I am just a wee bit groggy today because of a highly uncharacteristic bedtime last night.  Liam was playing at a coffee house in the city and although the scheduled time was eight to eleven, it turned out that his guitarist - the rhythm guy I think (I can’t ever tell which is the lead guitar and which is rhythm) - is also in another band which by happy circumstance was playing in a bar two blocks away.  Since this band is headed up by a local DJ on an alternative radio station - one who had interviewed Liam or hosted him or whatever just last Thursday - we all felt duty-bound to troop down there and give a listen to his band from 11 to two a.m.  Much more pleasure than duty, as it turned out, since this band has about ten members (once Liam's guitarist had arrived) and they do an interesting and eclectic bunch of music.  An added pleasure in the evening at the coffee house was the arrival of Mike - a first cousin of ours, twice removed, who had been listening to the radio Friday, heard a song he liked, which was followed by the DJ breaking the cardinal rule of DJ-ing and actually mentioning the name of both song and artist, adding that the artist was none other than Liam Shaughnessy who would be playing Saturday, etc. etc, and the aforesaid Mike decided to check it out.  

Mike is a thoroughly good guy whom I have seen exactly once before in the last 20 years or so.  He is (follow me here) the grandson of Betty, who is the sister of that Annie about whom I wrote in the entry "What Chicks Dig" some time back.  My most serious length of time spent with Mike was when he and his sister Mabel were in the neighborhood of ten years old, give or take, and we all attended the graduation of Annie's eldest daughter in Wilmington, NC.  This was a walk on the other side of life to say the least.  I had flown down, but rode back with Betty, Emmy (who is Betty's daughter and Mike's mom), Mike and Mabel.  At the time the comedienne Judy Tenuta was being featured in a series of ads for something (hair stuff?), one of which had Ms Tenuta throwing her arms in the air and striking a pose, exclaiming, "You can't get body like this in a bottle - unless you push! real! hard!"  and by dint of repeating this until everyone in our little party above the age of 10 was nauseous, I endeared myself to the two youngest members of our party for quite some time to come.  A couple of months ago, during deer season, I took it upon myself to visit Betty and while I was there this man walked in dressed in camouflage carrying a weapon and complaining that he had sighted nary a deer.  This man turned out to be Mike.   So we renewed our acquaintance, and he turned out to be a really nice guy (I may already have said that).  

When Mike showed up at the coffee house last night, I didn't recognize him (after all, he had been in camouflage the last time I saw him, and isn't unrecognizability the whole point thereof?), but he recognized me and gave a big smile and walked halfway to my table and sort of bowed and just acted in a way that no one has since I was young and incredibly hot - if I do say so.  I was baffled beyond belief, being a realist in some areas, until he finally clued me in to his identity.  I in turn, made him known to Liam and Rose, after the performance, and to Luke and his girlfriend Carol and to George, none of who have seen him in some 20 years, if ever.  

Mike is the second very pleasant surprise for me kin-wise in the last few months, the first being re-meeting my cousin Warren at the graveside of his grandmother – yeah, I know, at a grave, but nothing is perfect.  Since Warren’s arrival in Baghdad post-funeral we have been e-mailing each other, and I was incredibly complimented when he said of everyone he knew I was the only one who had become a real e-mail buddy.  When you are stuck in a 10’ by 10’ hole with a farting born-again Christian, I guess even long-winded e-mails look good.  Maybe ‘long-winded’ is an unfortunate term here, considering the eruptive habits of the B.A.C just mentioned.

The coffee house appearance was a great success.  The crowd was thin at first – it was an unbelievably cold and unpleasant night to be out; wind whistling through one’s bones and so on.  Moreover, the coffee house was not all that easy to find; and once found, the door was even harder to discover, but the place filled over the evening.  The folks who run the place do everything wrong, as far as commercial success is concerned, but that fact does give rise to a certain raffish charm.  The place is dotted with mis-matched sofas and chairs of all descriptions as well as a couple of what must have once been church pews.  Liam and Rose were playing with the rhythm guitarist I mentioned, and just when they were warming up a local musician who is very well known in the area showed up and was persuaded to join in the music.  This guy, whom I shall call Jack Daly is a huge fan of Liam’s (and vice versa) and has recorded some of Liam’s songs.  He is particularly fond of one of Liam’s older songs called “Light My Way, Mend My Heart” which is a really good song, and at one point they just ripped that song.  It was a completely feel-good evening, and made me once again wonder how the Hell I ever wound up in data processing as a life.  Jesus!  It isn’t that I should have been a musician, but clearly I should have had a life more like Liam’s.  I am thinking of hanging out at coffee houses and saying enigmatic things and getting some disciples or something.  It is at times like this I realized how really bleak and awful my life has become sine I left Saudi.  I actually was interesting once – at least to myself – though it almost seems like another lifetime. 

All of my brothers love words; all are copious readers, though in most cases you would never guess it to know them, for most of them would be taken for (and perhaps are) a pack of rednecks.  When we are together and someone mentions a writer or a character or a line, we know what each other is talking about; or at least we can speedily put something in a context each other gets.  So many people just go blank if it is not on the NY Times best sellers list, or currently on TV.  We don’t all like the same stuff – far from it, but we get each other.  I love to hear Liam’s songs because his lyrics tend to be thoughtful or funny.  This is also why Jack Daly likes Liam’s stuff.  I think the Irish love language in their own way, and although I have no particular pride or shame in being Irish (it was, after all, not my doing and so many of them are such appalling bigots), but there is a sensibility that I enjoy. 

On another note, I felt very badly this week about the death of a couple of actors.  Normally I don’t give a shit about the lives (or deaths) of entertainment folks, but I had a real affection for both Suzanne Pleshette and Heath Ledger.  Everytime I saw Ms Pleshette being interviewed for any reason, she had such a not-stuck-on-herself quality, and was such a hoot; only a few actors carry this sort of thing off – Betty White, Harrison Ford, Bert Reynolds.  There is a feeling that they realize that they are lucky and that it does not entitle them in any way, yet they don’t do the phony humble “I am no one without my (adoring) fans” fake humility thing either. 

Heath, of course, gave me Ennis Del Mar, and also the fantastic performance in Monster’s Ball.  I happened to catch a story on his friendship with a genuine cowboy in Australia who actually was gay, and terrified to deal with it.  The things this guy had to say about Heath’s kindness, and encouragement were very touching.  Some people just make the world better.  I was incredibly happy when that “rolled up twenty-dollar bill” found near Heath tested negative for coke.  I so didn’t want him to be just another light-weight asshole. 

And then there is the other extreme.  I don’t know how much play the story got, but apparently some radio talking asshole, who actually was unable to distinguish Heath Ledger from the role he played in Brokeback Mountain, was braying forth celebratory humor at the death of this twenty-eight-year-old man.  I really wonder that anyone gives credence to anything said by someone who does not trouble to familiarize himself with a rough idea of the facts when he purports to be commenting on news events.  There are few topics easier on which to find the facts than the sexual orientation of Heath Ledger, his relationship with his female co-star and so on.  I am all for not giving a shit about private lives of public people, but if one plans to discuss them on the radio, one ought to have a clue what one is talking about.  What was funny, though unsurprising, about this guy, whose name is John Gibson (and of whom I had not previously heard) is that when he was forced to make a grudging, half-hearted half-apology he did so where a camera was able to find him.  This guy had the machismo of a marshmallow with a hair helmet.  I don’t know about you, but my gaydar went off, bigtime.  I am sure the guy is married, but then so are (or were) Rock Hudson and Senator Larry.  I am constantly amazed at the hate-spew from these folks who can barely lift a teacup without curling their pinkies.  Have you ever watched Tom Delay walk?  If he doesn’t have the prissiest walk this side of Rip Taylor, I don’t know who does.  And don’t get me started on Karl Rove, who patently has a man-crush (to put the best possible face on it) on his former boss.  Treat yourself to a gander at former attorney-general Gonzales.  Do you picture this guy strutting along with Rambo or John Wayne?   God save us from these pretend men.  They seem to think if they talk like a marine (preferably from a distance behind a security detail composed of them – or from an anonymous radio station) that they really will be men of that ilk when they wake up next morning.  How many game animals have died, I wonder, in the cause of proving the unprovable? 

 Liam and Rose are leaving town this week, headed in leisurely fashion toward a gig he has scheduled in Savannah, one of the few U.S. cities that strike me as actually worth a visit.  I will miss them much; I had fun while they were here.  And now, back to winter.

At the New Year's party, Liam unveiled a new song, which he dedicated to me, about our dear old Dad, called something like "Telephoning  Khrushchev".  This was a paean to our mutual dad, touching on the highlights of our experiences as subjects of the aforesaid's parenting techniques.  Liam touched on a tradition which I largely escaped by being the eldest and leaving home when the Dadster was only about 75%  nuts, and one about which I had forgotten.  This was Dad's penchant for building up a head of steam - much as a preacher builds up a sermon, as I believe those ornate pleas for cash in the various cult temples  are called - and rousting all the kids from their beds (this occurred most often in the wee hours), assembling them around the kitchen table, and letting rip at length on whatever topic was consuming him at the moment.  Dad preached, I blog: the apple hasn't fallen all that far from the tree.

The event which provided the title for Liam's song did not occur in my presence, but since Dad never let go of a good gag once he'd come up with it, I do recall a nearly identical incident involving not Mr. Khrushchev but someone similar, the late Pope Pius XII.  Just as the Beatles were said to find bursts of enlightenment by use of LSD, so the Dadster would often discover that a hearty combination of hops and barley gave rise to great leaps of inspired rant.  The three topics which consumed much of his thinking were politics, religion and kids-these-days.  So long as he was on one or another of this unholy trinity, we got a mere garden variety screed - maybe an hour or two of only semi-inspired oratory.  Actually, the third of these topics could also give rise to long hours of labor in field and garden where we expiated the accumulated sins of our entire generation in hard labor, so we vastly preferred his thoughts to settle on one of the first two topics, preferably politics, since his reflections on religion could lead to seemingly endless bouts of solitary or communal prayer; even today I cannot see a rosary without an involuntary shudder.  As I say, when he confined his reflections to a single one of these topics at a time, we were relatively well off.  But woe unto us when two of them met and mingled amongst the internal marbled mental halls of paternal philosophy.  At such times, his insights were often more than could be wasted on a mere coterie of children; they demanded an international forum.

And so it was one day when Dad had the happy inspiration that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington should be canonized saints, and that the Holy Father would be wrong to adhere to such pettifogging legalisms as questioning whether either of the pair had much faith at all, let alone concern himself with their nominal adherence to cults other than that espoused by the Holy See.  Dad was a fervent patriot and held a deep reverence for anyone who had been President, so long as that someone had not held the White House as a Republican from the days of Harding onward.  Abe and Teddy, for instance, by the clever stratagem of ruling and dying pre-1920 were right up there with Franklin, Harry and Woodrow in the pantheon.  Naturally, Dad was not content to  merely sit on his ass (as he would have expressed it, notably when [accurately] describing my preferred course of action in nearly any situation) and think  about it.  Nay, he must communicate this inspired thought to the man who currently administered the wealth of the world's largest business by the quickest means possible.  At that time, this meant the telephone.  God help us all had my father lived to master the computer.

So he seized upon this instrument with the same ferocity with which the canonization inspiration had seized upon him.  "Gimme the Vatican," he cried (or words to that effect) to the operator, for those were the pre-dial days when one was forced to deal with a human in order to be connected to the person with whom one wished to speak.  Operators then adhered to an amazing code of ethics; they were not to listen in on conversations (given what I have heard of 
telephone conversations since the advent of the cell and the concomitant decline in public manners, these ladies were dodging a major bullet here); they were not to disclose anything they overheard inadvertently.  In addition operators were precursors to 911; one reported a fire or injury to them and they saw to it that the siren was activated, then when volunteer firemen – as well as the inquisitive public - called to find the location of the problem, the operators dispensed this information, allowing one and all to either remedy the problem or to hurry to the scene and enjoy another's pain just as we do today by means of reality shows.  However, in our day, the pain was not simulated and editted for maximum dramatic effect.  I am curious why no one has come up with a reality show yet for these situations;  Losing Everything and Mama's Dead! suggest themselves as titles which would draw in loads of eager viewers.

Operators went to great lengths to put calls through in the days when the words “AT&T” and “service” could be coupled in the same sentence in venues other than the Comedy Channel.  And thus in due course my father found himself speaking to Monsignor Somebody in the Vatican.  The monsignor did not share the American telephone operator's zeal for connecting folks with their intended victims and flatly refused to rouse His Holiness from whatever holy or remunerative endeavor in which he was currently engaged, merely for purposes of being enlightened by Irishmen in New York.  At this, my father tore the telephone from the wall and threw it out into the front yard, just as he was later to do when similarly stymied in attempts to call President Eisenhower and Mr. Khrushchev.  "There's a hole in the window," sings Liam in recounting the latter incident, but in my recollection of the papal call, he opened the front door to dispose of the telephone.

In those halcyon days, telephones were wired into boxes on the wall, and were not intended for removal by consumers no matter how frustrating their telephone experiences were.  Thus reinstallation, when cooler heads prevailed (i. e. Mom's) required appointments and the advent of a repairman.  Such an appointment had to be made via telephone, and one can appreciate the difficulties presented when the phone to be repaired was lying upside down on the front lawn. Our nearest neighbors to the west had no telephone and used ours in emergencies.  The neighbor to the east was over-fond of gossip and would naturally overhear any discussion into which Mom entered with Ma Bell on her telephone.  For reasons unknown, Mom was loath to share the nature of her telephone difficulties with the entire township of Reedville.  So the reinstallation of the family phone involved far more than today's simple re-inserting the jack, or at worst, calling the telephone company and making a series of appointments in hopes that the company will eventually honor one of  them.

My mother has always been abnormally uncomfortable of being the topic of even benign public attention.  Thus when one of us children broke the newly re-installed phone just weeks later, she was beside herself at discovering she must again share with AT&T the fact that an unusual telephone event had occurred chez Shaugnessy.  It wasn't that she minded so much the expense or inconvenience of these calls as she feared being asked to explain how the problem occurred. When I say we had broken the phone I mean it literally, someone had broken the part that one spoke into into two pieces.  Those familiar with the old black telephones of the 1950s will recall that it would have been easier to break a steel beam in two than to break one of these telephones.  Merely dropping it would never accomplish the mission.  I can recall her wailing at the time, "Nobody breaks a phone," and in this she spake sooth.  I don't recall how this break was achieved but I suspect, recalling those happy days, that it involved the telephone ringing and two or more siblings simultaneously crying, "I'll get it!" and reaching the phone in a dead heat, whereupon, if memory serves, one would have bopped the  other briskly on the occiput with it, with sufficient force to break it.  "It" here refers to the telephone, as our heads were singularly  unbreakable, try though we might.  I remember the self-same Liam who got me started on all this falling over in the front yard while lifting a barbell with too much weight on it and cushioning the fall of the barbell with his forehead.

Happily that time the telephone was working and Mom was able to summon the ambulance quickly.  I remember the wife of the volunteer driver, one of the town's more legendary gossips who could easily outpace our eastward neighbor in the speed with which she would subsequently spread the tale, came along in the ambulance for the fun of it (as well as for the details), telling my Mom, "Now Celeste, you make sure they give you back that towel, because they'll keep it otherwise."  She referred to the ice-filled towel which my Mom had placed on Liam's forehead which was already doubling in size.  The forehead was, not the towel.  No lasting harm, it turned out, was done to the head, the barbell or the towel, although Liam bore deep purple bruises around his eyes which extended clear down to the base of his ears for weeks, and his  head was an interesting size for long enough to delight each and every one of his friends and well-wishers, however far-flung.

I was just trying to say why I had been absent from this bloggamy for such a period of time, but you know how one thing leads to another.  I guess I could just have said I was sick and had visitors, but contrary to Dad's perpetual accusation that I always want to do things the easy way, I apparently, in blogging at least, do not.