I trust The Three of You out there will forgive the sentimental ramblings of a semi-old fool. Today, as noted in previous posts, is The Teenager's sixteenth birthday.

February 25, 1989. A day, to paraphrase FDR, that will live in family.

I still can't wrap my mind around the idea she is closer to the front door than she is to the crib. I'm trying to adjust to the notion in two years hence she will be able to cancel out my vote. Which is why I'm putting in overtime instilling some good conservative values while I still have sway.

I was reminded this week of a note I wrote.  An open letter, really, that was published in the February 1994 edition of our ministry newsletter. The Teenager was much younger then and went by the name of The Five Year Old.

Of course, she was never really five. She has always been wiser than chronology ought to permit. She went from three to twenty-two in a matter of months. Is it any wonder, then, I felt so tongue-tied in scribbling this decade-old note to our first born?

My Dear Child,

I did not know I would be so in love with you.

The Teenager turns sixteen on Friday. Sweet Sixteen.

Can it really have been sixteen years since I pressed my nose against the glass in the maternity ward nursery, (a move I noted as utterly cliche even as my schnoz flattened) and gazed with awe upon the only one in the room with the same last name?

Can it really be that long ago my hair-trigger gag reflex tripped on the way to the delivery room and I was unable to adequately coach my wife, She Who is From Venus, through the birthing process?

Of course not.

This is a sham. A Farce. A cruel hoax of time perpetrated on a middle-aged man who is unprepared to send his first-born child out into the world in just a few short years.

Surely we have ten or twelve more years together . . . 

Well, at least we have Friday night.

Two days hence five more teenage girls will descend on Chez GPBlogs for the three-day Sweet Sixteen Slumber Party to end all three-day Sweet Sixteen Slumber Parties.

Total attendance? Six Teenage girls, two underage female siblings and the woman who gave birth to the one I used to call "Little Beauty." There was a time in my life when thoughts of spending Friday and Saturday night on the weak side of a 9-1 ratio  was The Stuff of Dreams. Now I'm just a little more focused on preempted shower times and plotting complex bathroom strategies for the three-day siege.

OK, so I complain too much. Could I ask for smarter daughter? Could I conjure a more graceful young woman who loves her God? Not in my wildest dreams.

So think of me this weekend. Serving pizza. Baking brownies. Popping corn and flipping pancakes. Think of me and feel no pity. I will be serving She Who Has Brought Me So Much Joy and her Merry Band of Teens.

It will be an honor.

And I seriously doubt I'll make it through the weekend without shedding a tear. Even now the eye moisten as I think of the line I've waited so many years to share with her.

"You've turned into the prettiest girl I've ever see-een . . . Happy birthday Sweet Sixteen."

Yes, I went missing in action for the briefest of briefs. But I can explain.

I began ripping the other day. And I couldn't stop.

No, I wasn't rending my garments or pulling out my hair over my inability to decipher thecurrent tax code. Anyone under twenty-five knows what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, I haven't been twenty-five since 1980 which will give you some idea as to the aging fount of knowlege from which your mind currently sips.

I have been sitting before my brand new 20 inch G5 iMac with 1.8 ghtz, 160 HD, SuperDrive & iSight copiously overcompensating for the past ten years when I have not for one moment been the owner of any technology remotely approaching the border of Cutting Edge.

So now that I have some juice I'm like a rogue child in a potato chip factory. Perhaps the simile seems odd. It wouldn't if you had ever been one.

I have.

Shave forteen years off that twenty-five. When I was eleven my Cub Scout troop toured the Granny Goose Potato Chip Factory in Sacramento. The tour was boring so me and a buddy cut our losses and became disentangled from the group. We stumbled upon the greatest discovery since Ponce de Leon discovered whatever it was that Ponce de Leon discovered.

We found a five foot tall cardboard tub filled to the brim with freshly minted Granny Goose barbecue potato chips. Now I might have resisted a five foot tall cardboard tub filled to the brim with freshly minted plain potato chips, but no one could blame two eleven year oldCub Scouts for being unable to resist the siren song of the processed version of the food that kept all of Ireland from starving.

No one, of course, except an unarmed security guard with a Granny Goose patch where a badge should be. But by then the damage had been done. Several major food chains would face BBQ chip rationing in the weeks ahead.

We became heroes to the other eleven and twelve year olds on the premesis. But security guards and den mothers have no sense of humor. And no amount of revisionist history will ever convince me otherwise.

But that was a rabbit trail we stumbled upon and it's time to return to My Excellent Adventures in Ripping.

One of the terrific features of System X (no relation to Malcolm) is the musical application iTunes. iTunes allows the user to place his audio CDs in a drive bay, record or "Rip" them onto the hard drive. From there one can "burn" a custom CD.

I did this Friday night and I wanted to share the news I had transcended my generation. So who better to share this monumental news flash with  than The Teenager. I knocked on her door.

"Open."

"Hey, guess what?"

"What?" she mumbled barely looking up from her book.

"I just ripped my very first CD!" I blurted in clear violation of the Parent/Teen  For-Once-Please-Try-To-Be-Cool Statute of 1962.

The Teenager rolled her eyes and returned to her novel. "You must be so proud," she deadpanned.

Indeed I was. Not even her attitude of technological superiority could put a dent in that. She no longer has the most souped-up racer on our Information Highway. And she knows it.

For all those in the audience keeping score I now have 1,356 songs compressed into 4.19 GB all stored as safely on the ol' 160 Hard Drive as one can store on a device so fragile it must be created in a sealed, dust-free environent.

For those requiring further clarification, iTunes tells me that if I start at the top of the alphabetical list ( A Beautiful Morning by The Rascals ) and listen to everthing between there and the last song ( that would be Zorba the Grek by Herb Alpert & the Tiajuanna Brass edging Elton John's Your Song by a gyro ) I would have spent, ahem . . . 3.2 days in the effort.

Yup. I'm going for the world's biggest jukebox.

When I informed The Tenager, relaying these numbers as though they were the stats on the back of my Topps 2004 Baseball Card she seemed unimpressed we share similar DNA, let alone the same address

"That's really sad, Dad."

And you know, it is really sad. I understand this now.

And yet, I still have the other half of my music collection to rip.

And Miles Davis to go before I sleep.

Tonight we were going to focus The Laser Beam of Truth on that last beaut from Bad Poetry Corner. But let's do that another time. Why put it off? Because I can.

I was recently reminded that while you can't, or at least shouldn't, judge a book by its cover, sometimes you can judge a product by its title.

I once found a Christian group called "Mercy River" in the discount bin at my local bookstore. OK, so the group was not actually ensconced in the bin. It was one of their CDs.

I picked up the CD and casually scoured for anythig remotely interesting. I was about to put the disk down when a near life-changing title caught my eye:

The song was called "Elvis has left the Building; Jesus is coming soon."

I just had to buy me that CD. It was not only a great title but the song fulfilled its promise. It's nice when life works out like that. Best $5 I ever spent.

Of course, one tangent often begets another. So you may find this site as amusing as I did. The focus is on Elvis' cup. For the squeamish among The Three of You let me assure you The King was never ever, so far as I know, a catcher.

It's time once again for that most beloved feature of GPBlogs: Bad Poetry Corner.

Of course The Three of You know what I'm talking about. But if anyone from a parellel universe has wandered in here unannounced and lost, I give you this link to define the purity of Bad Poetry in all its many splendored forms.

Today we dig into a vault which was cemented shut for humanitarian purposes before I took a jackhammer to the slab and made it accessable once more.This Bad Poem is seeing the light of day for the first time in nearly thirty years. I hope you don't enjoy.

FETCH ME A CUP OF LOVE, DEAR, BEFORE YOU SAY GOODBYE

I look at you
    and quiver with fear
When I realize that, someday, you'll go
    Though I want you always here

You have been the source
    Of so many inspirations
        You have shared in my creations
Though I want you to stay
    and bask
        in my sea of immortality
I know 'twould be unfair
    if others were not allowed
        to know you as I have
            to drink your warmth and sensitivity

You have touched me
    As you're sure to touch many others
        I will never forget

You will go soon
    to spread that misty formula
        of love
            and joy
                and simplicity
And the world will be richer

I will continue on
    and hope
        when I dip my cup

Into Life's rich supply of Happiness
    my well
        has not
            run dry




There now. that wasn't so good, was it? Tomorrow as a special treat I will perfom an autopsy on this Very Bad Poem so we can discover together with certainty whether this poem died of natural causes or , perhaps, was bludgeoned in a fit of rage by some mad lover of Frost. Until then, then, keep thinking warm thoughts and distill them all into Bad Poetry.
       
   

Just a few more days until pitchers and catchers report to camp. Before you know it Spring Training will be blowing over us with gale force winds. It would be nice to live in Florida or Arizona to take advantage of the lazy days of March when all it takes to get up close to a Major League player is some moxie and a smile.

Of course, there is a price to be paid for existing in such close proximity to the Major League camps. You have to live in Florida or Arizona.

Meantime, closer to home, there has been a controversy brewing in Anaheim where the Angels are trying to change their name. Not the team name, no, but the city. Their lease requires the Angels to geographically associate themselves with the city of Anaheim. The owner of the Angels feels there are big $$$$$$$ to be made linking up with the city of Los Angeles, despite the fact the Halos have parked their carcasses in Orange County since the Sixties.

The City of Anaheim has instituted legal action to block the move. The Angels have taken the preposterous step of changing their name officially to "The Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles." Never in the history of pro sports has a team been associated with two cities in the same breath.

Of course, the Los Angeles Dodgers hate the idea of these carpetbaggers to the south encroaching on their geography, if only in spirit. But there is nothing they can do because the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, has allowed the change to go forward and let the courts settle this mess.

So while the legal wrangling continues, the L.A. Times, which has no affiliation to the city of Anaheim so far as I know, reported a garment sighting recently which seemed to put the whole ridiculous episode into perspective. In one of the city's malls one reporter saw a Dodger fan wearing a customized cap. It read:

"The Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles."

If I don't come up for air in time for Monday's post, at least you'll know the reason why. Today my 20 inch Imac G5 computer arrived. Isn't it rather Freudian, you might ask, that men are always bragging about the size of their LCD screens? But I wish you wouldn't.

The computer been here almost three hours and, amazingly, it's still in the box. This restraint is not only admirable, but necessary.

I am making room.

My Wife, She Who is From Venus, and I are doing our once-a-decade sweep of all-things-useless from our ministry office, adjacent to the bedroom. I don't want to say we've accumulated a lot of junk, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Fred Sanford rang our doorbell tonight and asked to see the amassing piles.

I did the research. I found the deal. The hunter stalked his prey for months and now is carting home the carcass. Raise a can of Diet Coke in my honor. After all, this one needs to last at least 4-5 years.

Or until the next Great Junk Purge overtakes our happy home.

If you enjoy a good, hard laugh and would like to see an example of some excellent visual humor, you could do a lot worse than visit Punditguy . His posts today and yesterday had me rolling. Check him out.

Whew! What a relief.

At least that's how I'm feeling tonight given today's stunning revelation that "Desperate Housewives" star Maria Cross has emeged from the hetrosexual closet and admitted to a breathless world she is not a lesbian.

"I'm not," the ABC star told Barbara Walters on today's edition of "The View" offering one of the dullest two word denials in recent memory.

Cross then threw caution to the wind and an apparent bone of hope to every right wing conservative whack job skulking in the bushes carrying a hand grenade in one hand and bouquet of roses in the other, by protesting too much. "I just assumed this is what comes of being 42 and single."

The woman who plays Bree on the Prime Time soap just couldn't shut up about her newfound sexual revolution: "I don't know if they just needed to find a reason why I wasn't married."

Cross joins a long list of other upstanding Americans who are also not lesbians including New York Mets catcher, Mike Piazza, country singer Hank Williams Jr., "Peanuts" leading lady Lucy and Your Humble Reporter, who has both the plumbing and the offspring to defend the sordid allegations.

Barbara Walters refused to comment when I rhetorically asked the television set on which she was appearing why the sexuality of another was any of her business.

Richard Gere was suspiciously absent from the roundtable discussion, citing a prior commitment to host "Animal Kingdom."

Because I feel we have bonded, The Three of You and I, it's time to put your loyalty to the test. What was it we--I mean they--said in the seventies? "If you love something set it free. If it doesn't come back, it was never really yours. But if it does return you will have it forever."

Like The Ten Year Old might say: "Yeah . . . rrrright." She really hangs on that "r" too. You should hear the sarcasm. It's a thing of great cynical beauty.

In any case, tonight I introduce a new feature in our ever-expanding universe of literary straws to grasp. I call it "Bad Poetry Corner."

For tonight's feature I have dredged the muddy waters of my long past, er . . . past . . . to the paginated depths where the bottom feeder of rhyming meter dwells. From a small chapbook entitled "A Fresh Daisy, a Plastic Rose" I once self-published (as it seems no one else would self-publish it for me) I give you now the neo-classic ode:

Your Symptom is Familiar, But I Can't quite Place the Disease
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

My soul is high, my heart is light,
I'm gassey; I'm elated!
But who am I to call it love?
I might be constipated.

Now then. That wasn't so good, was it?

From time to time I will continue publish Bad Poetry Corner until The Three of You become the Two of You and so on until I myself abandon this blog and allow the tumbleweds to take over.

Meantime, I'd like to invite anyone who feels they have written poetry of such poor quality to be actually considered for Bad Poetry Corner to click on my email link and send me a stanza or thirty-seven.

Please keep one thing in mind, though. Lots of people believe they write bad poetry. Friends have discouraged them for years and these bogus bards believe they truely possess the gift. But they are wrong. They are merely bad poets. Not to be snide, but ANYONE can be a bad poet. It takes a righteous artist to pen the objectively awful poem.

The distinction is simple. The bad poet is a misguided writer who doesn't have a clue how to string seven words together in any remotely artful manner. Your eighth grade English teacher was a bad poet who was smart enough to never allow her work to see the school's yearly literary mag.

But a bad poem must be one the author him/herself actually believed at one point in life was of such stellar quality that it might bring love, fame, fortune and a place of honor in that year's "Top 100 American Poets" published by Vantage Press.

A really baaaaaaad poem is one that generally can be viewed when the cold light of day shines the eloquent ray of introspection through the prism of time.

A few minutes ago The Teenager asked me what I was doing, so I read this post in progress. I invited her to send me a candidate for Bad Poetry Corner. She told me, "I don't mean to brag, Dad. But I don't really think I have any bad poems."

"Do you know why that is?" I asked.

"No."

"Because you're not thirty."

Alright everyone, send me your poor, your tired, your huddled masterpieces. I'll be the judge whether they are good enough for Bad Poetry Corner.

She could have looked in a mirror another few years and never seen it. She might have rummaged through Google and never found the object of her desire. Had she gone a decade or so without discovey, her mother and I would have been jake with that.

But one day recently The Toddler raised her index finger in the air and it hit in the middle of her face. "Eureka!" she likely thought. "Oh sweet mystery of life at last I've found you." We'll never know for sure as The Good Scribes of Los Angeles were otherwise occupied covering the Blake and Jackson trials.

Indeed, she had hit paydirt. Let it be known now far and wide, this child, this innocent, this miniature genetic replica of Your Humble Reporter has now and for all time gained unfettered access to her nose.

Wistful memory retrieves a snippet from the archives when the mere touch of this child's schnozz induced screams of such magnitude that social workers would bang on our door at 3 AM.

"Just a little cleaning, kiddo. Daddy needs to move this little boogie so you can breathe again."

Or Mommy would grab the bulbous blue utility we affectionately dubbed "The Snot Sucker," beginning Hoover-like anti-gravity that will likely be the recurring theme of future and expensive therapy sessions.

No one could touch her small and perfect nostrils without an alarm sounding in her brain like the end-of-workday horn which graced the opening theme of "The Flintstones."

But now Pandora's Box isn't just unwrapped, it's been crowbarred. And The Toddler suddenly parades proudly around the room with a solitary digit of repose in her nose.

She has learned this sometimes makes her family laugh, though we try to swallow the molten giggles before they errupt to the surface. We are seldom successful. And now she knows that placing her finger waaaaaaay up there, then repeating this step in a wanton rat-a-tat motion a jackhammer would envy, gets her all the attention the offspring of a former class clown could ever want.

Yes, we try not to laugh. We attempt to look stern and say things like "Stop that!" or "That's not nice." But it's too late. She knows she's funny. She understands exploring the depths of these twin caverns empower her more than any turn on "American Idol" or executive position with The Donald ever could.

The Terrible Twos are nearly over. Her third birthday is square ahead. But until she learns a bit more about shame or her family finally gets a grip on looking sufficiently unhappy whenever her dancing digit begins to dart and dive, I have the distict feeling The Tumultuos Threes are going to be a very long year.

An addendum to yesterday's post whereby The Ten Year Old returned her spelling test to the teacher, pointing out her 100 percent was undeserved. Turns out on the ride home from school my daughter discovered another word misspelled that had been marked correct.

I'm thinking maybe The Ten Year Old should be correcting these papers instead of the substitute.

Today in class she received a special recognition award for bringing the discrepancy to light. It read, quite simply:

"I got caught telling the truth."

What a world this might be if we all got caught so red-handed.

Two quick stories about The Ten Year Old.

Apparently, while I've been away, the kid has missed her old papa. Last night She, Who is From Venus was putting our daughter to bed. The little one was clutching a piece of paper.

"What do you have there?" asked my wife.

The Ten Year Old handed the paper to her mom. It was the note I wrote to her on the first day of school this year. I had left it near her lunchbox knowing I would be asleep when she left in the morning.

It was her first day as a fifth grader, which marked the last year she would be attending her current elementary school. Next year junior high. But for this day a new beginning.

In the letter I told her how proud I was she was now in the fifth grade. That she had worked hard in school for many years and this was something she could look on with satisfaction.

I admonished her that she was now one of the oldest kids on the playground. That from time to time she might see a younger child who had skinned a knee or had been left out of a game and that it might now fall to her to give some aid or comfort.

That night she thanked me for the letter. That was the last I heard of it. Until last night. When I'd been away from home for nine days and, apparently, that letter was the most tangible way she had, at the moment, of holding on to me.

Today I found out she did something in school that I had never done during my entire tenure as a student. She turned herself in.

She had taken a spelling test recently and the results came back this morning. One hundred percent. All was right with the world. But, as she studied her paper, she noticed one of the words marked as correct was actually misspelled.

I haven't been able to talk with her yet, so I don't know if what came next was an easy or difficult decision. I don't know if she wavered, waffled or just walked. But walk she did up to her teacher and pointed out the error to her. I'm told the teacher, who was a substitute and doesn't know my daughter very well, was terribly impressed.

If I had to guess I would say it was easy for this child to come clean, even though no one would have ever been the wiser. She has a real heart for God and for doing what He would want of her. She would be the first to say how often she fails to walk in His footsteps.

But today I know she has two fathers who are beaming with pride, with love, with deep and abiding respect for the choice she made.

This is my last post from the underground bunker. Tomorrow I'll be home. The time has been well spent. But tomorrow I'll be picking The Ten Year Old up from school myself, then taking her to ballet class. I don't think I knew this until I heard these stories, but I've missed her at least as much as she's missed me.

I'm no fortune teller, but I'm guessing there's an after-school ice cream sundae for two somewhere in this girl's immediate future.

Tonight I watched the annual State of the Union Message with all the concern of a parent witnessing his child step to the microphone in a city-wide spelling bee. You find yourself involuntarily mouthing the letters with him. But more than anything you just hope the kid doesn't embarass himself.

Whenever President Bush speaks, I cringe at the thought of the malaprop waiting to springboard from the high dive of his tongue and belly flop into the cold waters of perception some twenty feet below. Let's face it. Eloquence was never one of this man's great gifts. "George W. Bush" is the living answer to the Jeopardy question "What do you get when you cross Norm Crosby and Casey Stengel?"

But listening to his speech tonight, which had its moments of rhapsody, you gotta give the President credit. It would be easy to pull in the reigns and play it safe in his second term.

Instead he intends to privatize social security, reform the income tax, pass a marriage amendment and, for good measure, stay the course in bringing freedom to the people of Iraq. Not a bad day's work if you can get it.

I'm sure I left something out, but let's not quibble. He will make a lot of enemies in persuit of his agenda. They'll have to get a number and stand in line. Even with a Republican majority in both Houses, his battles will be fought on difficult terrain.

I must admit, though, as much as I take pride in spending my one little ol' red vote in a very, very blue state, this pales in comparison to the way I feel about the man who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I trust him.

I know he's a politician. But I trust him. Yes, he's made mistakes. The miscalculations of this war have been costly. But I believe he is an honest man. One of firm conviction. Why else would he have stayed on course in Iraq when it was clearly the least expediant thing he could do while seeking reelection?

Of course there are the blood-for-money protesters who believe this war is about lining the pockets of the President's corporate friends. Well, that's one perspective. Since no amount of logic or rhetoric are likely to change minds at this late date I'll offer none.

I will say this. I've waited most of my life to be able to say about someone in the Oval Office, "This is a man I trust." And whether history proves me right or wrong, in the midst of a political system which all too often throws us two candidates we have no affinity for and says "Go vote for the lesser of two evils," I'm glad I got a chance to experience this feeling of loyalty at least once.

I don't think the President hit a homer tonight. It was more like a double. But he rounded second without tripping on the bag. It was a good beginning. And it's still just the bottom of the fith.

So I'll watch this term from the stands, praying for him as the Lord brings him to mind. God speed, Mr. President. Steer clear of scandals. Let your actions speak louder than your words. A few years down the road I'll be the one in the Texas Rangers hat standing and cheering while you're rounding third, heading for home.

Still under lockdown somewhere beneath the earth's crust, trying to pound out The Great American Non-fiction Book. The work is tedious. The words ooze like the maple from an old Vermont tree. Occasionally, they even taste as good.

So I took a small break tonight and caught "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" on the tube for what was probably my tenth viewing. This is one of those films that simply doesn't get old for me. Despite the fact I can almost recite the script, the comedy is as fresh as golden pita bread from from a big fat Greek oven.

Oh, how I enjoy this movie.

Michael Constantine is an actor whose work I have admired since the early Seventies when he played the principal on the television show "Room 222." What I find disconcerting about the talented Mr. C. is that I thought he was sixty years old when he did that show. Now, thirty years later, he doesn't look a day over seventy. This either speaks to the inability of youth to gauge the age of anyone over twenty-five, or it says I'm rooting for him not to be ninety because that places me much closer to the finish line than I'd like to acknowledge.

Constantine's character, Gus Portokalos, is the ultimate cheerleader and authority of all things Greek. His pholosophical perspective toward any of life's ills visited upon Gus or his family is not only profound, but affords us one of the great running gags in film history. (And those who follow this space closely--The Three of You--already understand just how enamored I am of running gags.)

"Weeeeeen-dex," he constantly tells anyone who will listen. "Eeet feeexes av-er-y-ting." Got a pimple? Spray some Windex on it. A sore back? Just drop a dab of that magic blue liquid on a towel and rub it in. Gus himself has hurt an elbow and as the camera pans back we see him soaking the wounded joint in a bowl of the magic elixir.

The line has transcended the movie and, from time to time, makes its way into The Family's conversation. The Teenager has just endured a hard day at school. The Ten Year Old isn't happy with what's on her plate. The Toddler trips on the hardwood floor and starts crying. I break into my best Gus Portokals impression, beaming ""Weeeeeen-dex! Eeet feeexes av-er-y-ting."

Mostly they just stare, enduring as they have these many years what they see as my perplexing sense of humor. They look at me as if I was from Mars. Even She, Who is From Venus, rolls her eyes and sends a mock scowl careening my way.

Jesus tells us in Mark 6:4 " “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor." This is true. I believe the Savior knew as well, though He failed to comment for posterity, that often in his own house a humorist is without laughter.

Such is my lot in life. Perhaps heaven will have its own laugh track. Or at least a ubiquitous drummer for my own private rim shots. But here I am on earth (or several hundred feet below), toiling on The G3 PowerBook, hoping to find enough words in just the right order to keep The Editor happy.

Windex. It's good for the heart and good for the soul.

I hear it works on windows too.