Dick Summer Connection

It was on Thanksgiving a number of years ago, that I started the Men Are Saints Appeal. (The M.A.S. Appeal) on WNBC Radio in New York.  Here’s the point: Men are seldom given credit for our sensitivity, intelligence and selfless behavior. For example…here in the Northeast, Thanksgiving is usually celebrated on a cold day. So where do we men traditionally encourage our women to spend the day? In the warmest room in the house which, of course, is the kitchen. We, on the other hand, in a manly display of selfless courage…throw ourselves in front of the tv screen to protect our loved ones from the terrible effects of the cathode rays that squirt out of the picture tube… especially during commercials for “erectile dysfunction” medications which, if not used under a doctor’s HMO plan, can cause us to get permanently stuck in the “upright position” so we have to walk bent over at all social functions till next March. And how much credit do we get for that traditional self sacrifice? Right! None!

How often have you seen a relatively innocent Louie-Louie Generation man at a raunchy bar go over to a woman he has never even met and invite her to the safety of his apartment to get her out of that dangerous environment? And what reward do we get? Right again. None.

But we soldier on as we always have, even in the face of this shameful lack of appreciation. That’s the basis of the M.A.S. Appeal.
As you can imagine, the M.A.S. Appeal is frequently not well received by certain people with more evolved levels of social sensitivity and mostly higher voices. But as a member of the Louie-Louie Generation, I have to keep in mind the words of Big Louie, His Own Bad Self…”If your eyes hurt after you drink a cup of coffee, next time remember to take the spoon out of the cup first.” (Actually, he said, “There are just some things a guy can’t control”…but for some reason possibly related to my cold, my eyes are hurting right at the moment.)

And it is true that I sometimes lose control of parts of me…like my left eyebrow which always seems to flip up when my Lady Wonder Wench walks into a room wearing some of those little outfits she calls “quite comfortable.” And occasionally under those circumstances, my fingers absolutely refuse to behave themselves, no matter where I try not to put them.

My theory is that a guy’s brain swims in a sea of testosterone, which absorbs some of the shock of getting hit in the head by baseballs, Yanni’s music, and high levels of excess verbal communication. Testosterone, you will remember, is a preservative. And a preservative stops stuff like germs and fungi from maturing. So testosterone is an anti-maturing chemical. And I have a lot of it…which is probably the main reason for the M.A.S. Appeal.

Seriously, scientists with degrees from actual schools (as opposed to Internet schools which will give you a degree for life experience and your bank account id plus password) agree that the shorter your pointer finger is compared to your ring finger, the more testosterone you have. Fortunately, some truly caring and lovely ladies I have known have come up with better… although I guess slightly less scientific… tests. (I’m willing to bet that roughly 100% of you guys are now comparing the length of your ring finger with the length of your pointer finger. This could cause a new wave of Email offers to lengthen and thicken ring fingers if the news ever leaks out.)

Everybody likes Thanksgiving. But I must admit that I liked it a lot more before the discovery of salmonella poisoning…which is what the government says you get from turkeys. I think what happens is that tiny little turkey dwelling salmon get into your blood and swim up stream to your brain to spawn…which causes you to completely lose control of your higher reasoning functions, which is what makes you rush to the mall to go shopping.