Dick Summer Connection

Opening Day. Spring. Not a second too soon. Talk about the Gratitude-Attitude. THANK YOU !

I’m sitting here in my big, comfortable, manly, black leather papa chair in my living room, and my legs are hurting, and I’m trying to remember what my Lady Wonder Wench wanted me to do with her car tomorrow, and I’m looking at a blank page where the copy for a new TV commercial that’s due this coming week is supposed to be…and in general, I’m feeling like an oldie-mouldy. Do you ever get that feeling? Like old age is creeking up on you. You feel like your social security number could be 000-00-0001. Like when God said, “Let there be light”…you were the one who flipped the switch. You feel yourself going from why not? to why bother? You’re tempted to go to a dentist and have him put braces on your dentures to make you feel younger. Is that what’s bothering you? Huh? Does it seem like your wild oats have turned to shredded wheat? Don’t complain. Remember the Gratitude/Attitude Connection. As Big Louie, his own bad self says: “We have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart?”

George Carlin had a wonderful and very smart take on the passing years. He said, “The most unfair thing about life is how it ends. Life is tough. What do you get at the end of it ? Death. What’s that, a bonus ? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get that out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work 40 years till your young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party hearty, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating…and you finish off in an orgasm.” George Carlin was a Louie Louie kind of guy.

It’s sometimes a weird time of life now for us Louie Louie Generation folks…finding ourselves in the middle of a room and wondering, “Who am I and what am I doing here?” Getting down on the floor to do some push ups, and pushing…and having Mr. Floor totally ignore you. Finding yourself saying, “What?” a lot.

It happened so fast. Just when I figured I was getting my head together, my muscles fell off. Last year my doctor said “I think you should have a stress test so I can save your life.” I said ok. The first thing he did was give me a form to sign that said essentially that this life saving test could kill me, but I’m holding everybody in sight blameless. I signed it because I figured if I’m dead why should I care. Then he started the treadmill; every few minutes the speed and the angle went up. I was sweating pretty good, but I was keeping up. So I asked the doctor what’s the record for this thing. He said 27 minutes. So I put my head down and got into it. But when I hit 17 minutes HE STOPPED THE DAMN THING. I said…WHAT ARE YOU DOING ? And he said it. The thing I HATE. He said “You did very well FOR A GUY YOUR AGE.” If he had been standing one foot closer, I’d have grabbed his stethoscope and blown Revile right in his ears.

There are lots of advantages to being a member of the Louie Louie Generation, not the least of which is called, “Been There, Done That.” But it’s also true that you find yourself doing some things that you didn’t do before. And you don’t like all of them. There’s a story about that in the Night Connections Personal Audio CD. It’s a fast lesson in how quickly our lives slip away. And, having been there, and done that, I know how the husband in the story felt when he woke up in the morning. I bet he stopped on the way home from work, and bought her some flowers.

“The Slip Away Wife” is from the Night Connections Personal Audio CD. If you like it you can just download it from the Night Connections icon on the home page.

The Gratitude/Attitude Connection. There’s a lot about it in my book, Staying Happy, Healthy And Hot. It’s a big part of the difference between the proud members of the Louie Louie Generation and those Dreadful, Dreary Drones. It’s the difference between being not young, and being old. It’s not really the years at all. My friend Paul Berge nailed it in his introduction to my book. He said, “Louie Louie Folks may not always remember where we put the car keys, or where we put the car for that matter. But we feel pretty good about the fact that we do have a car…somewhere.” We have the Gratitude/Attitude. Lots of folks don’t look at their lives that way. Lots of folks hate the fact that the years have been piling up on them.

Maybe instead of letting their oldie-mouldy feelings eat up the rest of their lives, they should try a the gratitude-attitude that they’ve had all those years. Lots of people don’t get to complain about all their years. Like those kids who died in that school in Connecticut. They never even got to go to a record hop and dance to Louie Louie, or drive a car, or just fall in love and bring someone flowers.

Catching up on email and stuff after a vacation. I think I’ve discovered the secret motto of 96.2% of Email advertisers: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again when no one is watching. No advertising on tomorrow’s podcast. 

….and Number One with a bullet this week, is “Help I’ve Fallen In Love With You And I Can’t Get Up,” with the See Alice Singers. Get the rest of the results on this Sunday’s podcast. 

Your age should never be a barrier to being a Louie Louie lad or lady. It doesn’t really matter how many birthdays you’ve had…you can consider yourself a member of the “Louie-Louie Generation” if a lot of your conversation these days includes words like “prostate,” “ouch,” “vitamin E,” “cholesterol,” “stress,” “diet,” and…”whaaaatt?” It happened so fast, didn’t it? It seems like just when we started getting rid of our pimples, we began suffering from precocious ab-deflation.

“Precocious ab-deflation” is a highly technical term. It comes from the ancient Latin word “pre,” which means “before” … as in “pre-marital sex,” and the ancient Brooklyn-ese word “coaches…which in ancient Brooklyn-ese means “wise people”…as in “all winning sports teams have wise coaches.” So “precocious ab-deflation” means we are losing our abs before we had a chance to get wise to what was going on. It’s all in my book, Staying Happy Healthy And Hot.

I am sitting here in my soft chair (sic) looking out at the snow on our front lawn. Yes, I know it’s spring; I know I am supposed to be in Florida for spring training; and it doesn’t snow there.However … 

My amazing Louie Louie Lad was worried on my account – he knows I don’t do thunder storms or snow binges well. So we came home a couple days early (which was a farce in itself) and now I am looking at that lovely white stuff. 

I figure I should have bet him a MILLION dollars that it was going to snow again. Take off your snow tires indeed! I am a Boston child … I know snow. Anyone want to bet for another storm?

We are too damn busy. But what do you expect in a country that encourages us to pursue happiness, life, liberty, sixty hour a week job security, state subsidized pre-kindergarten calculus coaching, decent housing, affordable health care, a non-smoking section, a joke free work place, a little league team that makes the play offs, cable tv, risk free sky diving, and a choice of low fat deserts?

Some people are even too busy for sex. It’s gotten so bad that The Rev. Paul Wirth of Ybor City, Florida has told the married members of his congregation that they should make time for sex EVERY DAY/NIGHT for a month. He says the 50% divorce rate is due in great part to the fact that we aren’t taking time for sex. Rev. Wirth is my kind of guy.

I’m busy too, but when my Lady Wonder Wench gives me one of those looks that you can pour on your pancakes, and that little smile that says “got a minute?”…so far… I’ve never had any trouble in finding a minute…or so.

But lately, I’ve been “too busy” to do push ups. I’ve been doing push ups since I was in grammar school. And I always hated them. But I had a Mickey Mouse lunch box with an Annette Funicello thermos bottle. And somehow I knew that Annette would be more interested in me if I did push ups. And by extension, I figured Jeannie, and Doris, and Mary, and Matilda, and the other Jeannie, and Maureen and other people who looked like them would be more interested, too.

This may come as a surprise to you women, but we Louie-Louie Generation guys all told each other that girls liked guys with muscles…and we believed each other…because you girls didn’t tell us we were wrong. You didn’t really tell us much of anything about yourselves. Mostly you just told us, “NO. DON’T TOUCH ME.”

Think about that. I’ll guarantee you… some time, some where, some girl was busy telling George Clooney, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, and Pierce Brosnan… NO. DON”T TOUCH ME.

One of the many benefits of being a Louie Louie Lad, is that we can look back at that understanding, and smile…grimly.

Back from vacation a day early today. Up at 3AM to catch an EARLY flight. Need to avoid thunderstorms along the way. Nighty-night.

You’ve heard that “Time flies when you’re having fun?” Well time also flies when you drop your clock. I’m sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather Pappa chair, with time on my hands. Sort of. Actually…I have pieces of my living room clock…which I dropped…in my hands.  It looks like the clock is dead…it’s just a bunch of little pieces on the floor. I was trying to set it to pick up the signal from some Godforsaken transmitter in the mountains of Colorado…which the government uses to keep clocks like this accurate. I don’t know much about Colorado, except that the time coordination transmitter is there, and expensive people go to Aspen to mate.  

My Lady Wonder Wench and I went to Colorado once so she could buy a horse. I was never clear as to why when we live in Pennsylvania, she had to go to Colorado to buy a horse. Have you any idea how many Pennsylvania horses must have looked up at our plane and felt rejected. Guy horses must have a very high rejection rate when you think about it…because they’re almost always gelded…which eliminates them from most of your sexier filly’s top ten horsing around lists.  

As a Louie-Louie Generation guy, I don’t like the sound of the word gelded. (To learn about Louie Louie guys, go to www.dicksummer.com ) Vasectomy is a much more manly term than gelding. I think the word vasectomy was probably invented by a Louie Louie Generation guy who was jogging home one day after having one. And here’s why I say that. Let’s take a look at the word vasectomy. Vasectomy starts with the letter v. In order to say the letter v, you have to bite your lower lip with your upper teeth…which effectively keeps you at least for a moment from whimpering. The rest of the word…hey think about it… a “sect” is a group of whackos who perform weird rituals…and “omy” is the kind of quietly dignified statement Louie-Louie Generation guys might well say when in great pain. So the word is made up of a  V to keep your mouth shut, a sect because it’s a weird ritual, and a gentlemanly comment…omy. Put em all together and they spell vasectomy. And as I understand it, it’s a delicate operation. One slip could change a raging male animal into a very quiet pet.    

I know I shouldn’t put you through explanations like that. But I am always so tempted. And for a Louie-Louie Generation guy, a missed opportunity to give in to a temptation may never come again. Louie-Louie Generation lads and ladies have been around for a while, but we don’t consider ourselves old. We call ourselves “brilliantly retro.” We have actual flesh and blood friends…as opposed to “Facebook” friends. And we can trust them. For example, I don’t worry about my buddy Al running off with my Lady Wonder Wench. Partly because I trust them both. And partly because she’s not his type. She’s not inflatable.   

My Buddy Bob, claims that in his misspent youth he starred in a number of police chase videos. But he is now retired from a highly responsible job as an executive vice president, and now spends his time working on a tell all business book. Bob has a Louie-Louie level sense of humor. The working title of his book is, “Better Management Through Finger Pointing.”  

Bob is an interesting guy who hit me with an interesting question the other day.  He said “How come a dog gets mad at you if you blow in his face, but take him for a car ride and he sticks his head out the window.” A heck of a question. He’s really proud of his dog. He claims he’s a really good watch dog. But I think my dog can lick his dog any day. 

Dick’s Details, a bunch of totally un-important facts that you can push into one ear, so you can squeeze the important facts that are keeping you awake at night out the other ear, and you can nod off comfortably to sleep.

Pigs have orgasms that last for thirty minutes. But my Lady Wonder Wench claims that’s not true for the male chauvinist kind. The nature guys say that bats have thumbs. That makes me wonder if the smarter ones might start hitchhiking on their migrations. The forces for good in the community tell us that 82% of Americans believe in the after life. Big Louie, his own bad self, says Louie-Louie Generation people shouldn’t wait till the after life. He says “If you can’t enjoy yourself now, enjoy somebody else before it’s too late.”

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

There’s a story in the Bedtime Stories personal audio cd and in the current podcast (www.dicksummer.com/podcast) about a guy who has just figured out that he missed the time of his life. He just realized it. It happened so fast. The story is called, On the Prowl. 

When you’re on the prowl you learn things. Like…how empty a crowded city can be…how quiet your phone can get…how your hands keep holding on to so many memories that you’re trying to get out of your head. On The Prowl is from the Bedtime Stories personal audio cd. If you like it, you can just keep the (www.dicksummer.com/podcast) podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the Bedtime Stories icon on the home page. 

Big Louie, his own bad self, the Chief Mustard Cutter of the Louie-Louie Generation always says, “Lions roar, monkeys gibber, and people preach.” Louie’s no preacher. But he’s always asking people things like…”What would you really do if you were absolutely certain you wouldn’t fail.” He figures if you come up with a good answer to that question, maybe you ought to seriously consider giving it a shot. Because time flies when you’re having fun. But you just never know when your clock is going to fall off the wall…and break into little pieces…that you’ll never be able to put back together again.