Now, regular readers reader, you know I run a family blog here. You know that I’m not the “who’s the hottie” type, and that I’m more likely to post a picture of a good bar-b-que, or a bicycle than of a woman.
I once went out with this woman who, for me, before I met my wife, defined “sexy.” There’s this one image in my head (get your mind out of the gutter! I told you this was a family blog.) that sums that up for me, with her in my t-shirt brushing her teeth.
That said, my goodness, I think I might have a new standard.
So now I’m in Germany. And seriously, I don’t know what the time zone is, or what the hell I’m doing here. I really just want to be home. I got into a fight with my wife in the airport. I hate that. We argued because when I called her, she asked me about presents for the kids, and I basically said I’d deal with it when I could. She got a little pissy about how I should buy real gifts for the kids, and I kind of went off on how I was tired and so on. Then she went off on how hard she’s had it and so on. Then we hung up. She called me back a few minutes later and started in again, so I hung up. Then I called back a few minutes later and we had an OK conversation.
The whole thing reminded me of the scene from Saving Private Ryan when the guy (I think it’s Nathan Fillian) gets told that his brothers are dead, and he freaks out. But it turns out that it’s not John Patrick Ryan they’re talking to, but John Francis Ryan. Then the guy says that maybe it’s a mistake, and maybe his brother actually is dead. And he just sits there saying “I gotta get home, I gotta get home.”
OK, this is nothing like that. But it feels like it a little. I gotta get home. My kids are there, and my second, a girl now 5 1/2, cries bitterly whenever I’m on the phone with her because she misses me so much. And my 3-year-old son won’t really talk to me. All he says is, “I don’t miss you, daddy.” But the wife told me he was basically sitting by the door for a good while yesterday waiting for me to come through it. Presents don’t make up for absence. Whoever made up that term “quality time,” was making up excuses for busy people. For the last 7 years that I’ve been a parent, the one thing I’m absolutely sure of is the necessity of quantity time. Just spending time with the children. Each one. Lots and lots of time. And there’s no such thing as too many hugs, or too many kisses.
Whoever says that traveling for business is fun has never done it. It sucks.
I’m a good parent. A good father. And right now I feel like a shitty one.
I once again watched one of my favorite movies in the entire world: Streets of Fire
You can click here for the trailer (I’ll try to upload it later today). And you just have to watch the trailer. See Willem Defoe with a bang. A “bang” as in haircut with bangs, but just one, so a “bang.” Not kidding. In fact, click here for the pic. He looks about 12, doesn’t he?
I think this will post the trailer:
In fact, this is one of those movies with tons of people in it: Rick Moranis, Diane Lane, Bill Paxton, Willem, Amy Madigan, Diane von Valkenburgh, Rick Rossovitch, Robert Townsend, Ed Begley, Jr., and just to let you know how old this movie is, the top billing was given to…wait for it…Michael Paré. Yes, coming off his Eddie and the Cruisers fame and fortune, his next vehicle was this rock fable (although Michael does no singing in this one).
And, truth be told, while there’s a significant amount of campy humor in this movie, it’s just a great, fun movie. And it has great music. The two songs I love are by a two-hit-wonder band called Fire Inc. The only two real songs they had were on this soundtrack: “Nowhere Fast” and “Tonight is What it Means to be Young.” The thing is, Max Weinberg is the drummer for Fire, Inc. He’s also the drummer for the E Street Band (and if you don’t know who the E Street Band is, get off my site now, please). So they have serious cred, as far as I’m concerned.
If you can, rent it. If not, download it (legally of course).
The image header has changed from a scene from 300 to a piece of my very old image header from my very old site. I think I’ll change it every once in a while, just to keep the freshness.
Enjoy.
UPDATE, 10 minutes later: Wow, I went back to see the old site, and got to reading things I posted three years ago. Damn, I was good. OK not so much, but it was a fun ride. For those of you who’ve been reading me for a while, take a tour down memory lane. Click here. The engagement story is there. Some funny movie reviews. My finding MooCow, and VJ, and others.
OK, so I’m looking through some blogs, and I got to Walking Kateastrophe, which you have to admit is a great name for a blog. And she’s got a great story on there about a proposal. One day I’ll write about mine. Some of my longtime readers might remember that I wrote about it a LONG time ago. When I was still on Blogger, I think. Wow, that was a long time.
But from her, I got to a GREAT name for a blog: Twas Brillig.
For those of you who don’t get the reference (and who I’m sure therefore never took 11th grade English), it’s from Jabberwocky. “Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” Yes, it doesn’t make sense. That’s the beauty. That, and the fact that Lewis Carroll was likely high on extreme doses of laudanum when he wrote it. (It’s an opiate that was a common painkiller in those days. See also, Tombstone).
