Elsmere Community Garden

Today I’m taking a break from being relentlessly negative and critical and discussing something positive: The Elsmere Community Garden.

A group of neighbors and volunteers in Elsmere has been coming together for months now to plan a community garden at an unused tennis court in our neighborhood. It’s something that we hope will bring fresh food and improve the community. We have been meeting regularly and raising funds and planning out our agricultural venture.

Last weekend things really started to take shape as we broke ground and started building the garden. We have 16 beds, which will be filled with all manner of seeds and plants for the spring and summer. A group of very dedicated volunteers came out to build the beds and haul the huge amounts of compost into them.

I cannot overemphasize the amount of compost we moved.

The amount of volunteers who helped was impressive considering the two days of cold, heavy rain we had. By the end, we were soaked and covered in mud and aching. But it was satisfying to see the 16 beds up and ready to be filled and it will be even more satisfying to see the cornucopia that will follow.

Cruising

So what are our thoughts on taking a cruise? I’ve never done it and I’m not planning on anything. I’ve just been thinking about it lately because I read David Foster Wallace’s essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

Wallace wrote about his seven-night cruise and all the rituals and crowd behaviors inherent when people set sail. He had some good points about how the staff can seem eerily cheery and everything is so micromanaged. There was a lot of insight into the sheer scale of the cruise and the psychology of wanting to get away.

There was some of it that I had to take with a grain of salt. Not to be indelicate, but Wallace didn’t seem like he had the right temperament to enjoy a cruise and its forced merriment, given that he did have problems with depression. He spent a lot of time in his cabin ordering room service.

I have definitely had those tendencies, too, since I have spent some free time on business trips eating alone in my room. But if I did ever go on a cruise, I’d definitely go into it wanting to be out in the open, eating at the buffet with everybody else because otherwise, what’s the point? I’d make sure I went into it with the right frame of mind.

A cruise would be more fun in a big group because then we would have our own table and there would me more potential pairings for activities so if one person didn’t want to play shuffleboard with me, I could find someone else who would. My main objection to the cruise lifestyle would be the need for formality. I’d be willing to go business casual or wear a suit (if I must) but I have no interest in wearing a tux to dinner. Sorry — I’m on vacation. It won’t be sweatpant city but I’m not buying formalwear.

My other problem with a cruise would be the constant overstimulation. As I said, if I ever cruised, I would be in a mindset that I would be up for anything but my idea of vacation is more to unplug. This is why my idea of communal fun is sitting around the deck at Seatowne, chatting and drinking and looking at the clouds. I’d be up for activity but I would also need to sit around in a deck chair and read for a bit. I wonder if this attitude depends on where you live. Wallace wrote another essay and observed that people in his rural Illinois home go on vacation and want to be stimulated and he theorized it’s because the Midwest is a little more open. He noted that on the East Coast it’s different, since we’re already crowded and overstimulated and need to decompress when we go away. I think that’s true.

Another reason why I have to take Wallace with a grain of salt is that he wrote the essay as an assignment. He traveled by himself and had to work so of course it wasn’t as much fun as it could be. For the same reason, I can’t write an accurate essay about Disneyland during my business trips to Anaheim because I have work to do and can’t enjoy it like a tourist.

Anyway, we’re not going on a cruise but that essay just made me think.

Apropos of Nothing

I saw a series of photos of the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and inside the nuclear reactor, a clock had stopped at the time of the meltdown. The caption said something like, “Time literally stopped at the moment of the meltdown.” No, the only thing that literally stopped was that clock. The flow of time still continued independently. Electric analogue clocks remain stopped until electric power is restored.

We are about halfway through House of Cards and I just hate Raymond Tusk. Can’t stand. He’s a billionaire who throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way and stomps around like the world owes him a billion and one dollars. I can’t sympathize with someone who humiliates the vice president’s wife because the president won’t automatically do whatever he says. I assume the writers are setting Tusk up to be an asshole so his comeuppance will be satisfying.

It seems like the people at Malaysia Airlines need some customer service training. When passengers are presumed lost at sea, their relatives probably deserve more than a text message letting them know. I know, I know — everyone just hates talking on the phone. Having to talk to people is really a fate worse than death. The survivors probably also deserve more than $5,000 in compensation. People on that crap covered cruise ship probably got more.

It must be repeated: NBC is the worst. The woooorrrrssstttt! At 9 p.m. on Thursdays, they’re airing some celebrity game show, where famous people play games with Jane Lynch. This might be fun on an off night but they’re airing Charades in the former prestige time slot of Cheers. I know those Michael J. Fox and Sean Hayes sitcoms didn’t do well but NBC could have at least given them enough respect to finish out the season.

I’ve been trying to get into Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories but I just can’t. “Get Lucky” is fantastic but some of the other tracks are just boring, like “Giorgio by Moroder,” which has Moroder doing a voice over about his life and just sounds like something from the History Channel. I am not sure why this album won a Grammy. Except for “Get Lucky,” I don’t like much about these people. The only other Daft Punk song I like is “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” and that isn’t even a Daft Punk song.

What is this new method of spelling where kids below a certain age are encouraged to spell everything phonetically and you’re not supposed to correct them even if they’re wrong? What purpose does that serve? I’m not an educator but it seems like kids might get confused once people do start correcting them. My teachers were consistent with spelling lessons and corrected me and you know what the result was? Now I know how to spell correctly.

My Eulogy for Fred Phelps

I had the tackiest dream

I dreamed that for some reason I went back to O’Hara to get a tour of the building. I’m not sure why I would go back to my alma mater because I don’t really care about how the facilities look now.

The answer is that they look tacky. One of the floors looked like a Macys Christmas display (without Mariah Carey dressed in a six-sizes-too-small Santa costume and singing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” like a smirking, condescendingly sexy toddler), which I thought was a gauche motif for a high school. There were escalators and it was all sort of this white marble material like in department stores.

Nothing looked like I remembered and walking through O’Hara, I couldn’t remember what the school originally looked like. I couldn’t remember where the gym was or the cafeteria or the breezeways or the TB room. I was talking to someone in my class and we both thought the school looked ridiculous.  

Oh, and for some reason Carol and Tyreese from The Walking Dead were at O’Hara doing something. Dream spoilers ahead. I guess there were there to bury some homicidal kids.

I guess the latest episode, which we watched last night, did burrow into my mind. That was one of the most disturbing things the show has ever done. Just rough.

Does anyone else think Carol looks like Han Solo with the gun and the boots and the haircut? Squint and they have the same silhouette.

Memo to the Person Who Stole My Wallet

I sincerely hope something bad happened to you after you used my credit cards to go on a $3,000 shopping spree at the Christiana Mall. I hope some kind of karma, legal or otherwise, catches up with you. There’s a special level of hell for the degenerates who do this sort of thing.

I was at Planet Fitness yesterday when someone cut the lock on my locker and stole my wallet out of my bag. They had replaced my lock with their own and also taken someone else’s wallet in the same manner. I always figured I was safer keeping my wallet in a locker than my car but even on a crowded Sunday afternoon, someone was able to do this. My locker was securely locked, too. I always yank on the locker to see since sometimes it doesn’t close all the way.

The person or people went right to the mall, charged $2,300 at Nordstrom’s and debited my account $700 at Macys (they also tried to charge more at Macys but got declined). This all happened within one hour. I was working out from about noon to 12:35 or so (thank God I cut it short because I was tired) and by the time I discovered the theft, called the police and called the bank, it was 1:05 and they had already spent my money.

I canceled my credit cards and debit cards right away so the damage was minimal and I’m not liable. I don’t carry all my plastic with me in case something like this happens. I also called Steve right away and he transferred all my money into our joint account, which the thief could not access since he doesn’t have that card. I know they don’t have my PIN but I wanted to be safe. They still got $700 before we could move but I should get it back.

I called Nordstrom’s to complain to the manager that someone was able to charge $2,300 and nobody asked for ID. She told me they usually ask for ID for purchases over $1,000 but I guess nobody did. I mean, the person could have presented my ID but that person doesn’t look like me and can’t replicate my signature. There were probably red flags that the cashiers ignored. Given the chronology, the thief must have raced to the mall and probably picked out something (jewelry? Several suits off the rack?) and charged it in a hurry. The mall isn’t far but they still were able to go down there, park and go to two stores and that tells me the person was probably in a hurry and the employees should have known something was up.

Now I’m driving without a license. The police told me I could do this temporarily and if I got stopped, I could just give them the report number. The DMV was on a two-hour delay today so I’ll have to go tomorrow.

The immediate danger is over but there’s always the threat of identity theft. Luckily, I know someone who knows a little about credit reports. Lucky also that I don’t carry around my Social Security card.

So this sucks. At least I can take some comfort in the bigger picture that I have earned a stellar credit rating and can buy my own merchandise. This dirtbag is reduced to hanging around the locker room with bolt cutters. My response when the bank asked me if I would press charges if they catch the guy? “Yes. Oh, hell yes.”

The Golden Rule

George sees the black leather wallet drop to the sticky floor but doesn’t get a good look at the guy’s face because the guy is already darting away toward the sound of the opening notes of the concert. Everybody is rushing forward as the house lights dim and the opening guitar riff rings out. It is only the crowd’s focus on the show that distracts all of them from the wallet and by some miracle, George is the only one who sees it.

Rushing ahead with the rest of the throng, George scoops up the wallet in the half-light of the ramp into the arena. A few people sigh and mutter at him, suddenly stopped and impeding their progress to their seats.

“What is it?” Rachel shouts to him over the din of cheers and drums. “Why did we stop?”

“A wallet. Somebody dropped it and ran to his seat.”

They move out to the concession stand where they can hear themselves think. George opens the wallet and looks at the driver’s license.

“Let’s see who we have here,” George says and reads off the laminated card.

“One Mark P. Worthington. Age 34. Brown hair, hazel eyes, 5’10”, 185. So we know who to look for.”

“Poor guy. I know how I’d feel.”

“Feel?”

“Well, I’d be panicked if I reached for my wallet and it wasn’t there. All my credit cards and cash gone,” Rachel says. “Uh … did he lose a lot of cash?”

George lowers his eyebrows and smiles, then rifles through the wallet. “One, one, five … thirty-seven dollars. So not that much.”

Rachel’s shoulders slump a little and her mouth droops. “Not that much. Well, at least we know what he looks like so we can find him.”

From the stage, they hear the lead singer greet the crowd with the name of the city. The crowd, with at least two empty seats, roars back at her. The two peer into the arena and see the red and white and purple lights move over the undulating mass of people.

“Good luck finding him in there. Must be 10,000,” he says.

“Well, maybe we can narrow it down. Where do you think a guy like that would sit?” Rachel says.

“Let’s see.” He opens the wallet again. “Mid-30s so he might be too old for crowd surfing on the floor. And he lives in … whoa. A very ritzy zip code. So no cheap seats.”

“VIP section? I know I would. But maybe we’re assuming too much to think he’s rich. What else … what else is there?”

He checks the other side of the wallet. “Amex black card. Wow. Isn’t that the one that’s by invitation only?”

“Yeah it is,” she smiles. “I’ve heard there’s no spending limit on those. So he’s a high roller.”

George sights another plastic square. “Speaking of high rollers, Mr. Worthington also has a Caesar’s VIP card. If he likes to gamble, maybe he got this card because he’s bad at it.”

“Right,” she says. “Maybe the casino gave him that card because he spent a lot there. So he could make a lot but also blow a lot.”

“So he could be cash poor. But how can we find this guy?”

Rachel’s eyes light up. “I know what we can do. Follow me.”

One level down, they find a security guard, who directs them to the lost and found. They hoof it to the other side of the arena while on stage, the band finishes its first set while the lead singer changes costume.

“So we can just turn it in and not worry about it,” Rachel says.

“Should we?” George asks. “I mean, we should but what’s the good if he doesn’t know who found the wallet?”

Rachel smiles. “Got it. Maybe he’ll be … extra grateful to us.”

“Let’s hang back and wait for Mr. Worthington to come back. We know what he looks like so we won’t miss him.”

It’s mostly quiet as the two wait off to the side. Only a few people walk by, none matching the man in the driver’s license. The band blitzes through one song after another, the sound muffled by the concrete walls.

“We’re doing the right thing, right?” George says.

“Sure. The guy will check here. We’ll see him, I’m sure.”

“No, I mean in general with this wallet.”

“Of course we are,” Rachel answers. “It’s sort of the Golden Rule. If you find a wallet with just cash and no credit cards or identification, you can keep it because there’s no way to get it back to its rightful owner.”

“Right, because there’s no way to walk around and ask, ‘Is this your cash?’ Any thief could claim it,” he says.

“But if you find a wallet with ID, you always try to return it.”

With the music continuing to pulse from some distance away, they watch the trickle of people, none of whom is Mark P. Worthington. After some time the music shifts to an undulating, roaring ballad.

Rachel smiles. “You remember this one?”

“Sure I do. We heard it on the car radio a couple weeks after we got married. We were taking it back to the shop to fix the … was it the transmission?”

“Yeah. What a piece of junk that car was. And we were so broke that the transmission about wiped us out.”

“Had to eat Ramen for about a month after that,” George chuckles. “We made it, though.”

“We made it. We always managed to. Never got rich but we still have each other.”

Rachel kisses George.

The show ends in sustained whoops and cheers and soon the fans file out. Soon enough they see him: Mid-30s, brown hair, hazel eyes, about 5’10”.

George approaches him. “Mark P. Worthington?”

“Uh … yes?”

“I have your wallet. You dropped it outside the concession stand before the show.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank you,” Mark says as George hands him his wallet, his $37 cash, Amex black card and Caesar’s VIP card.

“We couldn’t find you in the crowd so we figured we’d see you here,” Rachel explains.

“Well, thank you for being good Samaritans.”

For a second they stand in silence. “So …”

“So thanks again,” Mark says. “I really appreciate it.”

Mark shakes their hands. George and Rachel watch him go, still standing there even after they lose him in the crowd.

“So that’s it?” she says.

“So that’s it,” he says. “Oh well. Let’s go home, babe.”

The two join with the crowd in its artery flow out of the arena. They are quiet as the fans chatter excitedly around them.

Rachel says, “I wonder how the concert was?”

Is it hot in this exhibit hall or is it just me?

The willowy women strode around the exhibit hall at the surgical conference like two queens surveying their kingdom. Heads turned as even the jaded exhibitors, who had been around the country to every hotel conference center, had to steal a glimpse at these beauties.

The two perched on perilously high heel like flamingoes, walking gracefully over the industrial carpeting. Oversized sunglasses shaded their come-hither eyes from the fluorescent lighting. Miniskirts were their uniforms and one wore a cut-out shirt that showed just a hint of her hip, no doubt inciting fantasies across the aisles of exhibits.

There was a certain heat in the cavernous space but it had nothing to do with the way the air conditioner struggled to keep pace with the balmy Orlando weather.

Who were these sylph-like goddesses? What were they selling? Have you ever heard of … external fixation? Picture the foot in an erector set as it is immobilized to recover from trauma or Charcot surgery. These two magnificent sirens were drawing surgeons to their sexy-ay product at the booth just down from ours. This was a business strategy that was both smart and erotic.

Want to get a better idea of what I’m talking about? Search “external fixation” on Google images. But don’t do it at work. Your boss might not appreciate the sexxxxy search results.

Maybe at a future conference in some far-off city, I’ll run into these Amazons again. Until then, sigh …

Now that Matthew McConaughey has an Oscar, can I not hear about him?

I don’t really have anything against him but I feel that the discussion of his career is out of all proportion to his work and exploits. It’s just that I had been reading a lot of the Oscars predictions and got tired of hearing things along the lines of “Will they just give Matthew McConaughey an Oscar already?” Some critics were saying the same thing about his role in Magic Mike, which I thought was just OK. He was fine in it. But a lot of this talk of “just give him the Oscar” seems to happen for a lot of actors and it seems like the actual argument is “Well, he’s been in a lot, so …” I’m sure his performance in Dallas Buyers Club is great and I’ll see it at some point. I just think some of the focus on Matthew McConaughey can be dialed back a tad now that he has his statue. He just seems to draw excessive focus on whatever he does, personally and professionally, and I tire of it. Remember when the police busted him for a noise complaint and he was in his house playing the bongos naked and we had to hear about that for the next 62 years? Because it was so hawt that someone was naked in his own home. How transgressive. What a bad boy. It’s just flat-out erotic when I, half asleep and harried, get undressed and get in the shower. At least his acting renaissance (I’m sorry — “McConaissance,” because we have to give everything a catchy term based on a pun on someone’s name) took some attention away from this shopworn tabloid story. Now I get to read volumes about McConaughey’s charming, southern-fried, mellowed-out, regular-guy, charming charm. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. Know what I mean? He gets older and they just stay the, etc. He says “alright, alright” in his acceptance speeches. Did you know that? Were you aware? Alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright. Alright. Enough.

Locker Room Confidential

Rest assured, athletes, that if I ever become one of the first openly gay NFL players (simultaneously becoming the first middle-aged rookie with no athletic ability), I will not do anything inappropriate in the locker room.

With the coming out of Michael Sam, I’ve been thinking about the debate over whether players would fear a gay teammate checking them out or making them uncomfortable in their locker room. I don’t think it will really be the leering nightmare anyone fears it will be.

I think there’s a tendency for a lot of people, gay or straight, to check out naked people of both sexes just because of the novelty of a naked person in front of you. Of course people are going to be looking a little and I wonder if some straight guys sneak a peek, not in a sexual way but just due to human nature. I’d sneak a peek if I somehow ended up in a women’s locker room and it wouldn’t be sexual. I wouldn’t want to make the woman uncomfortable but I think it’s natural for your eye to wander just a little, in the sense that “there’s something you don’t see everyday.”

I don’t mind changing in the locker room. Occasionally there will be a naked guy at the gym and my eye might drift slightly but it’s more like you see the sun reflecting on something shiny out of the corner or your eye and it catches your attention. Or like someone’s wearing a funny hat: You’ll look due to the novelty. There’s certainly no leering involved and no lust. Most people know that their locker room porn fantasy isn’t going to come to life in front of them so we’re just trying to get dressed and get out of there like everyone else.

Nobody wants to be leered at or sexually harassed but the truth is that these football players have probably disrobed, knowingly or unknowingly, around gay people in the gym or in gym class in school and there was no problem.

What nobody is really talking about is that I think a lot of gay people are going to fight extra hard against the urge to look, even a little, because they don’t want to get their asses kicked. So I really doubt that a pro player in any sport, who knows he is already under a microscope, would even leave a sliver of daylight open for any drama to sneak through.

Anyway, that’s just the opinion of a gay gym-goer. I could certainly be wrong since it’s not like I’ve ever played football or have insight into NFL locker room culture. I just watch the game.