Maybe I can get Tiger’s ghost writer to help with my new book

I am so glad Susan Sarandan and Tim Robbins broke up. I know, they seemed like a nice couple and have been married a long time. And divorce – brother do I know it – is not a pretty thing.

But their Hollywood split has served a larger purpose; namely, it has briefly focused media attention away from Tiger Woods. That can only be seen as a good thing.

For weeks, the little news ticker running down the right side of my laptop’s screen has served up story after story about Mr. Woods’ latest dalliance. For some reason, “news” folks just can’t seem to get enough of heavily-augmented girls “coming clean” over their brief, torrid affairs with the famous duffer.

When did golf get sexy, anyway? Wait a minute; I think I can answer that one myself – when golfers started earning millions, right?

Anyway, the news (and I use that term ever so loosely) just wouldn’t let up about it. One show actually interviewed the mother of one of the girls with whom Tiger allegedly shared a Motel 6 evening. I’m guessing the network gave mom a couple hundred bucks as compensation for divulging the intimate details of her daughter’s life.

It does my heart good to see a family working together like that.

The upshot of all this is that people who had no interest in Tiger Woods the golfer have developed all kinds of interest in Tiger Woods the philanderer. He’s more famous than ever. If he decides to write a memoir detailing his experiences in the bedroom, he’ll be richer than ever.

And that, dear reader, gave me an idea. Like the Grinch’s plan to steal Christmas, it’s an awful idea, a wonderful awful idea! (It’s possible the idea formed because my shoes were too tight, or it could be that my head wasn’t screwed on just right. But I think that the most likely reason of all may have been that my wallet was two sizes too small.)

In an effort to remedy this diminutive wallet situation, I plan to announce to all the residents of Whoville that I have, in fact, had numerous affairs in the past five years.

I haven’t, but I plan to say that I have.

I intend to pay several cocktail waitresses, flight attendants and elderly Walmart greeters to claim they joined me in seedy, illicit trysts. Sure, it’s going to cost me plenty to convince these nice ladies to lie, but I’ll make that money up a hundred times over after my first appearance on Oprah.

After I’m absolutely sure everyone in America has heard about my nefarious liaisons, I’ll hold a press conference and tearfully declare how sorry I am. I also will use this moment to announce the publication of my upcoming book, “I Am So Sorry, America!” soon to be a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson as Mike Taylor. Also starring Heather Graham, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon as the accommodating Walmart greeter. (I intend to hang around the set a lot during filming.)

I realize it’s going to take me a bit longer than it did Tiger to generate the media attention necessary to pull this off. After all, he’s Tiger Woods, I’m nobody. But I went golfing with my son four or five times this past summer and I’m getting pretty good. All I have to do is win a couple PGA tours. How hard can it be?

Watch for me on Oprah.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

It’s hard to be mysterious when your whole life is online

I’ve found someone.

There, I said it and I’m not sorry.

As many of you regular readers already know, I’ve been wife-less for just under a year now. The past ten months have been one long series of failed dates, flirtations, brief romances, and disastrous relationship maneuverings that I hope to never live through again.

Though my column during this time has occasionally veered into Carrie Bradshaw territory (the fictional columnist portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker on “Sex in the City”), I am not an expert in relationships. In fact, when it comes to relationships, I am an idiot. Yes, I’m also an idiot about other things but we’re talking relationships here.

I can’t “read” women. I like them, but don’t understand them. Any man who thinks he does is an even bigger idiot than me, and that’s saying a lot.

So I’m glad to have found someone. Real glad. Even though she’s the sort of woman I understand least—intelligent, self-possessed, determined, confident, patient, beautiful … I could go on listing her attributes, which are legion, forever, but some of you would no doubt begin to feel a little nauseous. Sorry, new love makes people mushy and a bit tedious, except to each other. I’ll try to dial it back a notch so you won’t be tempted to toss your cookies here.

I’ve put off writing about her because to do so somehow makes the whole relationship “official,” at least in my mind. Once I share something with millions of readers (well, thousands, at least…maybe hundreds…OK, you 23 folks know who you are) it’s hard to turn back. If it doesn’t work out between us now, I’ll look like a fool, and not for the first time.

But it is going to work out. I love her, she loves me. I like her dad, I like her kids, I like her grandkids. I wish she had a better car, but true love rarely comes that neatly packaged.

In the time we’ve spent together, we’ve learned a lot about each other; favorite movies, religious preferences (both Catholic—whew!), favorite authors, shoe sizes, most embarrassing moments, and so on. I’ve found out quite a bit about her, and that’s good.

What’s bad is what she has found out about me. See, my life, for the past 20 years or so, has been chronicled in these columns, most of which are available online at various locations, like http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com.

Over the years, I’ve written about my failed marriages, my inability to perform household repairs without incurring major injury, my inept management of financial affairs…every flaw I have is right there for anyone to see! And see she has.

I’m guessing it took her awhile to read through all those old columns, but she is nothing if not meticulous and systematic. Thanks to my online history, I have virtually no secrets from this woman!

You can imagine the disadvantage this puts me at. I would love to embellish my past in an effort to make myself sound better and more attractive than I really am, but nooooo, all she has to do is click that mouse and the truth is right there in black and white.

One keyword search for “love”, “marriage”, or “beer” and she knows more about me than I want her to.

It’s too late to change the past. But, just in case she stumbles on this column, I’d like to state for the record that I am an ex-astronaut who left NASA because the constant shuttle missions were taking too much time away from the management of my multi-million dollar estate and all the work I do with the homeless, orphans and abandoned puppies.

Honest.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com. Fun LOCAL events covered by Mike Taylor online HERE!

I would give a lot for some of my mom’s fruitcake this Christmas

Fruitcake. It’s the one substance guaranteed to ruin what might otherwise be a happy holiday.

Yeah, I know there are people who love fruitcake. There also are people who enjoy Pauly Shore movies and the singing of Michael Bolton. This does not make any of those things—Shore, Bolton, or fruitcake—good.

While I have always felt free to express my dislike of Shore and Bolton, I was, for decades, forced to pretend I enjoy fruitcake. Why? Because I’m Irish, Catholic, and every year at Christmastime, my mother would make me one of those god-awful bricks of dough and pickled fruit. And when a good Irish Catholic boy’s mother presents him with a fruitcake—or any gift—the aforementioned Irish Catholic boy pretends he likes it, no matter what. It’s the law.

The holiday fruitcakes started coming the first Christmas after I married Wife Number One and moved out of the house. Wife Number One loved my mother’s fruitcake, and made the mistake of telling her so, thereby ensuring we would receive one each and every Christmas thereafter.

This was not a problem for so long as I was married to Wife Number One (five years, as it turned out). But when we went our separate ways, the fruitcakes kept coming.

This left me in the unenviable position of either a) eating the fruitcake myself, which was unthinkable, or b) throwing away perfectly good food, also unthinkable. There were—or so I had been brought up to believe—starving children in China who would sell their oxen for just one bite of my mother’s fruitcake. In later years it occurred to me that those starving children could just eat the ox if it came to that, but at the time the argument seemed plausible.

Faced with these choices, I would usually eat one small slice of fruitcake, heavily laden with Cool Whip to mask the flavor, just to assuage the guilt. What was left I would wrap in aluminum foil and place on a back refrigerator shelf. There the fruitcake would sit, week after week, month after month. Eventually, usually by July or August, I would toss out the moss-covered block, all the while mumbling to myself about what a shame it was that the fruitcake had gone bad.

This went on year after year after year. My mother lovingly crafted her fruitcake and gave it to me with a satisfied smile, secure in the knowledge that she was bringing some happiness into the life of her eldest son.

Then I ruined everything. After nearly 30 years of silence, I broke down and told my mom how I felt about fruitcake. Honesty, I decided in a moment of pitiable self-delusion, was the best policy.

“Oh,” my mother said, doing her best to hide her disappointment, “why didn’t you tell me?”

A fair question, but impossible to answer. I shrugged. That year my mother gave my fruitcake to my sister.

That was five years ago and I haven’t had a fruitcake in my house since.

I wish I had one this year. Shortly after I shared the truth with my mom, she stopped baking fruitcakes altogether. Then she stopped cooking, washing, cleaning house, dressing herself … the doctors said it was Alzheimer’s.

The drugs slowed it down, but not enough. When I visit her this Christmas, she won’t know who I am. She doesn’t know who she is. It will be a miracle, and not a kind one, if she’s still here next Christmas.

This is the woman who taught me to tie my shoes, who bandaged my scraped knees and made homemade chicken soup to battle my colds; the woman who spent the best years of her life making sure my life was good.

And I couldn’t pretend for just a little while longer that I loved her fruitcake.

If she could give me one this year, I swear I’d wake up Christmas morning, eat the whole damn thing, and count myself lucky.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com. Fun LOCAL events covered by Mike Taylor online HERE!

Want the perfect family this holiday season? Rent ‘em

I was talking with Angela, the girl who cuts my hair, the other day. It turns out we’re both going to be spending Christmas day alone.

Now, before you start feeling all weepy for me (or Angela), let me just say, it’s not so bad. I’ll be celebrating the holiday with the kids the day before Christmas and with friends a couple days after. But Christmas morning I’ll be flying solo.

I thought about asking Angela to join me Christmas morning, but she’s cute and younger than the socks I usually wear; I was afraid she’d take my invitation the wrong way. Too many people already think I’m a dirty old man; I don’t need to add Angela to that list.

At any rate, Angela (or maybe it was me, I don’t remember) came up with a good idea for dealing with solo Christmas mornings – rental families. This is the perfect time for a business like this to take off in a big way. The economy stinks, people are looking for work, and a lot of guys – like me – have been recently dumped and could use some company come December 25.

I envision it like this: For $100, say, you could rent a spouse. She would show up at the house early with “bed-head” and wearing an old robe. She would fix some coffee and maybe a couple eggs, and then wake you up with a cheery, “C’mon sleepyhead, Santa’s been here!”

You’d go downstairs together, turn on the tree lights, and then open presents.

“This isn’t what I asked for at all,” the rent-a-wife would say. “Don’t you remember? I asked for the green sweater. This one is blue! Did you at least save the receipt this year?”

It would be exactly like having a real wife in the house, only the coffee would be better.

Rent-a-kids also would be available at $50 each, so for $350, you could share Christmas morning with a nice, Catholic family like the one you grew up in. If you’re not Catholic, you could save a few bucks and rent just two kids, or even one, if you’re a yuppie.

The kids would dutifully scream excitedly over good presents and moan about the “gift” pajamas sent by Aunt Marge. They would shred wrapping paper with the fervor of rabid weasels disemboweling a bunny rabbit. The boys would make fun of the girls’ “stupid” gifts of tea sets and Barbie dolls, while boasting about their own Tonka trucks and GI Joe’s.

All of the children would complain bitterly that Santa did not, yet again, bring them either an iPod or a PlayStation.

The youngest child would spill eggnog down the heat register and the oldest girl would sob inconsolably after discovering the batteries for her remote-control Barbie Dream Car are not included and all the stores are closed.

But it won’t all be one-sided; your rent-a-family also would have presents for you. These would, however, consist of a garish holiday tie featuring Garfield in an elf’s hat and a pair of slippers shaped like the head of an antelope – pretty much what your “real” family would have purchased, if you had one.

By the time your rent-a-family leaves, sometime after 1 p.m., you’ll be happy to spend the rest of the day on your own, eating Chinese food and catching a flick.

Of course, as good as this idea is, maybe I’m coming at it from the wrong angle. So, if there are any single moms with a lot of kids out there who need a husband Christmas morning, I’m available. One-hundred bucks gets me sitting around the tree for two hours pretending I like the Garfield tie; for $150 I’ll even make the coffee.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Filling up these days is not a gas gas gas

I just had a birthday, so I feel comfortable slipping into “old codger” mode for a bit. Old codgers, as you are no doubt aware, spend a great deal of time complaining about how much better life was in the “good old days.”

Sugar was sweeter, skies were bluer, grass was greener … blah, blah, blah. It’s one reason old codgers frequently wind up in nursing homes; nobody not on the payroll is going to listen to them babble on like this. Sure, other old codgers might seem to be listening, but what they’re really thinking about is whether cream corn is on the menu again tonight.

At any rate, I’m going to risk commitment to the nursing home and do a little codger-ing myself this week.

When I was a kid (which is how all old codger proclamations begin) gas stations (which were called “service stations” because they actually provided service) were totally different than they are today. You pulled in and at least two guys in coveralls would descend upon your car; one to pump the gas, the other to check your oil, water, tire pressure and the fitness of your car’s various belts, hoses and wires. If something needed fixing (and, admittedly, sometimes even if it didn’t) the mechanic (they weren’t called “service technicians” back then) would fix it for you.

The customer would remain in his or her car, warm, dry and listening to “Moon River” on the AM radio.

It was a good system and the station with the best service usually got the most customers.

I was thinking about this the other day when I went to gas up my gun-boat (an old Mercury the size of a tennis court and the quintessential codger-mobile) at a gas station in Saugatuck. I won't say which brand of gas it was, but it rhymes with "swell", "smell", and not coincidentally, I think, "hell."

Rain was pelting when I pulled up to the pump; that sleeting, soggy, late-November precipitation that so plagues Michigan this time of year. No attendants came running out to fill my tank, but since that hasn’t happened in years, I wasn’t really expecting any.

I stepped out into the downpour, lifted the frigid nozzle from the pump and stuck it in the appropriate receptacle. I pushed the “regular” button. I squeezed the handle. Nothing happened. I pushed the button again. Still nothing.

A disembodied voice blared from an overhead speaker: “Pump nine is prepay only!”

I looked up into the pouring rain. “What?” I said.

“Pump nine is prepay only!” the voice repeated, somehow managing to sound bored and condescending at the same time.

I replaced the nozzle and trudged the 20 yards to the station’s entrance. I waited in line while the three people in front of me decided which lottery tickets and cigarette brands they wanted. Finally, it was my turn.

“I need to fill it up,” I said. “But I don’t know how much it will be. How can I prepay?”

The kid at the counter, who had obviously heard the question before, explained that I could leave a whole bunch of money, then trudge through the rain a second time to get whatever change I might have coming. I left $60, walked back into the stinging sleet, and stuck the nozzle in the tank.

This time gas came out, but sloooooowly. Why, I wondered, would they set their pumps so the gas flowed so slowly?

The answer came two seconds later, when a small box bolted to the pump began blaring out advertisements for the fabulous specials on Ho-Ho’s, Ding-Dongs and Twinkies being offered inside. The sound quality from the tiny speaker was terrible, but very loud.

For several minutes I stood in the rain, getting wetter, madder, and old codger-ier. As soon as I figured I had enough gas to get me home I gave up, though the tank was far from full. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Calling upon the patience of Job and the pacifism of Gandhi, I managed to resist pumping an extra gallon or so into the small speaker box, which was now shouting at me about how important my “shopping experience” was to the station’s management.

I’m thinking of staging an Old Codger’s Rebellion and wresting control of American business from the young and putting it back in the hands of geezers, where it belongs. I wonder if the AARP would give me funding.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

There’s something about a free T-shirt that makes people crazy

It has been years since my last monster truck rally; a dozen, maybe. I care about monster trucks almost as much as I care about who wins this season’s American Idol, which is to say, not at all. But my sons Jordan and James both loved ‘em, James especially. So once or twice a year we’d go.

Monster truck rallies, for those of you unfamiliar with pork rinds or chewing tobacco, feature large, heavily modified pickup trucks rumbling over smaller, less testosterone-infused vehicles. They’re loud, smelly, crowded affairs, and a lot more fun than I’m making them sound here.

Monster truck rallies are, for the most part, a “guy thing.” There’s a lot of shouting, jostling and other rude behavior that most guys keep under wraps when their wives are watching. Occasionally, there’s even a fight or two. Just guys—drunk, redneck guys for the most part—doing what guys do.

Now, I consider myself to be an urbane, sophisticated man about town, so I try to avoid inebriated hand-to-hand combat with guys named Bubba as often as possible. But sometimes, a situation arises that so threatens the very fabric of civilization that I just have to make a stand.

Such was the case when I fought over the T-shirt.

The T-shirt was shot in my general direction from a T-shirt-shooting cannon while crews were busy dragging a recently-capsized Ford F250 out of the arena. They do stuff like that at monster truck rallies to fill in the few quiet moments between Yugo crushings.

The T-shirt tried to sail over my head and into the bleachers behind me, but at the last second I leapt up and snagged it. No right fielder making the winning World Series catch ever felt more satisfaction than I did as I pulled that shirt out of the air.

But as I did, the guy sitting directly behind me tried to grab it out of my hand! I turned around, thinking he might be kidding. I had caught the shirt, fair and square, after all.

He was a big guy, hairy beer belly protruding impressively over his belt and from under his wife-beater T-shirt. And he wasn’t kidding; he intended to steal my T-shirt with a stadium full of monster truck fans watching the misdemeanor unfold in real time on the Jumbo-tron screen.

Now, I cared no more about that T-shirt than I did about monster trucks or American Idol, but there was a principle at stake here! I refused to let go. I pulled. He pulled. We pulled.

It soon became apparent he wasn’t strong enough to pull the shirt out of my vise-like grip. Sadly, I wasn’t able to pull it out of his. So we sat there, the two of us, hanging onto our corners of the T-shirt. For 90 minutes. Every so often, one of us would give the thing a half-hearted tug, like a dog wrestling for a rope he’s grown tired of.

Neither of us said a word, we just hung onto the shirt as monster trucks continued to do their thing in the arena below.

Eventually, the last truck rumbled out the door. The guys hawking cotton candy and $4 bottles of water called it a day. And still the big guy and I maintained our stubborn grips.

I realized one of us was going to have to give it up. Either that or we’d wind up spending eternity together, joined at the shirt. I decided I could probably do better by way of a life partner, so I let go my end. Bubba shambled away in triumph, the horribly mangled T-shirt dangling from his fur-knuckled hand.

There’s a moral here somewhere, but being the kind of guy who enjoys monster truck rallies, I have no idea what it is.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

There’s actually some comfort in hearing that final coffin nail hammered home

Earlier this year my wife left me. Then I lost my house. Last week, I finally hit the Trifecta of bad luck – I was fired from my job.

It wasn’t my fault, or the fault of the newspaper I was working for. The economy stinks, and they simply couldn’t afford me anymore.

Management was exceedingly nice about it; I should point out, and did everything they could to make the whole affair a little less devastating. It’s a great company; the best I’ve worked for, and I have nothing but good things to say about the folks there.

I’ll miss ‘em.

But I’m still unemployed. And, as many of you already know from sad experience, this is not a good time to find oneself without gainful employment.

So, the wife, the house, the job … if I knew three chords I’d write a country-western song. Seriously, I’m starting to feel like a character from a Steinbeck novel here!

If it weren’t for the fact I now have nothing left to lose, I’d be bummed out. But, other than my health (knock on wood) everything I thought important a year ago is long gone.

It may be that I’m still in a state of shock, but the whole thing is actually a little liberating. I have nothing left that can be taken from me. I can’t help but wonder; at some point did Job finally throw up his hands and laugh at his situation? The Bible doesn’t report this event, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

I mean, there’s only so much that can happen to one person in a short amount of time before it becomes impossible to miss the flat-out irony of it all.

So I’m not going to panic or pout. I’m going to file my unemployment claim, dust off the resume, get a good haircut, polish my shoes, pray, and start looking for work. Eventually (the unemployed bum says with crossed fingers) I’ll find something.

And when I’m not hunting for a new gig, I’ll do what everybody I know has been telling me to do for years: work on The Book. “Starving artist” sounds so much better than “unemployed bum,” don’t you think?

I’m not sure yet what the book is going to be about, but trust me, it will be fabulous! So much so, in fact, that you’re not only going to want to buy a copy for yourself, but several additional copies for friends and relatives.

Why? Because “successful author” sounds even better than “starving artist,” that’s why.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.