Rant #2,395: Daddy's Home

Happy Father's Day Friday!

We just have to get through the next two days, and we will come to the holiest day of the year, in my humble opinion.

It is the greatest day of the year for dads, who are part of the parental equation, even though some factions believe we are not.

Without what we possess in our bodies--and without what we provide to children later on as they mature and grow--the true family does not exist, no matter how hard some factions rant just the opposite viewpoint.

But whatever the case, Sunday is Father's Day, and I will be holding the "Father of All Barbecues" on this day. I will have a house full of people over to celebrate the day--actual fathers and grandfathers, as well as honorary fathers and potential fathers--and hopefully the weather will hold up for me to grill all of those hamburgers, franks and other stuff to the delight of our guests.

To discuss the importance of Father's Day to me and other fathers, I would like to go back to what I said in Rant #984, June 14, 2013.  Here goes, in edited form:

"This Sunday is Father's Day, and in my family, we call this the holiest day of the year.

Or at least the men in the family call it that.

It is the day to celebrate fathers and all they do for our society.

Fathers often get knocked for not doing the right thing, but fathers are important to the very framework of the family.

In the old days, it was the father who "brought home the bacon" to the rest of the family.

Today, in two-salary households, it is less so than it was a generation ago, but fathers continue to work hard and provide for their families.

I was lucky, because my father is and was solid as a rock.

He worked hard, did what he had to do with his kids, and earned the right to call Father's Day the holiest day of the year.

I have tried to follow in my father's footsteps. I work hard, do what I have to do with my kids, and I think I have earned the right to call the day the holiest day of the year too.

But my path was different than my dad's was.

I went through a divorce, and that disrupts how much influence I had on my daughter.

I have been a father since 1988, and I cherish the moment my daughter was born on the morning of May 15.

But it is really hard to parent over the phone when your child is not living with you and you are only seeing her every other week.

But that is what I went through with my daughter, and although we are on friendly terms, I don't think our bond is as strong as other fathers have with their daughters.

And that bothers me to no end.

When I remarried and my son was born in 1995, it was like I was given a second chance at being a father, and I have run with it since that day, on August 23, when he was born.

I have been his Little League coach, have gone to school meetings, have helped him with his homework, and I think I have done everything possible to being a good dad.

I hope he sees it that way.

So happy Father's Day to all you dads out there.

Even though we are often drubbed as not being around, and when we are around, clueless about what is going on, there may be nothing more important than the bond between a child and his parents.

And that includes fathers.

So have a nice barbecue, have a nice dinner or brunch, and relax on Sunday.

It is our day to do whatever we want to do.

And we deserve it, we really do."

Yes, we do deserve a great day, a single day reserved just for us each and every year to honor the male part of the parental equation.

So to all you fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers, potential fathers and honorary fathers, have a great day, and a great weekend. I will speak to you again on Monday.

Classic Rant #1,040 (September 12, 2013): Enter At Your Own Risk

My wife has tasked me with a job that I have put off for quite some time.

I have to clean up my daughter's old room.

When she was a kid, being a kid of divorce, she spent a few days a month sleeping in that room, and it was made up to reflect her likes as much as I could do it.

We used to tell her that she was actually lucky, because she had two bedrooms, one with her mom and one with me.

That only worked for a few years, but now that she is 25, the likelihood that my daughter will ever spend another minute in that room is just about nil.

So I have turned it into my computer room, my hobby room, my room to keep everything and anything that is me.

And yes, it has become a bloody mess since I have taken over the room.

(But no, it is not the mess in the picture provided here. I just used that to illustrate what a mess is. The room is nowhere that bad.)

There is stuff all over the floor, all looked down upon by shelves that were designed to hold my record albums, of which I have many, many, and, well let's say, I am brimming at the seams with LPs.

I also am using her old chest of draws to store my 45s, singles of my youth, and yes, I have lots and lots of those too.

Also, I have recorded CDRs and actual CD albums all over the place, too, and this makes the room look like it was hit by a hurricane.

But I like it that way, as I know that everything is where I can find it.

The problem is that my father-in-law is going to be staying with us for a week in late October, and the room can’t be a mess because he is not as steady on his feet as he used to be.

He will be sleeping in that room on the couch/bed we have in the room, and there really can’t be anything on the floor that he might trip and fall on.

I have started the process, but it is a tough one.

It was compounded this week by us having some work done around the house by a handyman. 

One of the things that he did was to paint our son's room, and talking about a bloody mess, that was it.

No, the paint job was fine, but like me, my son is a collector.

His direction is wrestling DVDs, of which he has a few hundred.

To get those out of the room, and to make the room ready for a paint job, was a pain.

The paint job now being done, we had to get everything back where it was supposed to be, all the furniture just right in the room.

The three of us did that last night, but it was a back-breaking pain in the neck. The handyman placed everything nearly back in place, but to get it actually back in place, well, my back ached well into the night from doing that.

And the DVDs aren't back yet. That is the job for tonight.

Back to the other room ...

Yes, it still looks like it was hit by a hurricane, but within the next two weeks, it will be cleaned up.

It often looks like a job for Superman, but I think I can handle it.

I think ...

Rant #2,394: Communication

Today, I am putting together a blog entry that really has nothing to do with anything, but it is on a subject that I have recently discovered and found to be fascinating.

More to the point, I am writing about the side of a popular actor that I never knew existed until now, or really, until the past few years.

David McCallum has had one of the strangest, up and down, longest lasting careers on television, at least in America.

The Scottish-British-American actor first came to our attention in a slew of movies in the late 1950s, where he often played a juvenile delinquent, including "The Violent Playground," and he had bit parts in several other films, including "A Night To Remember," about the Titanic.

Moving into the 1960s, McCallum continued to work pretty steadily as a film actor, aided by that quirky type of voice that you couldn't distinguish from being British or American, but that voice aided him to the hilt as Russian agent Illya Kuryakin in the TV series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." where he added a sort of Russian "tinge" to it.

Playing his role as a hip Russian agent with a semi-Beatle haircut and sharp outfits, McCallum became something of a sex symbol/teenybop star as opposed to Robert Vaughn's more staid, Napoleon Solo secret agent look, and the show's popularity allowed McCallum to pursue other show biz ventures, which I will get back to in a moment.

After the four-year run of the show, McCallum kind of faded from view, at least in America. He continued to act in movies and television--actually starring in the short-lived TV series "Invisible Man"--but his profile became so low from the late 1960s to the early 2000s that he was frequently the topic of the inevitable "Is he still alive?" questions.

In 2003, he got the break of a lifetime as one of the stars of "NCIS," as Donald "Ducky" Mallard, the team's chief medical examiner. He has continued with the show for its entire run, becoming one of its most popular characters. In fact, in one episode, one character wondered to another what Mallard looked like as a young man, and the response was, "He looked like David McCallum."

He is now 85 years old, and will continue with the show into its 17th season in 2019-2020.

Anyway, back to his time as Ilya ...

McCallum, the son of professional musicians, had a passion for music that went back to his childhood, and he actually was an accomplished oboe player in England, winning a musical scholarship to attend college.

The passion continued as he got older, but his musical career became somewhat sidetracked when he got into acting.

During his "U.N.C.L.E." years, he had gained so much clout from the show that record labels lined up to sign him to recording contracts, and finally, Capitol Records won out, and he ended up recording four LPs for the label and one very interesting single, called "Communication."

The only way to describe "Communication" is that it is uncategorizeable. It is a mix of spoken word, instrumental, female background singing, I guess what you could call rapping, and a bunch of non-sequitors that will leave your head ringing after hearing McCallum perform on this record.

It was way too weird for radio programmers, and while the record only bubbled under on the Billboard Hot 100, it set the tone for one of the strangest, yet most interesting, TV-movie tie-in recording careers that I can think of.

When record labels signed TV stars to recording contracts in the 1950s pretty much through the 1980s, it was felt that the signing was justified because the star was so hot, and was on TV each and every week, why not try to milk his/her popularity with the actor warbling some songs--maybe one will catch on.

For example, George Maharis became so popular on "Route 66" that he was signed to a recording contract, put out several albums and singles, and had a few hits, and the same thing can be said for Richard Chamberlain from "Dr. Kildare."

But back to McCallum ...

The same thought was in mind when the actor signed with Capitol Records, but he had other things in mind.

He decided not to sing a note on his records, and that he would simply take some hits of the day and re-orchestrate them in his own musical vision.

So his four albums for the label are simply filled with instrumentals, with his brand on each and every song, which must have driven the record executives crazy. How do you market instrumentals of popular songs done by a TV star whose face will be on the cover of the albums, but who actually won't be on the songs in any way?

McCallum's four Capitol LPs are musical journeys into his state of mind, and while they didn't spur too much airplay, they are pretty fascinating, no matter what song he is covering. He was really into the music, was something of a musical prodigy to begin with, and his star popularity gave him the leverage to do what he wanted to do, and do it with a lot of aplomb.

These recordings have been cult favorites for the past 50 years or so, and rappers have actually sampled several of these songs for their own recordings.

They are really worth searching out. I knew about them previously, but only now have I actually added his music to my collection, including "Communication," which has to be heard once, twice or three times to really absorb what McCallum was trying to do with this work.

And once his four-LPs were done, he was pretty much not heard from on record in the U.S. thereafter, except for a few spoken word LPs, a warble on "U.N.C.L.E." with guest star Nancy Sinatra, and on a soundtrack album to a movie that he starred in, "Three Bites of the Apple." where he sang one or two songs.

You can check out "Communication" at https://youtu.be/3rs4c-TEOVg and his interpretation of Lou Rawls' "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing" at https://youtu.be/9AU4bYrrw9s, as well as a bunch of his music on other spots on YouTube,

So although we all know McCallum as a fine actor, he is primarily a musician, and his music certainly opened up my eyes about another side of the actor that I never knew existed.

It might do the same for you, too.

Classic Rant #1,039 (September 11, 2013): Do Not Enter

Today marks the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

We can all remember where we were when these attacks were going on, and some of us were actually at the points of contact when these horrible attacks happened.

I was at work here on Long Island, and since we do cover government/military affairs here, we were greatly impacted by what was happening just a few miles away from us.

I also remember seeing military helicopters buzzing over our place of business, and yes, even though miles away, the stench of the attack carried over to our air.

We were let out early that day, and I remember my wife and I thinking about our son, who had just turned six at the time, and what type of world he was growing up in.

Life goes on. He is 18 now, and for that matter, my daughter is 25. 

Both experienced the attacks in their own way back then, and both have managed to move on from it.

We, as a nation, vowed never to give into the terrorists, and we haven't. We have rebuilt and moved on as a nation, but we will never forget what happened.

There is a major problem in the Middle East with Syria, and we are now deciding exactly what role, if any, we are going to play in the turmoil that is gripping that country.

And parties have vowed that if we get involved, there will be retaliation.

At this point in time, with our involvement in the situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan drawing to a close, I personally do not want us to get directly involved in anything happening on the other side of the world.

We have lost too many men and women who were doing their duty, but fighting other countries' wars.

Sure, we can keep an eye on what is going on in Syria, but I do not think we should actually officially become part of that mess.

These are barbarians who have perpetrated what is happening over there, and they will get theirs, if not now, then in the future.

Why we are even thinking about getting involved is anyone's guess, although I will bet that the public does not know the real reasons why we are considering it.

If President Obama was sitting here, I would tell him to his face that entering that conflict is not something I would do, and he is going to have to come up with a very, very valid reason to support him if he decides that we should go in there.

I think during the past dozen years, terrorists have gotten the message that we will not bow down to their wishes. 

Sure, things have happened since that time in 2001, they have helped to change our world into a much more cautious place, but the United States still goes about its business.

But to me, its business is not in Syria, and that is why, like many Americans, I fully oppose us entering that skirmish.

This time, let them figure it out by themselves--without our help.

Rant #2,393: I've Been Hurt

I have returned after a day's absence, but evidently, not without some controversy.

I previously said that I would not be putting up a new Rant yesterday due to a personal matter, and I followed through on what I said.

It did not mean that I wasn't around, just that I wasn't active here on the blog.

What I had to do took place a little later in the morning, and when it was done, it was done.

On Facebook, I put up a post related to that horrible David Ortiz incident, which is continuing to unfold as I write this.

More about that post later.

Anyway, somebody took me to task, basically knocking me for posting anything on Facebook the very day that I said I had to take care of some personal business.

Well, the personal business was over, I was at work, and I decided to post something--later a few things--because like most people who post things on Facebook, I just felt like doing it.

I tried to explain to the detractor that it is my decision--and my decision alone--to write a blog entry on a particular day. and no one else's decision.

Yesterday, I had to do something out of the norm that had to be taken care of, and it was not an all-day thing, so I posted on Facebook.

What's the big deal?

I will soon be taking a similar day off, and that particular one is an all-day affair, so it is doubtful you will see me on Facebook during the day, and I certainly won't be posting an entry here at the blog.

Now that that has been explained--I think the person just wanted to argue about nothing just for the sake of arguing, to be honest with you--we can talk about the David Ortiz post I put up on Facebook yesterday, which actually received quite a bit of support, I am happy to say.

Just to go over this horrid incident, the former Boston Red Sox slugger traveled back to his native Dominican Republic, as he often does, and was having drinks in a bar he frequents with a couple of friends.

All of a sudden, a gunman appeared, shot at Ortiz, and hit him squarely in either his back or his side, with the bullet penetrating a few organs and exiting out of his body with such force that it hit another person who was there, slightly injuring that guy.

But Ortiz's wounds were massive, and he might have been saved even a worse fate if he had been a man of lesser bulk.

There are many stories going around now about the incident being what amounts to a hit, and that Ortiz was targeted because he was having an affair with a drug kingpin's wife, but as of right now, that is unsubstantiated, but it does appear that Ortiz was targeted.

Anyway, read what I wrote on Facebook about this horrifying incident:

"You don't want to go and shake hands with a guy who is treating immigrants like [expletive] because I'm an immigrant. ... “Once you see what is going in this country based on being an immigrant or being black, it’s something that goes beyond going into the White House and shaking hands with the president just because.”

Who said this?

David Ortiz, a few weeks back, related to Alex Cora's decision to not accompany his team to the White House for the customary champions' meeting with the President.

Now, we know that David Ortiz was shot in a horrible incident in his native Dominican Republic, and he has been airlifted back to the U.S. for further treatment.

Sure, he was knocking President Trump's immigration stance, not the U.S. per se, but funny, he is being airlifted back to the U.S.--his adopted country, the country where he became a legal citizen a few years ago--by the Red Sox.

I don't hear him knocking the President of his adopted country now. And I think as an immigrant to our country, he has done pretty well for himself.

I wish Ortiz a speedy recovery, but funny, when the chips are down, the U.S. is always there to help, even if it is through what amounts to a U.S. corporation, the Boston Red Sox.

So, is our country really that horrible, as some would assure us that it is and Ortiz himself pretty much told us it was?

Where would you rather be--in the D.R., where American citizens on vacation are falling like tumbling dice due to poisonings at a few resorts, or being shot at, like Ortiz was, or would you rather be on U.S. soil, where we have the best of everything, and legal immigrant Ortiz--who went through all the policies and procedures to gain citizenship--will get the best care on his hopeful road to full recovery?

I think the answer is pretty obvious.

Knock this country if you feel the need to, but this country is always there, and has always been there, for those who are our citizens, whether they are immigrants or born right here."

This is a classic case of biting the hand that feeds you, I do believe.

Ortiz, as a legal citizen of his adopted country, has every right to say what he wants to say.

But sometimes, it is better to be happy about where you are rather than shoot off your mouth about something you know absolutely nothing about.

And where would he rather be now, in the Dominican Republic, or in the U.S.A., a country he is a new citizen of that he feels he needs to take umbrage with?

Quite frankly, he is lucky to be alive, lucky that he was able to fly back here to the U.S. for treatment, and yes, he is lucky to be a citizen of the greatest country on the face of the earth.

It is almost as if he were a guest in your home for the first time and then decides to shoot off his mouth about the lack of accommodations there.

I wish Ortiz well, and I hope this situation is not what it has been painted to be.

But Ortiz was targeted, that is for sure, and I hope that the authorities in the Dominican Republic find and prosecute anyone who was involved in this situation to the fullest extent of the law.

However, before knocking your new, adopted country, again sometime in the future, I would tell Ortiz to open up his eyes a bit and at the same time, close his mouth.

You are in a good place, and don't ruin it by saying idiotic things about which you know absolutely nothing.

Smile that radiant smile as you have for years; just keep your mouth shut while doing so.

Classic Rant #1,038 (September 10, 2013: Male Chauvinist Pig

Yes, I admit that I am a male chauvinist pig, and I am proud of it.

I like to look at beautiful women, just like most guys, even if they won't admit it.

When a beautiful woman crosses my path, I admit, I do give a look.

Not stare, that would be rude. But I do give a look.

Most of the world's so-called beauties are actresses and/or models, or at least that is what they tell us.

They are the standard of beauty, the standard by which we compare so-called common folk.

Every generation has its beautiful women, and this generation does too.

The problem with this generation's beauties, in my eye, is that they flaunt what God gave them a bit too much.

And if God didn't give it to them, well, they have the cash to go out and get it.

I prefer yesterday's beauties, those that were generally born with it, had it, used it to their advantage, and for the most part, still have it.

Let's see ...

How about Sophia Loren? The woman is old enough to be even my grandmother, but boy, is she one of the most beautiful women you ever saw or what?

Then you have Ann-Margret. We share a birthday (date, not year), but boy, she is so much better looking than I am that it is incredible that this person even walks the same earth as I do.

How about Barbara Eden? She can still fit into her Jeannie costume, and she seems to never age. I guess she has good genes.

And how about Annette Funicello? She left us several months ago, but when she was alive and well, she was probably the most understated beauty on the planet. She never flaunted anything, but boy, did she have it!

And then, we come to the two most beautiful women on the planet, bar none.

One is my mom. She is one of the world's greatest women, because she has put up with me for the past 56 years, and my father for even more than that.

And then, the top female beauty in the world: my wife. Not only has she put up with me for the past 20-plus years, but she seems to get more beautiful as we grow older together.

I know you're saying, "He's just saying that to protect himself," but no, I do believe that those two ladies are at the top, I really do.

Take that, Jennifer Aniston and Lindsay Lohan. Yes, you are beauties, too, but you have nothing on the ladies that I have named, especially the last two.

Yes, I am a male chauvinist pig, and I am proud of it.

Rant 2,392: Goin' Back

This weekend was a pretty quiet one for my family and I.

On Sunday, we had our highlight, as my wife and I, with our son, celebrated our anniversary.

We went to a local diner--something we almost never, ever do--and had a very good meal indeed.

We just never go to a diner for a meal out because usually, we have found that you get diner food with that diner taste, but last night, we were really happy with what we had, so it all worked out just fine.

What did we do the rest of the weekend?

We basically prepared for the upcoming Father's Day celebration, where we are expected to have a houseful of people from both sides of our family, so we bought some food and some other things which we will use to celebrate the day.

Other than that, with my wife working on Saturday, we didn't do too much.

On Saturday night, with very little on television, my wife and I watched a real golden oldie from the early 1970s coming out of England, "Who Slew Auntie Roo," starring Shelley Winters and then red-hot kid actor Mark Lester, who looked about nine years old but was actually 13 when this was filmed in 1971.

The film, directed by Curtis Harrington with writing credits to four different writers, is actually a retelling of the old Hansel and Gretel story, done in a 1970s chilling fashion.

In what looks like the early 1900s, an older, seemingly wealthy widow--played to the hilt by Winters--annually has children from an orphanage over for Christmas, where she bestows on them dinner, a sleepover, and gifts galore.

But two children from the orphanage--Lester and a kid actress playing his sister who was so annoying that I won't even mention her name--who were not among the invited children show up anyway, and the little girl--one of the most annoying child actresses I can ever remember, with a cloying voice and way about her--quickly becomes the favorite of the widow, for reasons we are about to soon learn.

Lester and his sister get into entanglements with their initial stay at the widow's house--more a mansion than anything else--and eventually, we find out that Winters sees the little girl as the spitting image of her own dead daughter, who a few years earlier had slid down a banister in the house, fallen off of it, and died right on the spot.

The old widow never got over the loss of her daughter, and she can't get over the loss to the extent that she never buried her daughter, keeping her remains in a coffin in one of the rooms.

One thing leads to another, and the brother and sister are kidnapped by Winters, locked in a room, and given food to make them fat. The old lady is not letting these kids go, but the two children find a way to finally get out, set the house on fire, and kill the old lady. They are not charged with anything, but in the process, stole all the jewels from the widow, and they walk away pretty much scot-clean from anything.

The movie was OK at best, and Winters steals the show as the old widow. The children are annoying, very nasty kids, and you cannot have very much sympathy for them, and that is one major failure of the movie, that you almost want the kids to go up in smoke with the widow when her house burns down, because these kids are really so nasty to her and to everyone they run into.

I would give the film a B for effort but a C- for execution, so the film gets an overall C from me. You can clearly see why the movie needed four writers, because it is kind of messy, but I do have to say that it is worth viewing just to see Winters' performance. She alone lifts the movie to that C level; in the hands of a lesser actress, this would have been a total disaster.

So there you have it; a dinner and a movie, split up by 24 hours but taken together, made for an OK weekend.

And I will not be here at my usual perch tomorrow, because I have some personal business to take care of, but I will be back on Wednesday with another glowing Rant.

Speak to you again then.