humor

On Writing

~ Lee Swanson ~ 9 Comments

Funny thing happened this week. San Diego’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists held its awards dinner and along with a great many well-deserved recognitions,  gave the Herbert “Woody” Lockwood Award for Humor Writing to this blog.

I was not there to accept it because the last time I stood in front of a large group of people and got a woody it wasn’t a pleasant experience.  I was probably about 13 but like receiving this richly undeserved award, it was both memorable and embarrassing.

The difference is I’m talking about this one. Having spent something more than 30 years writing what passed as serious news stories, getting recognized for humor writing is a major change of pace.

It is also the only sort of formal recognition I’ve ever received for writing.  There are writing categories in television awards, but I never thought my stuff qualified.   Writing television news doesn’t feel like writing, even to me, because if someone wearing makeup and reading out loud is the only person to read it, it’s not really writing, no matter how many people hear it.

Of course by that standard—and several others—this blog is still just barely writing.  Not that anyone is reading this out loud, I hope, but the loyal following is somewhere between the middle single figures and the low double figures.

Spending a career writing stories that are measured in seconds instead of pages means I don’t really have anything to show for it. Once it’s read on the air it’s in the air and on its way to Mars.

Several years ago, a friend who was also a news producer was at my apartment and pulled a book from my bookcase — How to Make $30,000 a Year Writing. “You do, you know,” she said.  That says a lot about a lot of things, primarily my impression of what I think writing is, and the kind of salaries news producers get.

So thank you SPJ for this misguided recognition of which I’m rather proud.

Light Bulbs

~ Lee Swanson ~ 5 Comments

I had a thought the other day when I was in the drug store buying light bulbs – and yes I realize the light bulb/idea thing is a cliché, but in this case it happens to be true.

Rest assured this is not one of those idiotic screeds about how the government is taking away our God-given right to buy incandescent light bulbs, though I do believe the possession of light bulbs should be guaranteed by the Second Amendment – a well-lighted household being more necessary to the security of a free state than a well-regulated militia.  If only there had been light bulbs in the late 1700’s (or well-regulated militias in the 2010’s, for that matter) the country would be a much safer place. But we’re not going there tonight.

First, why do drug stores sell light bulbs?  What happened to drugs stores selling, well, drugs?  A guy in a white coat buttoned like a Nehru jacket (look it up) standing in the back dispensing who knows what.  This was when pharmacists did more than count to thirty and put cotton in a bottle; when they actually had to know how to type on those little labels.

The rest of the store was devoted to aspirin, band-aids and birthday cards.  Maybe, if you were a lucky kid, the drug store also had a soda fountain where they made things like ice cream floats and chocolate root beer.

Mr. Peabody“Peabody here.  Yes, I said chocolate root beer. Come along Sherman, into theWABAC machine to get you a chocolate root beer. If you haven’t tried it, you haven’t lived.” 

Now, along with deodorant and hair dye, drug stores sell wine, beer, picnic baskets, toilet paper, pencils, ribbons, toys and light bulbs.

So I buy the light bulb at the drug store because there’s no hardware store nearby and before I can ask him not to, the cashier puts the single light bulb in a plastic bag and then reels off an eighteen foot long receipt with an offer to have a chance to win two dollars if I complete an online survey that primarily wants to query me about my name, age and e-mail address.  So much for privacy.  So much for the environmental advantages of the power-saving light bulb.

At home, I open the package to find that inside the carton is printed a coupon for a dollar off on my next light bulb purchase. This amazing energy efficient light bulb purports to have a lifespan longer than mine so the odds of being able to cash in this tremendous money saving offer are dim, so to speak.  The odds of finding this coupon again if I ever actually do buy another light bulb are even worse.

It might be better to just sit in the dark.

People Watching

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Some people do their people watching at the beach, the park or an outdoor café but for me the best spot is still the airport.  Parking costs more but for twenty dollars you can get a solid day’s entertainment.

 I usually position myself outside the baggage claim doorway to see people just after they’ve arrived and stepped out into the fresh air.  People flying out are frenzied, hurried and not nearly as interesting.

The first folks you notice are the ones who fall to their knees and kiss the sidewalk.  They are either natives of San Diego grateful to be home and away from wherever they were, or people who are afraid to fly and just grateful to be anyplace where there is something solid beneath the floor.

The business travelers are the least interesting and only partially because they are in business. They are in too much of a hurry to be bothered by anyone who is less important, and they are convinced that includes everyone. There’s a reason business people have a class all to themselves on airplanes and that custom should be carried out elsewhere as well, without the recliner chairs, special menus and free drinks, but with the exorbitant extra cost. Just cordon them off and make them deal with each other so the rest of us don’t have to.

I like to guess where people are arriving from and over time I’ve gotten to be pretty good at it. The easiest folks to spot are those who come from Minnesota, Wisconsin and other Scandinavian countries. Easiest for me because, whether I want to admit it or not, I was once one of them and I know what to look for.

There is, of course, the very pale skin. A Minnesotan’s blonde hair can bleach two shades just standing at the curb waiting for the rental car shuttle. By the time they get to their hotel they have second degree sunburn and when their week’s vacation is over, if they don’t have skin cancer they just weren’t trying.

As they stand and wait for the shuttle or a cab, you can see the Minnesotans gingerly fingering the zipper of their parkas, wondering if they will be risking frostbite if they open it just a little. After all, back home they wear their parka all year long; their only concession to summer is to replace the hood with a stocking cap. Minnesota has two seasons—nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding.

To be fair, these are generally the Midwesterners making their first trip out of the tundra. Those who have previously been as far south as Chicago or as far west as Omaha have found that temperatures can occasionally be above freezing at some times of the year in other parts of the world.  Those folks arrive shirtless, shoeless and almost pantsless and except for the translucent complexion could easily be mistaken for a typical student in his fifteenth freshman year at San Diego State.  Airport security people love them.  They can just wave them through. The Tourism Board is not as fond of these folks who have read the travel brochures and decided to “go native.”  They typically arrive with a pair of jeans and a twenty dollar bill and over the course of their stay, don’t change either one.

The other oddity one notices if you people-watch astutely and consistently is that Minnesotans don’t travel in December.  As they will tell you repeatedly—should you be unfortunate enough to ask—“it just wouldn’t be Christmas without snow.”

Really?

Anyone who has seen a second grade Sunday School Christmas play knows that those hanging at the manger in Bethlehem were wearing sandals, t-shirts and bathrobes; palm trees (perhaps plastic, but let’s not quibble) adorned the corners of the hay bale constructed crèche and the wise men rolled up atop camels.  Last I knew (and until global warming disproves this) camels don’t do well at the Iditarod. Yes, Virginia, the event that repeatedly spawns the greatest commercial success in world history took place in the desert. If Christ didn’t need snow, neither does anyone else—at Christmas or any other time for that matter.

So I pay the parking attendant and leave after a good day of people watching, content that it was money well-spent and convinced I’m fortunate to consistently be on the outside of the arrival gate at the San Diego airport.

Butterfly

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Not that everything needs to have a purpose (if that were so it would certainly call my existence into question), but why, exactly, are there butterflies?

They are certainly lovely to look at as they glide along, flapping their wings and dancing circles in the air. They may be on their way to somewhere, despite all appearances, though who knows where. Man has marveled at the butterfly for probably as long as they have noticed each other.

Several years ago, I spent some time in Papua New Guinea with a zoological expedition. Zoological expedition sounds so much better than “a bunch of guys in the jungle trying to catch birds.” The leader of the motley crew was absolutely enthralled by butterflies. And he still is, veritably lusting after them. With net in hand he chased after many of them, as they looped and flitted always out of his reach. I don’t think he caught anything but air in that entire trip. And of course it begs the question that, like a dog chasing a car, would he have known what to do with his prize had he caught it.

But it was from him that I learned that wearing bright colors might attract a butterfly to you—a much less aerobic endeavor than going about it the other way around. And while I have never been sure that it was true, something remarkable happened in the back yard just the other day – thousands of miles and dozens of years removed from Papua New Guinea.

As I sat outside drinking a cup of coffee, I watched a butterfly overhead as it made its pointless journey from nowhere to nowhere in particular. And then it came by and lighted on the table just next to my chair. I can only imagine that she looked at me and blinked the way that I looked at her and blinked, astonished to be so close and yet knowing that it was entirely beyond my ability to have such a creature.

I have seen pictures, of course, and admired them from afar, but now I sat enchanted, seeing her up close and alive for the first time in my life. So close in fact that I could see a tattoo of a stripper on her thigh.

Type Casting

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all

Typing was the only useful thing I learned in high school. Had we never advanced past manual typewriters the world would never have heard of carpal tunnel syndrome. Your wrists and fingers had to be strong enough to bend steel just to push down the keys and make a mark on a piece of paper. One of the many signs of advanced age is whether a person calls copy paper typing paper.

While useful, it was not my favorite class, though I’m not sure what was. Mrs. Sills would walk around the room and lift sagging wrists while we did drills.  asdfghjkl; They were exercises in every sense of the word.  We thought she was ancient, though when you are sixteen everyone over 27 is ancient.

Eventually I could look at the workbook and type the drill without looking at the keys. This all came in handy in journalism school when we were expected to type our stories without first writing them out in longhand (not to be confused with shorthand, which was taught in the next classroom by the equally ancient Mrs. Gaustad.  I didn’t take shorthand.  It was not something boys did).

Typing has held me in good stead ever since.  I seem to be able to think more clearly if I stare off into space while typing.  Somehow–and I’ve never understood this at all—my fingers know when they’ve made a mistake long before my head does.  And they stop and backspace and, sometimes, can even make the correction while I’m still looking down the hall at nothing in particular. Correction is a skill which came much later, with the advent of the computer, or at least with stuff called “correction strips.”  Backspacing was never allowed in Mrs. Sills’ class. It made for a rather messy paper, typing one letter on top of another. If White-Out existed, we didn’t know about it, and since we were often expected to use carbon paper (because apparently Xerox didn’t exist either) it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Typing class also taught things like indenting paragraphs and formatting letters.  Anyone who has ever read an e-mail knows that neither of those matters any longer. In fact the only vestige of typing etiquette which seems to linger on—much to the chagrin of many—is the convention of leaving two spaces at the end of a sentence.  I understand it’s not necessary, and not even considered correct in most circles, but my fingers can’t help themselves. If I think about it, I can use one space, but if I think about what I’m writing, and not what I’m doing, it’s always two spaces.  It just is.

But in point of fact, none of this will matter much longer, if indeed it does now. For most kids in high school and all kids in elementary school, typing is done with the thumbs while staring at the screen of their phone or tablet. Those reporters we used to ridicule who hunted and pecked their way through an assignment with one or two fingers were, it turns out, decades ahead of their time. Typing is going the way of punctuation and spelling. And when typing, or keyboarding or texting or whatever it will come to be called, is no longer an exercise for all the fingers, what order will the letters be in?  Except that it is the way it has always been, there’s no good reason for the letters on the keyboard to be arranged as they are. And, like double-spacing at the end of a sentence, one day it will change too.

When I do the drills on the proper way to hold a tablet while dexterously moving my thumbs about the screen, and hitting at least some of the keys I want to hit,  I’ll think back to Mrs. Sills, carbon paper (for that matter paper at all), and the keyboard.

Oh, QWERTY, I will miss you.

The Stamp Act

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

The cost of postage stamps has gone up again.  Stamps, children, are used to deliver e-mails when the Internet is broken. Which it never really is. At least not long enough to get a letter delivered.

It seems we are using fewer and fewer stamps, and as an incentive to use more, the cost keeps increasing. It’s a reverse of the economic law of supply and demand which has been around at least since Adam Smith, if not John Locke, both of whom also knew about stamps but apparently couldn’t convince the Postmaster. That same backward logic, by the way, seems to be the revenue model of newspapers, with much the same result.

Now, I know all about the cost of postage being a great bargain and much, much lower than in Europe and other unfortunate non-American areas. And that’s all well and good, but not really the point.

There’s talk of eliminating Saturday mail delivery to cut costs. This idea is met with great horror by people who seem perfectly fine with not getting junk mail on Sunday but can’t imagine living without it on Saturday. Given the amount of useful mail that comes to our house, they could cut back to once a week, or less, and I don’t think I would notice.

But the post office is sensitive to bad publicity and just can’t bring itself to pull the plug on Saturdays.  Their motto after all is not, “neither rain nor snow nor Saturday morning…”

That same fear of being criticized gets us back to the cost of stamps. To stop people from bitching about paying an entire extra penny for a stamp, the post office invented something called the “forever” stamp.  Buy it now, at the going rate, and no matter what happens in the future you can still use the same stamp.  The price could triple and your Christmas card will still get across country with just one ten-year-old “forever” stamp. 

It keeps them from having to print one-cent stamps, which may cost as much to print as they bring in, particularly when you consider the clerks who have to miss their lunch hour to serve the long line of people waiting to buy fourteen cents in one-cent stamps. 

The forever stamp is an idea that would have sent Adam Smith frothing at the mouth, unless of course the post office can freeze all its expenses too.  For instance I think the concept of “forever” gasoline has real merit, at least until Exxon Mobil has a cash flow problem.  And given their current profit margin that could be, oh I don’t know, forever.

Wine List

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

It happened again. We were invited to someone’s house and it was left to me to buy a bottle of wine to give the hosts; partly in appreciation for being asked and mostly as a peace offering for anything I might say while we are in their home.

I’m not good at wine. People who really like wine, and those who pretend to, make a big fuss over the stuff.  It’s as though their opinion of the wine is more important than their enjoyment of it.  We know people like that. They will declare that something is a “really bad wine” when what I think they really mean is that they don’t like it.  But it is declared with a certainty that can only lead to the conclusion that the grapes should be plowed under and all existing bottles used only for target practice.

Swanson wine bottleAnd that’s my problem with choosing wine. I can’t remember what we were served last time and whether the wine snobs liked it or not so I often decide what to buy based on the graphics and the colors on the label.  I like a clean label, uncluttered and definitely devoid of cute names.  Maybe I’m biased but I think my namesake vineyard does a rather nice job with labels.

Not that I have anything to do with this wine, though I did once get a letter offering me a discount on a case because of my last name.  But even at discount prices it’s too much for me to spend on wine.  And since I choose by the label I have no opinion whatever on the content of the bottle, though I’m told by those who pretend to know that it is definitely wine.

So there I am at the store, trying to buy a bottle of wine. I’ve long ago given up on trying to find something that our host, whoever it is, will appreciate, and I’m just hoping they won’t pour it down the drain in front of me.  And I’m completely lost. It’s not as though I haven’t bought a bottle or two of wine before, but who remembers names and even if you do apparently there’s a big difference in the vintages of stuff. I am in fear of having noses turned up as I present my purchase. All the bottles are disturbingly the same size and shape. And while I appreciate a good label, I’m not sure everyone does.  Some people actually open the bottle.  So I am reduced to reading the descriptions and that makes matters even worse.  This one is crisp, clean with overtones of berry and chocolate, so that sounds good.  But there’s another one that’s oaken and complex with depth so maybe that’s more sophisticated. 

I gather that all these descriptions are arrived upon at wine tastings by people with taste buds that can tell the difference between depth and opulent.  I’ve been to a few wine tastings and it is just the wrong place for me to be.  Inviting a scotch drinker to a wine tasting is like bringing an atheist to church; I enjoy the ritual but I just don’t get the point.

Apparently the first thing you are supposed to do is stick your nose as far into the glass as possible and breathe deeply.  I did this and snorted half a glass of wine up my nose.  Coughing, spitting and sneezing I knew immediately I would not be invited back. Then there’s the swirling, always while grasping the base of the glass so as not to sully the temperature of the wine with my sweaty palm.  One is then supposed to hold the glass up to eye level; I presumed this was to determine if I was shorted when they poured the samples but apparently it has something to do with the way the wine drips down the glass.

Finally, we actually got to taste the wine.  I watched to be sure I was doing it right.  Slurp in, almost inhaling it (without another episode of coughing and sneezing) and then swish it around in your mouth almost gargling.  Then spit it out. Excuse me, is that one that bad? But everyone is spitting it out. I’m thoroughly confused.

Two things come of this process; the description and the rating. At the store where I went to buy this bottle almost every wine had a rating from the Wine Spectator. I picked up one copy of that magazine and flipped it open. It happened to be an article titled “The Great Whites.”  Thinking it was either about sharks or racism I put the magazine back on the shelf. 

The Wine Spectator is apparently the industry standard but its rating seemed suspicious to me.  After all, I’d been to a wine tasting.  No one seemed to learn anything by spectating.  Now, if there was a magazine called the Wine Expectorator I’d give it some credence.

So I was left adrift without a lifeboat. I called my wife and asked if we could just give them money instead. Or stay home.

Resolved

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

I’ve made the promise before and even have taken a stab or two at keeping it, but this is going to be the year. I committed to lose that extra weight.  It’s not healthy to be overweight and if I keep going down this path I won’t be able to do many of the things that I want and need to do.

Friends have encouraged me and said they will do what they can to help. Family members said I needed to do more; not just lose weight, but exercise and get in shape, improve my strength and flexibility. That all sounds good, but I know it is going to be hard enough to just lose weight. I have to keep my eye on the prize.

I had a plan. People said I didn’t have a plan. But I had a plan. I Googled “songs for aerobics,” downloaded them to my iPod and played them really loud. I watched exercise videos. There’s nothing quite like an evening on the couch in front of the TV watching Power 90 workout videos with a bowl of hot buttered popcorn or a big dish of ice cream.

And now, here we are. The end of the year is coming up and it’s time to try another tack. My plan hasn’t worked.  Truth is, along about February I forgot I’d made a plan – except for the popcorn and ice cream part.

So first thing tomorrow morning I’m going to go into the spare room where we keep the elliptical machine thing and get serious. I’ll put on my sweatpants and a sweatshirt and turn up the thermostat as high as it will go. Sure that will jack up the gas bill, but desperate times call for desperate measures. As soon as I figure out how to turn it on, I’m going to get on the elliptical thing and go as fast as I can, non-stop, day and night until New Year’s Eve. No food, no water, no rest.

It’s a commitment I made and I’m going to keep it.

This is what I have to do. I’ve reached the physical cliff.

Then New Year’s Day, it’s back to the couch.  Let’s be real. 

The Ground Beneath Their Feet

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

As we come upon the time of year when people in movies reward themselves for being people in movies, I question the ground they walk on.

Some may worship it, I wonder about it.

Newspapers, television stations, blogs and websites all say these folks walk into the celebrations of themselves on the red carpet.  Which I think begs the question, is it all the same carpet?  Do they haul it from the Golden Globes to the Oscars, from the Emmys to the Tonys, from the MTV awards to the ESPYs?

They all are on “the” red carpet.  It must be one and the same or surely by now someone would say they are standing on “a” red carpet.

It seems as though it is not only the grammatical thing to do, but the ecological thing as well.  Vacuum the damn thing and move on to the next venue.   It’s better to use it again than to roll it up and wait another year while someone else makes an identical red carpet for an almost identical award show.  How many olefin gave their lives to make yet another red carpet? 

And once we’ve pondered that, consider this:  why red?

Nobody Listens

~ Lee Swanson ~ 3 Comments

Odds are I spend more time in doctors’ offices and clinics than you do. Not that it’s how I really want to spend my day, but they keep inviting me back. Since I have this vast experience it seems only right that I share some of what I’ve learned about medicine.

The first thing to understand is nobody is paying any attention.

Here’s what happens every time I’m in a doctor’s office.

The receptionist hands me a questionnaire which must have something to do with a research project, since everyone gets the same questionnaire and none of the questions pertain to me or the reason I’m there.

It calls for yes-no answers, but I’ve decided not to let that deter me. The first question is, “do you want a chaperone in the room with you?” I check “no” and write “I’d prefer a doctor.” Does anyone want a chaperone, ever? I haven’t even heard the word chaperone since junior high school dances and we didn’t want them then either.

Next question: do you have trouble standing or walking? “Not if sober, which isn’t often, so that’s a Yes.”

Have you fallen in the last six weeks? “See question two”

Are you often confused? This is the only question I answer by just checking the box, and without fail I always check both yes and no.

I turn in the questionnaire when the nurse calls me to go from the big waiting room to the little waiting room, the one with the paper-covered table.  No one has ever asked anything about my answers, because quite obviously no one has ever looked at them.

The nurse opens the door to the inner sanctum and always smiles and says “hi, how are you?” That would be a logical question for a nurse to ask a patient, except that the nurse doesn’t care what the answer is. You can answer anything you want and she will nod and ask you to step on the scale. “I died out there in the waiting room.” “Mmm-hmm, let’s get your weight.” “I’m fine, why else would I come in for chemotherapy.” “Right you are, step up on the scale please.” I know it’s a throwaway greeting, but if anyone ever asked “how are you” and genuinely wanted to know, you would think it would be in a doctor’s office. If you don’t want an honest answer maybe you should ask about the weather.

So the next step is to get my weight and then ask my height. No one has ever actually measured my height. They just take my word for it. Big mistake. First I ask “how tall do I have to be for that weight?” and while the nurse fumbles for an answer I say I’m six foot two, or six foot three or six three and a half. I never give the same answer twice. They write it down on a scrap of paper but obviously never record it anywhere or someone would have noticed by now. “This is odd; you’ve grown an inch and a half since you were here a month ago.” But no one ever says that.  And isn’t it kind of a dumb question anyway?   Has your height really changed much since back in the days when you had a chaperone?   Mine only changes because I’m lying about it.  So I’m going to start really lying and see if anyone even blinks. “I’m five-four, do you think this shirt makes me look taller?”

An hour or two later the doctor finally walks into the room and does listen, some, now and then.  Most of the time he’s staring at the computer screen.  I think he’s playing Angry Birds.