Brain damage.

I know a few motorcyclists, and all of them love their bikes. All of them also wear helmets. It's the law, yes, but they've also been around long enough to see what happens to motorcyclists who don't wear helmets. Similarly, they wear leather or denim or even high-impact armored jackets to protect them from being mandolined when falling off the bike at speed. 

Then there's this guy.  

I hope Dad's Girlfriend will be all right if they fall off the back and he lands on top of her. 

If they want to take no precautions and defy the law, well, you do you -- it's still a free(ish) country. What really irked me here is that Dad's little boy was riding on a mini motorcycle ahead of them. Now, the boy was properly dressed in helmet and jacket, but it's illegal for kids to ride these e-motorbikes on the streets. You'd never see the tiny tot coming. 

Good thing they weren't on a two-way street with a hill, a hill on which oncoming traffic would not see a little kid in the middle of the road -- whoopsie, that's exactly where they were. 

There was no trouble this time, not that I saw, but the lesson to the kid is: A) If it worked once it will always work (because that's how boys think) and B) Dad is cool with Dad's Girlfriend and they drive a bike with no protection, so it must be what cool adults do. As they say, more is caught than taught. 

Now, I'm not a fan of safetyism; overprotection is clearly leading to neuroses in our younger generations. But these kinds of risks are just dumb. Some parents set their kids up to fail; others set them up to be braindead. 

Part of the problem is that we really don't take concussions seriously. A football player gets his bell rung, we say rub a little dirt on it. A detective gets knocked out cold before the commercial; by the time you're back from the bathroom he's rubbing his dead and asking the Chief if they got the number of the truck that hit him. For a look at the inhuman durability of TV characters, I recommend Mannix. Keith Roysdon on CrimeReads passed along the data from someone who watched all eight seasons of the slick 70's private eye show: 

A 2007 column in the Washington Post by Neely Tucker notes that someone had tallied the times that Mannix was shot or hit in the head during the 194 episodes of the series. Tucker wrote that Mannix was knocked unconscious 55 times and shot 17 times in the series.

I guess it goes without saying that Mannix was not realistic. 

I was editing a novel for a big-name publisher some time ago and one of the characters was knocked out by a blow to the head. After the chapter break one of the other characters said that at least there was no sign of concussion. I hated to tell them that losing consciousness is a TREMENDOUS sign of concussion.

Most guys have had plenty of moments in our lives where we know something is dangerous but we say "Oh well!" and just do it anyway. And that's not a bad thing. Courage is never to be underestimated. But demonstrating foolish behavior to a child is not a good idea. And if there'd been a cop sitting over the hill and Dad got arrested with Dad's Girlfriend for riding improperly and letting his son ride a kiddie motorcycle in the middle of the street, the story would not have been of hilarity or tragedy but humiliation (and Dad's Ex lording it over him for the rest of his life). 

Head impacts cause brain damage. There's no reason to act brain damaged ahead of time. 

(P.S.: One motorcyclist I know who had super maximum protective equipment? I know he raced around the highways like a lunatic, because I once rode across the county with him in his car and I thought we were all gonna die. He was stone-cold sober, too, the only time I thought a sober driver was going to kill me. So he was wise to at least armor up on his bike.)

Weekend report.

1) I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to post on Father's Day yesterday, but I hope all you dads had a good one. It was a great opportunity to tell Dad Jokes™ without reprisal. You know who you are. (And who you are is PL Woodstock.) 

My late dad had a great sense of humor in terms of getting and enjoying jokes, but he could not tell a joke for beans. He either started laughing before getting to the punchline, or he forgot part of the setup and had to backtrack, or he felt he had to explain the joke in case you didn't get it (but you did). Well, he was omnicompetent otherwise, so not being Shecky Dad did not rise to the level of a character weakness. I miss him. 

2) Last Wednesday, McDonald's beloved shake-enjoying blob Grimace celebrated his 53rd birthday by throwing out the first pitch at Citi Field. Since then the Beloved Mets have won five games in a row. Fans are calling this the Grimace Era. Plans for a Grimace statue have been discussed. It could stand next to the Seaver statue outside the park.

I'm not saying that there's any connection to the winning streak. After all, the games have been at home against the woeful Mariners and the struggling Padres. But maybe…

None of this would have happened if Grimace had not changed his ways, from the evil four-armed milk shake glutton to Ronald McDonald's two-armed dopey purple pal. Recovery works! 

I would like to see if we could sign Grimace as a bullpen coach. Maybe get some of the others involved. Mayor McCheese could help calm things down in the front office, where they've been getting frantic as the trade deadline gets closer. Hamburglar could work as the base running coach. He's an expert in steals. 

But no Ronald. We’ve had enough clowns.

3) Yesterday I took some Windex to the glass-top table on the porch. Not the first time this spring. I couldn't believe how thick the layer of pollen on it was. It was like pond scum. You would need a paint scraper to write "Wash Me" on it.

If you live in the northeast United States and you think this is a bad allergy season, you are right. But you are not entitled to compensation. 

Heart wrenching.

When my dad died, my mom sent me a heavy box with a selection of his tools. He'd had quite the workbench. At the time I was living in an apartment and I neither needed a lot of tools nor had the place to store them, so I begged her to sell the bunch and not send them all to me. Well, within a few years I became a homeowner and regretted the timing that robbed me of most of my father's collection. 

My dad had some great stuff. 

All his hand tools had been used a lot, and it showed. He could do any kind of work within reason (he did not go too deeply into electrical work because he did not want to die before his time). The tools Mom sent me are more solid and better made (in the God Blessed United States of America!) than many of the tools I've bought since.  

While I was dealing with the sink trauma a couple of weeks ago—still unresolved, because I got busy, and sick—I had a closer look at this wrench. Exhibit A from my dad's collection, if you will. 

This is a pipe wrench, not a monkey wrench, the monkey wrench having a flat top and no teeth, meant to turn lug nuts. Nor is this a Crescent wrench, which has the C shape, its jaws in a direct line from the arm. 

The origin of the term monkey wrench is obscure, although it may have come from a supposed resemblance to a monkey's face. As you can see, this pipe wrench does not look all that monkeyish and is intended for use on small pipes. 

It has a number 8 on the head, signifying that it is an eight-inch wrench (at full head extension) for 1/8- to 3/4-inch pipes. The handle has a loop, indicating that it probably hung on a wall with a line of other pipe wrenches in numerical and size order. I don't recall Dad having the whole set, though, and I certainly have no order to my own tool bench. It's a disaster. 

I have no indication of how old it is, but a closer look shows me where it originated: 

Crescent Tool! So despite not being a Crescent wrench, this is a Crescent company wrench, you see.

The Crescent Tool Company was established in Jamestown in 1907. Jamestown is in Western New York, near the Pennsylvania border, about as far from Rochester as it is from Cleveland or Pittsburgh. Jamestown was the home of a large number of furniture factories, in part because of access to great amounts of furniture-quality wood, and indeed called itself the furniture capital of the world until 1945. It was not well-situated for heavy manufacturing in that era, though. But a thriving tool company? Why not? 

Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the wrench factory was still going after 117 years?

Ha! Ha! Silly human. New York hates things that cause prosperity like icky manufacturing. Western New York is as rust-belty as any Rust Belt state.

Crescent now part of Apex Tool Group, along with SATA, Campbell, Weller, and other tool outfits, and Apex is owned by Bain Capital. You may recall that Bain was the Worst Company in the Universe™ in 2012 when co-founder Mitt "the vulture capitalist” Romney was auditioning for another a job. 

Bain bought Apex in 2013, but the Jamestown Crescent factory shut down before that, in 1984. How do I know the date? Because if you worked there, you might be entitled to compensation! If you put in four weeks on a summer job 40+ years ago and have cancer now, you may be able to help a law firm get money!

Asbestos is not a joking matter -- and yet maybe it's a shame those old Jamestown furniture factories hadn't been built with it. The Jamestown Royal Factory burned in 2021, and the Crawford Furniture Factory burned in 2022. 

So where do they make Crescent products now? Apex uses lots of factories in several countries for its tool lines. I read online that Crescent wrenches have been made in China since 2011, but that report is unconfirmed. Could be Mexico, or Canada, even somewhere else in America—or so Bain hints. Are they just throwing us a sop? 

Oh, who knows. No one ever tells us anything unless they think we'll like it, so hardly any company tells us anything anymore. 

But my dad’s little pipe wrench was made in Jamestown, New York, in the good old USA. I miss my dad, and I miss a lot of things about that America, a place that made things that worked, that made things that lasted.

Old mailroom Joe.

Guys in the mailroom are my pals. At one time I worked for a not-for-profit organization that had a dull official holiday party, but down in the cellar, the guys in the mailroom had a Christmas party that absolutely kicked. Later in my fabulous career I had a desk job in a tiny office, and every morning Mike (I'll call him) made his mail rounds, and he would stop in to talk sports. I liked him and all, but sometimes I had to literally tell him to leave so I could get some work done and not get in Dutch with the boss. Mike later got canned for, well, using the executive can, although he denied it.  

But before either of those jobs I was a mailroom man myself, starting as a part-timer. They hired two of us to deliver the mail throughout an organization that had several buildings, so that meant shoving the mail cart through burning sun and pouring rain, through ice and snow. 

It looked like this one. Note that the
wheels are not made for ice and snow.

I, young whippersnapper, did the mornings, and old Joe got the afternoons. Our shifts were expected to overlap. But we spent the first couple of days together, learning the route and meeting everyone, and that's how I got to know old Joe.

Like Mike, old Joe liked to talk, but not about sports. He talked about his former career; he talked about his son (who seemed to be on the outs with him somehow, if I recall correctly). He talked about the kind of work he had done, but the details did not impress on my mind. What did was one thing he said on that second day of training, while we were sitting around waiting for the boss. It went something like this: 

"I think as we work together, you'll find that I have a lot of life experience. And you will begin to see that you can learn a lot from an older guy like me. In time you may come to think of me as a father figure."

And I nodded and thought What is the matter with this man?

It was like he had already scripted our relationship past the pilot episode, deep into the first season. I had just met him the day before!

Maybe he had. Maybe he spent too much time alone, thinking of how things ought to go. I'm pretty sure he was not married anymore, but I don't know if he was a widower. He may have watched too much TV. I don't recall a single bit of wisdom from him. I don't remember him ever asking me or anyone else about ourselves. 

Not that I had a long time to see him in action -- they fired him after the first week and put me on full-time. I never knew why, but were I to guess, I'd say he spent way too much time bugging people who were trying to work and way too little time doing his job. 

That was many years ago, and I'm sure old mailroom Joe has gone to his reward. I think about him sometimes. I think he was very lonely, but in his loneliness, he developed odd habits of selfishness that pushed others away, cementing him deeper in his solitude. There's lesson he taught me -- albeit as a cautionary tale. 

I hope he and his son restored their relationship. I hope he found someone who liked him and could spend time with him. I hope he didn't need the chump change from that mail job, because it did not pay well. And -- why not? -- I hope he found someone who did respect him like a father, even if it had to be his own kid.  

Light in January.

I'm a morning guy, and my dog is a morning dog, and as I noted a couple of weeks ago, at this time of year that means darkness. Which is not great. Cars don't see us, teenagers sneak up on us, animals are out there and while Izzy may smell them, I can't see them. 

Well, my wife got me this. 

I seldom do product plugs on the page, except maybe for some foods that aren't good for me, but I will plug this. (It's electrical, get it? har) It's a rechargeable headband that has a flashlight on the temple and a glow band for general luminosity on the front (that yellow strip). And when I say it glows, I mean it glows like Rudolph. 

When we're out where there are no streetlights and no sidewalk, at the time of year when the sun doesn't rise until past seven and the sky is usually plastered with cloud cover anyway, it's nice to be able to press a button on the headband and get this aura to illuminate the darkness. It lights up everything within about 30-40 feet, I'd guess, and certainly warns any cars that we're out there far better than just reflecting tape or the like would do. A second press of the button sets the glow strip on a less-bright / less battery-sucking level. I've yet to run out of juice on one of our walks, though, maybe because the sun eventually does come up. 

What really interested me from a personal-history standpoint was the flashlight on the side. 

Why? Because like most red-blooded American boys, my entire function in life appeared to have been to hold the flashlight in the wrong spot and annoy my father. Car trouble, insulation work, electrical wiring, plumbing -- anytime there was a job that required working in a dark spot, you can be sure I would be there holding the light for hours. My attention would wander and so would the light, and I'd get rebuked. In my misty water-colored memory, this seems to have taken up approximately 37% of my childhood. 

Well, don't I wish my dad were still with us so that he could see this miracle! A mere headband, so much more compact than a miner's helmet but with the same power of light! Dad could have worked in peace and gotten things done faster, and I could have been doing something more fun, like homework or going to the dentist. I won't say Dad didn't try, with products like the Snake Light giving some relief, but even they had to be moved around as he worked and there was never a perfect spot to hang them from. 

The headband's flashlight also has two levels of power. Plus, when you have it set to whichever function you want, you can turn on the side sensor -- this allows you to turn the thing on or off with just a wave of your hand by the button. When wearing big bulky gloves, this is a helpful feature. 

Now the complaint: The thing is made in China, and it shows. The glow strip partly detached after a few weeks of use. But it was easy to superglue it back on, and it's stayed in place since.

If I have another quibble, and I really don't, it's that when out in the cold I like to keep the hood up on my coat. This is fine with the glow strip, but it blocks the flashlight. Nothing much to be done on that score. I only use the flashlight when out with the woofer to zero in on whatever he's left behind that I must pick up, and he usually waits until we get home to do that.

So if you're in town and driving around early, and you see a light in the darkness, don't worry. It's not an alien or a ghost. It's just ol' Fred and his fuzzy sidekick, getting our morning air at some insane hour where any smart person would be sleeping. Give us a wave -- we'll leave the light on for ya.

Two weeks!

I don't want to put the fear of God into any of you guys out there, but Christmas is exactly two weeks away, and if you have that someone special on your list, remember:

🎅🎄FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. 🤶⛄

It's a truism that many men suck at buying gifts for their loved ones, and it's a truism because it's very often true. My dad was completely incapable of buying someone a gift. If he thought you wanted a shed, he could come over and knock one up in a day and expect no thanks for it, but when it came to going into an actual store and trying to figure out what Mom might like, forget it. I think he would have felt more comfortable being dropped blindfolded in Shanghai and told to find his way home.

For minor events, like Mom's birthday, he might unofficially deputize the kids to take this money and go buy Mom something nice. For Christmas, Mom just bought what she wanted. She knew what she was getting when she married him. And for her part, she was an excellent shopper and gift-giver. 

Mom (l.) out in front of the pack on Black Friday

Some guys figure that if they only had some real dough they wouldn't have this problem. After all, if you walk into a jewelry store and drop enough cheddar to buy a furnace, you're probably going to come out with something your beloved will like. There is some truth to that truism, too. Even this plan, however, has its pitfalls:

🎁 She may be the type who is not into jewelry. Maybe she's concerned about the exploitation of miners, or doesn't like cold metal on her skin, or just would rather wear natural accessories like feathers or twigs. You know: Hippies.

🎁 You might have tremendously bad taste that taxes the powers of the clerk. Even if you got your wife to like football, for example, a $10,000 diamond-crusted dental grill with CLEVELAND BROWNS written on it is probably not going to get the job done.

🎁 Wake up! You don't have 10 large lying around! She might hit you for blowing the money needed for the college fund or to put toward a new car! Whaddaya, stupid?

Goodness knows there are enough gift guides out there on the Internet. Maybe one of them can lead you to the present promised land. Better act fast (especially if you want free shipping, which we know you do). 

It's always going to be dicey, though, even if you know the person really well. And if you're in love, shouldn't you? You ought to be able to answer these questions:

⭐ Is this person the type to be really impressed by how much you spent? Because if so, she will know how much it cost. Trust me on this. 

⭐ Is the person the problem type who buys anything she wants and leaves no lane of approach, having clogged it with her own purchases? This is a very frustrating type, because you can surmise what she likes but have to assume she has it. 

⭐ Is this person one to drop hints? If so, respond positively enough to encourage her but not enough to assure her. (My wife will text me something she definitely would like, but it's always a side attraction gift, not the main event.) 

Well, good luck out there, people. When all else fails, a gift certificate is not the worst idea, but it always tells the person I LOVE YOU EXACTLY THIS MANY DOLLARS AND 00 CENTS, which isn't very romantic. 

I think my mom would have appreciated that much thought, though. Although Dad did build a nice shed. 

Memes to rent, memes to borrow.

It's another Saturday meme day, kiddies! Not a lot on tap due to the final deadline crush Friday, but I trust you'll find these original creations to be on target. 

Ha.

Several of my friends are devotees of the dad joke, the sometimes-clever pun or other play on words that makes some people happy. Other people will look at you like this:

As does my wife. 

Poor thing: With no children within target range at the present time, she has to absorb the brunt of my dad jokes. And I am constantly tempted to fire them off, even when I know she's going to get mad. Not kidding -- she has run upstairs in disgust, cursing the day I ever thought I was funny. I don't recall what the joke was; it wasn't the classic about the agriculturist who is outstanding in his field, nor the golfer's favorite socks that got a hole in one. I'm sure it was a groaner, but still -- just because she was having a serious conversation doesn't mean she should be mad at attempts to lighten the mood. Sheesh.

And don't try to tell me people don't love dad jokes. The Internet is a cornucopia of dad jokes these days, and guys like my friend Wink (not his real name) memorizes them to spring on his children. I'm talking beauties like these: 

And my personal all-time favorite:

On Instagram there are many purveyors of dad jokes, but my favorite is FitDadCEO. He sets up his jokes as something he asked his son, who responds with a bad joke -- and is topped by a worse dad joke. (I've tried to link to a good one.)

PLWoodstock, who frequently comments on this site, is a walking library of bad jokes. I wonder if he maintains a secret presence online as a writer of dad jokes under another handle, or if just steals them like I do. 

Either way, all of us dad jokesters can agree on one thing -- our audience. 

But I'm afraid if I keep this up, I'll be like the calendar -- my days will be numbered. 

Advice.

I have a coffee mug from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild that was a Secret Santa gift. It features the first lines of famous works of literature, and in tiny print on the mug's bottom it shows which book each line came from. I like the mug; it's a good size for a cup of coffee, and it's dishwasher safe. And I've read a good number of the books cited, too. 

As the handle is pointing to my right hand, the line that looms the largest is the opener from The Great Gatsby: "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

I didn't recall what Nick's father had told him, so I looked it up: "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages you've had."

It's a great way to start the book and establish the crucial theme, and I'm sure Mr. Fitzgerald would be glad that I approve. The thing that I started to turn over in my own mind is this: Nick's father had a lot of words compared to my old man. My late father was not a chatter. Nor was he much for giving advice. He had been raised by non-chatty parents, and had to learn many things the hard way, and it was the only way he knew. Plus, he knew that most boys only heed advice after the fact anyhow.  

The only direct pieces of advice I can ever recall him giving me are:

• "It's a great life if you don't weaken."
• "You gotta work."
• "Never steal anything small."

And that's about it. 

On the other hand, he demonstrated by his life that you had to be responsible for your actions, you had to be willing to work, you had to treat others and their property with respect, and you had to be strong when things were looking bad. 

So, maybe I won't get the first line of a novel from the things he said, but I got a lot from what he did. As they say, more is caught than taught. 

The just man.

As every Catholic knows, or ought to, Advent is a period of hope, not penitence like Lent. But Advent and Lent are both periods of preparation. Today we mark the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, as a reminder that our expectation is coming near, that our hope may become stronger as we wait for the child in the manger who is God among us. 

Which brings me to St. Joseph, which you may recall is my Confirmation saint and a model for the worker and the head of the Holy Family. Look at it this way -- his wife is perfect and his foster son is God, yet he's the head of the household. Must be a pretty special guy.

And that is why I am cheered beyond measure that Pope Francis has proclaimed this to be the Year of St. Joseph:

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2020 / 04:08 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis announced a Year of St. Joseph Tuesday in honor of the 150th anniversary of the saint’s proclamation as patron of the Universal Church. 

The year begins Dec. 8, 2020, and concludes on Dec. 8, 2021, according to a decree authorized by the pope. 

The decree said that Francis had established a Year of St. Joseph so that “every member of the faithful, following his example, may strengthen their life of faith daily in the complete fulfillment of God’s will.” 

I can't think of a better saint to look to at this miserable juncture in history than St. Joseph. He was a stalwart man, a provider, a protector, a hard worker, obedient to God and God's law, a just man, faithful to the end. He is the antithesis of everything we've endured in 2020 -- the constant lies, the destruction of businesses by our political class, the violent assaults on innocents, the attacks on families and faith from our cultural elites. The pope went on to write, “Our world today needs fathers." (A recent analysis in First Things would agree with that.) "It has no use for tyrants who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction.” 

This may be the first time I've been thrilled by anything coming from the Holy Father. 

I sure wasn't thrilled by the 2020 Vatican Playskool Nativity.

Pope Francis's silence over the horrors of China's oppression of religious groups, even Catholics, has frustrated me; his attacks on our president and our country have annoyed me; his endless taunts about "opening" the church to modernism -- that send the cardinals flocking to explain that what the pope said wasn't what he meant -- has worn me out. But this time I think he knocked it out of the park. 

Have hope, and if you're of a bent to do so, ask St. Joseph to pray for us. We need his example and his prayers to try to right the mess we're in now. Let us not be afraid, but rejoice and be brave.

Suits me.

One rainy night in June, my parents loaded the family into the car and drove off to buy me two suits. I had recently graduated from college. This was another gift, after so very many they had already given me.

Along the way a tire blew out. Dad got the car to the side of the road. I was going to help put on the spare, but Mom wouldn't let me. I had dress shoes on; I was going to be measured, going to try on jackets and pants; I had to stay neat and dry. My poor dad got soaked jacking up the car with us in it, changing the tire, somehow always keeping his cigarette lit no matter how hard it poured.

At the venerable clothing store, I was given the workup by the tailor. No off-the-rack here. Not when it came to formal and business wear. Colors were chosen -- one black, one blue with pinstripes. Chalk marks flew up and down the legs and arms like drawings of little birds. Maybe a tie or two selected as well. Ready in a week. And so was my kit prepared for the launching of my brilliant career.

It was an era where no man on earth would have gone to an office-job interview in anything less than a suit and tie and shined-up shoes. But even then, my parents' gift seemed very old-fashioned. I wasn't the first in my family to graduate college; although my parents had never gone to college, I wasn't even in the first in the car that night to have graduated. It was not that they were stuffing me into a uniform and insisting I bring home the bacon. It was that they were proud of me, something they didn't say in words, but that gift, that rainy night, showed me their pride more than anything words could have said. I wore both suits at least once a week for years as I commuted into Manhattan and went to work.

I bring this up because I gave away the blue suit yesterday.

The black suit was a lighter, almost summer-weight fabric, and eventually I wore it out. The blue pinstripe was stronger, and it survived everything but my appetite; I got too fat for it. I always swore I was going to drop the weight and wear it again, but I never did, even when I was jogging, even when I gave up beer. Nowadays, following my back injury, I can only do gentle exercise, if walking two big burly dogs can be gentle, and without exercise I have never been able to drop anything more than a few pounds. It was time to let this suit go.

Here's the thing -- I have plenty of old clothes that need to go. Others can use them; some of them are in very good shape. Some I've never liked even if they fit. Why should I keep them? And a suit, cleaned and still in good condition, ought to be in every man's closet. I have suits that fit. Someone could use that blue pinstripe; in fact, I just this morning saw an article on a charity that needs suits. But for years I wouldn't part with it, mostly for sentimental reasons. Yesterday I decided it had been long enough. My parents have been gone for quite a while now. My suit may be a little out of date, but there's nothing wrong with it. So I put it in the clothes collection box down at the church.

I hope it brings someone else good fortune. It certainly was always good for me. When I wore either of those suits, I always felt like a million bucks, or at least a few hundred grand.

Now I'm looking at other things with which I can part. Funny, but when I let that suit go at last, my first thought was, I think I can let anything else go now, too.

Home eck.

Some years ago when I was between jobs, I pitched a story to a friend who was still employed at a national magazine directed to the young homeowner. At the time the economy was thought to be in terrible shape, largely because it suited the desires of politicians and the media to portray it that way, and all the talk was about economizing. (The economy had little to do with my unemployment, as the economy has been poor in publishing since the start of the widespread use of the Internet.)

My story idea was based on the old shilling gas meters that were common in rental housing the UK. The downside was that if you were without a coin when the gas stopped, you would freeze; the upside was that you knew just how much you spent to keep the place warm. It occurred to me that most of the time we spend money without even realizing it, and I'm not even talking about Amazon Prime. In days of yore, families had a rough idea of what things cost; now we may not ever even see the bill, the money being removed easily from our checking accounts after we sign up, until our credit rating suddenly falls like an anvil in a Looney Tune.

They knew home economics back then.

I proposed to calculate the amount of money spent every time one boiled some water, turned up the thermostat, did a load of whites, took a ten-minute shower, ran the dishwasher, microwaved an enchilada, left a light on in a room all night, and several other daily household activities, so that the happy homemaker would start to understand where the money all goes. The money pitch: How much would you economize if you had to insert money for the gas, electric, or water meter each time you wanted to do these things?

I confess that memory of my father contributed to this idea -- he had an undeserved rep in the house as a tightwad, but he did go around turning down the gas and turning off lights, and always worried about money.

Anyway, I never heard back, which means no. The magazine might have gone for it if I'd had a better name as a feature writer, but I doubt it. I think they thought the story would be a total downer. It would make the Nervous Nellies more nervous, it would make the Sammy Skinflints cheaper, and it would be ignored by the people who don't even want to look at the electric bill anymore because it's boring and upsetting. As I've noted elsewhere, magazines, especially those devoted to one gender or the other, have been treating their readers like retarded children for some time. Still, I confess that the magazine I pitched to liked a breezy, upbeat style, and a penny-pinching piece wouldn't have suited them.

As I think about it, hard-facts stories like mine when applied to weight loss or general health are much the same. They are devoured by the true believers who already live the kale-and-Peloton life, but ignored by the mass of people like me who squint when they have to go on the scale. And yet those articles always find a home. Maybe it's true that Americans are just weird about money. As far as I know, coin-op gas meters never really had a market here.

A couple of classics.

When I was a kid, the dads tended to fall into one of three camps: Old Spice, Aqua Velva, or Skin Bracer. You'd meet the occasional Brut or even Hai Karate dad, but they were more likely to see overly friendly, like a salesman who couldn't turn it off at home. My dad found that Skin Bracer hit him just right.

But there were some classic colognes and aftershaves that had and have a recognizable scent, ones that just were not much in use by dads in the time and place where I grew up. I've not made a collection of them, but sometimes curiosity has overwhelmed me and I've felt obliged to try something like...

Clubman by Pinaud has been around since 1810, and smells like every just-for-guys barbershop I've ever entered. The omnipresent scent probably comes from the Clubman powder, with which every neck got brushed following the haircut. It's a nice, manly scent, a little floral but mostly woody, a little musky. I do find it a bit strong in the aftershave, though, so I will use a little Purell with it in my palm when I slap some on. I never want to be That Guy, the one who knocks people a step back because of his strong cologne (good or bad, a strong smell from a guy makes people react poorly).

This cologne, however, I found to be a little scary:

Supposedly Florida Water, an even older product, on the American scene since 1808, is named for the legendary Fountain of Youth that Juan Ponce de León sought. It's got a very spicy scent, clean rather than musky, and I would not have guessed that it contains oils of lemon, orange, and lavender, but it does. It also supposedly has a lot of spiritual uses for all kinds of pagan practices, but arrant nonsense aside, it's a pleasant enough product. I tend to thin this also with Purell, which may be why I have enjoyed no spiritual cleansing. The one mystic power I feared was that using Florida Water might turn a guy into a Florida Man, but the company that makes it is in New Jersey, so I think it's safe.

What do I usually use? Well, I like an alcohol-based aftershave because it kills germs (keep that flesh-eating bacteria out of your razor nicks!), it dries fast, and it feels clean. So I keep a pump bottle of Purell by the sink and usually just use that. For special occasions I may break out some fancy-pants cologne I got as a gift. But, every once in a while, I'll buy a bottle of Skin Bracer and use that, and remember my dad.

Technical difficulties....

...please stand by...

Nah, not really, but Microsoft did one of those OS upgrades last week and I expected the worst. Took forever. Still, when I consider how many people use MS software, how much crap we all download on our PCs of varied and sundry levels of compatibility and soundness, it's a miracle these upgrades take at all.

My dad could not have fixed a computer, I'm sure. He died before they really became a thing, back when the Internet was barely more than a military concoction and home computers were for people who wanted a thousand-dollar paperweight. I wonder what he would have made of all this.

He was a tool guy, a man who worked with his hands, and he could fix anything. And if he couldn't, because it required more technical expertise outside his field, he could bring in one of his pals. He always knew someone on The Job who could handle what he couldn't, and vice versa. They weren't really social guys, but they'd go to one another's houses when a project needed doing.

Toward the end of his life he told me that he couldn't fix cars anymore, that the computers in them would get messed up if he tried. I was stunned. He had been fixing cars since he was a kid, knew all the parts and what they were for, and he could handle anything that didn't require the engine block to be hauled out. But this is where we are now. Everything is Smart, which is rendering us dumb. I'm lucky if I know what hole to pour the wiper fluid in.

I know a few guys who tinker on their vehicles, guys like my dad who could probably build one from scratch if they had the right tools and the time (what American boy hasn't dreamed of building his own Centaur -- although it would be illegal now in most states to take it one the road, I'm sure). But all of them work on pre-1980 vehicles. There will always be car guys tinkering on cars, but I expect eventually all those cars will be Theseus's ships, philosophical conundrums with no original parts.

Among many things I would do differently were I to live this life again, though, would be to pay attention to my dad when he was doing home projects. He was a terrible teacher but I was the absolute worst student. Now I'm paying for it. Oh, sure, I can get a PC to work ("Here's the start button!"), but fix a lamp? Dude, better get one of those Radio Shack nerds in.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads. My heart was busted when my dad died. My car, my computer, and my heart are still the only things around here he couldn't fix.

Dads and movies.

We were chatting on Father's Day about dads in movies. especially in modern movies, where they seldom cover themselves in glory. If it's a comedy, you know Dad will be a dumbbell; if it's a drama, Dad will probably be an estranged man who constantly looks at his progeny with a sad, wistful face. Usually George Clooney's face.

If it's an action or adventure picture, Dad typically doesn't exist. I don't think we know anything about the fathers of Rick Blaine or Barry Kane or Jack Burton. Other dads in these films are all bad -- serial killers or evil scientists or those deep into the dark side of the Force.

But we do get to meet some dads in action or adventure movies; let's see how they made out.

Taken, Bryan Mills

It's hard to be a father when you're off killing people for the CIA all day. Bryan misses all his daughter's school plays and birthday parties, but can be counted on to spill all of the blood of her tormentors when needed. He's surprisingly sharp considering that his ex-wife and child seem to be able to bamboozle him at will early on in the film. I guess he's okay, but maybe he wouldn't have had to kill so many people if he just had cultivated different father skills in his career.

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are
looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what
I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired 
over a very long career. These include double-entry bookkeeping,
compliance with Internal Revenue Service regulations, lawn mower
maintenance, a bowling  average of 158, and the ability to shave with
a straight razor."

Thor, Odin

You think being a human dad is tough? Try being the immortal father of the Norse gods. The kids never leave the house. And all they ever do is party and fight.

Odin is known as Allwise, the god who famously sacrificed an eye in his quest for wisdom, but you'd hardly know it in this picture. He overreacts to his son being a doofus (like that was something new) and exiles him to earth, a move that will result in all sorts of mayhem and death among the humans, especially in the Avengers picture. Then he takes his little ol' man Odinsleep, not anticipating that his adoptive son Loki, the god of treachery, is going to use beddy-bye time to take over the joint. Didn't see that one coming!

"I do and I do and I do for you kids...."

Maybe you were right in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul about retirement, Odin.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Henry Jones

Henry's single-minded pursuit of his goals leads his son into deadly peril, and we can be sure it isn't the first time. Worse, we quickly find out that he shares his son's stupid habit of not preventing Nazis from acquiring enormously powerful religious artifacts. Plus Henry and his son (real name: Henry Jr.) bicker through the whole picture.

They say the Lord works in mysterious ways, but working things so His sacred artifacts had to be rescued by the Jones family could make you wonder about the kindness of Providence.

"He took hish nickname
from the dog! Can you
believe it? My shon ish
an idiot!"

So we see that even when action movie dads are tough, brave, not dead, and possibly competent, they can leave you shaking your head. Maybe next year we'll dissect fathers from Disney movies. I would expect that in real life all those Disney characters would be seeing analysts once or twice a week, minimum.

What's for breakfast?

Father's Day! They're going to whip up a nice breakfast for the old man, right? Let's see what tasty confections await us down at the breakfast table! Boy, I can't -- 

What the hell is this?

Sure enough, it's what you think it is -- General Mills has released two breakfast cereals based on the most popular varieties of Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints and Samoas (alias Caramel deLites). I spotted these in Walmart a few days ago. What kind of sad, sorry, cookie-inhaling fat bastard would be desperate enough to buy these?

So I bought the "Caramel Crunch" and tried it. Sure enough, the Internet's #1 cereal mentor, Mr. Breakfast, was already on the job, and I completely endorse his review:

The thing that makes Somoas cookies so good is coconut and gooey caramel lined with chocolate. By contrast, this cereal just looks like little cinnamon donuts. The flavor of caramel is there, but the coconut is so subtle that I'm still not sure if I just imagined it. There is no chocolate element to the cereal.... it still feels like General Mills is on their way to making a truly great caramel cereal one day, but this cereal is a stepping stone to get to that eventual product.

That was my feeling exactly. You really wouldn't know it was supposed to taste like a Samoa unless you saw the box. It doesn't mean that the cereal is bad, as it isn't -- crunchy, not preposterously sweet, caramelish -- but as a cereal version of the cookie it fails. (Mr. B says the Thin Mints cereal does a better job of approximating its cookie.)

Having had our cereal, what else is part of this complete breakfast, hmm? Waffles?

Almost two years ago to the day I investigated the Belgian Boys and found that they are a small outfit making these tasty Belgish treats. Tasty they are, especially the chocolate-covered liege wafel. The non-chocolate wafel has pearl sugar, which are delightful little droplets of hard sugar -- the chocolate ones have pearl sugar too, but it's kind of lost in the chocolate. These treats are like, if a standard waffle had a baby with a cookie. Like a pizzelle with a weight problem. As with the other Belgian Boys products, these are not quite really breakfast foods, though. Then again, neither are cookie-based cereals.

So all this sugar is getting to me; how about some nice healthy yogurt?

We've been following a lot of yogurt fads since Dannon stopped putting out its yogurt with those little cardboard lid discs. Mix-ins, Greek, Aussie, quark, lactose-free, whole milk... the yogurt aisle has grown to vast dimensions. But one thing Yoplait will keep doing is coming up with wacky flavors. Like root beer float.

This flavor is part of their Whips! line, which is yogurt whipped up to a creamy, almost whipped cream consistency. It looks like this:

You may note that that looks exactly like a scoop of ice cream does when it's been sitting in a glass of root beer for a while. Well played, Yoplait.

Here's the thing I find interesting: Hires, Barq's, Mug, and A&W root beer all use natural and artificial flavors, while Yoplait's root beer yogurt uses only natural flavors. Why is that? Why can't the guys who make actual root beer use all non-phony flavors? Are they scared of something? Is there some magic root beer ingredient that will degenerate after the shelf life of a cup of yogurt but shorten the shelf life of bottled soda? We want the truth, soda people. I suggest appointing a special prosecutor.

Well, after that meal you really ought to brush your teeth -- but if you can't for some reason, like you're at a funeral, maybe you could pop one of these:

I was surprised to see the labeling change in Breath Savers, a line of mints by Hershey that has always tried to get its packaging to make you think of whooshing through a frosty landscape, like you're on skis.

Whoosh!

The new font is attractive and completely counter to what has gone before. Looks like Century Schoolbook, or a reasonable facsimile. It caught my eye, which the old packaging never did. I suppose that's the point -- that, and as a means of focusing on the "breath" part, the way Certs (by Mondelēz) always has.

The problem for me is that Certs always tasted good and Breath Savers always tasted lame. Why? Sugar. Nowhere does fake sugar taste more fake than in candy. Breath Savers and other sugarless candies have always tasted like plastic to me. Some are better than others; the sugarless Werther's are not quite as obviously artificial. But they don't freshen your breath. And if you're going to freshen your breath after eating, why use a sugary candy and rot your teeth?

Well, that's enough Father's Day breakfast for me; back to bed! See you Monday!

Family business.

"Son, if you're going to get anywhere you'd better get your act together."

Groaner.

Even in the old folks' home, Albert wouldn't stop making Dad jokes.

Message to the dog.

Manly men and boyly boys.

You ever play that game when you ask yourself what your parents were doing when they were your age, and compare your progress through life with theirs? I think about that with my late dad sometimes, and Father's Day brings it to mind again.

Dad was a hardworking guy, a physically tough man who could endure a lot of pain. When he spent a day in bed, you knew he was practically dead. I only remember a couple of occasions when he was flat-out sick (once from bronchitis and once when we all got food poisoning), aside from the illness that claimed his life.

I wanted to be just like him when I was little. We wound up being very different, for any number of reasons. It doesn't make me better than him, not at all. I certainly am not as hearty as he was, nor as hard a worker. He was omnicapable with anything construction related, and could fix any car up to the time they started putting computers in them. He was an extremely reliable human being.

I wonder if our country is still capable of making guys like Dad.

In her book Men on Strike, Dr. Helen Smith argues that American men have been so disdained, ridiculed, attacked, isolated, and denigrated that it's no wonder that they aren't marrying, making lives, being the pillars of society they once were. Why should they? They get no respect for trying---look at any TV show. Mom is the superhero; Dad is the comic relief. "The law and culture tend to protect women and to harm men. Men are starting to realize this, and women need to understand that men have few reproductive rights, have few legal rights in divorce, and are seen as the bad guy in marriages that go wrong. It is not immaturity for men to be reluctant to marry, it is a rational choice not to place oneself in a harmful legal contract that gives them no safety net."

It runs throughout the culture the way faith in God once did: girls need to be encouraged to be kickass geniuses, boys are boneheads who are more trouble than they're worth. But do girls need all this talking up? Women are now the majority of voters, the majority of college students and graduates. What are men the majority of?

Suicides. 

Our local high school had pictures of the top 25 grads. Five were boys. (Only one was a Caucasian boy.) I don't wish to downplay the excellence of the other students, but it's been more than twenty years since our culture got obsessed with representative groups that "look like America." Does five boys out of 25 look like America?

Boys know that they get more attention when they mess up and no plaudits when they do well. They expect girls to be better students and they see no reason to compete. They see Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, supposedly heroes, being belittled by their more-intelligent female friends. A 1997 MetLife study (The Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher 1997: Examining Gender Issues in Public Schools, available here) reported that "contrary to the commonly held view that boys are at an advantage over girls in school, girls appear to have every advantage over boys in terms of their future plans, teacher's expectations, everyday experiences in school and interactions in the classroom." It's little wonder that boys think less now of book learning than they ever did.  

I see it with sons of friends. They may be okay with athletic achievement, but they discourage academic achievement among themselves. Why be a dork and get picked on by everybody?

We have rightly been concerned about inner city cultures that disparage academics. What happens when half the human race adopts that attitude? 

You can say that men had more privileges in my father's time, and you'd be right. But they also had a hell of a lot more responsibilities, and could take pride in the honor of fulfilling them. Now men are considered superfluous, and honor a sham, and have acted accordingly. As C. S. Lewis famously said, "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

When Dad was my age, he had survived poverty, cancer, and he had to support a teenage me. He was a rock. Men today have been turned into those phony plastic rocks you see in landscaping. Some look good, but you can't build anything on them.