Things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving

This week’s blog may well be the shortest one I have written. Since Thanksgiving is this week, I figure I’d take the time to write what I’m thankful for, which in reality, could apply to any year.

1) Family: I’m thankful for my parents and sister who’ve helped me out financially when I really didn’t want their help as my money problems was my nest and my responsibility to dig myself out of, not theirs. Most of all though, I’m thankful they are still alive.

2) Friends: I’m thankful for all my friends from the ones on social media to the ones I continue to see in person. I’m also thankful for those who’ve helped me out during moments of crisis when the time arose.

3) Employment: I am thankful I have a job and have never been unemployed for any certain length of time.

4) Health: I’m thankful I still have my health to a certain extent, and was only bedridden for three days in the hospital this year which was all my fault. At least it served as a wake-up call to take better care of myself in monitoring this “pain-in-the-ass” disease I got called diabetes, which brings me to number five.

5) I’m thankful I woke up alive today!

 Happy Thanksgiving!

©11/25/15

Could social media replace high school reunions?

When I got the phone call during the summer of 2008 from a former classmate at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas letting me know the class of 1988 would be holding their 20th reunion in late August, I wasn’t that excited about attending.

Given I was one week away from being laid off at the IT job I held back then, and I still hadn’t heard from another job I had interviewed with the month before as to whether I was hired or not, the last thing I wanted to do was listen to former classmate’s success stories. I didn’t want to see pictures of their kids and listen to them boast about the six figure salaries their significant others make let alone take a one-night stroll down memory lane.

To quote mobster Tony Soprano, “Remember when is the lowest form of conversation.”

My attitude about reminiscing on old times is equivalent of the attitudes a few of characters in "The Big Chill" (1983) spoke about, including Alex, the one whose suicide off screen brought the college graduates together and who audiences learned about, if not identified with, through various recollections.

I equate my not wanting to reminisce with what Harold, played by Kevin Kline, said about his friends over dinner.

“Getting away from you people was the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean how much sex, fun, friendship can one man take,” he said.

Ok. There was no sex but there were moments of fun and friendship.

Truth of the matter is I haven’t seen two of three of my closest friends I hung out with in high school since 2006. One I haven’t seen since his wedding reception in the 1990s. I have three of them on my Facebook page but despite my suggesting we need to get together one of these days for lunch that has yet to happen. The fact is when your friends are married and have kids and, in my case, I am single and have yet to find a significant other (then again, I’m not really looking right now) and don’t want any children, your interests change, and you drift apart.

Personally, I’m much more interested in finding out what happened to the ones I knew in grade school from 1976 to 1984 than I did in high school, which is where social media comes in.

Though I have only connected with seven former classmates from grade school on Facebook, thanks to seeing the occasional listing on the top right corner of the page when logging in that shows pictures under the heading of “People You May Know” I have been able to locate almost everyone from grade school. Even though I had no desire to friend a majority of those people, I have been able to learn everything I wanted to know about them just by looking at their personal portraits or pictures of their kids and seeing where they live or what company they work for, provided they made that information public.

The same applies to the ones I’ve either connected with or have found on social media that I knew in high school. All the information I’ve found out about various people is what I would learn attending an alumni party where you are served the best food (even if it’s not any good at least it’s free) from some of the top restaurants in the city, free alcohol and a band that actually knows how to play dance music.

To quote Jeff Goldblum’s character in "The Big Chill," “They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can’t come.” Or in my case, don’t want to.

I’m not denying it was good to see a couple of fellow classmates in person when I attended the alumni party last month at a homecoming game. I have since gotten a few friend requests from some other fellow classmates I had not seen in two decades as a result. The question remains; will I see them again when the 30th reunion comes up in 2018? Will I just for the hell of it, attend another homecoming game every year until then to see who I run into to play catch up? Will I even go to the 30th reunion or just wait until the big 50 comes around to find out how many of us are left? I’m not thinking that far ahead.

Now that we got social media, I don’t think a day goes by for anyone that they don’t see a post from so-so letting everyone know what their relationship status is, wish friends happy birthday, where they are working at, posting pictures of their kids, family holiday get-togethers, and places they are going to on vacation. People can now click on the “like” option if they “like” the comment, meme or opinion so-so posted, or they can engage in pissing contests arguing about politics, gun control, free health care or terrorism. Or at the very worst delete them because they don’t agree with their left-wing/right-wing politics.

With the technology we got now, what do we need high school reunions when we can find out all we ever wanted to about someone through social media other than maybe get the free food and never-ending supply of alcoholic beverages?

©11/18/15

Am I the only one who read Playboy for the articles?

I am not going to lie to you. At least I am man enough to admit it!

For almost 20 years from the late 80s to the early part of this century I read Playboy magazine on a monthly basis and kept the current and back issues in mint plastic bags with each decade labeled in cardboard boxes. Notice, however, I said “read” as contrary to what Hustler founder and publisher Larry Flynt and likely every woman in the world thinks, I actually did read the magazine for the articles.

The first thing I looked for in every monthly issue were not the “pretty pictures” but critic Bruce Williamson’s movie reviews. Williamson, who died in 1998 was the magazine’s longtime movie critic since 1968 and was among the few reviewers whose writing I drew inspiration from when writing my own film reviews that also included Chicago film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, Pauline Kael and Richard Corliss.

Although Playboy showcased a number of fictional short stories from such notable writers as Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Norman Mailer it was the interviews I paid most attention to. The most colorful was Lawrence Grobel’s March 2001 interview with former Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight.

“He (Grobel) wants to know how I feel about God, marijuana, Gore and Bush,” Knight told his friend and former Dayton coach Don Donoher during the interview. “This has been like an investigation being conducted by the CIA to see whether or not I'm capable of running the Buenos Aires branch of covert operations. This is a question-and-answer session the likes of which Rockefeller did not put his potential son-in-law through."

Playboy magazine’s business decision last month to no longer publish women fully nude beginning with its March 2016 issue next year didn’t come as a surprise to me. The adult publication’s circulation, which peaked at 5.6 million in 1975, dwindled down to 800,000 over the years thanks to the Internet.

Like Dallas based Blockbuster Video, which closed its doors in 2014 (several franchise stores reportedly still exist) and became victim to viewers downloading movies off the Internet and video-on-demand, the porn industry has also taken a hit.

"After 62 years, Playboy is putting its clothes back on," Playboy Enterprises CEO Scott Flanders told CNN Money. "It served its purpose. When (Hugh) Hefner launched the magazine in 1953 nudity was provocative, and today it's passe."

Unlike Today hosts Willie Geist and Al Roker who spoke of the first time they opened up an issue and the image of a naked woman changed their lives forever at the ages of nine and ten, my first exposure to the magazine did not happen until junior year in high school when a friend smuggled the May 1987 issue featuring "Wheel of Fortune" (1983) host Vanna White on the cover.

Stupid me, I was too scared to attempt to buy the magazine at the bookstore or at 7-11 without being asked for identification. Yet, I had no trouble writing fake doctor’s notes with my parent’s forged signatures as a means to get out of class towards the end of the day during junior and senior year in high school.

What set Playboy apart from all the other adult publications is how it crossed over into the Hollywood mainstream. Ross and Chandler argued over whose joke it was the magazine chose in that Friends episode. Bud Bundy was heartbroken and found no reason to journey down to the basement anymore when Peggy sold Al’s Playboy magazines in "Married... with Children." Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) visited the Playboy Mansion and met founder Hugh Hefner in "Beverly Hills Cop II" (1987). When a couple nerds needed to create the perfect woman in "Weird Science" (1985), they opened up a locked chest full of Playboy magazines from the 1980s for research.

“I don’t think that any other magazine in the 20th century had more influence on America and the world and that’s a pretty wild position to be in,” Hefner said on Today.

I stopped buying Playboy over ten years ago, one, because I had no more room, two, the older you get your interests change and three, I felt the magazine had lost its way in terms of offering worthwhile content let alone noticing how increasingly thinner each month’s issue was getting. Yes, even those “pretty pictures” were less than stellar.

It seems fitting now for the magazine to return back to its roots where the publication was known for the articles as much as it was for the pictures. The 1953 premiere issue featuring Marilyn Monroe on the cover, which was undated, was only 44 pages. Back then, Hefner didn’t know if there would be a second issue.

The question now is come March next year, can the once mighty Playboy bunny with its new look (women will still be featured in provocative poses but the centerfold’s days are numbered) compete in an age where there is already a glut of PG-13 adult magazines such as GQ, Maxim, FHM and Esquire who already offer plenty of pictures of scantily clad women in the same provocative poses on the covers and inside their monthly issues.

At 89, Hugh Hefner doesn’t sound worried.

“It’s been a wonderful ride and it’s not over yet,” he said.

©11/11/15

Despite the urgent need to go "Back to the Future", former alumni wouldn’t change personal high school experiences

Anyone who says high school was the best four years of their life didn’t ask me what I thought of my four years from 1984 to 1988 at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas as that is a chapter I’d much rather forget. Like conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh who said the best thing he looked forward to in high school was that it was over, I, too, felt the same way.

I was not an athlete, or an athletic supporter, though I did like the brigade uniforms whose attire was over the knee skirts and high-heeled boots. To quote Al Bundy from "Married... with Children" (1986-1997) on "The Avengers" (1961-1969) British TV show character, Emma Peel, the brigade team “kicked really high.”

When the time came junior year to buy a class ring, I didn’t need a ring to prove I was going to be a senior like this was some sort of rite of passage. To quote postal carrier Newman (Wayne Knight) from "Seinfeld" (1989-1998) when asked why he doesn’t deliver mail in the rain, “I was never big on creeds.”

That’s not to say those four years were a complete waste. I experienced quite a few ups, but the downs outweighed the ups. Those ups I had would make former late night host David Letterman’s top ten list. For example, I enjoyed my 8 a.m. typing class freshman year because the woman teacher who taught it always wore heels and skirts in between the occasional pants suits.

I still don’t know how I passed my biology final sophomore year with a B since I failed all the tests that required me to name the organs of giant grasshoppers and starfish and ate most of the jellybeans I was required to use in a lab assignment to create molecules and used the leftovers to build my own super structures using toothpicks. Nor do I know how I passed all those quizzes and tests in my English classes because I did not read "The Odyssey", "A Separate Peace" or "To Kill a Mockingbird". I must have either paid close attention taking notes during the class discussions, used "Cliff's Notes" (do those still exist today?), or got the questions and answers from classmates who had already taken the tests earlier.

The big highlight for me junior year was watching a fellow classmate get pulled over by a cop for speeding. My stomach hurt that day after school from laughing so hard. I don’t care if “instant karma” came back after me senior year when I got pulled over by the same cop for going 60 in a 30. At least it proved that "Christine", the yellow rusted ‘76 Ford Pinto (which made its debut in the 2010 movie, "The Losers") with no protective gas covering I drove could go over 60 just as much as it hit 140 when I floored the “American classic” because I was stuck in icy weather.

I was involved with the newspaper senior year but when I compare the award-winning brutal film reviews and sometimes no-holds-barred columns I write today to the fluff I churned out in high school, I can’t help but look at all those articles with embarrassment. At least I managed to get the administration worried with my final news story about all the teachers who were leaving when I graduated in 1988. When I asked the ethics instructor, Mr. Poundstone, why he was leaving he told me to use his quote, “It’s hard to teach ethics in a catholic school.” The powers that be cut the line from the story before the issue was published. I was stirring up trouble before I even decided my degree was going to be in journalism and I wasn’t even looking for it.

Despite those moments, if I had that steel silver grey DeLorean my eighth-grade teacher Mrs. Allen owned I’d turn the vehicle’s digital clock back to August 1984 and make three changes. One, I’d actually take my classes seriously instead of settling for being a B/C student knowing now just how much my parents paid to send me to private high school. Two, I would have asked a woman who was on the newspaper and was a junior when I was a senior during the 1987-88 school year to prom instead of settling for working that weekend (I didn't have any money anyway), and three, I would have warned my younger self about the importance of diet, exercise, and saving money to keep that younger version from becoming what my older self is today.

For years browsing the school’s website I had been envious of the stuff the students got now that I wished were offered when I was there (two theater auditoriums, two gyms, bowling team, film club, healthier lunch menu). Sure, the Class of 2019 today probably have it better than what I had, but what can’t be replaced are the personal experiences I went through. Now that I think about it, I don’t need Mrs. Allen’s DeLorean to go back in time to make changes. I am happy with the way things turned out now.

Besides, her car didn’t come with plutonium and a digital clock where I could set the time back. That stuff only happened in the "Back to the Future" (1985-1990) movies.

©11/4/15