Hersteria

As a Canadian it is hard for me to fathom the size of the crowds showing up at former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s book signings. The people queuing up for hours on end seem to be in some state of dorky delirium.

I can’t think of a single Canadian politician who could possibly evoke this kind of emotion. It is true that Pierre Trudeau’s rise to power in the late 1960’s was accompanied by a certain ‘mania’ which, at the time, seemed completely out of national character…but generally Canadians reserve most of their bandwagon time for hockey. Does this make us dull? Yes, but I’ll take dull over demented any day.

The fact that Sarah Palin is getting this kind of boost is beyond me. The fact that many people in the crowd are gushing statements like, ‘ We want her to be the next President’, has me contemplating a move to Micronesia. It feels like a kind of latent, misguided feminism that must have the icons of that movement diving for cover.

Oprah Winfrey’s news that she is leaving daily television has momentarily pushed the perky Palin out of the spotlight and that must be sticking somewhere deep in her craw. Frankly, I’d much rather see Oprah in the oval office.

Sarah Palin is the perfect political metaphor for a society consumed with ‘celebrity without substance’ . It’s  true that as a former governor she has some political chops, but there is something here that doesn’t quite ring true. What is it? Ironically,  she has a made-to-measure running mate for current public attention in Levi Johnston, the man who has fathered her grandchild. Now that he’s dropped his pants for Playgirl he’s apparently taking aim at an acting career. Acting? It’s kooky. It’s crazy. Forget about the forebodings of the Mayan calendar this is as sure a sign as any that we’re all going to hell in a hand basket.

Stop the world I want to get off.

Slip Slidin’ Away

Maintaining a blog like this will tap your sap. I’ve only been at it a couple of months but sometimes, as with every other writing venture,  you sometimes run a little dry.

It is all too easy to let a day go by without posting here. In that way, it’s exactly like exercise. You promise yourself you’ll get at it tomorrow..and..well…you know. Exercise is something I must simply will myself to do. I feel much better after a workout but dropping down for those first 40 push ups is all mind over matter.

A few years ago I bought a home gym. I had belonged to a commercial gym downtown but it went bankrupt. Luckily, my yearly membership had almost expired so it owed me virtually nothing but there were a few people, literally, left holding the bag.

I have never been an athletic guy. I broke my collarbone once playing touch football. You can’t believe what it took to get me to walk in the door of a gym that first day. I felt exactly like Jerry Lewis’ Nutty Professor character Julius Kelp.

Gym worthy?

There was not a single piece of equipment that was familiar to me and the guys walking around there looked like they could crush me between their thumb and their index finger. But eventually I lost my self-consciousness and began to feel better…right up until the gym closed.

Clearly not mine. Perhaps available through mail order.

I researched the home setup online. I found the best piece of equipment I could for under a thousand dollars. It wasn’t one of those things with bows and arrows. It didn’t promise to give me Parmesan-grating abs. It was a good counterweight system that looked like it wouldn’t kill me. Some kid who worked for the retailer, and was less than half my age, came over to the house and put it all together. I consider myself to me moderately handy (see To Build a Better Barbeque earlier in this blog) but there was no way I could have assembled all the pulleys and pivots and flywheels and cables and superstructure of this home gym.

It looked good sitting there in our catch-all recreation room. If you’d seen something like this two hundred years ago, of course, you would have rightly assumed that someone was about to be pulled apart slowly and painfully under sanction of the state.

So I worked out. There was no one watching over me..no one cracking the whip. It was all self-motivation. I started slowly and built up the repetitions and resistance. I did the stretching so I would at least be able to get out of bed the next day. Sometimes I’d get on a real roll…every day for maybe three weeks in a row and it paid off. I knew it paid off when I went for an annual physical and my doctor asked me how I was getting so muscular and was I , perhaps, ingesting supplements. I damn near fell off the shelf-papered examining table.

A Gerry leg

But I was still a pencil-neck. A lean mean pencil-neck and I would always be that way. There are no Gerry men who kicked up sand at the beach. It’s not in the genes. First, there are the Gerry legs ( like Chippendale furniture). Then there is the Gerry ass (missing like Amelia Earhart). I did, and continue to do,  about as well as a Gerry can do.

Writing and exercise are the only two things that are going to get me through this miserable winter.

In brains, as in (limited) brawn, it is now completely evident that if you don’t use it you’ll lose it.

Even if you never had it to begin with.

That Song on your Lips

I am sitting at the computer writing this while my wife is preparing dinner in the adjacent kitchen. She is softly singing a song to herself as she works and it happens to be The Wayward Wind. What does this mean? Anything?  There are people who will tell you what your dreams signify. There must be someone who can interpret the songs that seem to burst lyrically from your subconscious. But…..The Wayward Wind ?

I’ll assume she’s feeling alright. People seldom sing when they’re down. The most disturbing example of spontaneous song to ever emerge from her lips was while she was being wheeled into an operating room for the delivery of our first child. She had been in labour for twenty-four hours and was shot with enough anesthetic to drop an elephant. In her delirium she selected a hymn.

Lately, I have been whistling several songs from the famed musical Camelot , but only because I am reading a biography on Richard Burton, who starred as King Arthur in two Broadway productions. You understand, I know where those tunes are coming from.

The Wayward Wind, though, is a puzzlement. It is a country song written by Stan Lebowski and Herb Newman. If I asked Angie right now to tell me who either Stan Lebowski or Herb Newman were she wouldn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. She also wouldn’t know that the song she is trilling was a smash hit in 1956 for a woman named Gogi Grant. Patsy Cline did a good job with it too. If I offered Angie a million dollars…literally, a million dollars… to identify Gogi Grant , she would fail. So the song is stuck in her head based purely on its infectious melodic merits.

some wayward wind

Perhaps she is feeling wayward. That would be completely out of character..but, hey,  you never know. Perhaps she is feeling restless. Wayward and restless?  That’s not a good combination for a married woman. There’s a song in Camelot called , ‘ How to Handle a Woman ‘. I’d better give those lyrics a closer look.

Rungs to Ruin

Another weather story. I must be getting desperate. That’s always the first sign that a reporter is tapped out…when you pull out the old chestnut of weather.

Anyway, we’re supposed to be smacked with an incredible amount of rain here in the next few days. They call it the Pineapple Express because it’s a weather system that comes from somewhere out there in the Pacific, somewhere in the vast, distant, general direction of Hawaii. It’s a very romantic and meaningless euphemism.

In advance of the heavy rain, I am contemplating getting out the ladder to check the eaves troughs for those pesky downspout-blocking leaves. This is always a stupid idea..getting out the ladder, I mean. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons says there are 500,000 ladder-related injuries in the United States every year. Not all of these injuries are from falls. Some are due to pinches, cuts, drops, over-extensions, even lightning strikes, I suppose. There is no end to the ways you can cause yourself harm with a ladder. It’s the most useful yet lethal device in the garage.

For that reason, ladders may come with more manufacturer warnings than any other product.  It’s doubtful that one in ten people actually read them.

Here are several, self-evident , common sense guidelines to using a ladder that people violate routinely.

1)  Inspect every ladder each time before use.

2)  Do not use the ladder for anything other than the obvious use for a ladder.

3)  Do not stand on the top step.

4)  Always face the ladder when ascending or descending.

5)  Wear rubber soled-shoes.

I’ve broken all of those rules over the years, many at the same time. I’m probably lucky to have escaped intact but I’ve also become a lot wiser with age. Number 4 is interesting. I used to routinely come down a ladder facing out. I must have rationalized that if I plummet at least I’ll be able to see where I’m going to splat. Number 5…I’ve also been up a ladder in warm weather wearing sandals. Sandals! What the hell kind of safe footwear is that? Even the Romans knew better than to go up a ladder in sandals. When it comes to ladders, many of us become a little muddled after we pass that third rung. Must be the thinner air.

One of the dumbest things you can do with a ladder is attempt to walk it. What makes people think they can skitter along the side of a building, high above the ground, by rocking or jumping up and down on a ladder like it’s a pogo stick?  This is the result of watching too many Road Runner cartoons or emulating John Belushi’s peeping Tom turn in the movie  Animal House . If a manoeuvre tends to defy the laws of physics, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get away with it on a ladder.

I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going up there. If the rain is heavy enough, perhaps the resulting torrent will simply flush those leaves right over the edge of the eave. There…I’ve rationalized my way to better health and happiness through protecting life and limb

I’ve also made way for an afternoon nap.

Here come the Crafts!

We have barely put Remembrance Day to bed and now comes the tsunami of Christmas craft fairs. They’re already queuing up in the classified section of the local newspaper. Craft fairs are a great way for churches and social organizations to make a little money and I have found my share of interesting feature stories at some of those events but it does seem , at times, that some people are stringing two buttons together and calling it a craft.

For that reason, the work of a skilled artisan at such a gathering really stands alone. There are a couple of particularly high-end events in Vancouver and the prices reflect the level of talent. The average craft fair, though , is awash in less than breathtaking merchandise. There are acres of knitted baby clothing, homemade jewelry and tabletop greeting cards. I would say the go-to term for much of this is ‘ whimsical ‘. Yes, whimsical. If it looks like an eight year old might have cobbled it together at the kitchen table one Sunday afternoon, then you can always claim it as a bit of whimsy.

I tend to glaze over within ten minutes of hitting a craft fair. Speaking of glaze,  no more pottery, please! Anyone who can lay their moistened palms upon a lump of clay is spinning out their own line of dishes, bowls, moustache mugs and toothbrush holders. I can’t remember ever seeing a single piece of pottery at a craft fair that wasn’t instantly forgettable. If you have a creative itch to make pottery (and then sell it) may I recommend a tube of good cream?

You will find all, if not some variation ,of the following at a craft fair near you.

Someone is infusing oil with herbs. If not oil, than vinegar. If not vinegar than they’re putting all of the same stuff into homemade soap, which is great except it leaves the bottom of your bathtub looking like a compost bin.

There is always one booth crammed with all manner of particularly unattractive, heavily laminated wall clocks.

There is also one guy, a Wilford Brimley-type, who has gone crazy with a jigsaw. He has spent months reducing a large pile of lumber into brightly painted and varnished sets of house numbers, kids’ names, coat racks and whirligigs.

Jigsaw run amok

The jigsaw guy is a close friend of the router guy who can buzz out a cottage name for your place at the lake before you can say Shangri-lah-di-dah.

A bad hat

Someone will be selling hats, perhaps the strangest hats you have ever seen. If you receive one of these hats as a present on Christmas morning it will force you to perform an appreciation scene that would make an actor of Meryl Streep’s capabilities blanche.

There will be candles, lots of candles. Some have the potential to stink up the house worse than a pan of fried sardines.

One of the booths will have no customers. It will be deserted, save for the lonely vendor behind the table. I always feel a sharp pang of guilt when I pass this person by and have been known to walk all the way around the building in the opposite direction to avoid it. If this makes me shallow, so be it.

Somewhere amid the sea of bric-a-brac will be one very good idea. The kind of idea that makes you wonder why you didn’t think of it first.

And finally there will be the gag gift. This has been produced by someone who thinks they have stumbled upon the funniest damn notion since the dawn of man. They’re hoping you will think so too. I’ve witnessed them all….from the Pet Wok (small metal bowl in a box)…to the fake reindeer poop (falls under the whimsical excrement category).

The worst one I’ve seen featured a piece of orange felt topped with a quarter that had been glued to the bottom jaw of a clothes pin. A miniature mallet was attached to the top. When you squeezed the pin, the mallet levered up and down over the coin and the felt. This was called a ‘quarter pounder with cheese’. Get it?

A quarter pounder with cheese

It was so dumb I bought two.