I'm a big deal in Russia, but I'm not sure that's such a good thing

 I'm kind of a big deal.  Unfortunately, nobody within 4,000 miles of my current location knows it.  This makes it hard for me to get good seats at fancy restaurants or "fan discounts" from the guy who comes around in the spring to exterminate the wasps living under the eaves of the garage.

But if I ever go to Moscow, I'm all set.

As I reported in a previous column, about a year ago I was forced to branch out from my usual "Reality Check" deal and find additional writing gigs.  It turns out you need money to eat and there are people willing to give me some if I write for them.  Not a lot, but some.  I have had some and I have had none, and I can tell you that some is better than none any day.  It's not as good as a lot, which is always my first choice, but nobody wants to pay me a lot.  So I settle for some.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, I'm kind of a big deal in Moscow, but nobody around here knows it.  I didn't know it myself until earlier this week. 

Let me back up.  About a year ago I began writing a horoscope column for an English language newspaper in Russia's capitol city.  I told Vladmir, the editor there, that I didn't believe in astrology, that I knew nothing about it and that I had never even read my own.  Vladmir's response was the Russian equivalent of "fake it," which is what I've been doing ever since.

Muscovites, apparently, liked my ridiculous and almost certainly inaccurate predictions, because it wasn't long before Vladmir had me writing additional horoscopes for other print and online publications over which he holds dominion.  I was happy to do it; Vlad pays me about a hundred billion rubles, or $75 American (though it's possible the exchange rate I've suggested here is no more accurate than my predictions) for each horoscope I write.

Like I said, not a lot, but it keeps me in beer and Ramen noodles.

But once I ship the horoscopes off to Vladmir, I try to forget all about them.  I find this helps me sleep better at night.  If I start thinking about the fact I am, in essence, lying through my teeth to the entire population of Moscow and its environs, I begin to feel small vestiges of guilt (no doubt left over from my Catholic upbringing).  Guilt like that can keep a guy awake, even if all the folks he's lying to live half a world away.

At any rate, the big deal thing: the other day I received an email from Vladmir requesting a short "bio" and mugshot to run with my horoscope columns.  Russian readers, Vladmir said, want to know more about me, including what I look like.

At Vlad's request I wrote a bio explaining how I have always felt drawn to the supernatural realm and have, since childhood "felt the presence" of forces within me, guiding me, molding me into the brilliant prognosticator I am today.  The two letters which best sum up that biography are S and B, though not necessarily in that order.

Still, in for a penny in for a pound. I've discovered that once you start lying it really does get easier, just like my mother used to tell me, though, now that I think about it, I doubt those words were intended as encouragement.

Regardless, it's the photo I'm worried about.  There are 11,500,000 people living in Moscow and now any of them with a newspaper know what I look like.  I'm guessing I have offended, annoyed or otherwise disrupted the lives of at least a few of these folks with my (again, admittedly) inaccurate predictions.  It's possible couples have married or divorced because I hinted the stars were in favor of such a thing.  I fear that by now there are more than a few Muscovites who would love to get their bear-fur mittens around my neck.

Hmm...suddenly those 4,000 miles between here and Moscow don't seem quite far enough.

Mike Taylor's new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available in both paperback and eBook version at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or on amazon.com. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Sometimes, my job just isn't manly enough

I'm beginning to think I'm in the wrong line of work.  And not just because this is, from an economic standpoint, the worst time to be a writer since that first semi-literate Neanderthal hammered out a primitive hieroglyph on the rough-hewn wall of his cave.*  Being a writer has never been a lucrative profession unless your last name is Koontz or King.  My own last name doesn't seem to generate quite that much buzz at the Barnes & Noble checkout counter.

But that's OK.  Like I said, most writers, myself included, aren't really in this for the big paycheck.  At one time I was in it for the girls, but that was back in college, when any guy who could put two sentences together and knew what "iambic pentameter" meant was thought by most coeds to be "sensitive" and "soulful."  In truth, writers are no more soulful or sensitive than your average plumber; we're just better at faking it.

That goes double for poets.

Don't get me wrong, I like writing just fine.  And from time to time, it even pays the bills.

But every so often I hear something, some errant comment, that makes me think I might be happier in some other profession.  This happened the other night while SweetAnnie and I were having burgers and beer at Grattan Irish Pub.

It was the first time we'd been there and I was really digging the authentic pub atmosphere, the pint and the burger.  As usual, Annie and I had our Scrabble tiles laid out in front of us.  She was an English major and we both like word games with our beer and burgers.

Annie was sporting a pale, pink cardigan and I had on my corduroy blazer, khakis and old brown loafers.  In short, we couldn't have looked more like a couple ex-academic word nerds if we'd tried.  Happily, the pub is a friendly place where tool-and-die workers don't threaten to kick your butt just because you'd rather play Scrabble than watch Nascar, which is what everyone else in the joint was doing.

I was halfway through my burger and losing badly at Scrabble (as I so often do), when it happened.  A few guys sitting at the bar had been griping about their respective jobs when one said, "I bid on the steel, but didn't get it."

I'm not sure what that even means, exactly, but it sounded incredibly manly.

I bid on the steel.  I bid on the steel.  I bid on the steel.

I've never said anything that cool in my entire life!  That one statement conjures up images of beefy dudes in plaid shirts riding construction elevators to the tops of girder-strewn construction sites, dented lunch-boxes gripped tightly in calloused hands.  It speaks of fresh air, of welding sparks tinged with the electric perfume of ozone, of catcalls aimed at passing secretaries, of red-faced foremen and worn, leather gloves.

"I bid on the steel" is a siren call to male office rats everywhere!  A call to vacate the cubicle, grab a hammer, put on some steel-toed boots!

But here I sit in my basement office writing about it instead.  (This is a family newspaper, so if you'd like to read the expletive I'm thinking of here, you'll have to write it in yourself.)

Sigh.

Think I'll go sort out my toolbox and see if there's anything around the house that needs a nail pounded into it.

*And yes, I know Neanderthal man never used hieroglyphs on his cave wall or anywhere else. I'm just using artistic license here.  OK, so maybe I'm too lazy to research the thing. What can I say?  I was on deadline.

Mike Taylor's new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available in both paperback and eBook version at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com, amazon.com.  The eBook version also is available from Barnes & Noble Booksellers.  Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

My old buddy The Marlborough Man is trying to get me into trouble

My relationship with horses has always been adversarial. I love the way the look—from a distance. Up close, they are, quite simply, too big. It’s only natural to feel some sort of discomfort around a creature that can—should the mood take it—stomp my head into the ground like a pat of warm butter.

I would feel the same way around an elephant, a hungry lion, or an enraged hippopotamus. My Neolithic ancestors didn’t live to adulthood by trying to pet the saber tooth tigers. Being a big fat chicken is an important part of my genetic makeup and key to my long-term survival strategy.

So when someone invites me to climb aboard a demented 1,200 pound quadruped with a skittish nature and hooves the approximate weight and size of a cement block, I am understandably reluctant.

Every so often, though, I wind up asking myself, “Mike, you aren’t going to let a little thing like a million years of evolution keep you from riding, are you? You’re braver and smarter than your cave-dwelling forbears, right? You can do this, can’t you? What are ya, a man or a mouse!?”

It’s at this point I usually tell myself to shut the hell up already.

At any rate, for whatever reason, I occasionally find myself on the back of some ornery glue factory reject possessed of a bad attitude and the full knowledge that there is an idiot perched on his back.

I’m thinking about this now because a while back I discovered that a friend—one I’d not seen in years—has purchased a small farm house, found himself a few horses, and somehow transformed himself into a store-bought, idealized version of a cowboy. Incredibly, he has even developed a southern accent and a taste for country & western music. This despite the fact he grew up in Detroit. When I saw him last back in the mid-90s, he was listening to Snoop Dogg, wearing a baseball cap backwards and apparently thought he was black. He’s not.

He’s not a cowboy, either, but these days he thinks he is. He’s traded his backward baseball cap for a Stetson. He wears pointy boots with little silver things on the toes. He shaves only every three or four days. He chews, as in tobacco! He looks like the Marlboro Man if the Marlboro Man had never actually ridden the range or roped cattle for a living, which come to think of it, he probably never did. The Marlboro Man was a model for a cigarette company and no more a “real” cowboy than is my buddy from Detroit.

But a while back, my bud invited me to visit his ranch. (Apparently, if you have a couple horses grazing in your backyard, your domicile is a ranch, not a house.) I might go, but if I do, he’s going to want to show off his horses, which will probably mean going for a ride on one of them. This always ends badly for me. Always.

But, really…what am I? A man or a mouse?

Squeak.

Give your new iPad or Kindle reader what it really wants; Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available in digital format at Amazon.com. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Super Bowl Sunday is not supposed to be healthy!

I feel like a radical fundamentalist who’s just had his belief system questioned by a heretic in a Giant’s jersey. I am by nature a fairly apathetic guy and rarely get my knickers in a twist over articles I read in the newspaper, but a piece appearing in last Thursday’s Press has me fighting mad!

Found on the front page of all places, it is, in essence, a vicious attack ad targeted at something I (and many of my fellow Americans, I’m sure) hold dear. I’m talking, of course, about Super Bowl Sunday food.

As all civilized persons already know, Super Bowl Sunday is supposed to be an unabashed orgy of all that is calorie-rich, greasy, sugary, salty and flat out bad-for-you. Barring religious considerations or strict spousal circumstances to the contrary, that food should be washed down with beer and plenty of it.

But there on the front page of the Press (an otherwise excellent paper that has on numerous occasions failed to hire me despite much nauseating pleading on my part) was an article championing the idea of healthy eating on…yep…Super Bowl Sunday! You read that right: healthy eating!

I swear I’m not making this up.

I don’t want to sound more sexist than I actually am, but I couldn’t help notice the article was written by a woman (reporter SueThoms) about a woman (fitness guru and triathlete Tina Vande Guchte). I’m guessing this was because a man writing the same article would likely suffer major organ failure while doubled over laughing. It’s hard to write with a ruptured kidney; I know.

At any rate, Vande Guchte suggests all sorts of clever ways in which guys and gals watching the big game can stay in great shape while partaking of this annual event. According to Vande Guchte, football fans should keep dumbbells next to the easy chair and perform repetitive curls while watching the game. I’m sorry ma’am, but I need both hands free for beer and chips.

Vande Guchte seems like a very nice person; she’s an attractive redhead who looks to weigh about 97 pounds soaking wet and appears very sincere in her desire to see Americans shape up. On the other hand, she advocates jumping jacks, lunges, and side-to-side hops during commercial breaks, so she is obviously from some other planet, one where hot wings and jalapeno poppers were never invented.

To her credit Vande Guchte suggests skipping the half-time show in exchange for a quick walk around the block. Having seen Madonna’s performance this year, this is the one point on which Vande Guchte and I agree, but probably for different reasons.

Despite Vande Guchte’s admonitions, my own Super Bowl afternoon was spent with Sweet Annie at Riverbend Bar & Grille, where they served free ribs, spicy chicken wings, nachos and lots of other stuff that made it difficult for me to walk, much less perform stretching maneuvers on an exercise ball (as Vande Guchte also suggests).

Annie, who lives what I consider to be a bizarrely healthy lifestyle (she consumes vegetables) talked me into eating a single cherry tomato along with my more enjoyable treats. I’m pretty sure that tomato is what caused my acute “tummy trouble” later that evening.

Super Bowl’s over for another year. Apparently there was some sort of football competition going on between servings of chicken wings and ribs; I wasn’t paying much attention, but there was a lot of yelling so I know others were. And everyone there—even Sweet Annie, who to my eternal embarrassment also ate some carrots!—enjoyed the delicious repast.

Everyone had fun! Can the same be said for those poor underfed schmoes who attended Vande Guchte’s Super Bowl celebration of celery? I have my doubts.

Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or in eBook format at Amazon. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Getting a haircut was more fun when girly pictures were involved

Brenda cut my hair for nearly 15 years and knew my head the way Bill Clinton knows interns, which is to say, intimately. After a decade-and-a-half she could have probably trimmed my hair in the dark. The place I go to know, it sometimes looks as if they have.

But that’s OK; I don’t stress over a bad haircut. It’s the process of getting my head-fur shortened that bothers me.

When I was a kid, my dad dragged me to a guy named Carl on Grand Rapids’ West Side who for fifty cents would buzz my hair down to a comfortable stubble that lasted a few months between cuts. The cut itself took about 45 seconds and there was no conversation. I was a kid and kid conversation not one of Carl’s priorities. Besides, he had girly centerfolds tacked up around his shop and memorizing those took up most of the mental power I would otherwise have needed to talk about my Little League team.

It wasn’t until years later that I found Brenda; she owned the shop a few blocks from my old house in Lakeview and—at the time—would cut my hair for ten bucks. A huge jump from Carl’s two bits, but still not bad by today’s standards.

As well as Brenda knew my head, she knew my life even better. When she was little more than a kid herself Brenda provided child care for my two progeny, a job known at the time as “baby-sitting.” It was only chance that we both wound up living years later in the same small, northern Michigan town.

Brenda not only knew my kids, she knew the (Former) Lovely Mrs. Taylor, who—it turns out—had been getting her hair cut at Brenda’s shop for some time by the time she first touched scissors to my head. In addition to family, Brenda also knew a lot of the same people I did, a fact of life in any American small town.

We not only had a history, but folks to gossip about. Getting a haircut from Brenda was a chance to catch up on the torrid, tawdry underbelly of my bucolic little hometown; who was doing what to (or with) whom. Brenda was the pre-Facebook Facebook. We rarely ran out of interesting dirt before the haircut was finished.

But Brenda’s an hour away now, which is too far for me to drive just to get my monthly trim. So I’ve been frequenting one of those salon chains with a shop in every neighborhood big enough to merit a McDonald’s. I’ve yet to have the same stylist twice.

The cuts are OK, but I hate trying to make conversation with a stranger; usually a female stranger in her mid-twenties. I have as much in common with these girls as an aardvark has with a Philippine merchant marine. I don’t want to know who Justin Bieber is dating and they couldn’t care less which character I like best on Golden Girls.

So I sit there in uncomfortable silence waiting for the cut to be finished so I can pay my 15 bucks and scram.

I wonder if Carl’s still cutting hair? He’d be about 108 now, but you never know. I wonder if he has any new centerfolds.

Give your iPad or Kindle what it really wants—Mike Taylor’s new eBook, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available at Amazon.com.

Weird things can happen when you insist on kissing a dog

When I was kid people used to sweat. It's true. I remember seeing guys with shirts sticking to their backs at the Kresge's lunch counter back in the '60s. (Yes, I am that old, though I look about 32. Right?)

Anyway, people used to sweat, and not just the sort of people who drive fork lifts and operate air hammers. On hot August afternoons businessmen would sweat right through their seersucker suits. Sometimes, people got stinky. That's something else I remember from Kresge's lunch counter.

Nobody thought anything about it. You just held your breath until you were clear of the stinky person. It had no lasting adverse affect and built strong lungs for an entire generation.

Sure, people for the most part still bathed regularly. This is America, after all, not France. (I'm not trying to make friends with the French here.) Your choice of soap was Ivory or Kirk'sCastille, a white bar capable of melting the chrome from the bumper of your Buick in under an hour. It was the choice of real men.

Then some Madison Avenue type decided the world would be a better place if people didn't stink anymore. The Madison Avenue guy conferred with scientists and together they came up with a formula that not only prevented stinking, but cut back on sweating. Antiperspirant was born. Women, who had never been crazy about stinky men to begin with, embraced the idea.

Soon, no stinky man could get a date. Body powders, colognes, shavers with 32 blades that trim whiskers to a sub-microscopic stubble, foot powders, foot sprays, mouthwash, mouth-rinse, pre-brushing mouth rinse, pre-shave lotion, after-shave lotion, body wash, conditioner, facial masks, ear hair trimmers, nose hair trimmers, back hair trimmers, "other area" trimmers, waxing (for those for whom trimming isn't enough), and a million other "indispensable" grooming items and regimens followed.

We no longer sweat. In summer months we move from air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars to air conditioned offices. We sweat only when exercising outdoors and when we do we act like it's a Big Deal and get all self-righteous about it.

None of this really bugs me, despite my condescending tone thus far. I was sick in bed yesterday. I didn't shave, wash my hair, brush my teeth, shower. This morning I saw myself in the mirror and it wasn't pretty. Well, it's never really pretty, but the image staring back at me this a.m. was...let's just say if they ever hold auditions for The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Elephant Man, my acting career can finally get under way.

At any rate, I wouldn't want to go back to the old "deodorant optional" days.

What has me worried is a commercial I saw recently on TV. In the commercial, an attractive brunette is sitting on a sofa with her shaggy, mixed-breed dog. The woman and dog are face-to-face, nose-to-nose. In Kentucky, contact this close would be cause for a shotgun wedding.

The woman wrinkles her nose and makes a "Euuuuugghhh" sound, presumably because the dog has, well, dog-breath. The commercial goes on to suggest a new line of doggy breath mints. Apparently, there are woman who are going to kiss dogs and in order to make this more pleasurable, doggy breath mints are a must.

Can doggy deodorant be far behind? Doggy shavers? Surely smooching Rover would be more palatable if he didn't have all that face-hair, right?

Maybe I'm worried over nothing. But this feels like a slippery slope to me. Something about it, I dunno, just doesn't smell right.

Mike Taylor's book, Lookingat the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The future’s a funny thing when seen through the eyes of 1911 prognosticators

Connie was for several years the most important woman in my life. Depending on whom you asked, she was a) my secretary; b) the office manager; or c) the brains of the operation. (I was the only person to ever refer to her as my secretary, and then only when I was speaking with people I was trying to impress. I thought saying I had a secretary made me look important. I still think that.)

Connie remembered the names of every citizen in the small town I called home and could recite them to me quickly whenever they approached the front door of the newspaper at which we worked. Then I could say things like, “Hey, Bill! How’s the wife and kids?” when they walked in the front door. It made me look like I knew what was going on. I did not. But Connie did.

Constance (she hates it when I call her that) moved down south to Hillbillyville, USA several years ago. I miss her way more than I do any of my ex-wives.

But we’re still Facebook “friends,” so I keep up with what’s going on with her husband, kids and miscellaneous grandchildren. More importantly, I still get to see all the stuff Connie thinks is funny, amusing or interesting, just as if we were still sharing an office.

Earlier today, she posted an article from a 1911edition of The Ladies Home Journal in which the editors predicted what life would be like in the United States by the year 2011. One might expect the predictions would be silly or at the very least far off the mark, but they aren’t. In fact, most are eerily accurate.

For instance, the editors predicted there would be between 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people living in the United States by 2011. According to the Internet, which never lies, there were actually 312,862,977 U.S. citizens last year. Most of them spent their waking hours driving right in front of me, going ten miles per hour under the speed limit.

Other predictions included hot and cold air coming from spigots. The spigot idea didn’t work out, obviously, but the editors did describe with some accuracy central air and heating systems. Also, “ready cooked” meals that sound suspiciously like something you’d get at McDonald’s were envisaged, though the editors predicted the food would taste good, so points off there.

Automobiles that sold for less than horses were another prediction. I guess this depends on the horse and the car, but I’m guessing my 1994 Ford Taurus would pull in less cash than the offspring of Secretariat, say.

The editors also predicted air-ships, weapons that could decimate entire cities, the growth of the suburbs, subsidized education, automated farming, and the fax machine. Not bad for a bunch of guys who have been dead for at least 50 years (or longer).

They did miss the mark on a few predictions, no shame there. For instance, they foresaw the extinction of horses (by accident) and the extinction of flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches (on purpose). Neither of these prophecies came to pass, though I am hopeful with regard to the mosquito thing.

Other predictions included television (did happen), genetically-altered fruit (happening, despite a lot of whining from hippies and other people afraid of growing extra appendages), submarines (happened), free college educations (happened, provided you can hide from the student loan people until you die), cell phones (happened, according to my most recent bill), and auto air conditioning (happened, provided your car is not a 1994 Taurus, in which case it has been broken for a while).

Anyway, Constance’s article got me thinking about what life will be like in 2111, a century from now. I have some ideas, but I want yours, folks! Email your predictions to mtaylor325@gmail.com and I’ll run the best of ‘em in an upcoming Reality Check column. This is your chance to leave your mark on future generations!

In fact, let’s make a contest out of it. The very best prediction wins a 1994 Ford Taurus* with no air conditioning. Who knows? The old girl may have another 100 years in her.

*I’m kidding about the car. I need it to live in.

Give your Kindle something worth reading: Mike Taylor’s e-book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.