Im Going to Make it After All

I have adored The Mary Tyler Moore Show for years and years. It was and remains one of the best written and best acted situational comedies in the history of television. My young friend, Bryan, pictured below in another entry, is not at all familiar with it. Pity. I remember it well from my childhood but mostly from countless reruns on Nick-at-Nite and local channels. Now that I am older and I work in an office, the characters are even more real and funny to me as I see them portryated every day in the work-a-day psycho-drama that I think is office life in general. Here in the office we have wise cracking, hard working types (the Murrays), the cranky bosses with hearts of gold - well, here it's more gold plated hearts, but ... (the Lous), the bumbling morons (the Teds), the pure of heart (the Georgettes) the edgey nuerotics (the Phyllises), the office slut (the Sue Anns), etc. You get the picture.

As much as I love the show and as much as I find Mary the ideal human being - let's face it - she lives fabulously, dresses well, a serial dater, smart, funny, humble, etc - there is something about the program that has always gnawed at me. As noted, I find Mary, to use the vernacular of her time, far out and groovy. In many ways, I wish I was more like her. I can even psyche myself into thinking that I am indeed like her, but sadly, my blogging friends, this is not the case. I am, unfortunately, Rhoda Morgenstern. Not that being is Rhoda is all that bad, it's just that it isn't Mary. Rhoda was the plump, shlumpy neighbor - she was funny, hard working, but simply not in the category of Mary. She was almost there, but not quite. Rhoda wnated more out of life than it had given her - Mary couldn't figure out what to do with all th good stuff that was in her life - her loving family, her adoring boss, the men who lusted after her. Rhoda wanted to be an artist - instead she dressed windows in a department store. Rhoda wanted Mary's apartment - she got stuck with two rooms in the attic and a hot plate. Even when Rhoda got her own show, it thrived briefly and then bombed, changing formats and never really figuring out what it was supposed to be.

So, you see, Rhoda is me.

Im not an unhappy lad, not really. I have love, a decent job, a home, a family, etc. But it's a Rhoda's life I have.
Example: I am half Italian and half Croatian. By all accounts and with photos to back it up, my mother and fater were quite the good looking duo in their day. Reasonably, one could have expected lovely children from them. Me, I seemed to to have inherited all of their worst traits, both psychologically and physically (see various photos below). Im not hideous and I don't scare small children, but in no way do I resemble the best of either side of my family. I have an enormous head, I'm bald and when I see myself in a mirror I still see a skinny 17 year old instead of the chunky 37 year old I have become.

You see - not bad, but not quite the best. We're told all our lives to strive for the best and I do when I can. But there is just so much that one can do with the raw materials that one is given. I actually find the idea of plastic surgery for vanity's sake abhorrent. The world is made of Rhodas - the Marys are few and far between. I used to be far vainer than I am now. But time has taught me one thing and that's no matter what you do, someone in the world will think they are better than you are and will probably go out of their way to tell you that. I have this one friend who spends bushels and bushels of money on clothes and accessories that while beautiful, are really just pearls before swine. She's a lovely person and if that's what makes her happy, God love her - she hurts no one and is single handedly preventing a retail recession - but for me, well, I just can't fathom it.

I guess the real truth here is that unlike Rhoda, I don't actually hate myself and, moreover, I don't really care anymore that I am a Rhoda and not a Mary. I have all sorts of great qualities that live in tandem with all of my bad ones and that is the essence of being human. I wear what I like and look the way I want to look. I am most certainly the object of someone's derision and that's just fine. I live in a whirlwind of negativity that I feel and see in all aspects of my life - I just don't know how I have escaped letting it penetrate my soul. I think so much of the negative energy in this world comes from us longing for what we can't really have or what we really don't need. There is a simple beauty to life that I haven't mastered, but I think I get it. My capacity for living is boundless - the only time it's not is when I am too worried abut what you think fo me and when I can't get past my own self doubt, which, of course, is more often than not. Life is not easy, but it really isn't all that hard, actually. Be good to yourself, especially when you look in the mirror. Respect what you see there - like my enormous bald head. It's the only one I'v got so what can I do about it? I am no saint - far from it. I am as catty and as mean as the rest of the world, but I guess I maintain a guilt about it that keeps me from actually dipping too deep into that well.

I am rambling, and that's not nice. So, in short, Rhoda or Mary, it doesn't matter. We are all, hopefully, going to make it after all.

Roma Cappocia

I may have mentioned yesterday that my birthday is coming up - in seventeen days, actually. I used to celebrate my birthday with a vengeance. I was making up for what I considered to be years of neglect on the behalf of my mother and father. I got lost in the shuffle of all the brothers and sisters and birthdays were no big deal in our home. So, as I got older and was able to craft my own celebration, I certainly did. Oddly, this year my birthday approaches and I have no real desire to do anything outrageous or special. I look forward to a quiet evening at home or out with friends - something truly celebratory but in a quiet and lovely way.

However, this isn't to say that I don't want presents. Everybody loves to get presents. I refuse to believe those people who say that you aren't supposed to bring a gift to a birthday party. It's usually those people (myself included) who really mean that if you actually show up empty handed you will be talked about and ridiculed for days and days. So, I was thinking today about what I want for my birthday. My wishlist includes a million dollars, a home in San Francisco, a brand new car, another million dollars, etc. But that's all fantasy and fantasy is a good thing - or at least I think so. But one can dream at birthdays and at Christmas and since this is my birthday I will fantasize all I like.

So, here's what I would ask if I could really have anything at all for my birthday. For those of you who don't deal with cheese, move onto another website. Consider this a cheese alert - orange level.

The picture up and over to the right is a photo of my grandmother and grandfather that was taken in the late 1920s in Rome. I have asked my mother and aunts if they can determine where the photo was taken but it just isn't clear enough - I like to think it is near the walls near the Villa Borghese, just on the side of the Via Veneto. I like to think of them having been out on a summer night and having had a gelato or a coffee together, stealing a few moments away from the house that was full of young girls. I imagine them being approached by the photographer - there used to be photographers on the streets of Rome who would just stop you and take your photo and you would pay him and in a few days you would receive a photo in the mail - isn't that lovely - and laughing a little between themselves and then agreeing to take the photo. I am so grateful that they did.

I never had the pleasure of knowing either of my grandparents. My nonna died in 1960 and my nonno died in 1972 - one before I was born and one I was too little to have known. They died far away from Cleveland, from me and from my mother. All I have ever had is this photo, along with others, to fill the void where their presence should have been. I have dreamt of them many times in my life. I have heard stories about them and tried to imagine them as they must have been to have produced not only my mother but my crazy aunts as well. This sounds a little biased, but I don't think a finer bunch of dames has ever existed than my aunts in Rome. They had to have come from only the best of partents. I wonder, too, what my life would have been like if I had the chance to run from my mother and father into the all loving and forgiving arms of my grandparents. What it would have been like to have all of that love and affection - all those hugs and kisses that were never mine. I don't really lament it, truthfully. I think I feel it more for my mother thand I do for myself. One day I will chronicle the story of my mom and dad - it's pretty wild and totally compelling. But for this moment, this melancholy moment on the edge of a night of a very hot but beautifully happy day, I wish that for one day I could be seated across from these two kids and just have a nice, long chat. I'd tell them all the tings I would want them to know about me and for me, I would love to be kissed just once by each of them - I think I could live on that the rest of my life.

Is it odd to miss people whom you have never known? Is it normal to long for something that you never had - I mean, really, what do I know about it. I guess the image I have in my mind of them is stronger than any reality could ever have been. They, for me, have escaped the ravages of age and time and remain this charming couple on a charming street in the most charming city in the world. I feel, too, that by loving them and wishing for them as I do, I keep them alive - and in some small way, I think they are indeed with me even though that sounds crazy.

So, for my birthday, I think I will allow myself a solitary hour or two where I fill my head with pretty images of Italian grandmas and grandpas fussing over me, pinching my cheeks and buying me gelato behind my mother's back. It's a simple gift - and what the hell, it's free.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity...

I ran across this photo today and I thought to myself that I would sell my soul for it to be cool enough to merit having to wear a jacket and hat. It is an unnaturally hot day in Cleveland. The air is thick and heavy and even though I am sitting in what they claim is an air conditioned office, I am miserable and warm and all around grumpy. I thought about not posting today since I am not in my normal, merry mood, but then I thought that perhaps this would indeed put me back in my normal, merry mood, and voila, I think it's working.

So, what to discuss today? Aside from this heat that is suffocating and I might add, boring me, I am currently obsessed with the idea of my having to mow the lawn. This is, as you can imagine, a weekly event in my life and it something most people jut go out and do. Not me. I begin to obsess about it after three or four days after the last mowing. I start watching the grass get higher and thicker and I start getting this horrible feeling in my stomach about my impending need to mow. This summer has been so incredibly rainy that the grass just keeps growing and growing - in past years it hit a dormant stage and you could just mow it and mulch it. I haven't been able to even do away with the bag yet there has been so much grass. I attempted to mow it yesterday, but the heat was so bad and I just couldn't face it. I have been thinking about it all day now and trying to come up with some sort of excuse to keep me from having to mow today. Unfortunately, the sun is out, I have my health and I really haven't anything else that I need to do so I really haven't got an excuse. I am sitting in my office dreading the notion so badly that I actually exhausted myself from worry and fell asleep. My colleauge, Judy, came in and found me passed out on my desk with my head lolling to and fro. This is not Judy's first encounter with me asleep at my desk, so she did what she always did which is to clap her hands loudly and scare me half to death. If I didn't adore Judy, I'd loathe her.

Other things that I am obsessed with at the moment: my photo printer was sent back to Kodak for repair. I will not rest easy until it is back. I need to get an e-check on my car. I am paralyzed about this as I just can't face the idea of waiting in that line and driving out to the station and etc. I have to renew my license plate tags (this in tandem with the e-check). My birthday is coming up and I just don't feel like celebrating turning 37. It's hardly an accomplishment. The heat consumes me and makes me worried that my central air unit will collapse under the strain and I will be found dead in my bed from heat exposure. Im obsessed with the idea that my boss thinks I am obsessive compulsive (how's that for really looking for something to be worried about). I am worried about Israel and Lebanon, about Iraq and Syria and Iran and North Korea. I am worried that I am getting heavy again after I had lost a good deal of weight. I am obsessed with the notion that at my next doctor's appointment they will discover I have some incurable illness. In short, gentle readers, I worry.

Am I eating right? Am I taking in enough fluids? Am I a nice enough person? Is there life after death? All of this nonsense, all of this worry, all related to the fact that is so damn hot outside. It plays with my brain. It makes me weak and tired and I just hate it. This is getting very whiney, I know, but I feel like whining. I try not to do it often but sometimes it just slips out.

So, thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Wherever you, I hope you are cool and comfortable

Why didn't God let me look like this?

My first question is if you merely read a blog but don't actually add to a blog, which makes you a blogger, are you a bloggist? Just a question.

The second question on my mind is how is it that one person is born and looks like Bryan, who is pictured here on the left, while others are born and look like me (see photos above). It's just grossly unfair.

It's raining like mad tonight and I am sitting in front of the computer convinced that my basement will flood and wash the house down the street. It's highly doubtful that this will happen and what is really strange is that I think that on some level it would be pretty cool if it actually did. I am envisioning this whole raining for 40 days and 40 nights thing with Bryan and me floating around the midwest in my house. It wouldn't be so bad if we still had electricity and food and the dog learned to never ever go to the bathroom again......but oh well.

As far as biblical catastrophes go, I don't think the flood thing is the worse. I wouldn't mind being trapped in a floating house as long as I landed somehwere nice. My luck being what it is I would probably land somewhere in Michigan - and for those of you know how I feel about Michigan, this is not a good thing. It would be beautiful, though, if the house took float and followed some mystical path to a whole other world. Im not talking about munchkins or hobbits or anything like that - and to this point don't you think it's strange that when other people fantasize about other worlds everyone is so damn short - in my fantasy world the house lands somewhere near Sweden and it is populated by very tall good looking men resembling Jude Law.

So, you see, the house is floating away down the street and I am sitting on the sofa and I look outside and I see all these things passing me by and I don't even care. I would make a few phone calls though. I'd call Rachel and tell her that the end was near and that we would now really find out what happens to Jewish people when they die. I might possibly call my mother who would categorically deny that my house was floating away all the while she'd be treading water in her living room as the flood waters consumed her, my father and all of the religous artifacts that decorate their home (where's your messiah now?).

Now we've floated east, past downtown (where, oddly, no one is doing anything to stem the flood. In fact, people are cheering as the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame slowly disappears from view and the Browns stadium collapses) and the flood waters pick up some speed and we past Erie and Buffalo and start a course for New York. Bryan asks as we round the bend near Albany, do we have enough chocoalte to last the voyage to which I snidely reply, cram it.

Now we're somewhere in the Atlantic and I think maybe we can hit Italy in a few days, so I call my aunts in Rome and ask them if they are flooded too. They laugh and tell me that no, it isn't flooded and even if it were it would be Roman water and there's no water in the world like Roman water. So, cool, we're headed to Italy. Will I need my passport or will the sight of a floating cape cod style house washing up on the shores of Ostia be odd enough for the Italians to just say come on in.

The rain has let up for real outside and I don't think the house will float away tonight. Which, sadly enough, means I have to go to work tomorrow. But really, if your house could float away, where would you want to go?

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just wish you were somewhere else? That would be today. I stumbled across this photo today - yes, it's Rachel again. For those of you who are wondering, Rachel is my boon companion, my Girl Friday, my Boswell, etc. She, much like myself, is not fit for human consumption. We are friends with each other because, basically, no one understands me quite like her. We are kindred spirits of a sort.

This photo comes from the first time we ever traveled together. We didn't start out small - we went to Rome together. It was for neither of us our first trip there. I had been there many, many times as my mother was born and raised there and met my father (who, incidentally, is from Croatia) and married him there.

So, anyway, we're actually sitting in a bar called The Bandana Republic. My cousin took us there and we quaffed a few pints and Alessio, my cousin, snapped this photo. So, as I said, I stumbled onto this photo and I just wished....with all my heart....that I was in Rome and not in a sweltering office in Cleveland, Ohio. For those of you not familiar with Cleveland, you are in a good place. Cleveland, for those of us born and raised here, is one of those love-hate things. But, as I grow older and get more or less resigned to the idea that I will probably die here (but let's hope not - I hold onto hope - I always am holding onto hope), I have grown to loathe and despise Cleveland. But that is all for another blog entry - right now, the point...

I wish I were any where but here. I wish I were in Rome....I wish I was drinking a lukewarm beer at the Bandana Republic (which, for any Rome bound travelers out there, is on the Via Ancona near the Piazza Porta Pia) - I wish I was walking down the Via del Corso crowded by tourtists and gypsies and roasted chestnut salesmen....and I wish I could just drift over to the Via Fratina to the American bookstore and buy over priced used copies of books in English and just walk until I'm spent and pull out the dog-eared copy of Flaubert's Madame Bovary that I just bought for an outrageous amount of money and sit at a table on a strange, curvey medieval Roman street, sipping black, acidic coffee and dreaming of a time and place that never was nor never could be mine.

So, the long and short of it is....I wish I were in Rome. Where do you wish you were?

Today, I am a Geek

It is a Wednesday afternoon - hot and unpleasant - here in Cleveland, Ohio. My office is a sauna, I have a mountain of work to do and I am, despite what I have to do, terribly bored. My friend and I have spent a good deal of the afternoon instant messaging each other links to webistes regarding Lord of the Rings. Stop here for a moment to assure yourselves that I am no L.O.T.R. fanatic - I read the evil books and I saw the very pleasant and engaging movies. My fascination comes from the crazy people out there who have dedicated their lives to Tolkien, hobbits and all the related nonsense. We today found a page of haikus dedicated to L.O.T.R. This got me thinking...... I am in constant search of more time in my life. More time for the things I love to do and, believe me, my list is long and varied. I really haven't the right to sit here and be sanctimonious about people who are so enthralled by Tolkien, etc. that they would create webpages such as: http://quizilla.com/users/Tinuviel/quizzes/LOTR%20-%20Which%20Helm's%20deep%20Soldier%20are%20you%3F/
http://www.jackflannel.org/lotr/

I get just as obsessed and into things and in some strange, strange way I almost admire them their dedication and conviction. So, rather than feeling catty and superior to them, I figured, let's give it a whirl. Here's my haiku: first light on fifth day Gandalf coming; fear no more Helm's deep safe again

Not too bad, huh?

I like geeks. I am, I think, proudly one of their numbers. We were talking about STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION today at lunch. Again, I need to unequivocally state, I am no Star Trek fan. I have friends who are enthralled by this program (not to mention a colleague of mine who had dedicated his entire office with T.N.G. ephemera....) and because I genuinely like to know what the hell people are talking about, I have seen many of the episodes. As much as I laughed about the devotees and their never ending fascinating with what, at best, is a badly acted and poorly produced science fiction series, I realized I am no different. I adore the Harry Potter series, both books and films. Although I find Tolkien as an author UNBEARABLE, the movies, as stated, were fun, engaging and worth the price of the ticket and I secretly enjoying talking to L.O.T.R. fanatics about the movies----and I like to listen to computer geeks wax poetic about hard drives and bytes and the like even though I have no idea what they are talking about. I work at a place that deals with a highly defined speciality and even though I don't share my colleagues passion or interest for the subject, I love to hear them talk about it because they are so incredibly into it.

This is my friend, Rachel, who has been Instant Messaging me. She'll back me up on my ultimate point which is...

Geeks are interesting people who really care about things.

So, today, let's hear it for the Geeks. Geeks of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

So I am trying this again, this, this blog thing everyone is talking about. I am not quite sure exactly what it is I will be discussing here, but my life is rather funny and I am most amused by it, so, perhaps, you will be too. So, stay tuned, live life beautifully and let the games begin.