Dick Summer Connection

It’s good to get off my feet…sitting here in my big, manly, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room. Tired feet are a problem for Louie Louie Generation guys like me. Getting off them is obviously a good first step…ditching shoes is good…soaking them in a shower…good stuff. But I found the best way to fix feet is with my head. I’ve found that’s also a good way to deal with defeat. Feet and defeat. I take a minute…close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and think about walking in soft sand, bright warm sunlight on my skin, gentle sea breeze…and I’m walking over to a beach blanket where my Lady Wonder Wench is waiting in her bikini, with a bottle of hand warmed lotion to give me a massage that starts at my feet, and keeps on going, and going and going. My feet usually just kind of forget they hurt. And nothing can defeat me.  

Tired feet hit us Louie Louie Generation folks at about the same time as everything in life is beginning to really click. Our knees are clicking, our elbows are clicking and I’ve actually heard an occasional clack from my neck. As I’ve told you, because of excessive kneeling in silent prayer as a youth, I have had problems with my knees, so I had a knee replacement. I think I got the last one they made for the out dated model knee with which I came equipped, but it worked out semi-ok

Big Louie, the Chief Mustard Cutter of our Louie Louie Generation always says, “When you get to our age, you should realize that at if at first you don’t succeed, the best thing to do is to try not to look so surprised.” I think a lot of times, when you’re at the age when you get married hoping Medicare will pick up the tab for the honey moon, you can forget what succeeding really means. Money really is a good measure of success, but it’s certainly not the only one. It depends on what’s really important to you. Some of the people I’d consider successful…I don’t even know their names…but to me…they’re awesome. Like the guy who first looked at a tall building and said…”My God…it scrapes the sky.” What a thought. How about the guy who invented the rubber duck for your bathtub? And who invented the rear view mirror?  Beethoven died a pauper. Harry Truman didn’t have much of a bank account either.

I don’t knock making money. I’d be delighted if you went to Amazon and bought a copy of my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot for yourself and every one of your friends, and everyone in your neighborhood. But it’s ok with me if you don’t, because there’s stuff in the book about my Lady Wonder Wench that I want the world to know. I am so proud of her. So just getting the book out into the world, makes me feel like a success. If the world doesn’t read the book, that’s the world’s problem. I gave it the chance.

Dick’s Details. Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1- What don’t bison do well ?

2- Why don’t men own cats ?

3- What do poodles and Australian sheep have in common?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

The trick to using your head to fix both your feet and your feelings of defeat, is that if you have a good imagination, the little guy inside who talks back to you, and wiggles your eyebrows when you see someone sexy, and runs around in little circles when the airplane hits some really nasty bumps…that little guy doesn’t see much of a difference between what’s actually going on around you, and what he’s imagining. So if you can get him to imagine good stuff, he can actually make you feel like that good stuff is really happening. Everybody has a little guy like that. He’s stronger and smarter in some people than in others. And it’s when he’s stronger and smarter that using your head to fix your feet and your feelings of defeat, works best.

Here’s a quick way to figure out if your little guy is strong and smart. Close your eyes, take a couple of deep breaths, and for ten seconds, try not to see a purple elephant. If you couldn’t help seeing the purple pachyderm, you’ve got a smart, strong little guy. It’s a help to have a strong, smart little guy these days, because we seem to be living in a time of Pessimist Power. Lying, stealing and cheating are all over the place. I got an Email inviting me to what was essentially a pre-fire-sale. Somebody has supposedly posted something really nasty about me today, and about a hundred guys want to hire them to get rid of the post. And lots of folks seem to be looking for a meaningful one night relationship. Then there was an actual headline in the Long Island Newspaper that said, “St. John the Baptist wins girl’s title.” Wait till the guys at the Vatican hear about that.

Lots of people are scared these days. Scared of all kinds of things. That’s reasonable because lots of times, there are things to be scared of. There’s a story about that in the Night Connections 2 Personal Audio CD. Been there, done that like the guy in the story . It sucks. The worst part is telling her. It’s also pretty hard explaining it to the kids, and the rest of your family. When that happens to a guy on the radio like it did to me, the whole city knows about it It’s a time when it’s really hard to remember that…you can never tell when something wonderful is going to happen.

“Not Again” is from the Night Connections 2 Personal Audio CD. If you like it, you can just keep this podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, check out the Night Connections 2 icon on the home page.

Our youngest relative, Cecelia, is three, going on four years old. Her favorite saying is “Shit happens papa.” She’s a smart little kid. But I’m a Louie Louie Generation guy, and I’ve figured out an interesting thing. Only about 30% of what I expect to happen really happens. That’s a fact. Both good stuff and bad stuff. About 30% is about it most of the time. This week, for example I was expecting a check…which arrived and didn’t bounce. But I was also expecting a problem with my FAA Flight Physical which didn’t happen, and a big bill for some work I’m having done on my plane, which also didn’t happen. One out of three. It’s almost always like that for me…and maybe for you. Think about it.

That means about two thirds of the time I’m worrying about something I expect to happen…I’m worrying for nothing. Maybe you too. The extension of that works too. Usually, even if the worst thing you can imagine happens, it’s only about one third as bad as you were afraid it would be.

That doesn’t mean you should never be afraid. There are things that scare the hell out of me. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and I saw my Lady Wonder Wench lying on the pillow next to me…smiling in her sleep. I love that smile. But my feet were hurting…bad…and that made me start wondering how often I’d get to do that…see her smile like that…how much time do we have left together. It was a crusher. A terrible feeling of defeat.

So… how do I fix a bad feeling of de feat? With my head of course. I took a couple of deep breaths, closed my eyes, and grabbed that little guy inside me by the ears, and I made him see me standing…looking at the great God in His heaven…and I was telling God, “I’ve got nothing left. I used everything you gave me. Including all my Lady’s love. Especially my Lady’s love. If you are truly the God I think You are, you’ll let me see her…smiling…again. And you’ll never take her away from me…not ever again.”

I am still receiving all sorts of repercussions from my very innocent comment concerning sex – and even Molly and Tall Beth are feeling the Louie Louie heat.  But we stand by our words … we need sex as much as the Lads do; but we also need to be held.  You Lads are content with sex.  We are content with sex and the emotional contact (correct use of that word) that really good sex provides.

As for fear – our granddaughter lives in Watertown and she and her guy had cops and agents everywhere.  They also had us three hundred miles away and our daughter fifty miles away, worrying for all we were worth.  And the Lad is right:  go ahead, scare us all you can.  We will stand up and spit in your eye and we will never be so afraid we are frozen in place.  That’s what we do best in this country.  We carry on and take care of our people … and we win.

The Boston bombers gave us a gift. Fear. It was a little like 9-11…the kind of day when you wake up screaming, then you realize you were never asleep. You’ll always remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard about terrible things. Like when the first plane went into the World Trade Tower on 9-11. Let me go sit down in my comfortable, big, manly black leather poppa chair…before I fall down. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I’ve swallowed a sack of cement, and it’s beginning to harden. 

Do you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at a radio station when terrible things like that happen? Let me tell you a personal story. Once upon a time, all the way back when Louie Louie was all over the radio dial, I met my Lady Wonder Wench at  WBZ radio in Boston. She was in charge of the commercial schedule, and I was on the air. Radio was different in those days. And no radio station in the country was as different as WBZ. It was a giant. An “Everywhere Station.” Walking down the beach on a nice summer day, you didn’t need to bring your own radio. All the radios on all the beach blankets were always tuned to WBZ. It was before cars had air conditioning, so when you stopped for a red light with the windows rolled down, WBZ was on the radio in the car next to you. When we broadcast our Christmas show from Boston Common, the cops had to close all the streets around the park to accommodate the crowds. 

There have only been a few stations like WBZ. WABC in New York, WLS in Chicago, KDKA in Pittsburgh, KFI in Los Angeles…monster fifty thousand watt stations that pretty much covered the whole country at night. They were the stations on the transistor radios kids hid under their pillows to hear Louie Louie, and Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and She Loves Ya Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. But they also had real people on the air. Guys who told jokes, and stories, and sometimes kept callers from jumping off tall buildings between the music. And they had other guys who really cared about the news, keeping you informed about what Castro was doing with his Russian rockets, and what Martin Luther King’s dream was all about, and…and…Dallas. And John F. Kennedy.  

John F. Kennedy. From Boston. Unless you were there, you can’t possibly imagine the horror of that day in Boston. Try to imagine telling jokes and stories that day to people who walked the same streets he did, and went to his church on Sundays, and to the same parent-teacher meetings. It didn’t happen of course. Most of the guys on the air were in their 20s or early 30s. We were pretty good at jokes and stories. But only “The Old Man”, Carl deSuze knew what to do. He taught us all a lesson…one that helped me when Martin Luther King was shot, and when the Newark Riots broke out while I was at WNBC. Carl was ancient as far as the rest of were concerned. He must have been in his late forties. While we did record hops for some extra bucks, Carl did lectures…based on his world travels. He knew the Kennedys personally. He often hung with them at Hyanis on the Cape. 

Carl had been WBZ’s morning man since 1945. And he understood what radio was really all about. It wasn’t just jokes and stories, and rock and roll, and news about people far away. Actually, now that I think about it, it was about telling stories. It was also about being a friend. A friend you could count on when you hurt…to do whatever he could to help…including telling you stories to make you feel better. He took the station’s remote broadcasting unit down to the Common…that’s a park right in the middle of the city…and he told stories…gently…for hours…about the dead man we knew as the President, and he knew as…a friend.  

That’s the kind of thing that goes on behind the scenes at radio stations on terrible days like that. Been there done that lots of times. This time…the night of the Boston bombing, I sent a note to Peter Casey, the Program Director at WBZ. The note says, “I would give almost anything to have been on the air with you tonight. I was on the air when JFK was shot, and when King was killed. I always felt like I could put my arms around the people who were listening. The station was like a giant shoulder for people to lean on…a gentle place to fall…and a powerful helping hand to stand up again…taller and even stronger than before. 

Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1-    Where are the cities most often hit by hurricanes?

2-    What’s the fastest animal on earth?

3-    How can you tell if it’s a REALLY quiet night in town? 

And…the answer to the question we asked last time…Who said sex is the biggest nothing of all time…was Andy Warhol. 73% of women got it right, and 43% of men got it right. 

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind. 

I put some of my note to WBZ’s Program Director Peter Casey up on the blog as a Dickie-Quickie this week. And it got lots of reaction. Here’s a note that will give you a little more of an insight into what happens at a radio station at special terrible times. It’s from a radio guy by the name of Mike Tearson. He said, “I understand. I was on the air the night John Lennon was killed. It was one of the most difficult nights I ever had on the air. That special relationship between us behind the mic and the people at the other end is a bond to be valued.”  

But how about what goes on at the other side of the mic. That Dickie-Quickie note I put on the blog a few days ago got a lot of attention. Here’s a note from a woman I am proud to call a proud podcast participant. It’s about her reaction on that terrible day in New York. Ellen is a doctor. She said, “Your thoughts about how broadcasters feel on terrible days are important to those of us who are physicians and other first responders. On 9-11 many of us had only hand held radios to keep us informed, and to comfort us as we faced an unknown enemy and a fearful future. I left my midtown Manhattan private practice office heading downtown on Fifth Avenue toward the Towers to help. I was wearing my white coat, with my stethoscope in my pocket, and my hospital ID in my one hand, and of course my radio in the other. I was wearing heels…I didn’t have sneakers or flats with me, and I was, of course, praying.” 

Praying’s not a bad idea. It looks like the bad guys are sneaking out of their holes. And that means some of our people are going to get hurt. If you’re scared, don’t be ashamed of that. It’s only when you’re scared that you can have courage. Having courage doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you simply know there are things that are more important than fear. 

So the Boston bombers gave us a gift. Fear. Among other things, a good hard shot of fear can be a sudden reminder that you’re alive. What a gift.

I think I’ll remember yesterday for a very long time. Let me grab my seat here in my comfortable, manly, black leather poppa chair and I’ll tell you about it. Once upon a time, a long time ago…so long ago that as a matter of fact it was during the original reign of the Louie Louie Generation…Louie Louie was still all over the radio…my Lady Wonder Wench gave me a wonderful yesterday to remember. It was one night when we were first dating. She was driving…we went through a toll booth…it was late…she had on shorts and a slightly sexy top…which on her is anything less than an iron shirt…nor ironed…iron. You’ve heard her voice. And the rest of her looks like she sounds. We came to a toll booth, and she looked up at the toll taker…a young guy with a heavy metal station playing in the booth…she smiled sweetly and said, “My you look so lonely.” I thought he was going to drop his eyes, his teeth, and his badge. You could hear his glands crashing into each other. His tattoos were actually shaking when he handed her some change. She smiled again, and we were off. She did that kind of thing all the time. She created testosterone tsunamis wherever she went. She still does, all these years later. A wonderful yesterday to remember.

The women in my family all like driving. Another yesterday I’ll remember is one summer when I lent my mother my car. I was slightly terrified. Mom’s idea of driving was to point the car, and hit the gas pedal. She wanted to use my car to drive to the beach, and generally run around a little. She was 83 at the time, but very healthy, bright and alert. However…she had to sit on a pillow to see out over the dashboard. I was worried about it, but what do you say to your mother when she says, “Will you please lend me your car ?” I said “The brakes are bad.” She said “I’ll get them fixed.” I said “That’s too expensive. I’ll get them fixed…in a week or so.” She had heard lots of “the check is in the mail” stories like that, so she said, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to rent one then…one of those old ones that don’t run very well…that’s all I can afford.” So, mom got the car. When I gave her the keys, she said “Thanks.” She smiled, opened the door, got in, pointed it toward the beach, and lay down rubber. As I remember, it was a long summer. She brought the car back minus the bumper that summer, which was ok, because turn about is fair play, and I remember some escapades of mine in her car while I was growing up…I remember some of those yesterdays quite fondly. 

Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1- Why can you say a nectar bat is a most distasteful creature?

2- Why should you keep your ride away from a buttwink ?

3- When should you keep your kid out of a stroller “

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

She’s sleeping comfortably on the couch across the living room right now…my Lady Wonder Wench. She’s not feeling well, and she’s had some bad news today. But she’s beautiful. My own personal testosterone tsunami. She always turns things around. I was giving her a back rub to help her relax, and because she knew I was hurting because I knew she was hurting, she started trying to make me feel better. As I said, she’s a beautiful, Louie Louie Generation Lady.

She reminded me of one of Big Louie’s best sayings: “You can never tell when something wonderful is going to happen.” Then she started to sing. She hasn’t actually sung…out loud…since before her accident a few years ago. But she actually started singing a song about watching for something wonderful. Tomorrow.  She was singing quietly, but out loud. Then she took a deep breath and smiled, and fell asleep in my arms. How did I get this lucky.

Here’s something new.  We’ll call it Man Mouth vs. Woman Words. Was it a man or a woman who made this statement: “Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.” That’s an actual quote. Was it said by a man or a woman. Man mouth or woman words. Drop me an email – dick at dick summer.com . I’ll give you the answer on the next podcast, and I may give you a sneak Dickie Quickie preview during the week  here on the blog. Let’s see if men or women are better at our new game…Man Mouth vs. Woman Words.

Speaking of driving, even some road signs remind me of my Lady Wonder Wench. Soft Shoulders. Slippery when wet. And my favorite because her more militant friends hate it…YIELD ! Speaking of things feminists hate, even Big Louie, the chief mustard cutter of the Louie Louie Generation will admit that some guys need to calm down a little. He says, “You may be getting too hormonal if your erogenious zone is any soft surface…or if you are frequently having sex even when you don’t need it, or your morning after regrets are mostly that you didn’t have it more, or you’ve stashed a lover on company property…like in your desk drawer. Ask yourself, does your love making make your contact lenses steam up, even in August? Have you been asked to move because your bed has been capsizing and you’re bothering the people downstairs ?

Or have you had the opposite problem. If that’s the case, Big Louie has some hints for better love-making. First, never ask “How was I” in the middle of love making. You’ll get some nasty answers. Also, wait till your lover has come to a complete stop before getting up and ordering a pizza. That’s known as the Flight Attendant Rule. Remember, if your partner calls out your name in a moment of passion, don’t say “What do you want now?” And last but not least, if your partner asks to see you again, don’t show off by whipping out your pocket appointment book and thumbing through a few pages. Hard to believe but some guys actually do stuff like that so they can look macho. Mostly, guys like that are what I call in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot…”Pimple People.”  Some people just call them loud mouths. Louie Louie Generation guys aren’t like that. We tend to be happy, powerful and quiet. Lots of people mistake happy, quiet, powerful men for weaklings. Especially when it comes to love. There’s a story in the Bedtime Stories Personal Audio CD about a quiet guy who’s finding out the hard way, that if love is the answer, there never was a harder question.

It’s true that yesterday never comes again. But this guy got lucky. He found out that sometimes today is really the start of tomorrow.

The story is called I Miss You. If you like it you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just check out the Bedtime Stories icon on the home page.

Some of you have probably figured out that I was the guy in that bedtime story. It was lots of yesterdays ago. I almost gave up…all those yesterdays ago. Because yesterdays never do come again. But ever since I met her, every time I’ve been about to give up…I hear her reminding me that you can never tell when something wonderful is going to happen. If it didn’t happen yesterday, maybe it’ll be tomorrow.

An important note  from a Proud Podcast Participant just came into my Email. It’s about the current blog and the podcast at www.dicksummer.com/podcast :

I don’t know why, but the current podcast ( www.dicksummer.com/podcast ) is breaking all records for downloads. There will be a new one on Saturday. Maybe somebody can tell me why this one is busting chops !

First of all, I do not spend the major part of my life with the ladies at the cross-stitch shop … well, mostly I don’t … and so there will be no answers from Tall Beth and Molly till either later in the week or next week.

In the meantime, it’s a good thing I listened all the way through to the Lad’s podcast, or I might just have shortened his lifespan.

 There is no doubt in this wide world that women (as a rule) enjoy and need sex.  BUT WE NEED TO BE HELD MORE!!!!!

 Now if that doesn’t crease your male ego, keep this in mind.  We can get pregnant and then go about our lives (as a rule) without the Lads.  But there is not yet a man anywhere in this wide world who can get pregnant and … as their saying goes … pass on their genes to the next generation.  You Louie Louie Lads NEED us Louie Louie Lasses in order to feel “manly” and watch your sons (and occasionally daughters) grow up to be replicas of you. 

 The Lasses can hold your hand and fix the boo-boos and cook and clean and keep your bed warm (and exciting) – and some guys can do most of that as well.  But only the Lasses can make that knee replacement of no importance to the emotion we feel for the Lad who holds us against his chest and strokes our hair and tells us we’re beautiful even when a look in the mirror tells us “ugh!”

This was one of those days…when you’ve just got to sit in your big, manly, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in your living room, and hang on tight. “Women don’t need sex like men do”…that’s what my Lady Wonder Wench said today. After decades of being together, she waits till now to tell me this. I’m an experienced, Louie Louie Generation guy. I know I should have kept my mouth shut, but that little guy in the back of my brain who’s supposed to keep control of things like my mouth and other things must have been on his lunch break…so I couldn’t help myself. I said, “huh ?”

She said, “Women like sex, but we don’t need it. We need emotionality. Men only need sex.” I’ve gotta tell you that got me pretty emotional. As in, “If that’s true, that’s not fair.” And I really think it’s pretty nasty of God to set things up like that. Because it seems to me that it’s supposed to be a cooperative situation. And who the hell could love a woman who looks like my Lady Wonder Wench without an occasional growl, a serious rise in blood pressure, and at least a momentary  loss of control of where he’s putting his hands…among other things. This is not my fault. Sometimes my body grabs me. God did this to me.

Like most Louie Louie Generation guys, I am a sensitive and deeply spiritual person. For some reason, my Lady Wonder Wench seems reluctant to believe me when I tell her that. I needed a knee replacement a few years ago and you would be shocked if I told you what she said to me when I explained that my knees were worn out due to excessive kneeling in silent prayer as a youth.

A famous feminist once said, “If there were no men, there would be no wars, no football, and no violence, just millions of fat, happy, women. And all across America, women stood up and did the wave. What is this ? Women dream of world peace, an end to hunger, and a safe environment, and guys just dream of being stuck in the elevator with one of the Kardashians ? If a rich sixty year old guy marries a twenty year old woman, is it because that’s the only way he can find a woman of his emotional maturity ?

I’m sensitive, but I must admit to on occasion having a good deal of animal about me. My body does grab me frequently. As a matter of fact, some nights in the full moon, I have had so much animal about me that I have been known to attract fleas. But that doesn’t mean the only time I think about a candlelit dinner is when the power goes off. I know that sometimes my Lady Wonder Wench needs to be left alone, but not be left by herself…and I don’t understand that…but it’s ok. It’s like, “I’m fine” means she’s not fine. And I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s ok because Louie Louie guys know lots of things that work don’t make sense. It’s like if you play hookey they throw you out of school. Or the doctor says you’ve got to get your pulse rate down, and the only way to do that is to exercise… which gets your pulse rate up. And diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but a dog is a guy’s best friend. It makes no sense, except to those of us who are truly sensitive. But I say if sensitivity, emotionality, and charm were all there is between men and women, we’d all be chasing Barbara Walters.

Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1-  What are Bill and Melinda Gates up to that has every guy’s attention?

2-  What puts a stop to flirting in a car?

3-  What’s the scratchiest item in the U.S. de fense budget?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

“Tall Beth” and Molly are two of my Lady Wonder Wench’s needle pointing buddies. They’re a lot younger than my Lady, and they’re always saying, “All the good men are married.” So how come that’s not what the married women are saying? I don’t mind a little confusion. But right now I’m suffering a confusion contusion. And that hurts. Because I’m sensitive. Lots of guys are sensitive.

There’s a story about a sensitive scientist at M.I.T. who managed to clone himself. The story hit the internet because the clone got bored yesterday and went down to the subway station and flashed all the passengers. The sensitive scientist heard about it, and ran down to get the clone back in line. He was sensitive…embarrassed…a man of science and his clone was acting like a pervert. So the scientist rushed onto the subway platform…white lab coat flapping…and the clone got so scared that he fell off the platform right into the path of the oncoming train. The transit cops arrived, and arrested the sensitive scientist for making an obscene clone fall.

I love that story although there are those who might call it insensitive. And my Lady Wonder Wench says stories like that make it clear why psychoanalysis often works more quickly for men than for women… because when it’s time to go back to childhood, we’re already there.

There’s a story about a guy who got a fast lesson in sensitivity in the Night Connections Personal Audio CD. It’s called The Tiny Dancer.It’s about a bad boy who was beginning to become a man. But it was too late. She saw him…and she looked right through him. She could see that there still wasn’t quite enough man inside him to make her feel safe. If you like it you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just check out the Night Connections icon on the home page.

“Women don’t need sex like men do” she said. To be fair she was just kind of upset. That’s why she was giving me that look that said, “Millions of sperm. Hard to believe you were the fastest.” I should have just shut up. But that little guy in the back of my brain who’s supposed to keep control of my mouth and fingers and stuff must have been on his lunch break. At times like that, it seems like every time I try to put my best foot forward it lands up in my mouth. And to be honest, “Huh?” isn’t all I said. But she has always loved me when I least deserve to be loved, because that’s when I need it most.

So when she saw me trying to get my foot, and lots of of my knee replacement out of my mouth, she finally just smiled and she said, “I need you in my life. Sweat and all.”

After all these years…you’lll never guess what she said to me…my Lady Wonder Wench. New blog/podcast this Saturday. www.dicksummer.com/podcast or www.dicksummer.com/dsblog .