My Movember Adventure

A gin-fueled conversation at a party in August led to me finally growing some facial hair this Movember.  I could say I was motivated to draw attention to men's health issues but really I was just curious about what it would be like.  I've never gone more than 2 days without shaving* and I had questions.
- How would I look with scruff?  Like Don Johnson circa Miami Vice or like a serial killer?
- How long would I need to achieve enough facial hair to get past the super-cheesy 17-yr-old-with-a-mustache phase?
- Will letting my scruff go feel as annoying and scratchy as I think?
- Will loved ones laugh and point or just laugh?

*When I was 19 I got the chicken pox so I went about 5 days without shaving.  This was the pre-selfie era and we're all thankful for that.  Also, I wasn't really an adult yet so it didn't count.

So I embarked on a shaving-free adventure.  Here is the timeline of key phases.

Day 1 - Saturday November 1
I didn't shave today!  Did anyone notice?  Anyone?

Day 2 -- Sunday 11/2
Second day without shaving.  Time saved not shaving can be applied to watching additional football, always a bonus.  On day 2 only people hyper aware of my facial hair* notice that anything is different.

* Me...and me.

Day 5 - Wednesday 11/5
Now things are starting to show.  To no one's surprise I've got a fair amount of gray mixed in with whatever beard I've mustered so far.  It feels like a brillo pad stuck to my face.  In the mirror I perceive myself to look like late-career Brett Favre with a side order of serial killer.

At this point I've also discovered that I'm inept at taking selfies.  I see myself in the mirror and think, "OK, I guess I can live with that."  Then I take a picture of myself in the mirror and what shows up on the camera is a completely different person.  "Who is THIS clown?  This is not the same me I see in the mirror.  Is this a strange iPhone filter that changes you into a different person?"  So my Movember chronicling is plagued by poor photographic documentation.

Day 7 - Friday 11/7
Now I'm annoyed.  The beard is advancing and I'm scratching constantly.  I wonder how noted neck beard enthusiast Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts can even function as a human with neck hair, much less operate as a professional athlete.  I traveled for work this week and I told everyone in the office there, "Get a good look now because this isn't happening again."

I fly home and we have a dinner outing planned with two other couples  I'm not going to make it through the night without taking some action so I do a Google image search of beards to help me figure out how to trim this monster.*  I land on a picture of Daniel Craig** as the closest representation of what I've got going and pull out the razor to clean things up based on his personal grooming leadership.   Beard maintenance is a lot trickier than I ever imagined but cleaning things up a bit makes life more livable.

I'm not sure how you can tell us apart.

*It felt monstrous to me but probably barely registered on the Duck Dynasty scale.
**When you do a google image search there are no photos of accountants from Iowa or IT dweebs from Minnesota.  It's primarily movie stars so that's what I had for comparison.  Mr. Craig and I are at least the same age and have the same coloring.

Day 8 - Saturday 11/8
Time for radical change.  The beard experiment has lasted long enough and I have a game plan.  Today:  goatee.  Maybe it's really a Van Dyke but I call it a goatee.  It's the go-to facial hair configuration for guys of my generation wanting to look tougher than they really are.  Because of the cliche potential I'm only signing up for the goatee for one day but it has to be done.  Finally shaving all the other scratchy stuff makes things more palatable by another notch.  But now I look like Generic Sports Bar Guy #3.

Day 9 - Sunday 11/9 - Wednesday 11/12
Now we get to the fun part.  There's no reason to go through all of this struggle and not have a Fu Manchu.  First thing Sunday I shave off the chin hair to leave a glorious* Fu Manchu-style mustache.  My first thought is...

I let it incubate for a few days.  Mature.  Steep.  Blossom.  True, it garnered more giggles than fear but at least I could operate under the self-induced illusion that the Fu Manchu granted me extraordinary powers of intimidation, martial arts prowess, and Jesse The Body Ventura quotes.  That is, until I realized I was looking a lot like Creepy Rob Lowe from the DirecTv ads.  As I walked around the office I could see people shying away and thinking, "restraining order."

To be clear, I'm on the left and Creepy Rob Lowe is on the right.

*All things are relative.

Day 13 - Thursday 11/13
And finally, a mustache.  It wasn't quite the robust, 70's era porn 'stache that would really set hearts a-flutter but it was unmistakably a mustache.  I believe -- and the competition for this distinction over the course of my life is fierce -- that there has never been another day where I looked MORE idiotic.

Is that not the most glorious, sensible-female-repelling, young-child-frightening facial hair abomination you've ever seen?  And equally glorious was how this coincided with the one day at the office where we interview a fresh batch of college recruits for jobs.  Those kids won't remember a single thing I said during my kickoff speech* but they'll probably remember that there was a guy with a ridiculous mustache.

*OK, they'll probably remember my references to the Hunger Games, TJ Lavin, and Dr. Seuss's Sneetches.

Day 14 -- Friday 11/14
That's it, I'm done.  I know the point of this is to maintain a mustache all month but I can't take it anymore.  Friday morning arrives and I hack that thing off as quickly as I can.  Ahhhh, blissful, non-hirsute normal-ness.  At least I can say I tried it.  For those of you who witnessed it:  cherish the memories as I'm not likely to try it again anytime soon.

The Biel-Beckinsale Total Recall Brawl

In one of my undergraduate composition classes we frequently had to construct 3-5 page papers around ridiculous and unscholarly topics.  This is reminiscent of those days.

The 2012 remake of Total Recall is serviceable and sufficiently entertaining as a rental, with significant but reasonable departures from the original.  The plot is absurd, but plausibly so within the context of its story which is true of most science fiction/action films.

One memorable scene (especially for guys) is an epic hand-to-hand combat fight between the two lead females:  Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale.  Here are two alternate views on how to interpret this scene in a broader context:

View 1:  This was yet another depiction of the centuries-old male fantasy of a catfight, pitting two certified smokeshows brawling over a guy, albeit one that makes use of non-girly special ops training and high-incendiary explosives.  This gratuitious scene exists solely to serve the prurient interests of mouth-breathing men.  (Note to film-makers:  Please, give me more.)

Or

View 2:  This scene presages the emerging dominance of women in society, as documented by Hanna Rosin and others.   Here we have two athletic women advancing their own agendas and the male lead, Colin Farrell, is marginalized to the sidelines to scrap with a droid soldier.  Farrell's character dimishes as a lead and becomes merely a pawn in the larger, movie-long struggle between the two women.  (In support of this view, but regrettably from my standpoint, Colin Farrell is the only one of the three to appear topless in this film.)  The actresses were completely, if snugly, dressed, no baby oil was involved, and jiggle was at a premium.  One could boldly say this fight symbolizes the real-world societal ascension of women relative to men and is a post-feminist statement on the on-going shift in the gender power structure from males to females.

Or maybe it's just an entertaining scene in an action movie.  Complicating the analysis is the knowledge that Beckinsale's husband was the film's director.  Was he exploiting her, or helping her career?  Likely the two had considerations to advance her bona fides as an action star, already established in the Underworld films.  Film critics and observers have argued for years as to whether women can carry action films;  in my view they can if done credibly.  In real life I doubt that Kate Beckinsale cracks 100 lbs by much and would struggle to push around my 5' 9" 8th grade daughter, much less an ex-military adult male.  But she is clearly athletic -- as shown in this film and the Underworld series -- and this is about acting and show, not real ass-kicking.  (Another attractive, underfed woman convincingly opening up multiple cans of whup-ass on people:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qna_1BEB4fY)

On film Ms. Beckinsale is convincing even if CGI and other movie magic is along for the ride to help.  There is always a suspension of disbelief in these films, in the same way I don't believe Sylvester Stallone is really doing all those things in The Expendables at his age (even with that much HGH running through his system), and in the same way I don't believe Orlando Bloom is really that proficient and accurate with a bow and arrow.  I'm temporarily but consciously buying into the fact that Kate Beckinsale can seriously smack someone around.  As for Jessica Biel, she's got some guns to go with her looks and can probably shove folks around without the assistance of Hollywood trickery.

So, to summarize:  more babe fights, please.  Everybody wins.

Lump

Recently I had a lump surgically removed from my lower back.  As lumps go I could have had worse.  About the size of a small fist, it was in a discreet spot, only visible when I was at the pool or mowing the lawn with my shirt off on a hot day (hot being defined as 55 degrees and up).  I didn't get the vibe that it was a bad lump with ill intent.  It was simply a collection of fatty tissue that decided to take up residence in one concentrated area of my body and while away the days.

Despite the lack of perceived lump-initiated malice, after 10 years of living with the thing I'd had enough.  Fairly often I would inadvertently whack the lump when getting into my car, putting on my backpack that I use extensively when I travel for work, or any number of other routine activities.  Plus, I didn't enjoy feeling like I had a mutant growth coming out of my back.  My career as an international male back model has really slowed in the past decade.

I visited a general surgeon, hoping it was such a minor thing that he could scoop it out of me with a melon baller right in his office and be done with it.  But no, it was too big for that, and I learned they can reach deeper inside you than is apparent, like an iceberg.  The doc made vague proclamations about needing "support staff" and "modern operating room equipment" and other accoutrements that smacked of lawyer-driven precaution and safety.  So I entered the world of hospital administrative processing and outpatient surgery checklists.

Leading up to the procedure I had numerous phone calls with nurses asking preparatory and often duplicative questions, the cumulative duration of which lasted far longer than the procedure itself.  No, I don't have an allergy to latex.  No, I don't have a problem with anesthesia.*  No, I don't have a living will.  I was asked at least 4 times if I had a living will.  This isn't heart surgery!  Have some confidence in yourselves, people!  After the fourth of fifth time I was starting to have doubts myself.  Should I have a living will?  Only old people have living wills, right?  Holy crap am I THAT old?  I already have a "regular" will to decide who gets my 8 yr old car and my collection of Guitar Hero Xbox games.  If I wake up a vegetable?  Just put the hospital room TV on ESPN and see what happens.

*My college roommate had a problem with anesthesia, once turning into a multi-day narcoleptic after dental surgery.  He also was known for having epic hangovers.  I'm no doctor but I see a connection here.

On the day of the procedure I had my wife drive me to the medical center, as required by the doctor, even though I was convinced of my invincibility,* at least in my ability to drive myself home afterward.  I then began the procession of waiting rooms and familiar questions (No living will!) before finally getting to the pre-op bed.  Not wanting to take a vacation day for something I was still convinced should be done in 10 minutes in a doctor's office, I had my laptop with me and was working online with an IV and other tubes plugged in to me.  All of the world's knowledge can be delivered wirelessly to my computer but I still need clear plastic landlines to receive fluids and pharmaceuticals.

*Typical guy

After playing several games of Ruzzle with my waiting wife, after responding to numerous work emails and documents, and after reconfirming with each medical professional who entered the room that I was, indeed, the David Carl that was born on 7/8/69, thereby distinguishing myself from any other David Carls getting surgery that day in the same facility in Shakopee, MN, they finally wheeled me into the operating room.  Was I feeling the anesthetic yet?  No, not yet, triggering a latent memory in the back of my mind of an un-read article from a recent Atlantic Monthly about people waking up in the middle of surgery.  They put a mask on me and flipped me over onto my stomach on the operating table.  OK, now I'm feeling the anesthetic. And blah blah blah...out.

Thirty-five minutes later I'm awake and being wheeled back to the pre-op room, feeling no different and wondering if they really took the thing out.*  I popped open my laptop to resume working and wait for the doc to say I'm free to rejoin normal society.  Eventually he drops in and says there were no problems, they'll biopsy the mass in a few days (this isn't a Lifetime movie of the week:  it was negative), and that I shouldn't do anything in the next few days that will stretch my stitches.  So no cardio tennis tomorrow?  No.

*I really hoped they'd tell me the lump weighed 5 pounds, thereby giving a serious boost to my personal tonnage reduction efforts currently underway.  But the biopsy report described it in grams so bleech.

I'm now living the carefree life of a lump-free human being.  I swing my backpack onto my back with abandon and look forward to spring break on the beach when people will look at me and think, "Hey, he's not a deformed freak.  He's pretty old, though.  I bet he has a living will."

Dave's 2013 New Year's Resolutions

1. I'm not going to lose weight, I'm going to reduce my atmospheric displacement.
2. This year, get the extra 9 yards and pass Eric Dickerson.
3. Reduce my exposure to second-hand HGTV.
4. When people at the office ask me to print in landscape mode, don't mis-hear it as "manscape" mode.
5. Less jeggings, more jorts.  Gird yourselves accordingly.
6. Live by the WWTECD credo:  What Would The Expendables Cast Do?
7. Acquire weapons of mass destruction; use as deterrent for potential suitors of my teenage daughter.

Reunion for Cakeeaters

Recently I attended my 25-year high school reunion.  Not being particularly fond of my high school years, like many people, I hadn't attended any other reunions.  I didn't feel like ages 15-17 were the pinnacle of personal achievement so I've always felt more positively about my college years* than about high school.  But when some of my far-flung friends said they were flying back thousands of miles for the event I figured I'd better suck it up, drive the couple miles to a neighboring suburb, and deal with it.

*Or 2nd grade.  Or last week.

As a quiet, shy kid who couldn't play sports and wasn't a band geek I wasn't well-known within my class of 615 students.  I'm reasonably secure with how my life has progressed, but my main apprehension about attending the reunion was:  no one would know who I am.  And not just that they wouldn't remember me, but that they never knew me in the first place and I'd have to spend inordinate amounts of time explaining who I was and convincing people I went to the same school.  On top of being non-memorable personality-wise, with a late birthday I hadn't exactly filled out by the end of school so at reunion time I was around 60 lbs heavier than on graduation day <insert fat joke here> and perhaps not physically memorable either.  While I often prefer anonymity in situations like these, in this case social interaction couldn't be avoided.   I envisioned receiving the following questions:

• Did you go to our school?
• Who the hell are you?
• Do you work here?  Can you bring me a Bud Light?
• I don't remember you.  Did your spouse go to Edina?
• Were you this much of a dork in high school?
• No, seriously.  Who the hell are you?

There's nothing I like less than explaining who the hell I am to the smirking, eyebrow-raised dubious.  I was counting on the Power of the Name Tag to allay some of this.  Also, just like in high school, I would have the protection of the pack.  Four friends now living in Germany, Florida, London, and New York would be with me along with a few local guys like myself who hadn't settled down far from our hometown.  So I put on my 5th-best frock, abstained from an inhibitions-loosening pre-reunion tequila shot, girded my loins, and ventured out of the comforting embrace of my house.

Despite hailing from an affluent Twin Cities suburb our reunion was held at a bar/bowling alley on a par with the one featured in The Big Lebowski.*  We arrived figuring a two hour stay would be sufficient with a built-in escape plan to head to another watering hole downtown with other, non-grad friends.  This knowledge reassured me, along with the fact that I'd driven us to the joint and could theoretically ditch at any time.

*I learned later another grad from a different year owned it.  A swankier joint was featured at the 20th reunion but apparently no one liked the formality.  The dude (who plans these events) abides.

In a greater upset than Great Britain recently winning gold medals in activities where there is sunshine, we ended up staying 6 hours until 1 AM.  Most of this time was spent talking amongst our own circle of friends, just like in high school.  And just like in high school, mingling was still awkward for me.  It was sometimes hard to identify whom I knew from those days within the gathered crowd and therefore would be safe to converse with.  People fell about evenly into these categories:

• People we knew and recognized immediately.  "Wow, he hasn't changed."
• People we knew back in the day but weren't recognizable without the name tag.  "Yeesh, what happened to her?"
• People we never knew and didn't recognize even with a name.  "That dude?  I got nuthin'."

As the event unfolded I realized a troubling flaw in my name tag strategy:  if you needed to get close enough to read someone's name tag you were already committed, and therefore already on the off-ramp to Awkwardville, population You.  You had to get so close to read the name that if you realized you DIDN'T know the person, or didn't want to talk to him or her, then you were stuck.  As a result you found yourself two feet away from someone with a derp* expression on your face trying to conjure conversation from nowhere.

*Example of a derp expression:

 Other highlights of the night:

• One egregiously drunk woman propositioning one of my friends for extramarital canoodling after being shamelessly goaded to do so by one of our other friends
• Various accusations of botox and plastic surgery
• A complete disdain for the bowling lanes, despite the exhortations of our homecoming queen to get rolling
• A painfully lengthy conversation about IT careers with the highly over-served girlfriend of a guy we barely knew.  The conversation concluded with her sudden concern regarding the whereabouts of her fallen name tag, which she searched for by thoroughly groping her female frontal parts.  My friend and I politely snuck away at this point.

The coup of the night was our friend Sean snagging a picture of the woman arguably* considered the babe of our class.  To protect the innocent I will refer to her as Fatima**.  Sean was talking to a couple other women that we knew a little bit.  Fatima happened to arrive at the reunion just then and stopped briefly to say Hi to one of those other women on her way by.  Sean, who as a U.S. Marine with combat experience knows how to identify and track a high-value target, suddenly erupted with, "Hey, how about a picture!"  Courtesy required Fatima to smile and pose for this completely unplanned picture that now included Sean.  I believe a medal is in order for this.

*I said ARGUABLY!
**Not only was there no real Fatima in our class, I would wager that a Fatima has never attended our high school. 

In retrospect, the whole thing was no big deal.  A couple people recognized me, most didn't.*  I'm sure I'll never see most of these people again unless I go to another reunion.  People clustered in some of the same old cliques but it was more about hanging with who you knew.  I was genuinely curious about what life and career paths people had chosen but it was impossible to learn anything without having detailed one-on-one conversations.  No one was extra bling-y, no one showed up in a limo, and I didn't hear anyone raving about out-sized career success or precocious children.  After 25 years, we are what we are.  My friend Richard probably summed it up best:  "I'm telling my kids that it doesn't matter what people in high school think about you.  In 25 years no one cares."


*As I was walking out the door at the end of the night I threw away my name tag and then paused to let someone catch up.  At that moment, as I stood a mere 3 feet from freedom, a woman from our class came up and uttered, "Hi, I don't recognize you.  What's your name?"

Observations on Spring Break in the Florida Keys

I've compiled a few random observations and comments from our recent spring break trip to Key Largo.  We went with another family and had a great time but, as always, there are some things that merit further explanation...

First Class, sort of

Endless slogging back and forth to Connecticut resulted in the whole family getting upgraded to first class for the flight to Miami.  Free booze!  Vacation drinking starts early!

        Me:  "I'll have a whiskey and ginger ale"
        The flight attendant delivers just a ginger ale.  I'm not one to make a big fuss so I throw that back so I can order again.  This time I aim for something that I assume can't be interpreted any other way than a plea for booze.

        Me:  "Can I get a GIN AND TONIC?"
       And...I get another ginger ale.  Should I have written it down?  Is there a special language spoken only by veteran first class travelers to which I'm not privy?  I could make a stink at this point to get this rectified, in the process presenting myself as an alcohol-craving d-bag, which I am but I try not to show it in public.  I know, I know -- first world problems.  Deciding to sit quietly, I go back to my movie and dream longingly of a well-stocked bar at our rental house.

Bidet
Our bathroom had a bidet in it, which I regarded the same way, and gave as wide a berth to, as I would a hemorrhoidal gator.

Compensating
What's with all of the Hummers in the Keys?  Expecting a blizzard?  Preparing to armor-up for an invasion from Cuba?  Anomalous preponderance of Small Penis Syndrome?  Yes, yes I think so.

A Dolphin's Perspective

         "Hi, my name is Molly and I'm one of the trained dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon in the Florida Keys.  Just got out of ANOTHER staff meeting.  Half of what I do is go to meetings.  How am I supposed to get anything done?  Plus, that lecher from accounting was scoping out my tail fluke again.  Creep."

          "Anyhoo, that last borefest was to review the day's schedule.  Looks like my first task is to be the dolphin partner for some dopes from Minnesota for the DRC's swim-with-the-dolphins experience.  There's seven of them so I better swim over and see what they look like."

           "OK, fine, fine, young kids -- this is good, not too bad, this is doable... HOLY CRIKEY HE'S A LOAD!  Dammit, one of the dads is the size of a manatee and I can't believe I have to drag his ass around the lagoon.  One of my tricks is to pull people around the water while they hang on to my dorsal fin.  He'll probably pull mine clear off -- assuming I don't first sink to the bottom from sheer exhaustion after towing that cargo barge around.  At least I'll get the union-mandated bump for the extra tonnage.  And that other dad:  he looks OK but if he starts dancing during the mimicry portion of the routine I'm just going to splash him."

Things

• Things Minnesota has that Florida doesn't:  curbs
• Things Florida has that Minnesota doesn't:  buckets of chum for sale.  "Chum Bucket:  $19.99"  Minnesota has its fair share of bait and minnow vendors but that doesn't grab one's attention like chum.  First of all, "chum" is just a fun word to say.  Second, chum means sharks, not walleye, and sharks move the interest needle much more.  You can't empty an ocean-front swimming area with cries of a walleye sighting.
• Other things Florida has that Minnesota doesn't:  random, backwater, health-code-violation-waiting-to-happen-looking restaurants that surprisingly crank out good food.  We hit two after mid-day activities:  Fish Tales and The Hungry Tarpon.   The Minnesota equivalents of these would have melted Velveeta on every menu item and the side dish would have been jello-based.  In the Keys you get a well-made fresh fish dish and a reasonable beer selection, all appearances to the contrary.

He Chose...Poorly

• Florida tattoo shops:  enabling unwise self-decoration choices by alcohol-addled tourists every 600 yards.  I guess if they were spaced as much as a mile apart someone might sober up so better cram a couple more in there.

Whiteout Conditions -- Take Shelter

Key Largo, FL -- Local public health authorities in Key Largo, FL, along with the Department of Homeland Security, are preparing citizens for a cataclysmic event that will surely stress the emergency response infrastructure.  On Sunday April 1st, David L. Carl of Eden Prairie, MN will emerge from his vacation rental house and remove his t-shirt, exposing his ultra-pasty-white torso to the tropical elements for the first time.  The resulting reflection, which could approach the brightness of a hydrogen bomb detonation, has local officials gearing up for the worst.

"We're advising residents to stay inside, especially young children, the elderly, and anyone with a weak stomach," cautioned Key Largo Chief of Police Don Wilson.  "The blinding flash from the sun hitting his body could do permanent retinal damage to anyone in a 5-mile radius and might melt surrounding structures.  Plus, it will certainly be visually upsetting."

Despite the mild winter in Minnesota, Mr. Carl still has not seen direct sunlight for over 6 months.  Scientists brought in from MIT have struggled to properly identify and measure the level of paleness  in his skin.  "Our machines simply aren't calibrated for a color that doesn't exist anywhere else in nature or even a laboratory," said mechanical engineering senior Rebecca Livingston.  "Plus, there's a lot of surface area we're dealing with here -- he's no ballerina."  Mr. Carl's skin color has been variously described as "translucent," "non-existent," "uber-pasty," and "so, so friggin' white -- a white not seen since biblical times," the latter of which Behr is considering as a new paint name.

His skin is so pasty that it's possible the sunlight will go right through him.  In that case the only people in danger would be those standing immediately behind him.  Hazmat suits will be issued to the family and friends traveling with him.  Public health officials advised them not to arrive in Key Largo until the 2nd when the highest risk should have passed.

No such luck for local residents.  "If we can just survive the first 10 minutes we should be OK," continued Sheriff Wilson.  "A boy that pasty is gonna burn to a crisp in no time.  Once he's a good reddish-pink we'll be past the most dangerous point.  But people should still wear protective eye-wear.  If he flips over onto his stomach we could have a secondary flashpoint."  Wilson then seemed to be lost in thought, as if he was envisioning the horrific aftermath of such an event.

South Florida residents aren't the only ones at risk.  "This flash could reverberate across the oceans, like the tsunami from a couple years ago," advised Chet Grundler of DHS.  "We're alerting other Caribbean nations and even West Africa to warn their citizens to stay indoors."  DHS officials are also arranging for post-traumatic stress counselors to be available for the survivors.

Dave's Extremely Helpful Guide to Accents of Major English-Speaking Nations

Based on my VAST foreign travels and lengthy study of linguistics I've compiled this extremely helpful and scholarly diagram showing how to recognize the country of origin of a particular English accent.

Les Mis and Mortality

A recent viewing of Les Miserables at the Orpheum, of all things, reminded me of the summer of 2010 when, like the main character but for different reasons, I had to seriously analyze my own mortality and what it meant for raising my daughter.  For more than four months that year my body deteriorated to the point where I had to assume, for the first time in my life, that I wouldn't live to the ripe old age I'd hoped for.  And if I had to calibrate my life goals downward, that meant I had to think hard about what I owed my daughter with the life that I had left.  It wasn't like I was going to keel over suddenly but cashing social security checks didn't seem guaranteed.  It's going to take a bit of back story to set this up.

I've had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in my hips and knees since age 13.  To keep this shorter than a Stephen King novel I'm going to summarize hip and knee JRA like this:  it's a drag.  But that ain't nothing compared to what arthritis is like when you get it in your back and neck, which is what happened to me in late spring of 2010.  When arthritis moves into your back and neck it's known as the Scrabble-rific Ankylosing Spondylitis.  During the day I could barely function;  every movement hurt.  At the office, I looked forward to conference calls because I could close my door, put my headset on, mutter something every once in a while, and the rest of the time put my head on the desk and simply try to exist.  At night I was completely useless, the aches and pains so bad that I often went to bed at 7.  Karen was thinking, "What, this is all I get?"  My situation was obvious to most:  over the years I've gotten good at disguising a limp but I couldn't hide the fact that I couldn't turn my neck.

Along similarly cheery lines, rarely has a story been more aptly named than Les Miserables.  Justice and fairness were in short supply in early 1800s France and Jean Valjean enjoyed even less than the other dregs of society depicted by the actors.  Pursued by Inspector Javert for most of his life for stealing a loaf of bread, Valjean finally carves out something of a life under an alias and agrees to adopt and care for the daughter of a woman whose own misery index was off the charts.   Hey, let's set this zany story to music!  His life becomes a crusade to protect and nurture the daughter, interspersed with a song here and there about how crummy things are. 

Back to my miserables, the worst case scenario for hip and knee arthritis is joint replacement, something I had to consider as early as age 17 but have skated without so far.  What has made me semi-normal over the years is fairly powerful anti-inflammatory medication.  Helped with hangovers too.  Unfortunately, it didn't make a dent in A.S.  The worst case scenario for Ankylosing Spondylitis is, uh, you grind to a halt.  There is no vertebrae replacement surgery.  My doctor's proposed treatment cost $2000 per month and he wasn't sure it would work.  I was staring complete disability right in the face.

It was easy to assume that there was no way I was going to live to an age where one gets to enjoy being cantakerous with this amount of wear and tear on my body.  It was draining just to get through a day with minimal activity -- there was no way I could handle years of this.  I started worrying about supporting my family.  And that led to wondering how much of my daughter's life I was going to see.  Again, I wasn't going to expire in the next couple months, but could my body take this beating for another 20 years?  10?

Seeing my daughter have kids?  Maybe not.  Seeing her get married?  Iffy.  That could easily be 20+ years from now.  Jean Valjean protected his adopted daughter until he was certain she'd marry a decent fellow.  In Napolean-era, lower-class France that was about the best a dad could do for his female offspring.  If you simply kept her out of prostitution you were ahead of the game.

Goals are a bit loftier in our current age, Toddlers and Tiaras notwithstanding.  I settled on getting her through college as the minimum for which I needed to stick around.  At that point, my work is mostly done anyway and she should have the tools to make her way through life and figure out the rest. That meant squeezing out 12 or so more years and being able to work long enough to cover the Lexus-a-year tuition costs.

Arthritis is my Inspector Javert, the man who ruthlessly hunted and hounded Jean Valjean across decades.  But arthritis won't throw itself off a bridge and it definitely won't bring the audience to its feet with a rousing solo.   The provisional happy ending to my story is... the spendy medication is working for me.  The manufacturer helps pay for it (And how much are they making on this if they're paying most of my costs to take it?  Let's get Anderson Cooper on this.) and the weekly shots have returned me to what passes for normal.  But there are no guarantees that it will continue to be affordable or that it'll continue to ameliorate my condition.

At the end of Les Mis, which coincides with the end of Jean Valjean's life, he sees his daughter get married and he is overwhelmed with relief and love.  About 2/3 of the way through the performance I had made the connection between Jean Valjean's epic journey and my atypical circumstances.  Even though I'm mostly past the fear of my body grinding to a halt, Les Mis reminded me of the tremendous responsibility of getting my daughter into a sustainable adulthood.  I was a lot more emotional at the end of that musical than probably any other male in the theater, most of whom were probably thinking, "What kind of glare will I get if I pull up ESPN on my iPhone right now?"  MonsieurValjean, I know a little something of what this means.

Dave's 2012 New Year's Resolutions

1. Get my Milli Vanilli tribute band back together again.
2. Ask Derek Jeter to stop pestering me for advice with the ladies.
3. Less leather pants, more leather chaps.
4. Find words that rhyme with "Connecticut" for my new book of limericks.
5. Wear a cape and mask when I use my super power.  What's my super power?  Blowing through an annual medical deductible before the end of January.
6. Dance in public less than the 1 time I did in 2011.
7. 1 less heat-driven, tequila-accelerated trip to the ER.
8. Play a round of golf where I don't lose a single ball.  Bwah-hah-hah!  Who am I kidding?  No chance.
9. Finally enforce my patent on the comma.  Better lawyer up, folks!

How Jenna Got Her Name

September-ish, 1999
Brian is visiting the basement of Carl Ancestral Manor which at the time is located in Minnetonka.  We're watching the Vikings attempt to recreate the magic of the 1998 season in a fashion that is insufficiently juggernaut-ish.  Randall Cunningham has inexplicably and abruptly lost his mojo and the specter of Jeff George looms large.  Karen is nearing the "get this thing out of me" stage of pregnancy.

Brian:  "So you're having a girl.  What are you going to name her?"

Me, absent-mindedly contemplating a career switch to Mojo Recapture and Rehabilitation:  "Alexis."

Brian, doing what all friends of guys do (i.e., cause trouble where previously there was none):  "Oooooh.  Sexy Lexy."

Me, quite alarmed:  "HONEY!!  What's next on the name list?!?!  Alexis is out!"

Post Script

Avid readers of this space know that several months ago we acquired front row tickets to see the Irish band The Script.  After a health-related postponement by the lead singer led to a rescheduling back in June, the day of the concert finally arrived last week.

Our seats were preposterously close to the stage.  Not only were we in the front row but we were in the center of the row.  I couldn't even manage the front row in the early days of my friend Jeremy's band, Tina and the B-Sides, when they were playing venues like The Rajun Cajun in Mendota Heights.  The front 4 rows occupied what is normally the orchestra pit at The Orpheum.  Our seats were temporary folding chairs while the unwashed masses behind us were in the normal tiered seating of the theater.  Chumps.  Our front row brethren consisted of the following:  two teen-age girls (more on them later), a couple EVEN OLDER than we are, a mother and an ear-plugged daughter, a handful of late 20s women and a guy who fell into the category of The Bemused and Accommodating Boyfriend.  He and I and others of the same ilk -- we shared a bond that night.

At this point I still barely knew anything about The Script.  I was aware they were Irish and knew they had a few alt. rock songs getting quite a bit of airplay.  For those of you thinking to yourself, "I don't know any Script songs," well, you do.  Unless you belong to a cult that forbids FM radio you've heard at least this song (lyrics kick in around the minute mark).  But I still didn't know what they looked like.  They could have grabbed 3 busboys from Crave and the Orpheum's custodian and trotted them out and I would have yelled "Woo-hoo yeah!  Let's rock!"

Eventually the lights dimmed and the band came out and I deemed them to be sufficiently rock-and-roll-y and Irish-y and therefore authentically The Script.  They were all nice, clean-cut blokes but when the lead singer came out I had a greater understanding of The Script's appeal.  Sure they've got some popular tunes but the lead singer and keyboardist, Danny, is a good-looking gent.  When he sings his heartbreaking love songs the ladies think he's singing to them.  Lads, I'm on to you.

Here's how I would describe Danny and I don't mean this as a backhanded compliment.  He looked like a guy Disney would look for when they needed an actor to play a teenage boy-band heartthrob and found a mid-20s guy to act with the other mid-20's actors in what is supposed to be a teen drama.  Anyone with a girl under 12 knows what I'm talking about.  He's attractive, seems earnest, keeps hair product companies flush, and you could bring him home to momma.  But he can certainly sing and write good songs and you can't blame him for being good-looking.


Danny O'Donoghue , lead singer of The Script and future star of High School Musical 4

A quick perusal of the swath of audience behind us revealed the crowd to be 75% female.  The women were intensely focused on the band and the music.  They were singing along to all the songs, even the ones that haven't seen the light of day on the radio.  They were enthralled.  Some of these women brought along their boyfriends and husbands.  If they didn't know entering the theater that their significant other had a little crush on Danny, they knew it now.  The guys kinda swayed to the music and looked on benignly while their wide-eyed women gawked at the stage.  This was all harmless because no one was going to run off with the band, so the guys were Bemused and Accommodating.

Back to the front row.  I didn't know the lyrics but I didn't want to seem like a completely un-hip tool.  That role was being ably filled by the EVEN OLDER GUY two seats to my right.  I wanted to make a good impression for Minneapolis.  I wanted to represent.  So I pretended to mouth the lyrics as best as possible.  Unfortunately there's nowhere to hide when you're 2 feet from the lead singer.  We were so close that I could have grabbed Danny and dragged him down to be devoured by the females before security could react.  The music was a little lighter-weight than I prefer but reasonably enjoyable so I wasn't faking my enthusiasm, just my knowledge of their lyrics.  Luckily the lead singer hardly noticed me because of...

...the two teen-age girls next to me.  Oh my goodness gracious they were going absolutely apeshit for Danny.  As soon as the band came out they started screaming that high-pitched girlie scream that drowns out banks of amplifiers and makes dogs hide under beds.  Armed with a sign asking Danny to bring them up on stage for a kiss, they were doing everything possible to attract his attention:  jumping up and down, reaching for him, and crowding the stage the entire concert.  If you check out that Breakeven video again you can see them pressed up against the stage in the center of the front row.  Around the 1:08 mark they raise their hands when Danny walks by, hoping for a low-five and an exchange of incidental DNA with their idol.  The tall-ish guy in a blue shirt behind them who looks like a tool is me.

Immediately following the concert, in acknowledgement for their ardor yet aware of their jailbait status, a roadie handed them the setlist but no invitation backstage.  The girls squealed "He touched it!" and they weren't referring to the poor roadie.  I don't know how they reconciled sharing the one item between the two of them.  I fear it may get rent in two in a fit of teen puppy-love jealousy someday.

Remember the mother/daughter pair I mentioned earlier?  The matching father and son were also at the concert but they were in the 4th row.  It is no accident that the wife ended up in the front row and the husband was further from the stage.  Bemused and accommodating.

The band, and especially the guitarist, were clearly influenced by U2 and there is no shame in that.  Several songs had guitar riffs reminiscent of The Edge's church bells-like sustained notes.  And Danny's voice echoed Bono's tone on occasion.  Any Irish band from the last 15 years is sure to have some thread of U2 running through them.  U2's done OK.


Guitarist Mark Sheehan, the Irish Chris Daughtry

Was the concert worth the price we paid for the tickets?  That doesn't matter.  We had a great time and we got to make a donation to a good cause.  Some Script songs will make their way to my ipod eventually.  Karen was certainly pleased and she giddily shows her friends the pictures she snapped.  And now she's dropping hints about wanting to see The Script in another city...