Work hard.

Love true.

Live simply.

Be humble.

Top Ten Ways to Annoy Your Butcher.

1. Get angry at me for things I have no control over. I don't set the prices. I don't select the brands. I can't order brands we don't carry and I don't write the ad. One of my favorite sources of anger is when they put something like a whole pork loin on ad, then show a picture of an expertly roasted rack of pork carved and decorated with little booties and some poor SOB shows up actually expecting to get a cooked crown pork roast for 99 cents a pound. Really? (sigh)
2. Grill minimum wage workers over precise cooking instructions for complicated , expensive meals. Come on. I don't know if you realize this or not, but we can't afford to buy half the shit you do—king crab legs, lobster tails, filet mignon, sea bass, etc--let alone be expert in the preparation of it (most grocery store “training” boils down to “wash your hands and don't steal anything”). A little thing called Google, people. Use that $500 smart phone in your pocket and a little f@$king common sense.
3. Ring the the @^%$# bell and then not know what the @#%$ you want. This isn't the Mercedes showroom, I'm not going to twist your arm to buy some ground chuck. You either want it or you don't. Same with indecisive people (“I don't know what to have for dinner”) and people who can't make a six dollar purchase without consulting with someone on their cellphones.
4. Cellphones.
5. Mosey on up to me when I'm filling the case and ask, “What kinda deals you got today, buddy?” Do you want me to stop what I'm doing and recite you the entire ad, or can I just hand you a circular like everybody else? Or, here's an idea, look at all the pretty colored signs hanging above the case.
6. Try to negotiate the price. What is this #^%$ Abu Dhabi? This isn't a garage sale or a flea market. The price is the price. It's set by suits in Suit Town and there ain't nothing I can do for you. See #1.
7. Call for stupid reasons (especially during rush hours). Hey, I really enjoy stopping what I'm doing, putting down my knife, washing my hands, drying them and then taking your so-so-vital call. It's like taking a little break EVERY TWO MINUTES!And if it's something like, “Um, I bought a roast a couple, um, weeks, ago, and um it doesn't look so good. Is it, um, still safe to eat?” or “I'm going to be in the store in a couple hours and I was wondering what kind of steaks you have?' I'm going to hang up on you. Not really. I can't. But I'm hanging up on you in my mind. Special kudos, though, to the ones who call during the rush to ask “What kinda deals you got today, buddy?”
8. Ring the #&^%^&$%#$ buzzer when I'm standing right there. I may not have noticed you yet but a clearing of the throat or a shuffling of the feet will get my attention. Ringing the buzzer in that situation is like shouting at me. I'm a stressed man with sharp knives. I do not like people yelling at me.
9. Expect preferential treatment because you namedrop. I hate just about every #^^%#ing executive in the company so telling me you're golf buddies with him is just going to get you spit in your hamburger. Not really. Maybe.
10. And the final, sure fire way, to really, royally, piss-off a hard working meat-cutter is to waltz into the meat locker in your suit and tie and clipboard and proceed to tell me how to do my job and why I am not living up to corporate standards. I'm a stressed man with sharp knives; are you really yelling at me?

The Best Christmas Present.

There's an art to gift giving. The perfect present is is one that is both unexpected and indispensable. It's gift says I know you better than you think I do. Or even I know you better than you know yourself. I've been fortunate. I've received more than my share of great gifts in my lifetime.

A few, though, stand out. Early in our marriage my wife surprised me with a leather bomber jacket. I had wanted a leather jacket all my life but had never told anyone. I loved that jacket—and wore that sucker out in a few years (ripped it on a barbed wire fence, left it in the rain, kept it in the jeep until the dye faded to white). One year Matt gave me a little pocket multi-tool that turned out to be the perfect size to slip into a pocket or a fishing vest. I used that a lot until it was lost—like all things seem to disappear in my fishing vest. A former boss gave me a leather bound journal--which became my lifetime hike log. My brother gave me a stainless steel thermos which kind of baffled me at the time, but quickly became indispensable. I was a crushed a couple years ago when I dropped and broke the cap. It was the perfect size between small and large—and I have not found anything to replace it.

I didn't know I wanted or needed any of these things—until they became irreplaceable and deeply intertwined with my life.

The best present I ever received , though, was the last one I ever got from my mom and dad. It must have been the last year I lived at home in 1983. It was a Black & Decker tool set from K-Mart that contained a circular saw, a jig saw and a drill. At the time I was a college graduate slacker working at McDonald's and mass-mailing resumes to ad agencies across the country. The gift of tools was both unexpected and maybe a little bit wishful on their part. I promptly put them back in the box and forgot about them.

Flash forward to today. Those three tools have followed me my whole life. I have used them on and off again for thirty some years. They haven't wore out. They haven't failed. I can't think of anything else I owned back in Michigan that is still with me today. They were the perfect gift both practically and symbolically.

All a parent can hope for is to bestow upon their child the tools to succeed in life. Do that, and you've given the greatest gift of all.

Merry Christmas Mom and Dad. Thank you forever.

Oh! Christmas tree!

My cramping hand clutched desperately for the flimsy limb in the top of a forty-foot pine tree, swaying in the first winter gusts of the year. Hanging on for dear life, I uttered a silent prayer that I would survive—preferably with all limbs and head intact. Of course I already had doubts about my head. After all, what in the hell was an out-of-shape, overweight forty-five-year-old man doing in the top of a giant pine tree anyway?Bear attack? Wilderness panic? No, my friends, it was something much more insidious and frightening. Christmas spirit.

           Those of you who know me are probably already shaking your heads. My reputation as a devoted Scrooge is long and well deserved. People I don’t even know stop me in the store in the middle of August. “Only five more months ‘til Christmas,” they chuckle merrily as my eyes bug out of my head. Everybody knows I hate the holidays. But as I getter older, I also seem to get a little wiser. All this hating is not good for the soul. Hating things you can’t change is pointless and self-destructive. Instead of hating Christmas, maybe like old Ebenezer and the Grinch, I could learn to love it. So after the Great Thanksgiving/Smoked Turkey/ Home Inferno (see earlier blog) I decided I’d actually put up some lights this year.

It had literally been years since I had bothered to put any up lights. I had no idea what worked and what didn’t and the whole mess looked like an octopus eating spaghetti in a string factory. Naturally the few that were easy to untangle where the ones that didn’t work. The ones that worked I managed to drop and shatter many of the bulbs. Hours went by. Finally, through persistence, cannibalism and redneck technology, I was able to cobble together several working strings of lights.

Where to put them? I could decorate the front of the house but we never go out there in the evening. Who was I trying to cheer up? The neighbors? Hell no. Those people wouldn’t even help a guy fight a fire at one in the morning. No I was trying to cheer myself up so I strung them around our back patio. The end result was kind of nice, but a little lacking… Then I started to eye the giant pine tree that dominates our backyard. The previous owners had bought a live Christmas tree one year and, when they were done, planted it in the middle of the yard. The thing is now a Sequoia. It’s home to all sorts of critters and birds. I’ve seen whole flocks of birds fly out of it. Rodents, rabbits, stray cats and, I think, a couple spotted owls live in there. We once lost a dog for a week in this tree. El Chupacabra and Bigfoot party in there once and while.

So anyway there I am standing on my back patio holding a string of Christmas lights and eyeing the tallest pine tree in Arizona. The rest I guess is predictable.

I strung together all the remaining lights that still worked, climbed atop the roof of my house and tied a rock to the end of the lights. Thus I made a giant rope of lights and proceeded to attempt to lasso the pine tree. Surprisingly my plan worked. On my second or third toss I managed to snag an upper limb. All that remained was to climb down and carefully wrap the string of lights around and around the tree. Of course this proved more difficult than it seemed. The string of lights kept snagging on lower branches and required careful looping and swinging of the lights to lay them in place. Imagine a giant jump rope. My wife and son came out and helped me for a while—even though I’m quite sure they thought I was absolutely nuts. That’s the kind of sport they are. When someone in your family is borderline deranged, you learn to humor them.

Things were pretty much under control when she went back into the house. I was making progress. Just one remaining snag… I stood on the top of a stepladder to get a better angle, started swinging my jump rope string of lights and made another beautiful loop up into the tree exactly where I wanted. It landed on a large nest in a branch directly above me. It was perfect shot—except the nest it smacked turned out not to be a nest. More of a hive really. A giant beehive. Suddenly there are about four million bees zooming towards my head. Something told me there weren’t going to sing me Christmas carols.

Those who believe that man was never meant to fly has never stood atop a step ladder while being attacked by a swarm of bees. I don’t actually remember jumping from the ladder, but suddenly I was halfway across the yard and I still hadn’t touched the ground. I can honestly say I have never moved faster in my life. I would’ve won Olympic Gold if beehive sprinting were an event. I was halfway down the block before I even slowed down.

Carefully, I slowly crept back into the yard and snuck into the house when the bees weren’t looking. There I waited them out. Then, just before dark, I went back outside and finished the job. With the satisfaction of a job well done, I plugged the lights in and stepped back to view my masterpiece.

The top of tree did not light up.

Unbelievingly, I carefully looked to see if the top string got unplugged. Nope. It was plugged. They just didn’t light up. I couldn’t believe it. After all that work… It was incredibly depressing. I couldn’t go to sleep that night. Then, when I did, I dreamed of exploding lights and laughing bees. The next day I got up and went to work. But all I thought about where those lights. On the way home that night, I bought two more strings of lights, drove directly home and started unwrapping the tree. I pulled down every strand of lights off that @*&%#$ tree and climbed back on the roof with a new lasso.

The problem was, after a day of meat-cutting, my arm sucked. The first toss missed the tree entirely. The lights sailed past and flew to the ground with giant crash. An entire string of lights was smashed. Undaunted I hooked up a new set and tossed it again. Another bad toss. This one went left and low. Way too low. Unfortunately it hooked on the tree good and when I tried to retrieve it, I ended up snapping a string in half. Now I’m angry. In a matter of minutes, not only have completely undid all my work, but I’ve wrecked two strings of lights in the process. I was so mad I briefly considered picking a fight with bees. Instead I went in the house and yelled at the dog.

I brooded on those damn lights until my next day off. It happened to be Arizona’s coldest day in five years but I didn’t care. I went to the dollar store and bought ten more strings of lights. The tree was getting decorated—whether I lived to see it or not. This time, however, I knew I had to throw caution to the wind. This time I was going to climb to the top of the tree myself.

I don’t know what kind of pine tree it is exactly, but the thing is thick. I got out my aluminum extension ladder and found that, fully extended the ladder barely reached from the outside of the tree to the tree trunk—about five feet off the ground. Oh well, that gave me an avenue into the tree. From there I began to climb. There were so many tree branches, however, I had to worm and contort myself upwards. There were massive piles of dry pine needles everywhere—and they infested my hair, my ears, my clothes and even my eyes. Pine sap soon covered my hands and clothes. As I got towards the top of the tree, a cold wind began blowing. My hands started cramping from clutching the branches. The tree began to tilt backwards from my weight.

Actually, it was kind of fun.

Then another gust of wind blew me back further. A bee buzzed around my head. I knew it was time to get the job done and get the hell out of there. Clutching the tree trunk with one hand, I attempted to tie the end of the string of lights around a branch as high as I could reach. Easier said than done. The wind started blowing the top of tree back and forth. I started to get seasick. Three bees buzzed around my head.

Finally I just wrapped the string around a branch three times, knowing full well it wouldn’t hold and shinnied, fell, tumbled down the tree and hacked my way out. Finished, I didn’t even bother turning the damn things on to see if they worked. I just plugged them into the timer and walked away.

Later that night, after the dinner table was cleared and the family was settling down in the living room, I asked my wife to take a little walk with me. It’s freezing out, she said. “Come on just out to the street and back.” We walked out into our cold, dark neighborhood and walked out to the street. “Wow.” The tree was lit up from top to bottom. We stood and admired it for a long time.

“It’s beautiful, “ she said and then turned and uttered the words that sent shivers down my spine. “But it makes the rest of the yard look dark. Maybe you should…”

All across the neighborhood, a terrible scream echoed through the night.

--December 2006

Christmas KISS (Keep It Simple, Santa)

Christmas KISS: Keep it Simple, Santa.

People, I'm sure, get tired of hearing of me bitch about Christmas. Every year I invariably look forward to, then dread, and then am disappointed in Christmas. It's a pattern, I realized, that deserves some inspection. What is it about Christmas that bums me out so much? Is it the hard work? The money spent? The rampant materialism? The overt commercialization? The religious/political posturing?

No, I've concluded. All of those things are evident everyday in our decadent and decaying world. No, what really bugs me about Christmas is all the little chores and obligations that are forced on me against my will. None of them particularly onerous, but when combined, tend to ruin my zen. In short, Christmas is one giant complication in my otherwise simple life.

No, it's not the materialistic greed or over-commercialization of Christmas that bother me. If you've got the money to spend, spend it. There is definitely a satisfying element to finding the perfect gift—something you know will surprise, touch and inspire someone you love. My problem is when your spending becomes this herculean feat of epic contortion and complication wherein not only do you become mired in stress and conflict but your self-inflicted vortex of hopeless, romanticized idealism begins to suck poor innocent clerks, cashiers and yes, meat-cutters into your impossible passage to perfection.

I enjoy working. I don't mind when it's busy. I even enjoy taking a special order for a roast of a particular size or shape. What I hate, what I absolutely hate, is when somebody wants, needs, demands something we don't carry. Then it becomes a huge complication. We have to take the request. we have to make phone calls and inquires. We have to work out a price, then contact the customer back. We have to call back and make the order. Then we have to schedule the pick-up and then figure out how to sell the rest of the oddball product in order to make a profit on it (usually doesn't happen). Times that by a dozen and you have the makings of a ruined day.

Now this is just me. I know good business is built on that kind of above and beyond customer service. And people with great managerial skills handle these kind of complications on a daily, hourly basis. I know that. But it ain't me, babe. I am happiest in work (and life) when I am focused a a single task. When I am working hard and fast and “in the groove,” I am in a good place. Christmas orders and questions interrupt the groove.

To many people, this is just life. Complications are necessary in the pursuit of perfection.

It occurs to me that this is what ruins Christmas for a lot of people. We make these huge efforts to make sure everything is perfect. We over commit to a dozen little rituals, traditions and obligations. We go on some quest for the holy grail of the unattainable... and are disappointed when we can't find it. This is what a lot of us do in life. I was fishing with a friend the other day at a lonesome high mountain lake and he looked over at me and said, “how does it get any better than this? And why do I never have time to do this? We've done something wrong with our lives striving to pay for stuff that does nothing to make us happy, tied down to jobs that make us miserable, when all it takes to make me happy is a forty dollar rod and reel.”

Exactly right. Amid the hustle and bustle this season we all need to take a breath, think about what really makes us happy and focus on the little things of the season that we enjoy (Christmas lights, sappy movies, Irish Cream and mistletoe in my case). Don't stress if the post office loses your package, you couldn't find the right color sweater, you forgot to mail Aunt Edna a card or the butcher bungles your order for Scandinavian caviar. Take a deep breath and, when in doubt, keep it simple, Santa.

And, yes, the butcher wouldn't mind a new rod and reel.

Walmart stole my Christmas.

The problem with Christmas is not that I hate it so much, but that I love it so much. I get these idealized romantic ideas in my head. Christmas shopping for instance. The last two years I've tried to make a tradition out of going shopping with my wife. In my head, I see us taking a trip to the big city, spending the day together, shopping, eating, hanging out in cool Christmas-y places and getting in the spirit of the moment.

But what is the spirit of the moment? Does anyone even decorate anymore? In my mind, I imagine vast Christmas displays, a Hollywood wonderland of sight and sound with bell-ringing santas and Salvation Army bands playing carols and carriage rides and ice skating and booths selling eggnog and Christmas treats and... In my mind, I picture armfuls of brightly wrapped gifts and snowflakes...

And then we go shopping. Invariably we end up in a strip mall, a shopping mall or a big box store and everything looks the same. Walmart, Best Buy, Barnes and Noble—they all look the same no matter what city you're in or the time of the year. The stores don't bother decorating—it would apparently ruin their corporate identity and add a few pennies of overhead--and the place is filled with slightly desperate, basically unhappy people served by underpaid, unhappy clerks. There is nothing festive about any of it.

And the merchandise... In my head I want to see displays of elaborate toy landscapes. Model trains and happy salesmen flying airplanes and helicopters. I want to see toy stores full of toys actually entertaining and amazing people. Instead we have Toys R Us: yet another big box filled with cheap, unimaginative garbage. I bet 90 percent of everything in that place was tied to a movie or television franchise. What the hell ever happened to knights and castes? Cowboys and Indians and forts? Pirates and ships? Barns and cows? As a society, if we can't be creative and imaginative in the toy industry. What hope is there?

Due to the Walmart homogenization of America, there is nothing unique about anything. Or any day.

At the end of the day, we've spent hundreds of dollars and not bought anything we couldn't have got at the Walmart two miles from our house. There is not a single purchase that is unique or special. No aha! moment when you're not only found the unique gift, but something that surprised and amazed yourself as well.

This is Christmas today. This is America: filled to the brim with cheap, unimaginative goods designed to eek out a few extra pennies from the bottom line but devoid of soul and festive spirit. I respectfully withdraw. Next year I will be shopping locally, mostly thrift stores, and online. Black Friday will be spent in my Santa boxers in front of the computer screen with a bottle of Irish cream and a plate of Christmas cookies. It might not be my idealized Hollywood version of holiday shopping, but I'm going to be festive as hell...

How to Smoke Your Turkey/Backyard.

         A few years ago, I decided to smoke our Thanksgiving turkey. Roasted turkey was fine, if a little bland,but the whole process of opening up a bird, plopping it in the pan and sliding it into the oven was a little lacking… Where was the challenge? Where was the culinary passion? Sure, I could experiment with a lot of exotic dressings but, with every government agency from here to Washington D.C. issuing terrorist-level warnings about the danger of undercooked stuffing, I decided to go in another direction. I decided to smoke my own bird.

Finding a smoker was easy. Like ab-crunch machines and bread-makers, every thrift store, and rummage sale had one or seven of the things. I soon realized why. The cheap low-end smokers are water-based smokers. The coals go in a pan at the bottom, the grill goes in the top and suspended, somewhere between the two, is a pan of water to lower cooking temperatures. Online I found pages of advice on how to smoke a bird in this manner—the most common of which was to throw the piece of junk out and buy a more expensive box-style smoker. Undaunted, courageous and cheap, I assembled the old parts and threw the turkey on.

The grill immediately collapsed, fell into the water pan that buckled, spilled the entire pan of water into the coals and extinguished the fire I’d so carefully started at 7 a.m. That first year I had no idea what I was doing, no idea how long it was going to take or any kind of thermometer to tell when it was done. We ended up eating pink turkey at 7 p.m. Unknown to us, smoke often gives the white meat a pinkish tint, but at the time, we were convinced we were eating raw turkey. We were also so hungry we didn’t care.

Maybe it was the hunger, but, even that first year, everybody loved the taste. After that, I was trapped into doing it every year. While I improved my techniques, every year brought a new challenge and crisis. One year, while I desperately tried to get the coals re-stoked, I dropped the turkey in the dirt. Another time, the water pan collapsed again—this time spilling greasy water over my brand new jacket. One year the turkey came out purple. No clue. But each year, the problems were worked out. Each year the product seemed to improve.

This past Thanksgiving was the pinnacle. Still using my now antique smoker, the finished product was something you’d see in a glossy magazine. Not only were there no mishaps, but also I had the entire process timed to perfection. The coals died away just as my digital thermometer hit 170 degrees exactly at the hour I’d invited the guests. People actually ooh-ed and ahh-ed as I brought the bird in from the patio. The only tense moment was the scramble for the last piece of delicious, succulent turkey…

There’s satisfaction in taking on a challenge, learning the craft and mastering it. Thus I was kind of congratulating myself the next day as I cleaned up the patio, swept up the wood chips, gathered the empty charcoals bags and dissembled the now trusty, old veteran smoker. I cleaned the outside, scrubbed the grill clean and tossed the ashes into my compost heap. I guess I was still reliving the glory of the perfect smoked turkey when I went to bed Friday night.

My self-satisfied sleep was soon interrupted. Matt, my stepson home from Scottsdale, woke us up sometime after midnight pounding on our bedroom door. He was yelling something. Something that sounded like, “Get up! The backyard is on fire!” I rolled over and mumbled to my wife. “What did he say?” “Something about the backyard being on fire…” We both suddenly leaped out of bed. Dressed in skivvies and a t-shirt, I rushed out of the house and into the freezing morning darkness. Matt had not been exaggerating. The entire backyard appeared to be on fire. In the middle of our yard, just beyond the patio area, we have a series of compost bins—one for dry material, one for wet and one for the finished compost. The wet pile was ablaze and so was the wooden bin for the finished dirt. A giant pile of brush and dried weeds sat next to the now encroaching flames. The entire back yard was lit up and burning ash floated crazily all over the yard.

Initial shock quickly wore off. Get the hose! I ran to the outdoor faucet in the back of the house, spun the hose onto the faucet and turned it on. Nothing came out. It’s frozen! Shit! The flames were now leaping higher—so bright you could hardly look at them. My wife ran to the front to get the hose there. I grabbed the first thing I could find—a small six-pack cooler and ran back into the house and the kitchen sink. Our kitchen faucet is notoriously slow, so I stood there waiting for the tiny cooler to fill while outside the window I could watch the bonfire.

Deb returned from the front yard with the shocking information that the front hose was frozen too! Imagine that! She quickly redeemed herself by remembering that we owned a fire extinguisher. “The fire extinguisher!” “Yes! We should get the fire extinguisher!” “Where is the fire extinguisher?” “The fire extinguisher is around here someplace!” Of course the fire extinguisher was hanging by the back door that we’d charged through a half dozen times already. Matt looked at us like we were retards. He ripped the thing off the wall with brute force and ran into the back yard.

Meanwhile my six-pack cooler was almost full of water.

By the time I returned to the yard with my half gallon of water—Matt had emptied the entire fire extinguisher on the inferno. While it had definitely dampened the worst of the flames, the fire was already coming back. My six-pack of water had virtually no effect.

Deb then reappeared with yet another fire extinguisher she remembered we owned. I ran back to the house for more water and almost tripped over the dogs’ five-gallon water bucket again. A light bulb went on in my soggy brain. It wasn’t near as bright as the fire but… Dropping my six-pack cooler, I grabbed the five-gallon pail and threw it on the burn. That made a difference.

Running back to the outside faucet, I had to fumble with icy hands to take the hose off we had just moments earlier put on. Finally I got it off and turned the handle. Water shot everywhere. The outside faucet is connected directly to the well pump and the water pressure is intense. Suddenly my underwear is soaked and I’m standing barefoot in a couple inches of cold water. I didn’t care. Now the bucket was filling fast. By the time I got back to the flames, Matt had emptied the second extinguisher on it and had now found a shovel and was throwing dirt on the flames. I threw another five gallons and suddenly we were making progress.

Now I’m starting to look around and see if a crowd has gathered to watch the show. Incredibly all our neighbors are apparently asleep. I listen for the sirens, but so far hear only the hissing of the fire. Deb found another couple buckets and we started running back and forth from the faucet to the flames. Most of the compost bin was gone-- only the far wall next to the dry pile was still standing. I looked at the ten-foot high pile of dry branches and shuttered. If that caught—and the dry wood plank fence behind it… I dropped my bucket and started hauling wood away from the rest of the flames. Matt started to bust up the reminding pieces of the bin and Debi pitched in to help--running a board and nail into her foot in the process. They don’t make house slippers like they used to… I was still expecting to hear police and fire truck sirens any minute. I imagined myself attempting to explain to the firemen why exactly I dumped hot ash on a rotting pile of plant material. Obviously, sir, alcohol WAS involved…

I don’t know how long we continued to throw cold water on the now soggy ground, but by the time we went inside, we were soaked, shivering and covered in soot. Bright side to the story I reflected, we could now understandably give up the whole smoked turkey tradition. Time to go back to the good, old, safe roasted bird. The other two looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you kidding?” Matt said. “This is the BEST THANKSGIVING STORY EVER.”

Obviously alcohol was involved.                                      

A f