Welcome to Geezer Alert
For many, the main title above probably is an oxymoron. An alert geezer? You mean that old guy trying to make up his mind in the crosswalk? Or that old lady standing motionless in front of the soups in the supermarket while you’re trying to get past? Are you kidding?
No. And yes. As a soon-to-be-60 baby boomer, I know that being on the downside of life’s curve can give an individual pause — and sometimes it’s way too long of a pause for the faster-moving set among us.
But there’s still some mental acuity left in this geezer’s head, and … let’s see, what was my point? Oh yeah, right: I’d like to share ruminations from my sharp mind in this blog — see? I’m already casually tossing off a non-geezer term; some old balding guy stuck in his ways would have written “topical essay” or “mass-audience opinion piece” — for anyone who might be interested. Thus: “alerts” from a geezer.
Now, please bear with me here. I’m well aware that at no time in our history has talk been cheaper. We’ve got minute-by-minute Internet commentaries by the thousands. There are Facebook walls, Twitter tweets, cable/satellite TV “news” reports around the clock, many thousands of blogs and then, of course, blogs like this about blogs like those.
Cave dwelling has never looked so appealing.
So, why join the fray and further frazzle the frayed? The simple and honest answer is because I want to push my first novel. I think it’s great and want many people to buy it. (A website featuring details and the opening chapters will be created upon publication. )
But I also used to write a weekly newspaper column, and I am summoning up all my remaining ego — what’s left after being rejected by about 100 literary agents and small publishers — to suggest I can cut through the morass of chatter and offer something worthwhile.
To begin with, though, I must point out that my alertness is really not as great as the photo below may indicate. That little studio shot was taken several years ago, when I had maybe twice as much motivation, not to mention 40 more pounds. I was preparing a job search and some potential employers were asking for a photo. That effort never did result in gainful employment but I still want to get some use out of that darn picture.
(As for the weight loss, I received a diabetes scare shortly the photo was taken. My doctor ordered 10 pounds off my 225-pound frame. My exercise and diet program knocked those pounds off in a few months so Doc suggested dropping 10 more. I just kept on going — swimming three times a week, walking four times a week — and within a year got down to my college weight, 176 pounds. The result was a gaunt look only a skeleton would love, so I’m working on keeping the weight at about 180; still a little off-putting bony, but maybe less sickly looking. I hope to maybe share more current shots of my gauntness in future blogs. Hope you can stand the suspense.)
Anyway, as a former small-town journalist, father of two, 33-year married man and aspiring novelist, I’m gambling that I might have some ideas or observations that can help or entertain others. I’m a pretty mainstream guy in many ways but very different in many others. That will be the topic of Blog One.
As I continue in the blogosphere, I hope people will write me with their own suggestions for ideas and maybe even requests for help – you know, things I could research or make a few phone calls about for those either disinclined or unable to do such work on their own.
No. And yes. As a soon-to-be-60 baby boomer, I know that being on the downside of life’s curve can give an individual pause — and sometimes it’s way too long of a pause for the faster-moving set among us.
But there’s still some mental acuity left in this geezer’s head, and … let’s see, what was my point? Oh yeah, right: I’d like to share ruminations from my sharp mind in this blog — see? I’m already casually tossing off a non-geezer term; some old balding guy stuck in his ways would have written “topical essay” or “mass-audience opinion piece” — for anyone who might be interested. Thus: “alerts” from a geezer.
Now, please bear with me here. I’m well aware that at no time in our history has talk been cheaper. We’ve got minute-by-minute Internet commentaries by the thousands. There are Facebook walls, Twitter tweets, cable/satellite TV “news” reports around the clock, many thousands of blogs and then, of course, blogs like this about blogs like those.
Cave dwelling has never looked so appealing.
So, why join the fray and further frazzle the frayed? The simple and honest answer is because I want to push my first novel. I think it’s great and want many people to buy it. (A website featuring details and the opening chapters will be created upon publication. )
But I also used to write a weekly newspaper column, and I am summoning up all my remaining ego — what’s left after being rejected by about 100 literary agents and small publishers — to suggest I can cut through the morass of chatter and offer something worthwhile.
To begin with, though, I must point out that my alertness is really not as great as the photo below may indicate. That little studio shot was taken several years ago, when I had maybe twice as much motivation, not to mention 40 more pounds. I was preparing a job search and some potential employers were asking for a photo. That effort never did result in gainful employment but I still want to get some use out of that darn picture.
(As for the weight loss, I received a diabetes scare shortly the photo was taken. My doctor ordered 10 pounds off my 225-pound frame. My exercise and diet program knocked those pounds off in a few months so Doc suggested dropping 10 more. I just kept on going — swimming three times a week, walking four times a week — and within a year got down to my college weight, 176 pounds. The result was a gaunt look only a skeleton would love, so I’m working on keeping the weight at about 180; still a little off-putting bony, but maybe less sickly looking. I hope to maybe share more current shots of my gauntness in future blogs. Hope you can stand the suspense.)
Anyway, as a former small-town journalist, father of two, 33-year married man and aspiring novelist, I’m gambling that I might have some ideas or observations that can help or entertain others. I’m a pretty mainstream guy in many ways but very different in many others. That will be the topic of Blog One.
As I continue in the blogosphere, I hope people will write me with their own suggestions for ideas and maybe even requests for help – you know, things I could research or make a few phone calls about for those either disinclined or unable to do such work on their own.
Not a mainstream guy
There I was, midway into a Flying Marvin, the legendary skateboard move named after the late, great Marvin von Rolfe. As you can see from the photo at right, I had everything going for me: the look, the height, the blue skies, the hat, the momentum, the T-shirt, the good breakfast.
But it was not to be. Out of nowhere, a ferocious gust of wind slapped the board 10 degrees off course. That was just enough to push it past where my left foot was supposed to regain contact. The resulting crash broke more than just every bone in both ankles. It also crushed my spirit, my desire to continue in the sport that had been a part of my life since age 2.
Of course, the above is a work of fiction. I just wanted to use a swell photo supplied by iWeb, the supplier of the format/template for my original blog. (And when Apple discontinued use of iWeb, I went and got a matching photo from some internet clip art.) But the story of the flailing Flying Marvin does dovetail with this inaugural “Geezer Alert” blog, laying out why anyone would want to read what I have to write.
My bottom-line hope is that, like those X Game athletes, I can be viewed as perhaps a little outside the mainstream, in terms of what most people do, but not near-whacky, like someone bungee jumping naked off a Tahitian cliff.
If you stick with me, then, you should find what I do or say interesting, even helpful, amidst the blizzard of words swirling in our world.
For starters, though, I actually need to point out the opposite — how sadly average I really am, in many ways.
A quick summary:
I am a middle class white American, born and raised a Roman Catholic in suburban New Jersey. That means Catholic schools, uniforms, nuns, Marist brothers … all the stuff of urban NJ religious upbringing legends.
My dad was a successful businessman, my mom a successful housewife. The marriage? Not so successful. Nineteen years in, they divorced. (My mom went back to college, got a degree in special education and embarked on a very successful, two-decade career in Southern California.) But they had raised two incredible, humble sons.
I went to Catholic schools through 12th grade, graduated with a degree in communications from Boston University, worked my way up through three small daily newspapers in the South, got married, returned to college for a master’s degree in journalism (Northwestern University), bought a small weekly newspaper in Clinton, N.Y., had two children, sold the paper, started another out of my house, sent the kids off to college, battled depression, and closed the second publication to pursue a lifelong dream of fiction writing.
Pretty mainstream stuff, really. Yet, day by day, I feel more like I’m actually paddling down a side stream. When I look at the world digitizing around me — people nuts for football, “American Idol,” Harry Potter, vampires, race cars, “Lord of the Rings,” beer, Bruce, Carrie, CSI, Starbucks — I feel out of the loop. (I foresee future blogs on all of the above.)
Part of it is simply age. The entertainment, sports and social worlds are built around attracting youth. I am not youth. But a bigger part of my strangeness is me, my basic tastes.
Take a most recent example: I went to the ESPN Website, just killing time, and saw a link to its celebrated “30 for 30” series of 2010 films marking the sports networks’ 30th anniversary. I had watched all but one (a way-too-painful replay of the 2004 World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox over the New York Yankees, the sports team I have pulled for the longest and hardest).
The “30 for 30” page had a spot where you could rank the 30 pieces. I immediately voted as no. 1 the segment on disgraced track star Marian Jones. The piece touched me. Very well done. I watched it twice. The rest of the 26,000 voters? They ranked it dead last.
Only 32 – 32!! — of my fellow watchers agreed the show was the best of the lot. The most no. 1 votes, by far, went to football-themed flicks, which landed in the middle of my list. The second-worst overall ranking went to “Unmatched,” an examination of the strange closeness between longtime tennis rivals Martina Natrolova and Chris Evert. I put that at no. 6.
There were some agreements in the rest but, looking at the extreme ends list, the vast differences illustrate my mainstream vs. sidestream feelings. Most prominently was the love given football-related films, America – at least its males, including my oldest son — adores its football. Me? Not so much. Even in my younger days, when I rooted hard for any number of sports teams on all levels (youth, high school, college, professional), I never was really passionate enough to, say, give up Saturday or Sunday or New Year’s Day to football, or to paint my body team colors and sit in a freezing cold stadium after downing a six pack of beer in the parking lot.
Now, with each passing year, my already-moderate interest wanes — just too many teams, too many new players, too many other things in life to explore. The games all begin to look the same. Interestingly, though, I’ve taken to women’s basketball, particularly on the collegiate level.
Again, I’ll explore that and other topics — even delving into areas that actually matter, stuff outside the entertainment, sports or social worlds — in future blogs, But for this introductory piece, I just want to make the point that most men my age still love their football, according to national TV ratings and other indicators. That puts me outside the mainstream despite being a pretty mainstream kind of guy.
And I can think of a plethora of instances just like that, which should give my blog observations a different perspective. Let’s hope so.
For starters, I’ll keep things light — as opposed to tackling politics, religion, family or the meaning of life — and return to the sports realm a and post an essay I wrote a few years ago, just to get some stuff off my mind. It counters the notion that most people want Division I college football to adopt a playoff system. I sent the piece to one local newspaper columnist and one columnist for “Blue & Gold Illustrated,” which covers the University of Notre Dame athletics, primarily football. It was never published or even acknowledged.
If sports blogging bores you, you can go straight to my second entry: Why I value shows like “American Idol,” “Glee” and “Smash” despite the fact they really are crappy TV shows. Posted on March 22, 2012
But it was not to be. Out of nowhere, a ferocious gust of wind slapped the board 10 degrees off course. That was just enough to push it past where my left foot was supposed to regain contact. The resulting crash broke more than just every bone in both ankles. It also crushed my spirit, my desire to continue in the sport that had been a part of my life since age 2.
Of course, the above is a work of fiction. I just wanted to use a swell photo supplied by iWeb, the supplier of the format/template for my original blog. (And when Apple discontinued use of iWeb, I went and got a matching photo from some internet clip art.) But the story of the flailing Flying Marvin does dovetail with this inaugural “Geezer Alert” blog, laying out why anyone would want to read what I have to write.
My bottom-line hope is that, like those X Game athletes, I can be viewed as perhaps a little outside the mainstream, in terms of what most people do, but not near-whacky, like someone bungee jumping naked off a Tahitian cliff.
If you stick with me, then, you should find what I do or say interesting, even helpful, amidst the blizzard of words swirling in our world.
For starters, though, I actually need to point out the opposite — how sadly average I really am, in many ways.
A quick summary:
I am a middle class white American, born and raised a Roman Catholic in suburban New Jersey. That means Catholic schools, uniforms, nuns, Marist brothers … all the stuff of urban NJ religious upbringing legends.
My dad was a successful businessman, my mom a successful housewife. The marriage? Not so successful. Nineteen years in, they divorced. (My mom went back to college, got a degree in special education and embarked on a very successful, two-decade career in Southern California.) But they had raised two incredible, humble sons.
I went to Catholic schools through 12th grade, graduated with a degree in communications from Boston University, worked my way up through three small daily newspapers in the South, got married, returned to college for a master’s degree in journalism (Northwestern University), bought a small weekly newspaper in Clinton, N.Y., had two children, sold the paper, started another out of my house, sent the kids off to college, battled depression, and closed the second publication to pursue a lifelong dream of fiction writing.
Pretty mainstream stuff, really. Yet, day by day, I feel more like I’m actually paddling down a side stream. When I look at the world digitizing around me — people nuts for football, “American Idol,” Harry Potter, vampires, race cars, “Lord of the Rings,” beer, Bruce, Carrie, CSI, Starbucks — I feel out of the loop. (I foresee future blogs on all of the above.)
Part of it is simply age. The entertainment, sports and social worlds are built around attracting youth. I am not youth. But a bigger part of my strangeness is me, my basic tastes.
Take a most recent example: I went to the ESPN Website, just killing time, and saw a link to its celebrated “30 for 30” series of 2010 films marking the sports networks’ 30th anniversary. I had watched all but one (a way-too-painful replay of the 2004 World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox over the New York Yankees, the sports team I have pulled for the longest and hardest).
The “30 for 30” page had a spot where you could rank the 30 pieces. I immediately voted as no. 1 the segment on disgraced track star Marian Jones. The piece touched me. Very well done. I watched it twice. The rest of the 26,000 voters? They ranked it dead last.
Only 32 – 32!! — of my fellow watchers agreed the show was the best of the lot. The most no. 1 votes, by far, went to football-themed flicks, which landed in the middle of my list. The second-worst overall ranking went to “Unmatched,” an examination of the strange closeness between longtime tennis rivals Martina Natrolova and Chris Evert. I put that at no. 6.
There were some agreements in the rest but, looking at the extreme ends list, the vast differences illustrate my mainstream vs. sidestream feelings. Most prominently was the love given football-related films, America – at least its males, including my oldest son — adores its football. Me? Not so much. Even in my younger days, when I rooted hard for any number of sports teams on all levels (youth, high school, college, professional), I never was really passionate enough to, say, give up Saturday or Sunday or New Year’s Day to football, or to paint my body team colors and sit in a freezing cold stadium after downing a six pack of beer in the parking lot.
Now, with each passing year, my already-moderate interest wanes — just too many teams, too many new players, too many other things in life to explore. The games all begin to look the same. Interestingly, though, I’ve taken to women’s basketball, particularly on the collegiate level.
Again, I’ll explore that and other topics — even delving into areas that actually matter, stuff outside the entertainment, sports or social worlds — in future blogs, But for this introductory piece, I just want to make the point that most men my age still love their football, according to national TV ratings and other indicators. That puts me outside the mainstream despite being a pretty mainstream kind of guy.
And I can think of a plethora of instances just like that, which should give my blog observations a different perspective. Let’s hope so.
For starters, I’ll keep things light — as opposed to tackling politics, religion, family or the meaning of life — and return to the sports realm a and post an essay I wrote a few years ago, just to get some stuff off my mind. It counters the notion that most people want Division I college football to adopt a playoff system. I sent the piece to one local newspaper columnist and one columnist for “Blue & Gold Illustrated,” which covers the University of Notre Dame athletics, primarily football. It was never published or even acknowledged.
If sports blogging bores you, you can go straight to my second entry: Why I value shows like “American Idol,” “Glee” and “Smash” despite the fact they really are crappy TV shows. Posted on March 22, 2012