As though she wasn’t already well-rounded, Pammy came up with her list and it made me realize that there are some rare women who quote humorous movies as much as men are stereotyped to do. My list is a little bit similar but different. The movies that I will always cease to channel-surf for:

1. The Blues Brothers

Elwood: What kind of music do you usually have here?
Claire: Oh, we got both kinds. We got country *and* western

**************

Elwood: It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

2. Fletch

Waiters: Muchas gracias
Fletch: Tierra del fuego

3. Back To School

Dr. Phillip Barbay: What did he want?
Diane: Oh! What do ALL men want?
Dr. Phillip Barbay: [wryly] He wants you to dress up as Wonder Woman? Tie him up with a golden lariat and force him to tell the truth?

*********************

Trendy Man: Mr. Melon, your wife was just showing us her Klimt.
Thornton Melon: You too, huh? She’s shown it to everybody.
Trendy Man: Well, she’s very proud of it.
Thornton Melon: I’m proud of mine too. I don’t go waving it around at parties, though.
Trendy Man: It’s an exceptional painting.
Thornton Melon: Oh, the painting.

4. Coming To America (perhaps my most quoted movie of all time)

Clarence: Oh there they go. There they go, every time I start talkin ’bout boxing, a white man got to pull Rocky Marciano out their ass. That’s their one, that’s their one. Rocky Marciano. Rocky Marciano. Let me tell you something once and for all. Rocky Marciano was good, but compared to Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano ain’t shit.

******************

Rev. Brown: He helped Joshua fight the battle of Jericho, he helped Daniel get out the lion’s den, he helped Gilligan get off the island. If lovin’ the Lord is wrong….then I don’t wanna be RIGHT!

5. Wedding Crashers

Jeremy Grey: How many times you gonna do this shit? Rule #32: You don’t commit to a relative unless you’re absolutely positive they have a pulse.
John Beckwith: Rule #16: Give me an up-to-date family tree. That was your mistake. You made me look like an idiot.
Jeremy Grey: Rule #76: No excuses. Play like a champion!

****************

Sack Lodge: Claire, you get your fucking ass on that altar right now!
John Beckwith: Wow, we’re getting a great preview of what marriage is gonna be like with Ike Turner over here.

6. Trading Places

Louis Winthorpe III: He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it? My Harvard tie. Like oh, sure he went to Harvard.

7. History of the World, Part I

Marcus Vindictus: Don’t you know your right flank from your left flank?
Captain Mucus: I’m sorry sir, I flunked flank.
Marcus Vindictus: You flunked flank? Get the flunk out of here!

8. Van Wilder

Taj: I would like very much to spend my remaining days here as your assistant.
Van Wilder: Okay, we’re just going do a little word association. Say the first thing that comes to your mind. Milk.
Taj: Tit! Oh, mommy. Most Indians would say “cow” because they are sacred, but I hear “milk,” I think giant jugs. You see, I cannot go home a virgin. I came here to study the great American art of muff diving. To smack clam, munch rug, dine at just one American pink taco stand! You know, I wanted to, how is it, park the porpoise. You know? I want to take it through the car wash, baby. And get it waxed. I want to wax it. Wax it! You know, and air dry. Air dry that shit, yeah! And I would like to be your assistant very much, Mr. Van Wilder.

***********

Van Wilder: What is wrong with people today?
Hutch: [taking a hit from a bong] It’s the internet dude, it fries their brain cells.

9. Major League

Harry Doyle: [before the playoff game] Monty, anything to add?
Colorman: Ummm… no.
Harry Doyle: He’s not the best colorman in the league for nothing, folks!

10. American Pie

Jim’s Dad: I have to admit, you know, I did the fair bit of
[hesitates]
Jim’s Dad: masturbating when I was a little younger. I used to call it stroking the salami, yeah, you know, pounding the old pud.
[pause]
Jim’s Dad: I never did it with baked goods, but you know your uncle Mort, he pets the one-eyed snake 5-6 times a day.

*****************

Honorable mention: Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Something About Mary, Bad Santa and, of course, My Big Fat Greek Wedding….

If you can’t roll with the big dogs stay on the porch

In the athletic world where grit and determination are key elements to success, this has always been one of my favorite lines.  I knew as a boy that if I wanted to overcome my neurologic and orthopedic problems and play sports “like a normal kid” that I was going to have to suck it up.  No one was going to help me and I didn’t want to be “different”.  It’s interesting that I could exhibit a stubborn determination in most pursuits but that my own father could quickly reduce me to an emotional twit.

Readers of this blog will quickly recall that I do write frequently about my son and his athletic exploits.   Bless him,  he’s already a better athlete than I ever was and I have always tried to lend him my mental toughness and intuition so that he could grow to understand the games that he plays.  His sport of choice has been baseball although he’s good at most sports he tries.  He most recently played as a nine year old in the 9-10 year old division.  He’s now in summer league however which is 9-12 year olds (!).   Yesterday was his first game and his first chance to “roll with the big dogs”.

I can’t say that it went terribly but it was very hard to watch.  First off, in this division, most boys on the younger end of the age range don’t get to play as much.  The top four players played all six innings and the remaining ten played three innings and sat out three innings.  My son played right field for the first three innings.  I expected that this might happen.  The bigger or more accomplished/familiar kids get to play the infield and right field is usually reserved for the weakest player because fewer balls are hit that way.  I wasn’t upset about it.  I thought it might be good to get him on the field in his first game and let him assimilate to the different rules and pace.  He isn’t the type of kid to ever complain about being in right field.  He was in the game.  That’s all he cared about. 

The other team had twice as many 11-12 year olds as we did (we only have four).  Couple that with my frame of reference which is my son who is a smallish nine year old…and they seemed gargantuan.  In the first three innings, the Little Spartan fielded three grounders without an error and hit the cutoff man properly each time.  I have always coached from a perspective that each kid deserves encouragement even if for the un-spectacular.  None of that came to any of the younger boys.  The coaches aren’t mean or condascending but they’re very businesslike.  Finally, in the third inning, the first real “lump in dad’s throat” test came.  One of the aforementioned giants launched a high fly ball to short right field.  The two infielders were running out and the Little Spartan was running in.  It would be a tough play for any of the three but in a tight game with runners ready to score somebody had to try.   I kept thinking “Come on boy, come on…that’s yours…you can catch it”.  My worst fear was that he’d drop it.  I suppose I hadn’t considered another option.  He stopped running.

Yes, he stopped as he neared the ball and it fell in for a hit.  He picked it up and threw it to second.  It would have been a tough play but if he’d have just kept running…you could see that he was tracking the ball properly the whole way.  I probably will never know why he stopped and it isn’t likely to be important.  My honest opinion is that he saw these two big kids running towards him and he was either worried about colliding with them or that he deferred to the older boys.  Either way…he had the best chance to make the play. 

He turned and went back to his position in right field and took his athletic ready stance.  I could see the bill of his cap sink and could read the disappointment from a distance.  There was no instruction or encouragement for any of the three boys so I yelled out “That’s okay buddy…you’ll get the next one!”.  I guess it was my fatherly duty.  Perhaps I was just disappointed in the lack of mentoring by the coaches.

My son sat the rest of the game.   I was glad.  I think that he was overwhelmed by the bigger kids and the faster game.  For the next three innings, he high fived every teammate after they fielded or batted (successfully or not).  He was a good teammate.  Maybe the coaches need to be more distant.  Perhaps they don’t need to build up self esteem like I do.  The coach was good to the boys after the game telling them that they played well and he was pleased that they competed against such a good team.  I guess I just have to see his style as different and stick to my style myself.

We only have three rules for sports:

1) Try your best all the time

2) Have fun

3) No quitting

I guess he’s rolling with the big dogs now.

I was somewhat amazed that they allowed me back into the US without a body cavity search.  I always seem to draw attention at any sort of customs because my Mediterranean features are judged to be too Middle-Eastern in appearance.  I was being racially profiled before 9/11.

After crossing back into upstate New York we decided to take the kids to see some nearby locks on the Erie Canal which were instrumental to the economy at the turn of the last century.  While the canal still does function, it does not play a vital role economically as it once did.

Upstate NY is picturesque from a distance and depressing up close.  As you find several roads that once led to something now lead to nothing.   Once bustling centers of commerce are now towns that have one wondering how they can sustain themselves economically for another 100 years.  In this particular instance, we passed house after house in need of serious repair (and 100% in need of a coat of paint) followed by a town center whose only remarkable buildings were those that served municipal purpose.  The rest were shops whose window displays were so old that anything on paper was faded and nearly illegible.  Quilt shops, a coin and stamp collecting shop, a boarded up lunch counter.  All barely more than a ghost town.

It all felt like my grandmother’s attic had exploded and it bordered on the surreal.  Am I judging it using social measures that are unfair?   Do architectural eyesores constitute some label on the surrounding area?  It seems like a bleak existence all told.  Where do these people work?   Surely the farms don’t support the whole of the local populace. 

Contrast this with my experience in Queens yesterday at a baseball game where every delinquent 12-15 year old boy in that borough and beyond seemed to be in attendance and actively blocking my view, swearing at someone in the next section at the top of their lungs and texting at breakneck speed on their cell.  The demographic, whose casual greeting consisted of “Sup, yo?”, seemed to have no shortage of cash to spend on awful stadium concessions. They also seemed to have no problem throwing and or discarding their rubbish afterward.  I thought to myself “this is our future?”.

The feeling of a social/cultural freefall seems very real to me at this point.  As a nation we’ve run up $45 trillion in debt (and most of that is PRIVATE and not federal).   We went from a manufacturing nation to one that exports financial services but now we can’t even do that.  The people who’ve caused the problems are also the ones who limit our ability to fix them.  The politicians and the routes of finance are so entrenched that there is no real way to “do something” to fix the problem.

So, if I understand correctly, we’ve now found out that lending lots of money to people with poor credit is risky.  Hmm.  At the same time, we want to bail out these lenders who’ve basically jeopardized our economy by their lending habits.   Europeans are starting to buy Manhattan property (because they can) and Anheuser-Busch was just bought today by InBev (a Belgian company that owns Beck’s and Stella Artois).  ANHEUSER-FRICKIN’-BUSCH!

Serves us right.  Our economy is now so crappy that every Tom, Dick and Harry is going to want to buy up controlling interest in American brands and we’ll be powerless to stop them.

I think that my current definition of embarassment is trying to get anyone outside of the U.S. to accept a dollar as currency.  Even the Canadian looney (no offense Canadian friends) traded at an advantage to our currency.  I guess we can thank Ronnie Reagan for the “me” generation and Bush I for deregulation and oh yes, Dubya (aka, “The Great Decider”) for not maintaining a conflict of interest with any agenda that he’s pushed.

Sorry folks.  This feels like a dead end.  Perhaps I am just cranky because my kid must have spilled some milk in my car and now I have this horrible smell that I can’t get relief from.  I’m trying very hard to see this recession as “limited” but I don’t see how it will be.  Someone with economics know-how please tell me I am wrong.

I know that there are numerous customs in the blog world wherein the keeper of the blog shares a bit of truism or random fact about themselves. I have never done that. I’m not really sure if it’s because I fear losing anonymity or not. Having been tagged by the Great Pammy, however, I should respond in kind by posting six random facts about moi.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your blog entry is up.

Here goes….

1. I collect art supplies. I am not an artist per se, although I have always wanted to paint and draw. It’s kind of embarassing when I find my little collection of paper, paints, pencils, brushes, etc.. I am a very big collector of writing instruments. I should point out though that I don’t collect expensive pens. Most are between a dollar and $60. I wrote every clinical note (in patients’ charts) in medical school with one $4 Parker Vector rollerball. I wrote with it for years and people were amazed that I never lose pens.

2. I am a bit agoraphobic. It is not to say that I hate crowds such as sporting events but I don’t like crowds in small spaces. I don’t like crowded clubs, for instance. I also tend to be okay with crowds if I am one of the first ones there. I used to show up at football games in college during warmups because the stadium was hardly full at all.

3. I have deep and distinctive brown eyes. Every woman that I have ever had any sort of relationship with has mentioned them.

4. I, too, overbuy hygiene products. I used to have a “smelly-kid” complex. Since my parents were immigrants, I guess their idea of hygiene and the commonly accepted level of hygiene were divergent. Since I was a teen, I can barely go into a grocery or pharmacy and not at least consider buying some anti-perspirant. Deodorant is okay but I have this fear that I am going to turn into Albert Brooks from Broadcast News. How embarassing.

5. I spoke three languages at age 14. English, Greek and French. Of course, I haven’t had much opportunity to speak French in twenty years so I don’t trust myself to do so now. I do happen to still understand most of it as a friend of my wife’s is married to a Frenchman. I do love the language as it’s very different from my native Greek tongue.

6. I once drove 20 hours. I have always maintained that men will go to any length; cover any distance if there is the faintest hint of a mere shade of a possibility of good nookie involved. Spring Break, senior year in college. I had 100 bucks, Mountain Dew and a gassed up car. I drove to a large state university in the midwest to visit my “First Love” who was a freshman there. I did not (to my dismay) get nookie but I did get a smooch and verification that she did, in fact, love me. The return trip almost killed me as I waited too long to pull over and rest. I didn’t have an accident but I came damned close. Still a worthwhile trip as I look back after all these years.

Since I don’t have a lot of people to tag…I will throw in a #7.

7. I wore doll clothes home from the hospital. Since I was a preemie and they didn’t have preemie sizes in the late 60s…my mom and dad had to buy a doll for the clothes. That’s what you get when you’re two pounds.  Shhhhhh!

I’m gonna tag Red,  Modobs because I already can’t wait to see what they’ll say…

With the rising price of gas, airfare has gotten more expensive.  We were planning a trip to Greece this summer but the airfare has more than doubled in six months.  That, coupled with my brother’s wedding being moved stateside, kept us from traveling to Europe.

It seemed like a shorter vacation by automobile would be in order so we settled on Niagara Falls for a few days followed by upstate NY.

I had been to Canada once before (Toronto) and found it to be a really neat place.  It’s like having part of Europe meet the U.S…but not.  The people are admittedly friendly and I wonder how they brave winters that are more harsh than the ones I complain about in New England.

The falls have been great. The people just as friendly as before.  I don’t like to generalize about people but the “average” Canadian that I’ve met is somewhat different than an American and I am not referring to the friendliness.  It seems from what I’ve seen in three days that while there are “haves” and “have nots” in the US, it would appear that in Canada there are more people towards the center (or “centre” as they spell it here).

I won’t go out and mention anything else yet because it’s simply not enough of a sample size to say.  While Canadians do seem to worry about similar things (gas prices, for instance) as evident on their TV channels…there is a lot of news that simply isn’t their doing but rather their interest.

Off to bed. See you guys soon…and hopefully, I can some of the 315 photos on my camera.  (Forgot the USB cable…oops).

Last week I had posted about a young woman who was flirting with me at work during her last days there.   For those thinking that I was over-reacting, In the next few days I received an email that backed off a bit and suggested that either she never had those intentions or perhaps she was back-pedaling when she sensed the interest might not be there on my part.  She did feel very comfortable opening up to me and she told me about her marriage to a much older man and that she loved him but that he was raised (and remained) a “tough love” kind of guy.  I offered her some words of encouragement as she moves on to her exciting new field.  I also offered some advice about marital difficulties as it seemed she really does love this man and yearns for him to be more emotionally available.  She said that her interest in me was purely because I was fun to work with and “as long as I’m being honest…being attractive doesn’t hurt.”.  I tried to accept the comment gracefully although it was a little uncomfortable.

It seemed a good thing to do.   Over the next few days, I received some follow-up email but it wasn’t any more frequent or any more personal than I receive from other trainees that I mentor.  The night before last, my family and I went to see fireworks with some friends.  I had a phone conversation with my mother about a problem that my Dad was having and the Blackberry was going nuts on my ear with push email flooding into the inbox.   The first was an email off of her phone which was a photo she’d taken of herself and asked me to do the same.  I said that I would not.   The subsequent emails had just come in and were one liners she was typing in the presence of a group of girlfriends out at a restaurant.  “Where are you?”, “Are you up?” and then it gets a bit worse.

“I miss you…”

and as though that wasn’t bad enough….

“Tell me you miss me…”

I was pretty angry.  Of course there was a transient smirk on my face but for somebody who has no designs on cheating much less with me…this sure doesn’t sound innocent.  I emailed her back a one line reply

“What the HELL is UP with you?”.

She apologized for drinking-and-typing.   Obviously….

I try not to be too angry with the world around me because I feel that anger is self-perpetuating and a very hard emotion to rein in.   I didn’t send anymore email to her even though she issued me another apology today.  I don’t plan to either.  If this woman really wants to be friends with me, then I suppose the best way to offer her friendship is to offer to have her and her husband to the house to meet my wife.   This woman is admittedly at a very difficult time in her life.  Mother of two young children.  She took a few years off before residency to become a mother…so she’s not as young as her peers at work.

My initial reaction to the “I miss you…” and “tell me you miss me..” emails is that these are not things she needs to hear from me.  They’re things she needs to hear from her husband and perhaps now…she’s so eager to hear it, that she’ll settle for it from anyone’s lips.  I almost emailed her back to ask her if these aren’t things that best came from her husband.  Whether I miss her or not (I don’t really) is irrelevant.  I can’t help but think of my long held belief that the work that goes into a marriage takes lots of energy.  This is especially true in troubled relationships.  Unfortunately, those are the instances where energy may be diverted away in the form of work or hobbies or even adulterous affairs.  What if she would have taken a second to fire off that email to her husband?  OK, besides the fact that he might not have responded properly, it really was his emotion to receive.

One of the things that comes along with mentoring trainees is that their problems are rarely all related to their jobs as physicians.  There are problems at home.  Last year, one of my favorite trainees had the unexpected loss of a parent.  I expect that some of this comes with the territory.

It remains a good example of how people communicate their emotions.  Men, women;  in some ways they are similar and in other ways not.

My little brother is about to get married.  He was engaged once before.  When that relationship ended, it was three weeks before his wedding.  I wasn’t surprised since I thought that she was all wrong for him but I did worry about my little brother and his emotional well-being.  At first, I told him that I loved him and that I was sorry.  I tried not to insult the bitch too much seeing as he did love her.  After that, I wasn’t as emotionally-delving with each conversation.  I know that he went home and spent a week with my parents after it happened and my sister said that a lot of his emotional work occurred there (whether or not my parents were helpful is another story).

For a good length of time afterwards, my wife would nag me to “see how he’s doing”.  I speak to my brother at least three times a week and sometimes every day.  During that time, I had whole conversations with him that would frustrate my wife because I didn’t ask him about the situation or his starting to date again, etc.  I would just let him guide the conversation.  I wanted him to talk about what he felt like talking about.   Lots of times, he’d talk about sports or work.   That was okay.  We’re brothers.  He knows he can count on me.  He knows how to speak to me.  I find that many women  I know want to get directly to the emotional point in situations like that.  I know my brother well.  I know when it’s time to talk.  You can’t give generalized marching orders for that scenario.  It just doesn’t work.

Disclaimer:  What you are about to read is 100% selfish and I know it.  If you can’t write your innermost, selfish thoughts on your own blog then you’re in trouble.

I think that life seems to be coming at me in waves these days.  Two major illnesses (my Dad and my business partner) have kept me on my toes all year long.  BestFriend and his wife moved last month and the clock is still ticking on him to call me.  He sent me an email to show off his new house a few weeks ago.  I had maintained that my life would be easier without him living locally since I would no longer feel obligated to invite him over for holidays and special occasions.  I took comfort in that fact and that there are one or two friends that I do have that I can hang out with.  My wife and I have some acquaintances/friends that are married couples.  Some we know through work but most through our kids.   As far as “close” friendships, there is only really one local to me.  Well, now that number is zero.  As it turns out, I have known this guy from my residency days.  You can point to it as one of the few friendships where the wives, husbands and children all got along well.  Our friendship was always in context of family get togethers so we never had a chance to do “guy things” but suffice it to say I consider him my closest male friend locally.  He’s been unhappy teaching trainees for some time and considered striking out into the world of private practice.  There always seemed to be some financial tension when you spoke with his wife (she’d bring it up…).  Now, he’s been offered a HUGE administrative job at a hospital out of state near a city that rhymes with “phallus”.  They came back with a huge counter offer once he said he wasn’t coming.  Now, they’ve not only accepted but they’re moving within the next month to get the kids settled into schools by mid August.  It’s shocking really.  Two dyed-in-the-wool Long Islanders moving to a hot, southern, landlocked climate.

The rational, logical part of me says that his current job was a dead-end.  He and his wife made a personal decision that was best for their family and they’re following through on it.  The selfish part of me feels as though another friend is leaving and I am slowly being driven into more isolation.  My wife invited them over and we’re having scheduling problems.  It’s just as well for now.  I’m just not in a good place with this right now.  I can’t believe how self-centered I am being about this.  I’m just amazed.  As if their life choices somehow have anything to do with me.

I suppose that making friends is a socialization problem.  Some people will say it’s a preemie thing.  Others will point to my parents’ nomadic lifestyle during my childhood.  Perhaps, I just need to re-think how it is that people make friends and my approach to that.

With my brother almost certain to be leaving next year to move back home…it’s just starting to feel that much more isolated and cold up here.  What to do?

In a sense, however, I do have a “good” abandonment going on as well.  I received a concerned communication regarding the poem that precedes this post.  It is, obviously, FM that is the subject of that poem.  I know that since her promotion, we see each other infrequently.  The last few times however, have been different.  While I will always have love for her somewhere deep in my heart…right now…I got nothing.  She’s been “business friendly”.  You know, friendly but “cold” at the same time.  Maybe a bit robotic too.  Not just with me, either.  In this most recent instance, last week, I felt nothing.  Absolutely no heart racing.  No hyperventilating or flushing.  Even the nether-regions were certainly experiencing milder-than-usual climate.  It’s a good thing.  It really is.

A fellow blogger once posed the question: “How do you know when you’re over someone?”.

One of my answers has always been “When you can stand in the room with them and their new beau and feel absolutely nothing and not give a damn about it.”.  I haven’t had to stand in the same room with her ass-of-a-husband and I don’t want to but the fact that she can walk in (or not), call (or not), email (or not) and I could care less must be some sort of progress.