedly so, week.” “[ ]… is wishing that the weekend wasn’t over!” “[ ]… had a great night last night.” “[ ]… has finished putting away the dishes.”

In response to such megatwaddle, I launched an ongoing anti-boring-status-update campaign through my own status updates:

SM Shrake … It’s raining boring status updates! April 20, 2009 at 1:11pm

… What is this, Night of a Thousand Boring/Cringe-Inducing Status Updates? February 15, 2009 at 1:23am

… is gearing up to talk about the WEEKEND with other weekend fans! Please don’t forget to ask me if I have any big plans. I love talking to you about it. January 9, 2009 at 1:12pm

… is itchin’ for some days-of-the-week talk. Here, I’ll start. Sure don’t seem like a Friday, does it? January 2, 2009 at 10:45am

… Oookaaay, let’s bring the room down a little. Anybody want to talk about how it’s Friday? TGIF! Woohoo! Mondays suck! Fridays RULE! December 19, 2008 at 2:01pm

… has today and Monday off. JEALOUS? Hey, anyone want to chat about the days of the week with me? I’m around. August 1, 2008 at 9:30am

WHY DO WE BROADCAST OUR STATUS TO THE WORLD? What kind of exhibitionistic freaks have we become? I remember on the chronically, bafflingly F.U.B.A.R. flop Friendster they had some kind of status bar, I can’t remember the magical little name for it, though. It seemed dumb then. Twitter seems dumb now. The first time I heard about Twitter, which was around the time in late 2007 that I joined Facebook, I thought “Oh, HELL no.” And I haven’t budged.

What is the difference between stultifying, numbingly banal status updates and ones that are worth reading? Well, if it’s about you or me — about our persons — it should tell something that is not boring, but rather, interesting. It should evince some kind of a reaction in my brain beyond stunned boredom.

SM Shrake… so, the memorial service is over… where are they planning to take Michael Jackson’s remains now? Does anyone know? Are they just going to drive around until they run out of gas, rather than admit there’s no plan? July 7, 2009 at 4:20pm

… COLLEAGUE: Did you get new glasses, Scott? You look different. SM: No, I’m getting really fat, so my glasses just look smaller. But they’re the same ones. May 6, 2009 at 5:53pm

… is nice once he gets to know you. So don’t think of him as “mean” or “scary” — think of him as “pre-nice.” April 10, 2009 at 11:08am

… knows he’s getting old, because he habitually refers to his iPod as a “Walkman” (much as Grandma Shrake used to call the refrigerator an “ice box”). March 13, 2009 at 10:26am

… wants to be on “Intervention.” But no one loves him, so it won’t happen in this lifetime. March 9, 2009 at 9:27pm

… is going to a puppet show with his ex tonight. Bringing some of my own puppets along so I can maybe get in on the act. February 15, 2009 at 3:54pm

… would be so embarrassed if anyone knew what song he is listening to (Hanson, “Mmm Bop”)… Oops, I guess it’s no longer “a secret no one knows.” January 15, 2009 at 3:48pm

… was thinking the other night: If I’m fat, then fat is hot. December 16, 2008 at 10:59am

… is returning to bed after eating some fried chicken for breakfast. December 12, 2008 at 10:22am

… is torn between two physical therapists, feeling like a fool. Getting manhandled by both of them is breaking all the rules. December 4, 2008 at 11:33am

… is dreading another weekend. November 21, 2008 at 2:15pm

…, when he was under 18, used to like it when he would get cards and letters from his grandparents addressed to “Master SM Shrake”. November 13, 2008 at 12:09pm

… is going to be at Halo later if you want to come try and assassinate him. May 16, 2008 at 5:07pm

… would never defriend the hand that feeds him. April 9, 2008 at 10:01am

… wonders if anyone else, as he does, wonders if others can hear the lame light-rock music you’re listening to on your iPod. January 11, 2008 at 11:42am

WHAT ARE THE NECESSARY AIMS OF A GOOD TOPICAL STATUS UPDATE? It should entertain, delight, challenge, blow a mind or two. This is all about realizing and fully accepting that Facebook is a stage, and we’re all players.

POLITICS

SM Shrake…
… thinks it would have been funny if President Obama had given the interview to Al-Arabiya in FLUENT ARABIC. January 27, 2009 at 10:20am

… is amused that it’s Obama’s first day on the job and the first day I was blocked by his motorcade! I just put on some Mary J. Blige and chilled while we waited. January 21, 2009 at 10:12am

… is going to ask Diego, the Barber to the Chief Justices, to give me a “John Roberts.” Cuz I wanna look like Justice John Roberts. Or should I get a “Rehnquist”? January 8, 2009 at 3:44pm

… “split his ticket” on Tuesday: He circled Barack Obama and crossed out Joe Biden, and crossed out John McCain and circled Sarah Palin. You can do that, right? November 6, 2008 at 10:35am

… is feeling weightless, in silent awe that this 8-year-long nightmare will soon be over. It’s deeply personal, jiggling every molecule in my body. November 4, 2008 at 4:21pm

… thought he had heard Sarah Palin say she and John McCain both believe “you can’t blink.” But last night at the debate, he showed he can blink like a champ. October 16, 2008 at 12:23pm

… is waiting for Hillary to walk him down the aisle and give him away to Barack. June 4, 2008 at 1:52pm

… doesn’t think the media is making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear with Obama… just a silk purse out of some above-average polyester. February 22, 2008 at 10:43am

… Even if Hillary found a cure for AIDS tomorrow, the headline from our super-fair media would be: “Clinton Pathetically Tries to Upstage Obama by Curing Disease That Was Started by Her Husband Anyway”. February 14, 2008 at 3:00pm

MISCELLANY

… Attention, people: Just because it’s warm doesn’t mean you have to immediately put on your scummy flip-flops and make everyone look at your feet. Grow up. March 7, 2009 at 5:55pm

… wonders if it’s okay, in lieu of “the Talk,” to just buy someone a copy of the book “He’s Just Not That into You” and say, “Here, read this.” March 3, 2009 at 8:58pm

… RE: Valentine’s Day: Do leather daddies give those LEATHER ROSES they sell at the gas station to their partners? If not, who buys them? February 14, 2009 at 9:57am

… is offended that Béyoncé was allowed to sing the song “At Last” for the Obamas’ first inaugurational dance. She would be great at a children’s talent show, but she is not up to this task. January 20, 2009 at 8:42pm

… The song playing in the cab, Nancy claims, was “Secret Agent Man.” But I swear it’s “Secret Asian Man.” Oh, secret Asian man: When will you come out as Asian? December 8, 2008 at 9:58pm

… Bogus business-speak terms of the day: “Pain points” and “sweet spots.” Is it a business or an S&M dungeon? December 5, 2008 at 11:56am

… paraphrases the Stones: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you can’t get what you need either. October 13, 2008 at 1:46pm

… loves the strangeness of life. Barbra Streisand and I are both HuffPost contributors now. Reunited, and it feels so good! September 20, 2008 at 2:55pm

… likes “Intervention” so much that y’all might need to do an intervention on him to cure him of his “Intervention” addiction. An “Intervention” intervention. June 23, 2008 at 9:18pm

… called Barbra Streisand to wish her a happy birthday, but she was out so I talked to James Brolin for a while and told him he should blog for HuffPost. April 24, 2008 at 3:30pm

… I guess when they tried to make Amy Winehouse go to rehab this time, she said “Yes, yes, yes.” January 24, 2008 at 3:05pm

… is wondering what Evel Knievel’s funeral will involve, stunt-wise. December 10, 2007

I AM A PERFORMER and I only like (to hear things from) other performers. FB is a public forum, and you owe your “reading public” something more than “SM is at work.” Facebook gets it, actually: They have that HIDE feature now, where you can “shut” your most boring friends “up” (“down”?). Praise the Lord for that. One more pointless status update, [ ], and you’re getting hidden with extreme prejudice.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

AND YOU CAN FRIEND HIM ON FACEBOOK!

“YOU Were Meant for Greatness.” Those words are stenciled in black spray paint on a gray electrical box on my street. When I first saw this curious graffito, I indulged in a faint little smile. Some days as I passed it on my way home from work it almost made me cry. So many (other) toothless, hopeless wrecks in my neighborhood, you know, need some courage and a kind word. Hope. Then one day I noticed the little anarchist’s A in a circle underneath it. Ruined the whole thing. Now it’s taunted me for a year and a half of my not-great existence. I avoid it now like the curse it obviously is. One of these nights I will paint over it. Those messages that are born of anarchy die of anarchy, too.

***

We’re well on the other side of the wrenching election that brought such stirring hope and change to every molecule of our collective national being. Many have commented to me about how incongruous Mr. Obama is to them. They still can’t shake a dreamlike feeling. Did we really shed the poisonous Bush regime in favor of a young, smart, attractive, liberal president with a sense of humor and “compassion” that isn’t just a cruel joke, or will we wake up violently from this dream? At the same time, creeping across the proscenium, sneaking inwards from our peripheral line of vision, is a stealthy nightmare. “This Economy”®.

***

I’m going to say what President Barack and his guys have been hinting around at. It’s this: Everything is going to vanish, in stages. Every. Thing.

***

Think of all the vanished answering machine messages in the world, in all the languages of the world. Gone forever. Don’t be so confident that everything you say and do is cached in those “safe” and capacious server farms out in the middle of the country or wherever they are. Answering machines once thought they were indispensible, too. They didn’t see the next thing coming, and now they’re buried deep in a dump. I’m talking to you, Internet. The anarchists are not just going to let you keep going.

***

As the Depression solidifies into Armageddon, we’re all going to have to get more comfortable with committing a lot more crime, too. The average Joe of the near future is going to make Mad Max look like Paul Lynde.

***

I have some ideas for how to profit from the end of the world. I started by registering as a trademark the words “this economy,” so every time one of you uses those words you have to pay me a royalty.

I heard on TV that a lot of down-laid/out-sized people are starting businesses of their own because there are no jobs. I heard the trend is for groups of friends to set up cookie shops in abandoned office space. Like squatting, but the business version.

I think we can do better than a creepy bake sale in a ghost office park, don’t you? See what you think of my first few ideas for businesses to start:

1. Internet II. We all take for granted that there can only be one World Wide Internet. Why? Think of how much $$$ the first Internet generated for its inventor, Bill Gates. Don’t you want to be Bill Gates? He’s got all the money. Get all Chinese on his ass, steal the knowledge you need and build it. Anarchist-proof it. Then underprice him. This current Internet is vulnerable, and it CAN BE BEAT.

2. Eviction Shields. Your pitch to customers: “Don’t let them evict you. Fight back.” The evictioneering field is saturated. But that in itself has created a new business opening: Provide people with ways to eviction-proof their home, such as moats, impenetrable steel doors, and of course strategically positioned snipers. Offer an end-to-end eviction-prevention system and people will pay as much as they can to stave off the inevitable for another week.

You may ask, “But, if they are broke and losing their house, where will the people get the money to pay for the Eviction Shield?” I anticipated that question…

3. Shadow Economy Job Training School. The non-shadow economy, the big one, is f*cked forever, let’s face it. But that means the secondary, “shadow” economy will “boom” all the harder. Lots of former IT workers, secretaries, and HR recruiters have no clue how to get into the cockfighting or drug-dealing business. That’s where you come in.

“But Scott, where will people get the money to pay the tuition at your crime school?”

Maybe I’ll offer scholarships. At exorbitant interest rates. I’ll read up on how the predatory mortgage lenders and banking-product people ran their scam, and get an idea of how to do this. Before angry mobs kill them all.

By the by, I’ve got lots more ideas for Depression-busting businesses you can start, but they’re a little shocking/disturbing, Jeff won’t let me put them on here. (I’ll give you a hint: One of them involves Soylent Green.) Drop me a line and I’ll send you the complete list for $2.

A friend writes: “This is so tender, sincere, guileless. Does this happen in 2008 without a wink of irony?” Short answer, no. Let’s take it bit by bit.

0:00. So, I used to watch “Kids Are People Too” (KAPT), even though I considered the title an insult. I was a pretty obnoxious “children’s rights activist” in the ’70s, so the name of the show was offensive: too obvious to state. “Of course we’re people, what else would we be, animals? Rocks?” I would say. Now I have reverted to believing they should be seen and not heard. Kids today aren’t as interesting as I was, though.

[There is close to nothing about KAPT on the Web. A few YouTube videos, and some practically empty shells at sites like TVGuide.com, TV.com, etc. It ran from 1978 to 1982, apparently. That tracks. I remember one episode where they featured two boys with that ’70s disease of super-rapid aging. They were two little boys that looked like they were 100 years old.]

Yet even though I watched, I don’t remember this host at all (apparently his non-ironic name is Michael YOUNG), whose pants leave nothing to the imagination, but whose banter with Patti does.

The washed-out, caramel color of the videotape this clip was transferred from only adds to the distancing effect, the eeriness.

0:19. “Everybody says ‘Patti Smith, punk rock.’” “Who? Who said it?” These kids in the audience are the same age I am, give or take a few years, and I certainly have no memory of knowing about punk rock when I was 9 years old, even though that was around its peak (the Sex Pistols broke up in ’78, for instance). But the kids in this audience seem to know who Patti Smith is, and they burst into spontaneous applause at the mention of Mick Jagger. Which is surprising, somehow. KC and the Sunshine Band, I would expect. But the Stones? Again, these kids are too young.

0:36. The little hand gesture while she says “it changes minute-to-minute.” I think she’s “on” something. I read that Patti was voted “Class Clown” in high school, which seems to belie her haunting Mapplethorpe imagery from the ’70s and the disturbing tone of many of her lyrics (e.g., the male-male rape scene that opens “Land” on the album “Horses.”) So, transpose the androgyne who sings about one boy pressing another boy against the “locka” and violating him, onto a soundstage full of happily screaming children, and voila, you have this clip, with its full quill of cognitive-dissonance arrows.

1:18. Her South Jersey accent is beyond intense, but so are the kids’ Jersey accents. Where was this filmed, Passaic?

Will you answer some questions? He asks. “I’m ready,” she says, like it’s a big deal. I think the audience is 99% girls, and all of the question-askers are girls. Which is interesting.

The mention of Mick Jagger causes PS to imitate his swagger and facial expression.

1:36. Kim Vaccaro asks where PS was born. “Chicago, Illinoise, Planet Earth.” Okay, then.

1:39. So she lived in Detroit (St. Clair Shores, to be exact) by this time, with her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5, because she answers as much to the host of KAPT. Proudly, with no explanation. Love.

2:12. What’s with the third girl (Melissa) saying, “What made you decide to take a music career?” Take a career? That’s such an old-fashioned turn of phrase. But this was 30 years ago. Ouch.

She entered into the “field” of rock ‘n’ roll? Hahaha.

2:30. She talks about giving rock ‘n’ roll back to the kids, “Myself included.” Her first child was not to be born till three years later. (She took a vacation from music to raise a family in suburban Detroit in the ’80s. I want to know so much more about this. I remember it vaguely; she blended in, I think, and no one paid her any attention there.)

2:56. I cannot believe the exaggerated clamoring to ask questions. Beatlemania, wtf. Baby dyke asks who her favorite singer is. “Maria Callas and Mick Jagger”? And they applaud again, this time inadvertently for Maria Callas. As though they know who that is.

3:20. As soon as she prefaces her song choice by saying “I know that’s a weird choice for me, but I like that song…” she strips any possibility for irony away with turpentine. So nonpatronizing — “tender, sincere, guileless” — with her shout-out to the Year of the Child.

3:34. She’s so excited to sing “You Light Up My Life,” and she’s not even kidding.

3:42. Michael YOUNG announces that they got the composer, your boyfriend, Joe Brooks… he not only composed the song “You Light Up My Life,” (YLUML) he wrote, directed, and produced the unwatchable 1977 movie of the same title. Then his résumé gets sketchy, threadbare. I wonder what the story is there. Maybe free-basing lit up his life… Who knows. He’s 70 now.

The musical number is such a talent-show-level performance, it’s … I … She stumbles over to the piano, and the composer of “YLUML” f*cking just hands her the mic, like, “Here you go!”

She sings with her eyes closed like a shy kid would.

It’s hard to understate how ubiquitous this song was when it came out, circa 1977. Star Debbie Boone and her father, Pat Boone, are right-wing nuts. I can’t remember what the movie was about. Somebody was handicapped or non-Christian or something.

4:52. You’ve got your bush-league psychedelic FX while she sings.

6:02. Then she forgets the last couple of lines… oh, wait. Joe is singing… is he filling in for her, or is she letting him take over on purpose?

6:36. She wraps up by shouting (unironically) the verse “You give me hope to carry on!” then it’s over and after awkward goodbyes with the host and the pianist, she waves and hesitates and just kind of walks offstage while Michael implores the viewers to stay tuned.

“Don’t go away because we have much more to come. We have Count Dracula and Adam Rich…”

To paraphrase “This Is Spinal Tap”: PUPPET SHOW AND PATTI SMITH.

LATER

In Royal Oak, MI, there used to be a clothing boutique, in the ’80s, called Patty Smith. The eponymous owner was a kind of funky hipster eccentric. I can remember reading at the time that Patti Smith successfully sued Patty Smith to remove their similarly-spelled name from the shop. It was kind of a scandal around Detroit. Like, who does this Patti Smith think she is? I’d have to do some research to see what the deal was. The more I think about it, Patti Smith WAS a fashion icon, so there were grounds. But it was one little shop in Royal Oak. Not a national brand or something.

EVEN LATER

I saw her perform at the big HMV (His Master’s Voice) on Walnut Street in Philly back in the late ’90s. She just rolled in and did a few numbers with a guitar right on the sales floor. I think it was in the middle of the Easy Listening section. As I usually do when I’m curious about someone, I locked eyes with her, but she stared me down within two seconds. Let’s face it, her eyes win. Spooky and wise, and they always, always were.

SUMMARY THOUGHT

She obviously did this children’s show because she wanted to. Why did she want to?

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

Oh-hey-look I’m writing about Facebook again. Instead of getting rich off a similar pyramid scheme, or “marketing myself” off-Facebook, where it count$, I’m sitting around in the dingy Facebook Fascination bathwater we all seem to be wrinkling up in.

Neverandnonetheless, I started a group late last month on The ’Book (as I call it), called “Frandor Forever.” No big deal, I’ve started one before. I just invited a few friends from college to join me in an online celebration of photos of ourselves from back in the day. It was as easy as pushing a button, 1-2-3. Not many bells and whistles on the Facebook groups, kids.

But when I pushed the button, something exploded. And I think I’ve figured out why.

First, an explanation of what it is. The official blurb on the group page is: A Facebook group to share our memories of Michigan State University and Greater East Lansing circa 1985-1995, give or take.

Originally, I had sent the following Facemail (as I call it) message to about 15 college friends on Facebook:

I want you all to know that a little bodega on Columbia Road a few hundred yards from where I live in Adams Morgan/D.C. underwent some construction this summer and then last week unveiled what they had been working on: They turned a corner of their store into an OH YEAH YOGURT. Remember that place in East Lansing? Across from Pinball Pete’s… I believe it was then replaced by Caffe Venezia… Long live OH YEAH YOGURT! Who knew it was a chain that can survive decades and creep up on you and scare you like that?

Well, everybody started talking about the old days in this Facemail message thread. It was getting out of hand, with lots of new responses all the time, so I said, You wanna know what? I feel a Facebook group coming on. What should I call it?

Frandor is this trashy, weird shopping center named for the husband and wife that developed it in the mid-20th century — Francis and Dorothy Something — in East Lansing. So the name Frandor itself in an insider tip to people who attended MSU but also left campus once in a while. By not making an explicit reference to Michigan State, I was being a little more roundabout with the naming than, say, “Spartan Pride” or “MSU Memories.” It was code, a dog-whistle to my friends, though it’s served to keep (I hope) the former fratboys and fratgirls out. Then as now, I’m a snob. It’s the difference between:

Now, what else would encourage the sharing of memories? Maybe the word “forever.” Frandor Forever. Nicely alliterative, also reminiscent of John Waters’s script for the never-filmed sequel to Pink Flamingos, dubbed Flamingos Forever. John Waters was our patron saint back then. Before his movies lost their teeth and Hairspray slipped down to middlebrow schlock.

Forever also implies our own immortality, which we all believed in when we were 19. And here’s me coming to my point. I think the reason hundreds and hundreds of people have now joined Frandor Forever is that we’re all pushing 40 (from one side of the number or the other) but we’re on Facebook, which was designed… for whom? For college kids. And what are we reminiscing about? College. Where are we doing it? Right in the very midst of oblivious present-day college kids. An unspoken invitation lurks for these young whippersnappers to come look at what the truly cool once looked like.

Anyway, the more we discuss what bands we were in, or went to see (I saw the Pixies live in 1989, okay?), or liked, and look at pictures of ourselves smoking and drinking and living in filth (John Waters’s ideal) and dressing up and being badass and young and thin and beautiful, the more flattered we become with our best memories of ourselves.

In the hundreds of photos that FF members have posted, it’s become manifestly clear that we were the kool kids at Moo U. Even with the pics of people I don’t know, who were there at the same time as me, otherwise not so interesting, the amazing fashions alone are worth the price of admission.

I’m sure some totally not-kool kids have waltzed in to the group under my non-watchful eye. Welcome, all! Like multi-colored food items, aging unkool and aging kool kids all come out the same color in the end. We all get equalized by Father Time, the Equalizer.

There have been lots of news articles about how the average age of Facebook members is slowly creeping upward. But no one has said why.

Here’s your answer. For the 40ish set, Frandor Forever (or your own time- and place-specific online reunion where people belatedly “meet” people and put names to faces they recognize from parties 20 years ago but never met at the time, where people demand that college-town luminaries join Facebook in order to participate in the group, where a detail in a photo makes dusty corners of your brain open up to let little clusters of memories fly out) is what Facebook was meant for.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

On my recent trip to Dublin with my unforgettable sister, KP, I was thinking about how I had never been so comfortable with my American accent abroad. I hadn’t been overseas since 1999. Maybe it’s getting older that makes you just not care. I didn’t apologize for how I talk or feel bound to explain it or anything. I am who I am.

We were looking for the next haunted church on our packed “Death and Drag Tour 2008,” standing kind of in the middle of an intersection. An old man with a forest-green wool coat and cap, wearing three-day stubble and dried soup speckles on his chin, carrying a cane, saw us hesitating over our map and asked if he could help us find something.

At first his impression was of the kindly, gallant, avuncular Irish bloke with a pipe in his mouth of postcards and legend. This guy said “’tis” and was Straight from Central Casting (“We need a ‘Twinkle-eyed Old Irish Sod’…stat!”). The stereotypical Irish brogue that people use humorously outside Ireland to imitate the Irish is not exaggerated, they sound exactly like that.

But then on a dime, he descended into a curious, unmotivated assholishness, repeating back to us the name of the street we said we were looking for, but corrected (we said “St. James St.” to which he responded in that “uh, you’re an idiot” tone: “Ah, yes, James’s St.”), then offered to show us how to get there.

Pointing around the bend with his cane, he gave us the usual bullshit British Isles–style directions (everything is always “just here, ’round the corner there” but in reality it never is, it’s always hideously, fiendishly far away) that really didn’t even make sense. He invited us to follow him instead, but he walked at about five steps per minute, causing us to feel an awkwardness about… where to stand while he was “leading” us.

“Where ye from in Europe, then?” he asked. I said, “America.” His demeanor changed immediately, on the final “a” in the word America, from that odd disdain covered with phony kindliness … to rage.

“How many millions has that bastard – excuse me, young lady [more fake gallantry] – Bush, killed? Hmm? How many millions?” he bellowed. I wanted to answer *maybe* 200,000 – that would be Iraqis and American-coalition soldiers combined, plus some Afghans and miscellaneous. That’s an unforgivable sum. But not millions, and not killed personally by Mr. Bush, though I understood what the old man meant. Not answering him engendered more awkwardness, because after all, I’m a stickler for facts and I’m not going to take the “respect old people” thing into the realm of trafficking in wild hyperbole with them.

After a few more shouted questions it became clear he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted, but then we didn’t know what he wanted. Did he want us to say, “Oh, you’re so right. We and all Americans are just demonic warmongers from hell. Thank you, sir.” Or did he want a debate? Out of a lingering deference to his oldness, we put up with his ranting, though frankly I was getting a little put off by being reduced to a baffled whipping boy for Mr. Bush’s misdeeds, and not being believed when I protested that I DON’T SUPPORT MR. BUSH OR HIS POLICIES.

“We didn’t vote for him,” I insisted. “That’s what ye all say!” the implacable old sod yelled into my face.

Then he demanded to know why the Supreme Court had handed the 2000 election to Mr. Bush. Why. Why? We didn’t have a good answer for him. KP said, “They’re majority-Republican-appointed” or something like that. Then we moved out of the intersection and he gestured over to the right, around the corner. “Here, come ’round here, I want to talk to you about politics,” he said, looking around suspiciously like we were being followed.

I said, “We’re voting for O’bama!” To which he replied sourly, “Who’s that, the Republican?” This sounded the final gong on our abortive “political discussion.”

He kept turning again and again to the side as if to try to compose himself, yet he found he just couldn’t control his exaggerated, 19th-century-actorish indignation. But I think he sensed we were disturbed, bored and annoyed. My patience was worn to the nubbins by our failure to connect with this old man, and even old leprechauns with dried soup on their chin can pick up on that when it happens.

So, with no real segue except an implicit “here’s another outrage!,” he closed by asking us in a doomsday voice did we know what the Irish government had just done to the pensioners (or somesuch)? It was, of course, something “political” and infuriating to him. He ominously dared us to read it for ourselves, whatever it was, which, like the ugly American swine that I am, I don’t care about.

Moving himself backward and away at five steps per minute, he waved his arm in disgust at us and muttered out to a dwindle, leaving us only with those initial dubious directions and an earful of bombastic brogue: We equal Mr. Bush because we are Americans. All Americans are Mr. Bush. No grays here, just blacks and whites.

We were still in the process of shrugging this ugly incident off when, 10 minutes later, across town, we were again looking at a map… and, oh look, here’s an old woman saying, “Whar ye tryin’ to go? The river?” (The river was plainly visible about 100 feet from where we were standing.) I told her we didn’t need any help, but thanks ever so much, in a nice tone of voice. She said where ya from we said America and in the same unhinged howl as her soup-splattered countryman she lit into us about the evils of Mr. Bush. I really wasn’t listening this time. I made my own dismissive hand gesture at her.

In an apparent reference both to him and to the fact that I had declined her help with the map, she sputtered, “Yer the second American that’s let the Irish down!” It was such a clever, thought-provoking line that I couldn’t tell if maybe she was wowing us with her comedy, but when she turned and rejoined her friend and gestured back at us as though we were something horrible, then with broad stage mannerisms tried to “warn” another group of passersby that we were American, trying to incite a riot, really, I realized she was serious. “Don’t get lost in Ireland!” she hollered back at us from down the street, a veiled threat. I felt like we had time-travelled into a medieval village and were about to be rounded up and put in the stocks then burnt at the stake.

I’d read about the ferocious anti-Bush sentiments people encountered in foreign countries. Now I’ve experienced them and obviously it hurt my feelings, because I’m berating, in writing, these two old folks.

But I loved Ireland, and found everyone to be lovely except these two. They can go rot in whisky barrels buried under the River Liffey.

They’d probably like that.

I’m sure when I go back — and I will, because excepting these two rude old clueless Celtic cranks I was charmed silly by Ireland — I’m sure I’ll get my Yankee ass kissed, because we elected a biracial butterfly in the USA, so all is forgiven. But I don’t deserve any special credit for that, just as I don’t deserve the wrath of the leprechauns for Mr. Bush’s stuff.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

OK so, last week my good buddy Phil (our Jandek correspondent) offered me a last-minute ticket to see R.E.M., Modest Mouse, and The National at the Mann in Philadelphia. Even though I already had thrilling plans for the evening (patching stucco), I sucked it up and relented. A very quick review:

The National: they went on at 7:00, which is generally a tad early to expect Philly folks; it was only about 1/6 of the way full. Well, those who missed it, it was your loss – an engaging and powerful set, heavy on tunes from last year’s success The Boxer, with the full six piece plus two horn players as well. You hear it in their live show more than ever – these lads clearly spent time with their U2 when they were youngsters, particularly when it comes to the dynamics and the drumming. The lead singer also has a bit of an early Morrissey thing going on as far as the way he carries himself on stage and approaches the mic…which is a nice segue to…

Modest Mouse: with former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr in tow, they were loud, bashing, and breathed new fire into tracks from older discs like The Moon and Antarctica, some of which were a bit loose at the joints on record and were tight powerhouses live. The venue was still filling up at this point, which added to the muddiness of the sound…I was wishing dearly that it was mixed better because there was all kinds of cool stuff going on (accordion, double-bass, interesting percussion) that you couldn’t hear AT ALL because the mix was, as usual, all about the drums and bass overpowering everything else, the guitars a close second, and the vocals a distant afterthought. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it makes me want to listen to the latest disc again more carefully. Bravo!

R.E.M.: My first concert was R.E.M., on the Green tour in 1989 (Throwing Muses opened, to put that in context). It was fairly heavy to realize that the last time I saw them was at that show, and that was… amazingly… insanely…19 years ago. What was more incredible was that I have to say, and I realize this is heresy, that I kinda enjoyed this show more. Granted, my seats were way better, the light show was aces, and as a new contact lens wearer the first time around, I literally wanted to claw my eyes out about halfway through the show as they stung and throbbed with second-hand pot smoke. Still, no matter how much the band has meandered in the years since, the set list proved that since Green the band really has released a battery of killer music. They were amazingly tight, threw unexpected gems (and even an off kilter request!) into the set-list without missing a beat, and really ROCKED. Plus, Michael Stipe now has that weird old-guy wiggly vein on his right temple (what the hell IS that?) – the same odd doodad that baldy Jeff Daniels sports in Iron Man. Also, Eddie Vedder happened to be there and jumped up on stage for “Begin the Begin”. Get some.

But friends, that is not why I was moved to write this. What I am really writing is an open letter to concert-going idiots. Without fail, every single friggin’ show I go to, there is at least one idiot within a two-row, four-seat radius (the incidence goes up exponentially for each mainstream radio hit the band has in their catalog). Is it just me? I really don’t think so, but even if it is, well, too bad – get your own damn website to vent on.

I just have a few public service announcements for you if you are one of these people, because you might not know what the point of a concert (i.e. a live performance of music) is, and I’d like to help you out.

1. Nobody Wants To Hear You Sing

First of all, you can’t sing. But that is beside the point. Even if you could sing, you’d have a hard time singing in key with the music as it bounces all over the place in these giant theatres. Also, beside the point. Concerts cost a lot of money – now more than ever – and it is only fair for people who put down their hard earned cash to actually get what they pay for – to hear the artist/band perform the songs; not to listen to your dumb-ass caterwauling. Why, oh why must you do this? You obviously think that people care – but no, because you know all the words, people are not thinking to themselves “wow, they are a SUPERFAN! They know all the words to that rare early gem and they’re screaming it like they’ve been screaming it in their bedroom since they were 12! They RULE!” They are, in fact, daydreaming of filling your mouth with cement.

Also, the one person with the guts to ask you to stop singing/screaming (and who you will of course then stare at for the rest of the show and hate with the anger of a billion burning suns…perhaps taunt audibly…who knows…), is not the only one who hates your singing. Everyone does. Everyone.

Knowing when to sing at concerts is the same as having basic social awareness, which many people, I realize, do not have. If you watch for the cues, perhaps the singer holding the mic out to the crowd or beckoning for everyone to sing along, THOSE are the appropriate times to sing. Between songs? Go nuts, muchacho. Otherwise, shut yer yap.

Sing along with the CDs in your car – they’ll never change or confuse you by doing anything you don’t expect. When a real live musician does, you ruin it for everyone around you. In fact, you actually look as though you’re lost and don’t know what is happening… like you’ve been betrayed because they altered a phrase or something. It’s lonely there, isn’t it.

P.S. You’re singing for the BAND? They can’t hear you, nimrod. Shockingly, this holds true even if you hold your beer up and scream until your throat separates.

P.P.S. You’re in a small, tiny venue like the Tin Angel and they actually CAN hear you? Give them some space, OK? You need to be medicated.

2. Nobody Wants To Watch You Dance

If the whole joint is standing up? Stand up and boogie! If you’re in the back row and there’s nobody behind you and you wanna shake it a bit? Fire it up! If the whole place is sitting and you and four friends just can’t… fight… the urge… and HAVE to stand up and dance?

You are an inconsiderate jackass. You’re an exhibitionist, which is evidenced by your not-so-sly looking around every once in a while to see who might be watching you. I see you…even though I don’t want to…but I don’t have a choice, since your arse in my face is the only visual I have to accompany the music. Do it in the aisles, do in the back, do it ANYWHERE where you’re not standing directly in front of other people not sharing your urge to get footloose.

3. Nobody Cares If You Know The Words Or Not

What could you possibly be trying to do when you lip sync along with the music and either do it right in the face of your friends (“yo, check me out, I KNOW THE WORDS TO THIS CHORUS!”), or incredibly, turn around with your back to the stage. I simply cannot even fathom why someone would do this. Perhaps they fancy themselves sort of like a booster cell tower for the band… they’re just helping to radiate the energy a little further back. Are you serious? Your back to the stage? Facing people you don’t even know? Keep it in the Karaoke bar.

Oh, and guess what, you’re not fooling anyone when it comes to the verse that you don’t know, and to hide it you sorta act like you’re so enraptured that you have to put your head down with your hair in front of your face…or head bang. Amazingly, people are not there to watch you, so you don’t really need to keep up appearances and put in a flawless performance. Relax. You’re at the show – people get that you’re a fan. You don’t need to be doing anything. Just enjoy.

4. Go Somewhere Else Instead

a. If you have only come to the concert to converse with your friends (screaming) atop the music (once in a while stopping for five seconds to look toward the stage, and bob your head as if to re-establish that you are actually attending to a performance).

b. If you are in a GA, standing room only venue, you are over 6’-2”, and you have parked your enormous Howdy Doody head anywhere but off to the side.

c. If you are in a GA, standing room only venue, and are one of those total a-holes who pushes his/herself to the front of the stage by shoving others out of the way, as if you somehow have more of a right to be there than they do (so damn it, you’re gonna make it happen!). Didn’t you learn anything in nursery school?

d. If you have only come to the concert to twitter about the fact that you are at the concert, and constantly look around the crowd nervously for other people you might know.

5. Nobody is Laughing With You

You’re not funny. You’re not cool. You’re distracting, annoying, and inconsiderate. You are in the very small minority, and people tend to band together in times of difficulty. It’s amazing what enough of them with a common itch to scratch can do with a cement mixer.

When Jeff wrote My Fun Dad in 2005, I thought it was absolutely fantastic, and it made me think that at some point I should do something similar…but it has always seemed a very difficult task because when telling stories about my dad there’s such a big physical component (lots of facial expressions and gestures), and they’re just not the same if you don’t do “the voice”.

Whenever anyone, and I mean anyone – my brothers, my mom, even my grandmothers – tells a story about my dad, they have no choice but to say his lines in sort of a mock raspy yell, because that’s essentially how he talked…loudly and purposefully – even when he was saying the most mundane things. I think the voice is half the story…but well, use your imagination.

My dad, William J. Starke (“Bill”), grew up in North Massapequa on Long Island NY. Professionally he was a home improvement contractor and a teacher; he taught “shop class” and later worked with emotionally disturbed kids. He met my mom in the early 70’s, a few years after she moved east from Queens. Not long after that, my 25 years with him began.

Building Stuff – You know how the story goes – in the early days, things were a bit tight. My dad was usually working a minimum of two full-time jobs as he struggled to augment his appallingly meager salary as a new teacher. While this meant that I didn’t see him a whole lot, it also meant that when I did, I was usually accompanying him to or from the lumber yard and he was good for a secret candy bar that I was under no circumstances to tell my mom about (Clark bars were his personal kryptonite). Anyway, he was chiefly a woodworker, so whatever he couldn’t afford to buy, he would build…out of wood. This means that I have some furniture he made that I count among my prized possessions – other bits of his handiwork didn’t fare so well.

The Ark – Before he had his first “work van” (a steady army of Ford Econolines for which my mom would sew curtains and at which he would hurl delightfully intricate combinations of expletives as he worked on them in the driveway), he needed some way to get all of the tools and supplies to job sites after school. To meet this need, he bought an old trailer frame and built a giant wooden ark on top of it; it was literally constructed like a shoebox – a giant rectangle with wells built on the sides to serve as fenders for the tires, and an enormous one-piece lid that was tied in place with ropes. The icing on the cake was that he would then hitch it up to our AMC Gremlin and hit the road.

One time he had the trailer filled with a bunch of junk and we were “going to the dumps” to unload it. He was talking to me about something as we drove over the train tracks at a high rate of speed – suddenly dad got quiet and his eyes got as big as saucers. I turned to see what he was looking at and saw the ark, defying all laws of physics, maintaining a perfect wheelie and keeping up pace with us a few feet to my right. Luckily this was early in the morning and we were in an industrial part of town…my dad slowed down and we watched in silence as it blew past us, finally hit a curb about 100 yards away, and then – with the trailer hitch straight up in the air – spun around for what had to be a full 15 seconds. He drove to where it came to rest, inspected it in a state of quiet shock, hitched it back up (the lid hadn’t even come off), and we continued to the dumps. Bill didn’t build no crap.

The Excavation – There were the toolboxes he built – enormous wooden crates with industrial hardware that weighed 40 pounds EMPTY (I still have one or two of these), the wooden Christmas ornaments cut from 2” thick maple that were so big and heavy that they had to be pushed far inside the tree to prevent them from falling off or snapping the branches…but nothing will ever top the project that even he had to admit , in hindsight, was insane…when one day my mom, brother, and I came home from a few days with the grandparents and he had decided in the interim to dig out and construct a basement under our house – which previously had no basement. By himself. He ended up eventually needing his brother’s help and a backhoe for that one, but wouldn’t you know it, he actually built the damn thing without the house collapsing on him?

Frankenbike – But nothing he built will ever beat the time he built me a bicycle. This was around the time that all of my friends had either a Huffy or a Mongoose, and all I really wanted was to have one too. I don’t remember what the going price was for one of those but my dad thought it was ridiculous, so he went down to a local junkyard and came back with enough bike parts to build three new bikes from the ground up. I’m talking about total reconstructions here, made from bike parts from the 50’s and 60’s, with tire tubes that he patched by hand and the whole nine yards. Luckily he didn’t give me the one with the basket that he spray-painted gold (kiddie seat for my little brother? Pfft – one leg in each basket, a towel on the back fender, and hold on tight!).

Mine was more of a Pee-Wee Herman type deal, but blue. When I expressed some concern that it might not be as cool as the other kids’ bikes, he told me I could make it a lot cooler if I got these little dangly reflectors to hang inside the wheels that would make clicking noises when they banged against the spokes. So as my friends created makeshift ramps and jumps for their dirt bikes, and rode through what little patches of woods were left in my neighborhood, I was the awkward goofball trailing behind who kept falling off the old-man bike that sounded like Fat Albert’s band. But I was mainly a goofball because I didn’t realize how cool it was at the time to have something that my dad built for me, and put a lot of heart into, instead of something my friends’ dads bought at the store.

Don’t Mess Around With Bill - My dad was a bit of a paradox – he had a giant heart, and that’s really what you saw 95% of the time, but you also didn’t want to screw with him. The guy was well over 6 feet tall and had hands like baseball mitts. Although he was someone that really didn’t have any acquaintances, only friends (after meeting him once you considered him so, and vice versa) – you got the sense that even though there were probably few people on his shit list, you didn’t want to be one of them. He also had that weird kind of construction-guy strength that just comes across as super-human.

I remember messing around in the gym with him a few times when I was older and being surprised that the amount of weight that he could bench wasn’t as much as I would have expected…but being able to bench weight isn’t a practical kind of strength. This is a guy who I incredulously witnessed carry the better part of a hulking cast iron furnace out of a basement, and pick up a full 10-gallon fishtank (fish, gravel, water, and all…) and carry it out to the back deck when my little brother cracked it with a folding chair and it was moments away from erupting in my second floor bedroom. The things he could do, I’m not convinced that your average nad-shrinking model on the cover of a muscle mag could tackle.

Injuries - This was a guy who once dropped a running chainsaw on this leg and turned his thigh into hamburger (and amazingly healed completely), kept an x-ray of his hand with a nail through it in his office like a trophy, used to regularly perform “self-surgeries” on his hands, and once, early in his career, punctured his eye with a nail and put a piece of duct tape over it so he could finish the day because he didn’t feel he could afford to stop working. Luckily for him, a dorky buddy of his from childhood grew up to be one of the most respected eye surgeons in the country, and after telling him he was a lunatic, managed to make the repairs.

One time when I was about 5 he was dirt motorcycling in the woods of West Virginia with one of his best friends and apparently the locals weren’t too happy about it, so they strung razor wire across the trail. My dad and my “uncle” were expert riders, and when my dad saw Steve inexplicably drop his bike a few yards in front of him, he thought it was a little odd. Steve managed to scramble up quickly enough to point out the wire to my dad, who saw it at the last minute, and by then had no choice but to drop his bike too. In the process, he crashed into Steve and essentially ripped Steve’s nose off his face. He then proceeded to slide off the embankment and down off some sort of cliff. When he came to, he tried to prop himself up and came to the realization that he had shattered his right arm.

However, they were miles into the woods, it was getting dark, and the only way out was going to be to ride out – but he wasn’t going to be able to manipulate the throttle with his arm like that. So, according to one of his credos (“duct tape can, and will, fix anything”), they taped Steve’s nose back on, and my dad used half a roll of the stuff to bind his hand to the throttle so that when he pulled his shoulder back, it would, coupled with an excruciating burst of pain, give it gas.

Knowing what he was capable of was at times a powerful incentive to just shut up and follow his lead.

C.R.E.W.C.U.T. – Needless to say, the few times that my brothers and I really sent him over the edge…well, you pretty much learned to respond to his bark because you didn’t want to find out what the bite was going to be like otherwise. That said, in another nod to my dad, I’m proud to say that he never laid a hand on us – even when, after seeing home videos of myself as a teen, I wouldn’t have blamed him had he beat me with a tire iron. In lieu of that, his punishments were either of the embarrassing sort (yelling “knock it off, ladies!” to my brothers and I in earshot of giggling girls in public places) or of the hilarious (but no less effective). One summer he devised a point system for us – he knew that when the school year kicked back in it was all about showing how you had grown up and gotten tan at the beach and how “cool” you looked on that first day back. He also knew that what we thought was the antithesis of cool was the dreaded crew cut. So, every time we did something bad he’d assign us another letter – C. R. E. W. C. U…that’s actually where I was by the time Labor Day rolled around. I was an angel that weekend. I wasn’t taking any chances… I’m quite certain he would have shaved my head himself had I scored that final “T”.

I realize that all of this sounds like a lot of “manly man” stuff…and I guess in some ways he was like that…but never in that sort of stereotypical, aloof way. He was always really gregarious and friendly and talkative even when doing those kinds of things. Especially when I was older, we kinda made peace about the fact that I was more into artsy movies, listened to noisy music, and would dare try something like sushi while he unapologetically wanted to watch movies that had “helicopters and explosions”, listen to Kenny Rogers, and eat handfuls of peanuts and chips with cheese dip.

Leading Edge – My mom used to call him “Peter Pan” because he refused to grow up. She said that someday old age would force him to… but he disagreed, and wouldn’t you know it, he was right – so for most people I think he’ll always remain a big kid. For instance, he was big on surprises. He was almost impossible to surprise because he was so perceptive, although he’d play along, like he did at his “surprise” 40th birthday party when he just happened to show up clean shaven and wearing a sport coat to what was supposed to have been a roofing estimate. He swore he was surprised as he worked the room like a congressman.

He surprised me on my 17th birthday by asking me to go out to the garage for something, and I found a $900 1983 Dodge Aries in there, which may as well have been a 1965 Stringray in my eyes. As kids he would tell us he needed help picking up some stuff at the store and we’d go along grudgingly and then erupt with delight as he pulled into the traveling carnival where we’d eat hot sausage and “zeppoles” for dinner. But he was really the master of the big, unexpected Christmas gift. He did it multiple times for all of us, my mom, me and my brothers… and at times you were almost like “dad…this is too much…you shouldn’t have done this”, which is really saying something for a kid to feel that way.

But anyway, one year we really REALLY wanted a computer. Our cousins had an IBM PCjr, and I dreamed of the day when I’d have all the time in the world to hammer away at my own copy of King’s Quest. When we opened the box and figured out it was a computer, we almost passed out – this came at the tail end of a Christmas morning that was already pretty killer. But my dad insisted we wait until after company came and went to start working on putting it together. Good thing. When my dad went to wherever he went (I think it may have been Radio Shack) to get our computer, I’m not sure he had a clear idea of what he needed to fulfill our Kings-Questy dreams. What the salesperson ended up convincing him he needed was a “powerful” machine (a Leading Edge, to be exact)…one that would outperform any measly PCjr and one that, to our dismay, was all DOS prompts, spreadsheets, and word processing…with a ONE GIG hard drive (my dad didn’t really know what that meant but he told it to me with such gravity that I was sufficiently impressed), and a four color palette.

There would be no questing on that machine, and it would take many frustrating days and calls to my uncle for advice just to get it up and running. It was essentially a glorified typewriter for most of its life even though I tried desperately to get games to play on it. But the best part was that he had sprung for some cutting edge technology called a “modem” (we’re talking like, 1986 here)…and we could, if we wanted, dial up our cousins in Ohio using this wonder, and type sentences back and forth to each other! We did think this was pretty cool, but the rub was that you actually had to type in a command to make it hang up after the session – otherwise it would keep charging you long distance rates indefinitely, which were pretty hefty at the time. We used it once. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad so nervous; he was so out of his element…you would have thought we were defusing a bomb from the amount of tension that was in the air…a few milquetoast sentences back and forth, a confirmed hang-up command, some deep breaths, and then a vow to not ever use it again because “who knows what could happen.”

The Wrap-Up – Any of my friends who read this will definitely tell me that it is absolutely criminal for me to not write down the story about the time that my dad made my brother and I try out for the U.S. Olympic Bobsled Team. But there’s just no way that text alone would do it justice. It’s just not possible, and I’m not going to maim it by trying – the brilliance of the story is my dad’s impassioned pleading and insisting, and you simply must have “the voice” to do it right. There are a hundred other stories that I could tell and I don’t feel like what I’ve written has even shed the tiniest bit of light onto what kind of a character he was. I would sit and talk about him all night if anyone wanted to hear it. But I think there’s one more story that might round out this meager portrait…and this one can only be told in the context of when we lost him – suddenly and unexpectedly, just like Jeff’s dad, in May of 2000 when he was just 50 years old.

My cousin Alex is like a brother to me, but he actually joined our family when my aunt remarried in the early 80’s. He wasn’t able to make the services for my dad but we were able to catch up with him around the holidays when everyone was back in town and we all went out to celebrate my brother’s engagement. He decided to crash at our place, and later in the evening he and I were in the basement talking, and he admitted that he was having a tough time being in our house and hadn’t been really looking forward to it – which I completely understood.

Anyway, he seemed more busted up than a lot of people as we got to talking and he said “listen, you have to understand something – that first family getaway when I met you guys, I didn’t know anyone and I was just a little kid…there was a huge group of people and kids and it was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced. And in the midst of that terror, when a lot of people didn’t quite seem to know what to make of me, out of this crowd of strangers came this even more terrifying stranger – a giant…and he came right up to me and talked with me, and for that whole weekend kept checking in on me and took obvious pains to include me…and by the end of the weekend I felt like one of the family…” and while the two of us sat there fighting back the tears like idiots he said “I never forgot that and I never will – that’s the kind of guy your dad was”.

That’s the really crazy thing about it – I still get people telling me stories about him, and trying to explain the kind of guy he was to me. And this is a guy who, when I’m at my absolute best, I’m only trying to emulate. Amazing. I’m not really sure how to end this…and that’s good, because I’d like to think of this as ongoing…but I’ll admit that from time to time over the years I’ve Googled his name to see if anyone out there that he touched has written something new about him – and have always been a little surprised when I don’t find anything, because I feel like he should have his own entry in Wikipedia and a statue somewhere. So, I’m gonna put up this little statue for him on Used Wigs where it’ll appear the next time someone…probably me…Googles him, and where he’ll stand mightily next to the statue of “Big D”. Happy Father’s Day, y’all.

- Russ Starke

As I’m about to experience my first Father’s Day as a father, please allow me this bit of cyberspace to talk about “Dad.” Don’t worry, I’m not about to traipse over the cutesy, sleep-deprived, new-dad territory that so many have traveled on before.

I’m sure my experience is no different than most new fathers (except that my daughter rules!): wonderfully satisfying, weepingly joyous and at times, extremely scary. Instead, I’d just like to tell you about my dad, Donald P. Lyons (AKA “Big D”), and the various ways he made me laugh like hell throughout my life.

Picasso – When I was a baby, my Mom and Dad decided to move from North Jersey to the beach — Belmar, NJ, to be specific. In preparation, my dad decided to paint the house to make it more appealing and didn’t let his complete lack of painting experience and limited artistic skill get in his way. After the job was hastily completed, my uncle said a good lawn mowing would also be wise due to the 10- to 12-inch-high grass that covered our yard. Once the grass was mowed, it was quite apparent where the new paint ended — about a foot above the ground — leaving a sizable grass-shaped swath of old paint along the entire perimeter of the house. Live and learn. Speaking of paint, my dad once painted his brother Bill’s car while he was away in the service. It would have been better appreciated if he didn’t use oil-based house paint.

Fun Machine - In a very “Homer” moment (and I’m not talking about the early Greek poet) while our young family was Christmas shopping at the Seaview Square Mall, Dad was stopped in his tracks by a man playing a colorful keyboard with the greatest of ease in front of a music store. This was no ordinary organ. It was a grand concert of splendiferous sound emanating from a machine the size of a small upright piano. Built with the best technology the 1970s had to offer, this electronic melody-maker sounded like a whole orchestra replete with horns, brass, woodwinds and a killer rhythm section that played a wide variety of styles from the rumba to rock. With little to no piano playing experience, anyone could learn to play in just a couple hours and be the hit of the party! Or so the pitch went. It was quite awesome.

When we noticed the price tag was $1,200, we laughed knowing it was so ridiculously out of our price range (a bag of kazoos was a bit more realistic). We went on our way. except for Don. who lingered a bit with a dreamy smile on his face as if he was in some sort of trance. Don liked music and Don liked parties.

I’m not saying we didn’t have a lot of money at the time, but a plastic pinball machine, two worn green vinyl couches, a large, plastic palm tree and an entertainment unit built from cinder blocks and black spray-painted planks of wood were the highlights of our living room. So you would imagine my great surprise when my mom, brother D.J. and I discovered the wildly expensive “Fun Machine” — which costs about three times as much as the family car — was sitting next to the tree on Christmas morning. I don’t know how Donnie pulled it off and at the time, nor did I care! This thing ruled. We all went nuts. My dad was so proud.

A tale like this would usually end with the expensive impulse purchase being ignored as soon as we got bored with it. It would then gather dust in the garage (next to my old LiteBriteT with the word “FART” colorfully displayed on it), its faux ivories never to be tickled again. Everyone would laugh at Don and his rash purchase.

But no! The machine provided maximum merriment and was the hit of our parties for a solid ten years, with slightly sauced friends and family clamoring to take the helm and bust out some “Wait Til the Sun Shines Nelly” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry” sing-a-longs into the wee hours. Uncle Nick and his rendition of “Blue Hawaii” led the charge. The good ol’ Fun Machine still sits in our side room, entertaining my toddler niece Jess from time to time. Sure, Don could have been practical and used the money for D.J.’s asthma medicine or new windows that squirrels couldn’t scamper through, but where would the fun be in that?

Pleather Jacket - So you get the idea that we weren’t the Rockefellers, but we always got by and my pops would do his best to keep within our limited budget set up by my mom. My dad was a smart guy, a financial adviser, so despite some whimsical purchases, he knew the value of a dollar. Case in point, he bought a caramel-colored, fake-leather driving jacket for 6 bucks at the local Two Guys (a budget Wal-Mart) in Neptune City. 6 bucks! The new Sweet album (Desolation Boulevard) D.J. and I saved for and purchased the same day cost more. The poorly tailored piece of pleather was about as stiff and thick as a sheet of cardboard and Donnie wore the thing proudly for at least 5 years. before he became a fledgling member of the Members Only jacket club. He earned his epaulets.

Cement Court – My dad wasn’t the most “handy” fella in the world. While his brothers and other male relatives built impressive decks, additions and other manly creations, Big D was most comfortable using black electrical tape to remedy most repair jobs. He did not have a tool box, keeping his vast array of old screwdrivers and wrenches in a drawer in the kitchen instead. Some other tools could be found in the grass in the backyard for safe keeping. Anyway, after successfully putting up a backboard on our garage with the help of Uncle Frank (no Bob Villa himself), we all immediately noticed that dribbling a basketball on the bumpy grass below would be pretty darn lame.

“Hey, let’s play some b-ball at D.J. and Jeff’s house! They have this cool grass court with all these sharp, rusted tools you need to dodge while driving to the basket! It’s insanely dangerous and fun!”

After assessing the problem, my dad decided he would build a cement court himself. Knowing even less about masonry than painting, my dad bought about 10 giant bags of ready-mix cement, masonry tools and a bunch of two-by-fours to frame out our new massive court. After two full days of blood, sweat and toil and using up all the bags and his all his energy, he took a step back to behold the fruits of his labor: a sad, three-foot by three-foot piece of thin, uneven cement about 12 feet from the basket. “Geez, we might need a few more bags!” chuckled Don.

But we didn’t need more bags. Donnie needed to rest and to catch the end of a Mets doubleheader. The court was not finished that summer or any summer after. Occasionally, years later, when we were all in the back yard, D.J. and I would pretend to have a one-on-one game solely contained on the small patch of cement. My dad would laugh and gives us that “What the hell was I thinking” look. I loved that look.

Communion Photo – In sixth grade I had to write an autobiography for a class project. I gave it to my Mom and Dad to proof and they were a bit embarrassed by one of the photos I included. The photo showed me sitting on our front porch in a little blue denim leisure-style suit (which was fabulous), opening some gifts I received for my first holy communion. They weren’t embarrassed of my goofy mug (this time), but were aghast at the condition of the front porch. The porch was black, but many of the planks showed off bare wood and chipped paint. It was in desperate need of a new coat or two. Instead of being inspired to go paint the porch (which was probably still in the same condition four years later), my dad simply took out a black pen and colored in all the bare wood in the photo. Don then handed me the booklet, “Good as new!” Who needs Photoshop when you have a Bic?

Coffee – My wonderful mother Patricia was a nurse and worked most Saturdays when we were young, so Don took care of my brother and I. Saturdays were pretty busy and my dad needed to get us ready for our early soccer games. As I mentioned earlier, the windows in our house were old and drafty and let in their fair share of November coldness, so the mornings were a tad chilly at Chez Lyons. In an attempt to warm up 7-year-old D.J. and 6-year-old Jeff, Don gave us the warmest thing handy. a piping hot cup of coffee. No matter how much sugar or milk I put in it, I just couldn’t down it. D.J., on the other hand, took to the delicious hot caffeinated beverage like a ravenous lion eating a freshly killed gazelle. The majority of pediatricians might differ, but Don’s cure-all for coldness worked extremely well. D.J. was the warmest, fastest, most energetic kid on the field every Saturday. and well into Sunday.

Coaching Soccer – Speaking of soccer, my dad was a successful soccer coach. When Belmar was in need of soccer coaches, they asked my dad, who already coached baseball and basketball for the town’s recreation department, to lend a hand. My dad was a good athlete who loved baseball (he pitched a no-hitter in high school), so coaching another sport seemed easy enough. When Don was growing up in Newark, NJ, soccer was not the most popular sport. “Sissies in shorts who kick each other,” was how it was referred to by most. Not letting his ignorance of the game stop him, Don went to the library and perused a few books on the game. He was good to go. His style of coaching was unique. He found the best player on the team, 9-year-old George Parker, and pretty much let him run things, telling Don where everyone should play. Don just stood on the sidelines and yelled, “Go get ‘em guys” and other words of encouragement. We came in first three years in a row.

Naps – Living at the shore, we’d have lots of company pop in all the time. This did not preclude Don from taking his beloved eye-closers when he deemed necessary. With a front porch teeming with friends and relatives from North Jersey and beyond, Don would excuse himself from his wicker chair and enter the house. After about an hour or so, some one might ask, “Where’d Don go? I thought he was getting me a beer.” But most knew where Don went and didn’t bother to ask. He’d reappear an hour or two later, refreshed and ready to enjoy the parade of people marching by the house.

German Beer – My dad was a Budweiser drinker. Once, when I came home from college with some friends, Don took me aside and said, “Hey, I was in the liquor store and I saw some German beer that was on sale so I got a couple cases for you and the guys.” He was very impressed with his purchase, as was I.. until I opened the fridge and saw two cases of Meister Brau with bright orange $7.99 price stickers. We drank the budget domestic beer (suppressing laughs) and thanked Don repeatedly for the treat. He didn’t touch the stuff.

Hitting the Boards – Some of my pals — Gowen, Yaz, Demarcs, Hewson, B.C. — were lifeguards in Spring Lake. My dad liked to jog the boardwalk in the town and yell out “Hi guys!” to the guards as he approached their stands early in the morning. The guards would look over their left shoulders, say “Hey Mr. Lyons” and turn back to staring at the ocean. 10 to 15 minutes later, they’d look over their right shoulder and see my dad only about 20 yards further down the boards from where they last spotted him. Don was the slowest runner in the history of human mobility. “Ya gotta pace yourself,” he would say half joking. I think he just liked to suck in the scenery. He always stayed a safe distance away from the rat race.

Driving Mr. Ziggy – For the majority of my life, we did not have the luxury of air conditioning. So the family spent a lot of time outside in the summer, except for our dog. Ziggy was an overweight beagle that was a bit difficult — not very affectionate, bad gas — and did not handle the heat well. The dog only really liked Don, and Don really loved that dog. When the heat would get into the 90s, my dad would load Zig into the car and drive around aimlessly just so the paunchy pup could enjoy the blasting A.C. in his face. That’s love.

Sadly, my dad died suddenly in 1996 at the age of 61. Nothing can prepare you for losing a loved one, especially a wonderful father who brought so much joy to all in his humble, low-key manner. The last time I saw him he was standing on the porch with Patty smiling and waving good bye to my friends and I as we drove off after a day of canoeing and barbecuing at the shore. I remember thinking, “Man, what a cute couple.”

I still miss him terribly, but retelling tales again and again helps me deal and keeps him close to me. Don Lyons was a normal guy with a great sense of humor who loved the Mets, the beach, Ireland, singing aloud and just taking care of his wife and boys. He was the best father a fella could have. So here’s to my dear old Dad, thanks pal! And to all my friends — D.J., Brian, Russ, B.C., Mike C., Nies, Parker, Williams, Linda, et al — whose dads passed away much too early, keep rehashing the good times. The stories never get old.

{This story was posted in March, 2005.}