Sunday Scribblings - New (2) Gwap - 1/6/08

Today I received a check in the mail. It was not a large check but it was for royalties for a song I co-wrote. There are two points I wish to make here. The first is that this small check is the first money I have ever earned in my life from doing something I enjoy doing. I know that is a sad commentary, but I think many of us do what is necessary to make a living without enjoying what we do. If I am the only one that feels that way, I stand corrected. I question whether the guy that pumps out your septic tank is self-actualized, but maybe so. The second point is that at the bottom of the letter that Tim sent along with the check, he wrote: “Thanks for the great song!” Those few words meant much more to me than the check. Oh, I will spend the money, probably on something very unhealthy, but I am keeping the letter, forever.

I have always enjoyed writing, but most of what I write is never seen by anyone but me. It is not that I don’t think my writing is good. Sometimes I write something that I think is very good but I am not confident that someone else will share my opinion. Writing is very subjective. For instance, sometimes I read a blog on Sunday Scribblings and I don’t understand it at all. It seems to be way over my head. But then I read comments from others raving about it. As a result I often think my own writing is not at the level of many who write here. As a result, I tend to use self-deprecating comments to protect myself from anyone who might think I am taking myself or my writing seriously. Well, no more. From now on when Lucy says she likes my writing, I am going to believe it, instead of just thinking she is being kind.

The song I co-wrote is called ‘The 3-Legged Dog” and is the title track of Tim Bays' latest recording. You can hear it here: http://www.timbays.com/mp3/3leg.mp3




Tim is one of a legion of great Nashville singer-songwriters who dwell in relative obscurity. He is one of a dying breed of folksingers. His songs seldom carry a message about cop-killing, ho’s and bitches, popping a cap, hate, or satan. As a result, he is not as commercially successful as say Flo Rida, who has this weeks Billboard #1 song.

In case you are hip-hop challenged, one of the verses goes:

Shawty what I gotta do to get you home
My jeans full of gwap
And they ready for Shones
Cadillacs Maybachs for the sexy grown
Patrone on the rocks that'll make you moan


(I think if my jeans were full of gwap, I would not write about it.) You could never use spell-check to edit a hip-hop song. The computer would crash.

But I am very proud to have Tim record a song that I contributed to. Don’t get me wrong, Tim is a very successful singer/songwriter. If you Google Tim Bays, his site is the first thing you see. If you Google me, Rick Wainright, the first things you see are “Did You Mean Rick Wainwright” and my son’s biography. But Tim's posse consists of his wife, her mother, two dogs, and a totally useless cat. I guess useless cat is an oxymoron.

Well, the new thing here is that I am going to send Tim some more song lyrics very soon for his review and I am not sending any to Flo Rida. My writing is not full of gwap. By the way, according to the Urban Dictionary gwap means money. My jeans are definitely not full of gwap. And so it goes.

Sunday Scribblings - "New" - 1/6/08

Sometimes my blog can reveal how stupid a man with a 145 IQ can actually be.
New things and foreign concepts confuse me. I usually end up falling back to that which is familiar and comfortable. Having traveled much of the world, this shortcoming can be magnified. My last blog discussed my failings as an Italian. We will now move on to my experiences as a German.




On my initial visit to Germany I was experiencing my first Gasthaus and after drinking several of the largest beers I had ever seen, needed urgently to visit the restroom, which they call a water closet (WC) or wasserklosett. The signs on the two doors said Damen and Herren, with no pictorial help. I used my innate faulty reasoning ability to figure that Damen was like Da Men, therefore the men’s room and the Her in Herren must mean woman. It may be apparent that I am not Sherlock Holmes. I am certain that the beers added to my illogic. I was so very wrong, even with a 50 percent chance of being right. There were indeed Dames behind the door I chose. By the way, why is the Oktoberfest in September? I missed it my first year there.

That was not my only Teutonic blunder. Some of my friends were discussing whether the largest city in Germany was Berlin or Hamburg. I interjected that I thought it was Ausfahrt. I had seen signs for it everywhere I went. For those challenged in German as I was, Ausfahrt means exit. The fahrt should have given it away. Think about it.


After a few similar incidents, I purchased pocket-sized a German-English dictionary. It was not convenient for conversation, but it came in very handy for getting the gist of what someone was saying or writing.


My landlord’s mother stopped by one day and seemed very distraught. What it sounded like she said was “Mein Ehemann ist Tute.” I had her repeat it several times to make sure. She seemed impatient. I knew some simple words at that point. I verified what I suspected, that Ehmann was indeed husband. But when I looked up Tute what I came up with roughly was that her husband was a doggy bag. I, of course, as is my nature, broke into hysterical laughter. She probably did not get the joke as she was telling me that her husband was DEAD. She was saying “Tote” not “Tute”. Simple mistake. I later satisfactorily explained to my landlord, Werner, who had become my friend. His mother never did. Come to think of it, she never “Sprechen” to me again.




Even though Germany tries to take over the world from time to time, it is basically a very religious, Christian, country. Martin Luther (no, he is not Superman’s archenemy. OK, I was confused on that too.) was a German Monk, who rebelled against the Pope and formed the Lutheran Church. Anyway, in small German villages, such as the one we lived in called Queidersbach, Sunday is a quiet time. At least in the 80s, when we lived there. No stores are open, no Gasthaus serve, and nothing is allowed that disturbs the peace. I wonder if they stopped bombing Britain on Sundays. I will have to research that. I learned that one Sunday when I was washing my car with “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel cranked up on the stereo. My landlord, Werner (Yes the same one that forgave me for laughing at his father’s demise) came by and calmly related to me in his broken English that my activity was against the village laws. He explained about quiet Sunday and that he was ordered by the village to get his American under control. I immediately had a vision of the scene in Frankenstein where mobs of townsfolk are approaching the monster with torches and pitchforks.



I adhered to their customs during my years there to include sweeping the sidewalk every Saturday, but I drew the line at sitting down to pee. Yes, many German men do. Most American women are content to have their husbands put the seat back down when they finish or at least aim in the vicinity of the bowl.



I also tried my best to learn the language, which I think is the responsibility of any immigrant or long-term visitor to a country. That is the only political statement I will make in this blog.

Sunday Scribblings - Holiday Memories - 12/23/07

This week’s prompt was initially a great disappointment to me. At first, I thought I had nothing to offer, as I am not a Holiday person. I endure the holiday season, but do not look forward to it or revel in it. Christmas has not been important to me since my children have grown up and New Years, like Valentine’s Day, is not a celebration for a single man and I have been single now for over 21 years. I was geared up to end the year with a flurry of shining wit but I feared my holiday memories would turn into whining shit. Then something came to mind that I felt compelled to share. This is primarily written to entertain Lucy, who has become a fan of my writing and often the only reason I bother.


I was stationed at Aviano Air Base, in northern Italy, in the late seventies. I resided with my wife and three young children in the small town of Porcia, a suburb of Pordenone. We were about 40 miles from Venice, which has nothing to do with this story, but I just think it was heaven to live that close to Venice. We were the only Americans living in a small apartment complex. My children adjusted quickly, as children always do, and quickly picked up the language from playing with the Italian children in the neighborhood. As Italians are generally of the Catholic persuasion and take the command to “go forth and multiply” quite literally, there were lots of issue to play with.

As Christmas came near I decided to do something nice for the neighborhood children. I hired an American who played Santa Claus for several functions on the base to come to my neighborhood and entertain the kids. I loaded him up with candy and small presents, which he was to deliver at a preset time. I made sure he would arrive when all the neighborhood children were outside playing in our dead-end street. I had my camera at the ready and he drove up as planned.

What I did not know was that for Italian children, there is no real Santa Claus. Presents come from La Befana, a witch, who is never seen. You can only imagine their terror when this fat, bearded, fool dressed in bright red ejected himself from his Fiat, and trod towards them shouting, “Ho Ho Ho.” The kids screamed and scattered. It would have been no different had Godzilla arrived in the neighborhood. Some kids could be seen with wide eyes peering out of their windows. The only kids left to receive Santa were my own, who had no idea what had happened to their friends. I should have done a little research into Italian Christmas traditions.


While I have your attention (poor assumption) a couple of anecdotes about our life in Italy come to mind. The apartment building we lived in housed six families and as I previously mentioned five were Italian. Italian women shop daily for fresh food and buy almost no prepackaged foods. Also, they throw nothing away. As a result there was one small garbage can to serve all six families. It was more than sufficient for all tenants, except us. After a few weeks of our humongous heaps of disposable everything dominating the refuse area someone hauled in a small dumpster. It was obvious that it was for our use. I surmised that as it had our last name stenciled on it. Nothing gets past me.

My oldest son’s bicycle was in disrepair and since I have no handyman skills whatsoever and my tool chest consists of a screwdriver and a hammer (with which I have done some remarkable work) we tossed the bike out. The next day one of the neighbor kids was riding it. It was not only fixed but also looked and worked better than ever. I am pretty sure that I had assembled it wrong from the beginning. My son said, “Dad, that boy is riding my bike.” I had to explain the concept of finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers.

Another time I found that one of my neighbors, Lucio, had left his car lights on. Finding his car locked I went to his door and knocked. He answered, and I was ushered in and had to eat and drink. Italian hospitality does not permit one to enter a home without consuming mass quantities.


My three years in Italy taught me much about their culture and customs. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I did get a chance to teach my Italian friends a bit about my culture. Italians did not eat corn on the cob. This was 30 years ago and things may have changed. But then, they only grew field corn, which is fed to livestock and did not grow sweet corn for human consumption. Corn was considered only fit for animals. I introduced them to corn on the cob and until my departure I was always required to bring some corn from the base.
We had an occasional neighborhood cookout, though they had never seen a Weber grill, the men were soon drawn to mine. It is a guy thing. When I left Italy, I left my Weber grill to Lucio. I am certain that it is still functioning.

Sunday Scribblings - Dance - 12/16/07

I am a hetorosexual, middle-aged white man. By definition, I am rhythmically challenged. But, if I consume the right amount of alcohol I will sometimes attempt to dance. It is the same amount of Jack Daniels that encourages me to take the microphone at a Karaoke. I am equally not proficient at both arts. I will address dance in this blog and save my Karaoke nightmares for a future submission.



On the dance floor I am often mistaken for someone having a seizure and as a result the onlookers feel pity and compassion instead of disgust and horror. So I have that going for me. There have been occasions in my life where I have had to dance sober. There are only a very few reasons for me ever attempting that endeavor. The first reason is that women nearly universally love to dance. I have been involved with women who insisted that dancing was the only real way to express my affection for them. Though I suggested other ways, I somehow ended up on the dance floor. Come to think of it that is the only reason I have ever danced without performance enhancing substances. But, though they work for Barry Bonds, they do nothing to enhance my dancing ability. Dancing without intoxication is a painful ordeal, much like dentistry without Novocain. I am aware that there is a beat to the music but it is not possible to command my body to respond to it. Slow dancing, though more enjoyable, particularly with the right female body type, presents an additional problem. Finding a space for my size 12 shoes to occupy that is not already taken. While slow dancing, my shoes seem to grow to clown-sized proportions.


In my high school days I always went to the weekend dances. I would usually be required to dance the last dance of the evening if I had any hopes of leaving with someone. Lucky for me, they always announced the last dance. After an evening of standing by the speakers being cool (and ruining my hearing for life), or watching the band, pretending I knew something about playing an instrument, sometimes even breaking into air guitar (we invented that), while the girls danced with each other much of the night, I would pounce on an unsuspecting girl, like a lion on a gazelle. I, like most of my friends, felt much too cool to dance throughout the evening, but one dance was a small price to pay for the possibility of second base and the much higher probability of striking out on three pitches. And no one would see me anyway because all the other guys were also scurrying to find what they hoped to be a horizontal dance partner. You had to move fast to get one of the easy girls. They were in short supply in those days. Of course, the girls had been dancing all evening and were at a stage of sweatiness that added to the allure.

I do enjoy watching people dance. It always amazes me when I go to a club and everyone knows all those line dances by heart. Everyone except me, that is. Do they practice at home? I haven’t been to a party in ages that didn’t include the Cha Cha Slide at some time during the night:

Slide to the left
Take it back now yal
One hop this time
Right foot lets stomp
Left foot lets stomp
Cha Cha now yal
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I risk losing my man card for admitting this, but I love to watch “Dancing With the Stars.” The grace, the elegance, the skimpy costumes. I love watching dance in the same way I enjoy watching courtroom dramas, but I don’t wish to participate in either activity.

Dumpster Diving -The Free Market System at Work

I generally don't have enough ambition or inspiration to write more than one blog a week (if that), but an event occurred that was worthy of a narrative:

Early one morning, I was throwing a bag of garbage into the dumpster and accidentally flung my keys with it. Looking into the dumpster I could see the keys on the floor, far out of reach. I did not know if I could physically climb in and out of the dumpster, but I knew for sure that I was not going to try.

There were three middle-school aged boys standing not far away waiting for their school bus. I walked over to them and asked “one of you want to make five bucks?” The look on their faces revealed I had made a poor choice of words.
I quickly recovered and as soon as I assured them that I was not asking them to perform any altar boy duties, they walked over to the dumpster to have a look. To be honest, I would have performed a reach around on the Archbishop of Canterbury before I would crawl into that stinky, slimy, container.

As we discussed my predicament, I realized that many elements of the free market system were at work here. It was determined that no one was willing to dumpster dive for five bucks, though I know that everyone has their price. Then the negotiations began. The larger of the boys, Bryan, volunteered that the smaller of the boys, Eric, would do it for $10. So Bryan was acting as Eric’s agent, or if a priest would have been present, his pimp.


What Bryan and Eric did not know is that the market would have supported $50. They could provide a service that I was in urgent need of. I had a tee-time in 30 minutes and their bus was due. The third boy, Ned, who looked neither agile enough to perform the task nor intelligent enough to negotiate, just watched the proceedings with mouth agape. He actually looked like a Ned. I did not think he was a stranger to dumpsters, but the size of this one baffled him. After all, this one unit supports a 50 unit condominium. It is quite cavernous. I believe that if Ned had entered the dumpster, the quality of the dumpster's contents would have been reduced significantly. But, I was secretly hoping for Ned to do the dumpster diving as he was wearing a Boston Red Sox hat, causing me to instantly dislike him, and question his lineage. But the irony of him entering a green monster was not lost on me.



So Eric climbed in and retrieved the keys. Before he could climb out of the dumpster the school bus arrived and Bryan and Ned ran off, leaving the third Musketeer (or Stooge) deep in the bowels of the dark, green, maggot-infested cave. The intense heat of the south always seems to make smelly, nasty stuff moreso. He yelled at them, but the walls of the container returned his voice to him. After a few slips into the fetid mire, he ejected himself from the dumpster. I thanked him and handed him $10. He looked at me and said, “great, how am I going to get to school?” I would have given him a ride, but he stunk to high heaven, and had streaks of unknown substances all over him. No way was he getting into my Beemer. He had completed the contract and received compensation. Our business was done.

Sunday Scribblings - "Walk" - 12/2/07

After missing Sunday Scribblings last week due to a Thanksgiving trip into a land where there is no INTERNET or cell phones (I will call this land that time forgot, rural Georgia.) I was anxious to attack this week’s topic with a vengeance. But unfortunately, the prompt “walk” did not immediately cause anything to surface from my cluttered mind, and anyone who knows me knows I am not prone to exerting much effort. So it appeared that I was about to have a two-week run of non-productivity from my writer’s garret. Actually, I don’t have a writer’s garret, but it sounds much more authorly than where I actually write, in the master bedroom of my condo. Actually, both bedrooms are the same size, but master bedroom rings of affluence.

As is usually the case, my blogs tend to write themselves, and this was no exception. I need to preface my submission (this is not it, just the dramatic buildup) by stating that I am an avid moviegoer. I have mentioned this in previous blogs. And though I have seen some really bad movies, I have never, ever walked out of one. I paid my $5.00 (I usually go to matinees) and, damn it, I am going to get my money’s worth!! I also, always have it in the back of my mind that the film will get better if I wait it out, much like life. Sometimes it never does, much like life.





I also need to tell you that I am a huge fan of Stephen King. He is by far my favorite author. I know that some of you will immediately turn up your nose and think, “how can anyone read such drivel when Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Kafka have not been fully explored.” For some reason, my vocalization of that quote includes a very posh British accent. Well, my blogs should indicate that I am not smart enough to interpret classic works and need King’s ability to paint a word picture for me. I read for entertainment, the same reasons I go to the movies. I would rather watch Jack Black than Sir Lawrence Olivier, though I appreciate both. I am not deep.





It is also important that you know that I know that adapting a Stephen King work to film is a crapshoot. While there have been some classics: Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, The Shining (Jack, need I say more), and the Dead Zone (Christopher Walken makes any film better). There have also been some stinkers: Children of the Corn (I think that if you name your son Malakai, you can expect trouble), Maximum Overdrive (When your star is Emilio Estevez, probably not gonna get Oscar consideration), and Dreamcatcher (did they even read the book?), to name a few. But even the worst of those had some merit and I watched them all until the credits rolled.






But this weekend I saw “The Mist”. Or at least I saw some of it. I enjoy suspense. I am entertained when a film makes the entire audience jump at once. But I don’t like pure gore. Not Al, not Tipper, not gore for the sake of gore. I am also a fan of suspension of reality, but not for the entire length of the movie. Great book, lousy film.



For the first time in my cinematic life, I walked out. The end.

Sunday Scribblings - "I Carry" Friday 11/16/07

This week’s prompt of “I carry” came at exactly the right time. I knew in moments what I had to write about. Could we please have a prompt next week that I can go back to “writing with a smirk”? It is much less painful..

I carry with me a heavy sadness that manifests itself during the Holiday Season. At no time is the disparity between the haves and the have-nots more evident than as Christmas approaches. The first pangs arrived today as I stood in front of a Salvation Army Angel Tree. I am certain that most people know what that is but in the event that one of my readers is from Neptune where there are no trees, or Dubai where there is no poverty, I will explain. The first name of a needy child is placed on a placard and hung from a Christmas tree. Along with the name is a present request and clothing sizes for the child. I am not sure how the children are selected as needy. I guess it is arbitrarily determined that there is a breakpoint for those in need and those not. I feel sorry for that child who barely misses the cut for needy and does not qualify for an anonymous gift. Anyway, you just select a child at random and provide some hope for Christmas. It is a great program and I participate every year.



One of the main reasons I participate in the Angel Tree is that in 1960, had they had such a program, I would have qualified. The Bunker Hill Company, which my dad worked for, was on strike for 220 days in 1960, ending on December 10th. We were living in Wyoming, where dad could find work in uranium mines, though he longed for the relative safety of lead (not much of a choice there). So a few days before Christmas we left Wyoming in a blizzard for northern Idaho, on bald tires and an 8 cylinder, running on about 5. Somewhere along the journey my dad purchased a Lionel electric train that I had been clamoring for. He did not have money for the necessities of life, but felt I needed a Christmas Present. My memories of all my 55 Christmases blend together but I remember Christmas that year more than any other. I remember it with a great sadness, which I have carried with me all these years. I know that I should be happy that my dad loved me enough to sacrifice for me. But I am not. I have carried with me a certain amount of guilt that a Holiday put him in that situation. I have sorrow that the Christmas Holiday has such a potential for sadness and disappointment. Most of all, I have remorse that I probably never said thank you for that sacrifice.


As I selected a child to sponsor, the sadness came in torrents. It is not a child’s fault that they are born into a situation by which they are deemed needy. It is not their presence that caused a parent to be unemployed, uneducated, unreliable, unlucky, unacceptable, untrained, unambitious, unappealing, unbefitting, uncoachable, unclean, unadept, undatable, uncultured, unequipped, undesirable, uneducable, unethical, unhirable, unfavored, unpolished, unpaid, unpardoned, unpleasing, unpolished, unlikable, unlaundered, unloving, unmanageable, unmotivated, unneighborly, unnamable, unprivileged, unprized, unrealistic, unproven, unpurified, unreceptive, unrestrained, unrespectable, unrefined, unremarkable, unabsolved, unacademic, unacclaimed, unaccomplished, unacquitted, unappreciated, unaromatic, unwed, unworkable, unsterilized, unsuitable, unteachable, unthrifty, unutilized, unvalued, undignified, undiplomatic, undiagnosed, uninsured, or unendowed. But, it is not necessarily the parents’ fault that they are needy. My dad was certainly not culpable. He was many of the uns listed above, but none by his own doing. He was a victim of circumstances. Yes, sometimes it is by their own choices: Alcoholism, drug addiction, laziness, abusiveness, abandonment, etc., but not always.



There are no guarantees that Charli, a 12-year-old girl who likes Hannah Montana and the High School Musical will actually receive the gifts I purchase for her. In the back of my mind is the vision of her guardian selling the size 14 pants to buy drugs. But I have to try. Maybe Charli’s daddy is just a victim of circumstances. Charli deserves to feel special, at least at Christmas.