only connect

Hello, I wanna connect with you all over the land. I was reminded a few days ago what it might be like if nobody ever touched you, and it was bleak - perhaps not solitary confinement bleak, but it was nothing good. That's what I heard from the men in the creative writing class at the prison. "Writing helps me communicate better with my wife and kids on the phone," a man told me.

Right now I want to go back, see Maria again (we've been lovers for many years now). I want to get hugged by my daughter, Gabby. That's always a good thing especially considering the girl does not dispense easily with affection. She'll hold you at arm's length if that's where you need to be.

My son, Max - it's great being in a car, just him and me. While the girls were off to Kober Brothers grocery to buy a birthday cake for the party, Max and I did some manly no bullshit stuff. I sifted through the $1 crap at Target, looking for a cool notebook to write in. There were notebooks with princess crowns on them and words in pink and purple like, "The colors of my life."

"Nothing but a bunch of girly shit here," I said to Max. He's a good boy. He never uses such foul words, but he suffers me as if he's aware of me and it all rolls off his back.

"I was hoping for something with Batman or Star Wars on the cover," I said.

After reconnecting with my family for an hour at the birthday party, I went off on my own.

"I'll miss you," Maria said. "Don't be gone long."

I was in Dovedale, Kan. (pop. 13,000). It's an upscale town, a bedroom community of Wichita. I texted a friend.

"Where's the best bar to write a blog at in this town?"

"The Buckhouse," he texted, authoritatively.

Writing, I was in a brown study. Upon completion, I closed my laptop, unplugged the cord behind the bar and slipped it into the black case.

"You get your homework done?" the woman at the end of the bar asked me. She was with her fiance, I want you to know that.

"Sure did," I said.

"Who do you work for?" she asked.

"I work for an underworld society. That's all I can disclose at this time."

My new friends bought me a beer, which is a good thing because one doesn't want to be lonely in an establishment such as this. Also, it was my goal to make people there love me before the night was over, and I succeeded in that endeavor. It's fair to say the love was reciprocal.

I know I bitch about people, but I try to convince my wife, Maria, not to take it so literally, telling her I'm not a hater. "I love all humanity," I say, mockery in my voice.

Thoughts went to Maria and the kids as I stood there, ruing over how I had to go to various spots to write, how sometimes doing it righ there in the house separated me from my wife & kids, as if work doesn't do it already. Always pray in my car in the parking lot before stepping into the old building across the street in which I work. (Place is said to be haunted.)

"God please help me be good to my wife & kids, my employer, my mom, the audience, to you." Then I feel guilty about putting God last & add that I want help being moral and respectable for the day. "I don't wanna let anyone down, " I pray.

I left the Buckhouse and rejoined the family at the Clubhouse in the retirement village where my in-laws live. This is in the town of Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the '70s). They're in keen spirits as they talk about the door slamming noises and the sounds of pots and pans rattling in the kitchen and books being shuffled in the library - sounds that have come from no explainable source. Max dealt with such things at our old house, built in 1918. He made peace with the knowledge of an apparition known as "Plaid Pants Man" dwelling in the house. They all breathed a sigh of relief when they saw me enter the Clubhouse Main Room.

"We thought you were a ghost," my little girl said.

High horse

"Did you hear what Obama said at the prayer breakfast?" the old man asked. I knew he'd go there and I felt a tinge of pride at being correct in my prediction, but it wasn't a big leap. They've all been on a bitchfest about it on Fox "News" & that's all the old man watches.

Jesus, all the president said was people should get off their "high horse." It's not like he said evangelicals think their shit don't stink. No, I think he made his point in a nice, diplomatic fashion. They're all pissin' about Obama mentioning the Crusades, Inquisition and the strange bedfellow relationship between White Southern Christianity & the KKK.

A man tells the truth and they have a cow - an animal considered sacred in Hinduism, a religion I'm sure the good Christian people hate even though the dumb sons of bitches wouldn't know a Hindu from a Muslim from a Sikh. Henry David Thoreau was a 19th century American who gelled Hinduism with his philosophy and theology as fluidly as a veteran bartender mixing drinks - the Harvard Cocktail, Dirty Girl Scout, Rocky Mountain Bullfucker and the like. But what a flipping snob I am to bring up this latte liberal college stuff. Talk like a real American, dammit.

I'm sorry the big tough conservatives have such thin skins they can't take a little honest talk about the historical sins of Christendom. It's okay to talk about how bad Muslims are because ISIL chops people's heads off - but don't put Christian history to scrutiny. Honestly, I'm sure some Crusader, Indian fighter or slave owner must've at some point, chopped someone's head off. I know they did a lot of cutting. Burning people alive - that was another of their methods of social control.

The president wasn't diminishing the horror of ISIL's terrorism. He wasn't saying Muslim good, Christianity bad. He was just pointing out that all religions have taken evil turns in their history. No religion can point fingers and cast the first stone. Right-wingers apply exceptionalism to their religion as they do their nationalism and Obama was just calling them on their bullshit.

Islamic terrorists are torturing and murdering humanitarians, journalists, Christians and women accused of adultery and trying to get education. In America today, we know right-wing Christians as merely being arrogant, hateful and racist - not murderers, just the philosophical and religious heirs of segregationists and people who committed murder. No, Christian radicals in America are not presently stoning women accused of giving fellatio or burning alive people of darker skin tones.

We just know from history that given the power, they would.

Superb owl

Hi, what's your opinion of Bill Belichick? Deflategate? Hell, spygate and the whole Philadelphia Eagles & New York Jets controversies? Do you think Matt Damon and Ben Afleck are responsible? How 'bout that scene in Good Will Hunting where Damon aka Will Hunting made reference to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States?

"Superb Owl." That's what the shit looks like when I text it. Not Superbowl. Superb Owl.

Maybe you're like some people I've heard. "I only watch for the commercials."

Oh boy! The commercialization. Clydesdales and puppies and robots bringing you Budweiser while you're in your recliner. Some hot Hollywood star - a Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johanson going all cock tease and all you're supposed to care about is how the digital animation transforms her into a bottle of -- oh it's Bud Light now. Anheiser Busch. Doritos in claymation and some swimsuit model simulating felatio on a a Sprite bottle.

What about all the togetherness. We are all one. All cultures in the world. We love and respect each other and all our colors, national tribes and religions in a spirit of harmony. That's what this extravaganza is about. Makes you wanna drink a Coke.

So the extended families on the couch. People start singing "America the Beautiful" in Spanish, while drinking All-American Coca-Cola, and my wife immediately hits the mute button on the remote. Luckily, her bigoted step-dad didn't hear. He was distracted, running his big, alpha-male mouth. It's enough he's in my house. Don't give me a jingoistic, race bashing rant tonight. Women in burkas appear on the screen. Oh shit. Wife, Maria, clicks, changes the channel. Old man never saw.

Several years ago we were at his house. The old man's friend, Wally, was at the place. Didn't hardly hear the game. Old man bitched the whole time about Democrats, terrorists, how Bruce Springsteen doesn't love his country and should be called "the loss" instead of the boss" and --- "Why are they so blind?" he asked Wally pleadingly. Wife was in the kitchen, not listening to the shit tonight. "Why Wally? Why can't they see? What's the matter with them. My dad fought in World War II to end this shit?"

And that was Super Bowl XXXVII for me.

The next year, some singing duo rave on about taking each other's clothes off, but all America has a collective cow when the chick's tit falls out. Good God people, babies see that shit every day. It's not like she revealed a waxed pussy or something.

For years, the Family Superbowl Party has been at our humble home. Father and mother-in-law. Brothers-in-law. Nieces and nephew. A clusterfuck of people in my little old living room and I can't see the damn TV. I just give up and go to my room and sleep anyway.

So fuck the Superbowl and the commercials.

Only this year, a friend invited me to a Superbowl party. It'll be in the old Methodist Church building, which is said to be haunted. Hell, maybe we'll play beer pong, I don't know. Maria's a little sad about my breaking with the family tradition, but she begrudgingly conceded to be okay with it.

I wonder if the friend who was stalking me on Facebook before I blocked him will be at the party?

Did the Patriots cheat the Eagles in 2004?

Speaking of which, I gotta say I loved the 2006 film, Invincible in which Mark Wahlberg starred as Vince Papale, the sandlot football player who tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles with some unexpected results. Best line: "He's got heart."
Remember the scene where Vince is talking to his love interest outside the bar they've been tending. Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" playing in the background. That's what I told Maria. Yup, slept with a lot of women before you. Didn't care if they cried no sir, but you baby - looooove's gotta hold on me.

Also I loved Greg Kinnear's portrayal of legendary Eagles (later Rams & Chiefs) coach Dick Vermeil.

Gotta go. I'm glad the trophy is named for Vince Lombardi who coached the Packers to the first two Superbowl victories back in the days when college marching bands played half-time shows and coaches watched plays on 16 mm film and dressed like coaches, dammit.

Your inner stools

February the effing first. Shaking hand spilling coffee down my throat. Commitments keeping me away - gone from you. You know the first time I saw you, I fell in love. And Maria - she's my wife (with perks) calls such scribbling the bane of her existence. Did you see the sunrise in Kansas this morning? i'm with you.

Jan. 2. Roughly 11 a.m. There's two of us in research, filing behind the department head into the conference room. He'll summarize corporate's revised vision, the inner circle requirements set by the guardians of the house. We're supposed to tweet cheesy-assed pictures, but we've been released from the company blog requirement.

"Blogging is dead anyway," Matt says. He's a short stout man with a slight Dwight Schrute look, receding hair and damn heinous mutton chops. 

Jace and I go with it, not bothering to gaze up from our manuals, because it really doesn't matter. No, it really doesn't matter at all. Big graphic images of popcorn in boxes, stand in the velvet curtains like Grecian columns, a vanilla screen in the middle. Old fashioned projectors and film reels. You see it when you click there. Jace's deal. 

She's kind of a freak about the whole thing, going to the Rose Heel Theater with her girlfriends, dressed like characters from the movies they'll watch. Vampirish, hobbit-like, the fat bridesmaid who pooped in the sink or whatever the hell it is. Jace's moment of gratification will come when she types the movie review into her phone and on to her blog.

I'm also an avid blogger, much like the character Laura Prepon played on that episode of House. She faithfully blogged the most intimate details of her life with her boyfriend. But Dr. House called her on her hypocrisy. Blogging about everything, my ass. Not her bowel movements. House diagnosed her with Wipple Disease, a gastrointestinal disorder that, left untreated, will bring death. 

In this same episode it was revealed that Wilson starred in a porn flick, "Feral Pleasures" to help pay the bills while in med school. Wilson discovered a book in House's desk. Atheist House was reading a book of sermons written by a Unitarian minister whom House suspected was his real father.

The episode aired a long time ago. (In the 2007-08 season, actually.) What the hell am I doing here? Blogging is so 2010. I started this blog that year on a tip from a speaker for the Underworld Writers of Friends Association. Meetings were held in downtown Wichita in the basement of Old Pheobe's Bookstore. 

A clusterfuck of Phoebes

I kind of hate people who call themselves writers. Phony bastards. Most can't write for shit and I hate bad writing like I hate bad rock n' roll and anyone who uses shitass words like "maneater" and "anyhoo." What do they do, but clusterfuck up the internet?

"If you want to write, the best thing you can do is start a blog," the speaker said, perkiness all over her. "If you don't want to buy a domain name, you can do it for free on a host site like wordpress or blogger."

She also beamed about the business you could do writing these "new things" called "advertorials." I couldn't see myself doing such a thing, but who knows? Advertorials. They're so over now.

I got on a host site. They own my shit now. What the hell is a blog? I don't even like the word. A lot of moms blog, raving about Bed, Bath and Beyond, goofing on how their asses won't fit in their jeans anymore and what blessings their kids are.

What the hell am I doing here? The woman who prescribes me the anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds says, "I think it's good therapy for you." Her name is Jennifer, also the name of Tony's sexy psychiatrist on The Sopranos.

I can't divulge to you the intimate details of my life. You understand it's not to be done, I know you do.

So I go to the office where we fit squares into circles and shove donuts from the bakery up our fat asses. Matt's cool for being a boss, I guess, but he's so godamn intense. Like Eric Foreman to Red Foreman in That 70s Show, I used to fear him until I figured it was no use and started responding like a perpetual smartass.

You work in order to do what you want in life. I'm sick of packing boxes and the shit of life like so many household bric-a-bracs Mom collected in her pre-dementia state. She thinks her mother is still alive. Writes her letters - a dying art form. But it's okay it's okay it's okay I still talk to her and she's with me like I'm with

__you.

Happy 80th, Elvis

It's not every day I write about Elvis Presley. There's been such an obscene amount of oversaturation. In their song, "Rock n' Roll Babylon," '80s band Love and Rockets began with the lyrics, "All those Elvis records circling the earth I think I've said four times over were you present at the birth?"

But Elvis, if he were alive, would be 80-years-old - elderly - today and I think that's worth commenting about. In his prime, Elvis Presley was the picture of wild, unbound youthful energy. Teenage girls would lose their panties for the guy and boys still sporting acne on their faces wanted to be him.

Of course, Elvis's image and style evolved over his career. Then he died and after all the stupid idolatry, the public image went to hell. He was parodied, stereotyped, reduced to a joke with ridiculous rumors about how he was still alive and working at the Kwikie Mart. In 1989, tabloids were still printing new lurid revelations about his drug use and sex life - something that never would've happened when he was alive. It's hard to believe in our oversharing era, but Elvis fiercely guarded his privacy and if anyone in his entourage talked to the press, they were gone. After he was dead, they talked.

"The man's never gonna get a rest," I said.

But after all these years, I think the dust has settled. We're at a point where we can put aside the fanaticism, cliches and tabloidism and consider Elvis from an artistic perspective.

He was a perceptive, magnetic and original performer who knew instinctively how to communicate with an audience and command the stage. Like Sinatra, he didn't write his own songs, but he could take possession of a song, interpreting the piece as if it were something autobiographical, a personal drama.

I see Lennon and McCartney, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Robert Plant as his heirs. Of course, they were also heirs to Chuck Berry, Little Richard and about every early rock n' roll and blues singer going back to Ma Rainey.

My mom had a big ol' stack of 45 records from her childhood. There was one I'd listen to ad nauseam - "All Shook Up." I was 8-years-old and I tried to imitate the cool, masculine voice on the record. I'd have my sister, Angie, introduce me: "Here is Jeff Guy singing, 'All Shook Up.'"

That August, Elvis died and I discovered, "Oh, that's the guy who sang that song." I'd heard the name Elvis Presley and knew he was some kind of entertainer, but didn't know the big story.

My parents were up late, watching TV specials about Elvis. It wasn't until Michael Jackson died that I understood what must have been going through their minds. When a bigger-than-life icon from your youth - someone whose been a constant in your life - dies, even if you weren't a fan, you feel a loss. A piece of your childhood is gone and you're reminded of your own mortality.

There's been a lot of bullcrap over the years. People have blamed Elvis for getting rich and famous, copying black rhythm and blues music. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin...they all gave their own interpretations of black music and they have all credited those influences. There has been crossing over between black and white music probably for as long as the two groups have been in America. Despite what's been said, Elvis wasn't the first. White crooner Bing Crosby and hillbilly singer Jimmie Rodgers were working with Louis Armstrong back around 1930. Now there's Eminem, Kid Rock, Rage Against the Machine. It goes on.

In the '80s, Elvis caught a lot of criticism for abandoning rock and roll for ballads in his later years. I think first and foremost Elvis was a singer and entertainer. He loved all genres of music and was non-discriminating in his tastes. It didn't matter if a song was written by Leiber and Stoller, Bob Dylan or Rodgers and Hammerstein. If it was pleasing to his ears, Elvis would sing it.

Besides I don't think his later stuff was all that bad. It wasn't as revolutionary or culturally significant as his early Sun recordings and there was shlock, but there was also some great, underrated stuff. The songs about heartbreak and lost love were his way of communicating what was going on in his life without saying it outright.

How much can you ask of a person? Sure I have fantasies of Elvis recording an album with Louis Armstrong in the '50s and Keith Richards in the '70s, but I think he gave a lot more as an artist than people can reasonably ask for.

Yes he got fat, sloppy, drugged out, but he was human. He wasn't a god like people have blown him up to be, he was a man. He had flaws and greatness, weakness and strength. I say, forget the mythology and white noise. Just see him as a man and an artist.

"The image is one thing and the human being is another." Elvis Presley, from a 1972 press conference.

From the first performance by Elvis and bandmates Scotty and Bill on the Louisiana Hayride. 1954

Clonazepam and zombies

Kaka drawing. "The Thinker," 1913

5 a.m. Coffee black, no riff raff as I sit in the kitchen, hands in detatched-like motion. I’m wearing a bathrobe, black T-shirt, socks and plaid lounge pants. I guess I could live in lounge pants and drink beer all day if I weren’t so wired with chaotic motivation.

Soon I’m in my car. The radio in my mind starts signaling premonitions of perdition at the worksite. I’m contemplating creation, worrying over what I’ll invent today. What if I endure the stress of achieving something and risk losing my grounding under onrushing vanity? “God, please don’t let me get past myself.”

What would I do without a job to bring needed balance and a sort of terrorism to my life? There’s a moment when I die a little after entering the parking lot across the street from the old building I work in. It’s said to be haunted, as unaccounted for slamming and voices coming from the attic have been reported late at night by employees burning the midnight oil.

Ignition still running, heat on, I pray in a desperate voice much like Jimmy Stewart did in that scene at the bar in It’s a Wonderful Life. “Please God, you know I can’t let anyone down.”

P/C Production capacity

I'm the only one in my department, the others taking time off and it all rests on me.  Veronica sits at her desk near mine but she’s of a different department. I play a YouTube video of a horrible song. I’d heard about 30 seconds of on NPR’s Marketplace as I turned left on Fifth Avenue.

“Let’s get physical, physical.” Veronica laughs and unable to take it anymore, I delete the whole thing. It was gross, all those men in the plastic looking gym, their junk hanging out for all to see.

I look at lists, jot tasks on pink Sticky notes, check email, charge my Android phone, study designs.

Sometimes when I feel lots of pressure, I recite the Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing…”

And sometimes I sing. Loudly and bad on purpose.

“Umm, have you ever heard Meatloaf’s 1977 album, Bat Out of Hell?” I ask Veronica, thinking maybe she hasn’t because she’s young. In her early 30s, I’d guess.

“Of course,” she says.

I WANT YOU I NEED YOU BUT THERE AIN’T NO WAY (lilting in the voice) I’M EVER GONNA LOVE YOU SO DON’T BE SAD, DON’T BE SAD (pause, breath) 'CUZ TWO OUT OF THREE AIN’T BAD

“Perhaps others heard me,” I say.

“We heard you way over here,” Erika in graphic design says jovially.

“When I die,” I say, “they can play this song at my funeral.”

Piano keys. Later I beat my hands lightly against the desk as the song plays quietly. Sing a few words. “You Cath-o-lic girls start much too late…You got a brand new soul, mmm, and a cross of gold.”

Pope Francis is in the news as he often is. (Mom told me when she was a kid, J. Edgar Hoover was always in the newspaper.) Veronica tells me she’s Catholic, but not a practicing Catholic.

“Neat,” I say. “Lots of history in the Catholic Church.”

“Lots of shit in the Catholic Church,” she says.

Then I get lost in work, feeling thrills and agony, not losing myself. I’m told I have grace and good customer relations.

Zombie show

I think what a good thing it was that I took my medication this morning. Clonazepam is a benzodiazepine, a psychoactive class of drugs with amnestic, sedative and hypnotic qualities. It is not Xanax, but is of the Xanax family. One thing I really like is how Clonazepam was mentioned in that zombie show, The Walking Dead. I watch it Sunday nights with Maria and her family, much like we used to gather to watch Breaking Bad.

Sometimes when driving home to Maria, Max and Gabby, the song pops into my head. “..cuz all I want to do is cash my check and drive right home to you,” the theme song to the early ‘00s sitcom, King of Queens, as sung by Billy Vera, a working musician since the ‘60s who also had a hit in the ‘80s with “At this Moment” from the sitcom Family Ties, as regarded the romance between Alex and Ellen before Tracy Pollan was replaced with the wooden Courtney Cox, one of many jump the shark plot lines to befall the NBC comedy, which aired Thursday nights following The Cosby Show.

Back home and I focus as my son, Max, tells me about the report he did on the pyramids.

“The Egyptian pyramids were bigger than the Mesoamerican pyramids,” he says. “The Pyramid of the Sun is on the Street of the Dead in Mexico. The Aztecs started building it in around 100 AD. They think it was a temple for some god, but it’s a mystery.”

It could set the mind reeling.

Bill Murray, 1982. First Letterman appearance. "The new Newton John thing."

Merry Christmas 2014

(7:45 a.m.)

Still dark here in the living room as I sit here, sipping coffee. It's my favorite mug, the one with pictures of my two kids on it. Christmas tree is resplendent - blue, green, red, golden lights. I heard my kids, Max and Gabby, get up this morning, stirring around.

"Guys, we'll wait 'till Mom gets up to open gifts."

"We know that," they say.

"Let's not wait Mom up because she was up late last night, wrapping gifts and making cheesecake."

Kids are getting older. Max turned 13 in September. They can wait. Heck, I think I hear Max in his room, communicating with friends on Minecraft right now. Gabby sat on the floor, looking at the tree and presents for a long time, but now she's probably reading a book. She always puts on her glasses & looks a bit like the librarian her mother once was when she reads.

(Later)

Gifts open now. Maria making homemade waffles.

My friend, Joy, is a psychologist and she likes to bake. She has all kinds of helpful hints for managing holiday season stress. Kids are overstimulated this time of year, she says, and thinking back to the highs I got as a child, I believe it. "It's okay to feel sad," she told me. "This time of year tends to inspire a lot of self-reflection and sometimes that can take you to a dark place."

For me, it was somewhere around November 2011. My old journalism instructor and adviser Les Anderson had recently died. He was kind of like a dad to us all. Definitely our best friend. Sadness swiftly altered into a temporary high as I saw friends I hadn't been with in a while, felt a rage of nostalgia and got lost in the intoxication of my own creativity - I had improved remarkably in 20 years. (Possibly.) Then euphoria alchemized into what seemed a dark irreversible hell. The concrete basement of our old house was said to be haunted, as was my own personal library - the room where my son said he had seen a mysterious character he named "Plaid-pants man" materialize and diminish with the atoms.

I'm sure Ebenezer Scrooge felt a wave of depression as the Ghost of Christmas Past took him to all those scenes where he effed up in life. Anyone would. I can just see him, knowing what's going to happen, saying, "No don't go there" and when it's over - "You're stupid! Couldn't you see? It was right in front of your eyes all the time."

I'd say I'm cautiously happy right now. Moderately all right may be a better description. Sure I was pissed when my drama queen of a daughter complained about standing in the "cold," ringing bells for the Salvation Army. "Go in with Mom and go shopping then," I said. Later, Maria and I both talked to the kids about how it wouldn't hurt them to think about people less fortunate and give some to others

But I'm happy with Max and Gabby this morning. They were appreciative of all their Christmas presents even though, to me, the presents under the tree didn't look too plentiful. I've actually been in living rooms on Christmas Day, seen kids get a shitload of presents and when they asked if there were more and told that was it, they exclaimed, "Darn!"

When I was ringing the bell outside Walmart, a fellow came up to me. "How much do you get paid for this?" he asked.

"I don't."

"You mean you volunteer for this?" he said, disbelief all over his face and up and down his light voice.

He shook my hand. Firmly.

"You're a rich man," he said.

I'll be damned. Imagine that. Me, J.Guy - a rich man?

I heard singer/songwriter Nick Lowe interviewed on Fresh Air with Teri Gross a couple of nights ago as I drove the dark highway. He wrote this song for a Christmas album he recently recorded and I really liked it. It's the kind of song Johnny Cash would've done.

Christmas Eve

Somewhere this moment in the big sanctuary of a Big Church, my wife, kids & in-laws are are at a candle light service celebrating the Dear Savior's birth. I couldn't join them because some new developments in my job kept me working longer than I had anticipated. This work involved a twenty-something man who stabbed another twenty-something man to death. The fight had to do with some kind of romantic entanglement and I don't know specific details. The District Attorney said he's filed more cases this year than in all his 16 years as a prosecutor. "Merry Christmas," he said.

Jukebox played Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher," followed by Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." I view this song by Satchmo as appropriate for Christmas. It's full of hope for a --

better world. My favorite line is about the babies. "They'll learn much more than I'll ever know." I've always found it interesting how this song was released the same year Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" came out. Both sides of a world in perpetual motion.

Then U2's version of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Nobody will ever top Darlene Love, but this is good and don't we need all the good things we can get? Like a short, aglow Christmas tree inside a lonely window. If it's there, I think the lights are like hope and hope can exist in tiny windows, just as it can in the church. I picture my family now with the glorious display - "Carol of the Bells" playing. I think of the lit up sacks lining the driveways of the Ridgewood District tonight in my hometown, Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000) in the early '70s.

In those days, my family had celebrated on Christmas Eve night at my grandma Mac's house. Then we would open presents at home on Christmas morning. They say every family has Christmas traditions (at least those in America who celebrate Christmas) and this was ours. Anyhow, at Grandma & Grandpa's house, it became a tradition every year to take a picture of the kids (siblings, cousins) sitting around the Christmas tree. This started around Christmas, 1974. I always thought it was neat how the grandparents always had a real life Christmas tree. My family had a fake one, but then the old people were always more rustic. No air conditioning, clothes hung on a clothes line (in the garage during winter).

Lately, my mom has been thinking her mother is still alive and I don't correct her. "She's not doing so well," she says, concern in her voice. "Grandma - she's doing great," I say. "She's quite healthy. Back to her effervescent self." "Really," Mom says, smiling as if she's relieved. "I'm happy to hear that."

I told the nursing director at the facility where Mom lives that the old guy with the whitish gray beard who came to see her was most likely her brother, just like she told them.

Sitting here at Leroy's, the dive bar near the Chinese laundry, frat houses and public radio station in the district outside Wichita State University. Shocker game last night was too much for some people like myself, prone to anxiety - 80-79 in overtime. I was at home. Made it there around 8 p.m. Watched the Heat Miser from the 1974 Christmas special, The Year Without a Santa Claus. "Dad loves this stuff," my wife, Maria, told our daughter Gabby. Max, our son, was in his room, playing Mario Party.

There's a small Christmas tree in the window of Leroy's, underneath the ancient neon Schlitz sign. Lights give me hope, make me think of seeing my family and whatever is out there for the world.

Christmas Parody Letter 2014

(Later on, we'll perspire as we dream by the fire.)                   Dec. 20, 2014

Dear _______,

Ho! Ho! Ho! I'm Santa Claus & I better not have seen your name on the naughty list this year. Okay, it's not really Santa Claus, it's me, J. Guy. Sorry I tricked you, but I get so full of Christmas spirit this time of year & this year, we're going to have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby danced with Danny Kaye. Please be good children, have sweet dreams of sugar plums & toy soldiers & always remember what my mother told me when I was a little boy, 8-years-old: "If you don't straighten up, you're gonna get reindeer shit in your stocking."

Oh my, and what music am I listening to now? "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from the Nutcracker Suite. Little ballerina pas de deux of the sugar plum fairy who came and hit the streets looking for soul food and a place to eat. My favorite part is Tchaikovsky's line about "all the colored girls go doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo."

It's been a busy year, having reached the milestone of my 200th blog and working as a foreign correspondent covering the "situation" in Syria for which I won the Holbrook-Grayson Award for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my appearance on Fresh Air with Teri Gross, but I talked to Teri about it at Pope Francis's mission, backstage at the Patti Smith concert. Teri and I are good.

The Guy family hung out with our friend, Kirk Cameron at the Duggar Family wedding. It was so beautiful the way Ben and Jessica reserved their first kiss for the altar. Cockadoodie on all those dirty bird liberals who said the picture looked like "Christian porn." What did JimBob mean when he said he shot a quiverfull inside Michelle's clown car?

Our son, Max, is thriving as a Boy Scout, diligently working to earn merit badges and helping little old ladies across the street. Also, he's quite adept at killing Nazis, while playing Call of Duty. He is now employed as a paper boy, for which he is earning rave reviews. While spending a bit of his paycheck on games, the bulk of it, he puts away in the bank "for college" as he aspires to develop video games, much like the pot smokers from the brilliant film comedy, Grandma's Boy.

Gabby, our strong-willed little girl, begs us to visit our Humanitarian/Filmmaker friends in California, the Kennys, so we can go to Disneyland again. Gabby has mild asthma and during one nighttime attack said, "I'm Big Wheezy." Her new nickname - Big Wheezy, which would be a good name, should she ever embark on a career with the Mafia. Gabby keeps little drawings and stories in book she wrote entitled, "crap i made." Also, Gabby has learned how to pick the door lock when her mom is on the toilet.

And speaking of her mom, my lovely wife, Maria, got enraged a bit while Christmas shopping at JCPenney. A woman with a "smoker's face" cut her off in line with her shopping cart and Marie got more irate than a Tea Partier staring at a black baby Jesus. Sitting behind the wheel of our family Santa Fe, Maria waited. The woman exited the front door. "YOU OLD BITCH!!" Maria shouted and sped off. I was mortified. "Would Santa Claus do that?" I asked. I do hope the YouTube video doesn't ruin Maria's chances of being appointed to a vacant seat on city council.

Earlier this year while the children were on spring break, we took a family vacation to Philadelphia and visited Maria's cousins - the twins, Dennis and DeAndra. They own a lovely Irish establishment called Paddy's Pub. There was a water stain image of the Virgin Mary and a woman known as "The Waitress."

Maria & me

And in other family news, there is Maria's uncle Bart. You see, Uncle Bart weighs around 375 pounds and his prodigious buttocks have left severe indentations on couches & recliners, some of which have broken under the weight of his corpulence. Anyhow, he'd pass these gross old man farts & we'd always laugh about the long trail these bursts of intestinal gas had to travel to exit the sphincter feature of his body. But it's not funny anymore. Uncle Bart had a disease of the colon this year and since your colon is related to farting, one musn't laugh. Uncle Bart had Hirschsprung Disease, a condition of blockage in which the nerves needed to allow passage of bowel contents are missing. We were afraid Uncle Bart would die like that guy in the episode of The Sopranos, who had a heart attack while sitting on the crapper of the Bada Bing Club. The good news is Uncle Bart is doing much better since the surgery. He endured insensitive fat shaming from his doctor, but he is on a gluten free diet now, which can majorly decrease the odor and frequency of one's intestinal gasses.

Also in the family, Maria's grandpa's cousin died, much like a drowning rat would if it fell into an uncovered bat of Christmas pudding sauce.

                                                    

                                                 

Mom, Max, me, Gabby

Peace, joy & remember I Am America and so can YOU

J. Guy

P.S. I remember Christmas as a little child circa 1972 watching a children's TV Christmas special about the little drummer boy. It was nice and he bore a resemblance to Damien, the demon child from The Omen.

Well, it had to happen sometime. Our good friend Dave Letterman is retiring & Darlene Love's annual performances of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" on the Letterman show will be a thing of the past. Here's a good place to end it. Thank you, Dave, Darlene, Paul & everybody.

Suck decade

So my buddy, Tim, must've been high, drunk on Miller Lite or something & he was screwin' off on his iphone from an undisclosed location in Amsterdam or some place of that nature. Shares some shithole of a YouTube music video (circa 1985) on the stupid Facebook. The nasty little man with a guitar pops out of the TV and kicks the cigarette out of the couch sitting loser's hand. Yup, this is good. Oh look, open the fridge and the band of minuscule men are rock'n like you can still rock in America - oh yeah, all right - "Might as well go for a soda, nobody drowns & nobody dies."

What in the hell? Some anti-drug song like that old lady, that "Just Say No" astrology consulting old chick would like?

I hate the 1980s. I think it was a shit decade. Worst of the 20th century.

In an alternative universe, the hostages would've been released early and Jimmy Carter would've been elected to a second term, the solar panels would've remained on the White House roof, MTV would've never been invented and the Minnesota-bred suburban-violently young-sloshed & pissed-bastardly-magnificent Replacements would be heralded as the greatest musical act of the decade.

But we don't live in that world. Never did. The whole godforsaken decade started with my favorite rockstar getting killed and my least favorite "great communicator" getting elected President.

Hall & Oates had a string of hits in 1982. Fuck Hall & Oates.

Anyhow, that's when I had to grow up. I was born when I was born and living my teen years in that ghetto of a decade was my lot in life. My dad got to have adolescence in the '50s, Mom in the early '60s. They had American Graffiti. I didn't even get Dazed and Confused.

There's a sort of plasticity, a phony, non-real quality to the '80s. The social consciousness of 20 years earlier wasn't just out of style in the '80s, it was repudiated, looked down upon, as if it were not only naive, but stupid to be concerned about poverty, nuclear weapons, racism, the "greenhouse effect," or women's rights. Making a contribution was about selling your soul to the corporation. College wasn't about debate and enriching one's self intellectually, but a step-ladder toward buying a Porsche. Instead of a President who looked like a movie star and inspired young people with world transformative ideals, you had a real life movie star President (albeit, a B-lister) winning the affections of would-be Alex P. Keatons by promulgating shallow ideas about greed, wealth, self interest above all others, imperialism and faux "morning in America" patriotism.

Pop culture was a reflection of that fictive conservative chic quality. Pop songs about materialism. MTV image trumping musical substance. Vacuous pop songs all around, the most glaring monstrosities released in the worst year of my life - 1982. Big hair bands that were an ersatz version of '70s hard rock. Movies and TV shows that glorified the lives of yuppies.

I said 1982 was the worst year of my life. I remember one day in seventh grade, I dared sit at the "popular kids" table. This guy - the kind of guy who liked to nickname his dick and trash all the girls he claimed to be banging - told me, "Get out. Take a hike." A girl was sitting there, watching, saying nothing and to this day I can't conjecture whether she approved or not. "Okay, I'll leave." Shit like that, you remember the rest of your life. Any time I had a bad day in junior high or high school, which was often, that son of a whore was always in the mix somewhere. I understand he's a devoted family man now, a good Christian. All reformed. He actually had the audacity to send me a facebook friend request and that'll never happen. It's okay, God'll forgive him.

Am I just projecting my own inner turmoil on an entire period? I concede that may be some of it, but for the most part, I'd say it was just coincidence that the worst year in my life happened to also be the worst year in the history of pop culture.

If you want to go down to the heart and soul, the deepest core of the '80s, I don't think it's Michael Jackson,  the Berlin Wall coming down, MTV, Reagan, Big Hair bands or any of that.

I think it's Rick Astley.

"Never gonna give you up, never gonna say goodbye." Ever been rickrolled? Sounds dirty and it is in a banal, joyless and de-evolutionary sort of way. It's vapid, devoid of soul, disposable, suffused with synthesizers and in its own way, fascist and evil. Rick  Astley, D-list, flash in the pan, nothing but a big annoying voice like grunt  huffing from within a rectally planted microchip lost in moussed, protuberant hair.

Rick (shitting) Astley. The decade deserves no better.

Veterans Day 2014

U.S. 23rd infantry. 37 mm gun in action. France, 1918.

There's a scene in the movie, Born on the Fourth of July, that really sticks with me. It's early in the movie when Ron Kovic is a boy watching veterans in a Fourth of July parade. He stares into the eyes of an old man wearing his World War I uniform, a sad look on his face. I've always wondered what kind of life shattering experiences from youth must have haunted this man in his old age. There have been millions of people with such stories. PTSD wasn't invented after the Vietnam War. I'm sure it's existed since war began. Thousands of years since primitive man started fighting with sticks and stones. The weapons are now multiple times more potent and lethal. Young men and women a generation younger than me are now coming home irreparably damaged from war.

It's interesting that Veterans Day, Nov. 11, is also the birthday of one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut. He was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. Vonnegut was imprisoned in an underground meat locker, which spared his life during people who survived the Allied fire bombing of the historic city of Dresden. During the tumultuous '60s, he would go on to incorporate the horrific event  in his novel, Slaughter House Five.

I've thought about war a lot this year with it being the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the 100th anniversary of the first world war. I've read Cornelius Ryan's journalistic account of the D-Day invasion, The Longest Day and I hope to at least start reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August about the start of World War I.

It must have seemed like Armageddon.

Lately, I've been thinking about a quote from former President, Commander-in-Chief and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. It's something he said upon being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002. 
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

I'm tired of seeing the world devastated by war, tired of seeing lives shattered and shortened. It's a crime that there are impoverished, homeless, jobless, drug addicted veterans in this country. They shouldn't be so removed. On the whole, Americans don't have enough skin in the game. War is a crime, a murderer. Hopefully, one day - I'm sure I'll never live to see it - America and the world will give it up.

I talked to a couple of Korean War veterans last week who recently went on the Kansas Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. They recalled crowds applauding them at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. A boy about 8-years-old and smiling from ear to ear eagerly shook their hands.

"I sure hope he never has to go to war," one of the old men said.