It’s hard to know how to feel about guitar player resurrections

Tom Webber is alive. I’m not sure how to feel about that. He was dead for nearly 30 years; now he’s not.

I suppose I should be glad. After all, back in the ‘80s, Tom was one of my best friends. A tall, skinny kid (weren’t we all back then?) with a cool, vaguely Mediterranean look, Tom was one of the best guitar players I’d ever worked with.

Plus, he was a genuinely nice guy.

I no longer remember the name of the band; just another four-piece combo cranking out “hair band” covers at west side dives. It was a decent group, though, thanks mostly to Tom’s impressive playing.

We were good friends, but I done him wrong. We were young, we were musicians, so of course it was over a woman.

She was beautiful, a willowy horse trainer named Denny. Denny showed up one Saturday night at the club. Flowing, honey-blonde hair, intelligent blue eyes, a smile that could break hearts at 200 yards; Denny was pretty much the whole package. She even drove a cool car; a Camaro, if memory serves.

It took about 10 minutes for Tom to fall hopelessly in love. Being somewhat more mature and just a little cooler than Tom, it took me 11.

For the next couple weeks, we both vied for Denny’s attention. Tom hovered over her like a lion over a freshly-killed gazelle; he bought her roses, cocktails and even performed this little trick he had, the one where he drank some sort of flaming shot without setting his considerable mustache ablaze. Even I had to admit it was impressive.

I, meanwhile, mostly admired Denny from afar. Yet in the end, she chose me, a decision she later came to regret.

Tom’s heart was broken, but he took it like a man. We kept working together, despite the fact it must have bothered him greatly to see Denny and me off in a dark corner during band breaks, making googley-eyes at each other.

A few months later, I broke Denny’s heart when I threw her over for a girl named Laurie, a decision I’VE regretted ever since. But we were young, stupid, selfish and completely full of ourselves. Which, I suppose, is the definition of young. (If you’re reading this, Denny, I hope you find some solace in the fact that, four years later, Laurie threw ME over for some zit-faced guy who serviced electronic dart machines. Karma’s a drag.)

At any rate, Tom carried a torch for Denny for a long time. The band eventually broke up, as bands do; Tom and I went our separate ways.

Three years later I learned Tom had died. He’d moved back to his hometown of Chicago and contracted some sort of exotic illness for which there was no known cure.

I don’t remember who told me this, but whoever it was, I believed him.

I felt terrible. I was going through girls back then like Rosie O’Donnel goes through a box of donuts. Tom, unlike me, was a sensitive kinda guy who really, REALLY, liked Denny. I’m sure he would have treated her far better than I did, and they could have had at least a few happy years together before Tom succumbed to his exotic disease.

In fact, had I not stolen Denny from him (which is how I was now thinking of it) Tom might never have contracted the disease to begin with and might still be alive and living happily ever after with the woman of his dreams.

I had killed Tom.

That was nearly 30 years ago and I’ve felt deeply guilty about it every day since.

Then last night I was talking to a drummer at the club where my current band is playing. We were discussing great guitar players we have known over the years. Tom’s name naturally came up.

“I really miss him,” I said. “He was a good guy.”

“You should call him,” said the drummer. “I think he’s back in town.”

“Tom’s dead,” I said.

“What? No, he’s been touring with Eddie VanHalen,” said the drummer. “He’s been VanHalen’s guitar tech for years.”

I know better than to trust a drummer, so I checked it out online this morning. Tom, it turns out, is very much alive and living a fabulous life I can barely imagine. Rock stars, gorgeous groupies, room service at four-star hotels, jamming with Eddie VanHalen … Tom’s living the rock & roll dream.

So. Thirty years of guilt. For nothing.

I may have gotten Denny, but in the end and without even knowing it, Tom got his revenge.

Have I mentioned how I feel about Karma?

Buy my book!  Just click on the link over there on the left side of the screen.  You'll be glad you did or no money back!  mtaylor@staffordmediasolutions.com (616) 548-8273

C’mon, Mike, don’t fear the Reader…

You are SUCH a chicken, Mike Taylor; a coward; a complete and total wimp! You are pathetic! What are you, a man or a mouse?

(Squeak.)

Nope, it’s not working.  I was hoping that by berating myself I could work up some nerve, in much the same way as did the Cowardly Lion as he approached the throne of The Great and Powerful Oz.

I’ve mentioned before how terrified I am of making public appearances, right?  I know I have. Yet, for reasons I can’t fully explain (greed), I have a book signing coming up Saturday, Oct. 27.  It’s at Robbins Book List in Greenville, just for a couple hours beginning at 1 p.m.

Sounds easy, right?  I mean, I already know how to sit; I know how to sign my name; I know how to smile and say thank you.  One would think this gig had a zero learning curve.

So why am I suddenly beginning to smell like poultry?

Well, first off, there’s the very real possibility nobody will show up.  Maybe, just maybe, I’m not as wonderful as I think I am, nor as universally loved.  

I base this possibility on the fact nobody showed up for my 50th birthday party except my then-wife and kids.  Despite my having mailed out a dozen invites a week earlier, it was just the four of us.  At that party there was tequila and a live band, so whatever embarrassment I felt at being stood up was soon assuaged through the liberal application of Cuervo and classic rock.  

As I understand it, there will be no tequila at the book signing; no live band.  If nobody shows up, I will have to face the humiliation without, um, distilled assistance or rock & roll.

Then again, maybe people WILL show up, people who read my column or have already read my book.  They will expect me to be funny, clever, articulate; all things I can easily fake in print but never seem able to pull off in real life.

I’ll stutter, I’ll mumble, I’ll blurt inappropriate things I will deeply regret later on.  I’ll make a fool of myself.

Regardless of whether anyone actually shows up, I’m doomed.

This is all made so much worse by Helen Simonson. Simonson’s book, “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand,” was chosen as this year’s One Book One County selection for Montcalm County. Everyone who’s read it says it’s a great novel.

That’s fine.  What’s NOT fine is Simonson herself.  She was in town last night to speak to an audience of about 400 readers (myself included) and she was brilliant.  She was articulate, interesting, entertaining … everything one expects an author to be at a book signing.

I sat in the front row, enthralled — like the rest of those gathered at the high school — with her clever stories, witty observations and wry sagacity.  Her book was a best seller and she’s done a lot of these appearances; she made it look easy.

And maybe for her, it was.  If so, that serves only to make me feel even worse about my own pathetic lack of social graces.

Sure, part of Simonson’s charm came from her British accent. “Put your hand up! This is a robbery!” sounds altogether charming when you say it with an English accent. An English accent is the polar opposite of a German accent, where even a statement such as, “I love you, darling,” tends to sound like wine glasses being cruelly crushed between two large, wet stones.  I’m fairly certain German is the language Klingons revert to when they want to sound scarier than they do in their native tongue.

Anyway, her accent was part of her charm, but not all of it.  She was collected, cool and in complete control.

I hate her.

No, that’s not true.  I thought she was great.  I just hope folks who attended her signing don’t show up at mine.  I can’t follow an act like that.

Sweet Annie has agreed to accompany me to the signing to offer moral support, but I suspect she plans to wear dark glasses and a fake Groucho mustache.  No need for us both to go down in flames, I guess.

Dallas Ford Lincoln, a fellow author, friend, and man with the names of two car companies in his monicker, also will be there signing his latest book. So if nobody shows, at least I’ll have another writer there with me suffering a similar fate.  I don’t know if misery loves company, but I do.

Ah, if I only had da noive.

BUY MY BOOK, YA CHEAPSKATE!  Available in eBook format at Amazon.com and in paperback at Robbins Book List and Greenville and online by clicking the links over on the left, there.  mtaylor@staffordmediasolutions.com (616) 548-8273

Television is to blame for the way I smell

To my co-workers who sit near me at the office, my sincerest apologies. I know, I’m starting to smell … well … bad.

It’s not my fault. I’m bathing regularly. My teeth are brushed, may hair is washed (and combed to perfection, if false modesty, for a moment, may be set aside).

Yet I stink.

It’s not my fault, but the fault of the laundry where until a couple weeks ago, I washed my clothes. It’s a nice enough laundry; most of the machines work, the dryers are hot, the attendant keeps things clean.

The problem is the televisions. There are two of them, and they are ALWAYS tuned to the most vile garbage imaginable; the most vile garbage I can imagine anyway. Maybe you can imagine worse, but I doubt it.

Before I go on, let me state emphatically that I am NOT one of those literary elitists who watch only PBS while nibbling Brie and sipping Chateau Lafleur from a crystal goblet. In fact, I had to Google “expensive wines” to obtain that Chateau Lafleur reference; I drink the stuff that comes in a box.

I enjoy the Three Stooges (at least the episodes with Curly), the “Planet of the Apes” movies, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Sure, I’ll occasionally watch “Masterpiece Theatre” or listen to “World News Tonight,” but mostly because I dig the British accents.

So what does all this have to do with the way I smell? I just can’t go back in that laundry, that’s what. I can’t. I can’t bear to fold sheets and socks for 45 minutes while some TV judge tries to shout down the two morons in his (or her) courtroom; while a TV host with hair even more perfect than my own gives his (or her) second-grade-level opinions on what’s wrong (or right) with teenage motherhood while a studio audience of what can only be described as the Stupidest People on Planet Earth shout and moan their collective approval or dissent.

I have only a handful of working brain cells left and they are being rapidly depleted by talk shows covering topics like “Lesbian space aliens who have been kidnapped by Amish farmers and forced to do the work of plough horses!!!” or “When weight loss turns deadly! Why the California Banana Cream Pie diet may kill you!!!”

Enquiring minds may want to know, but mine does not.

My wardrobe is beginning to show evidence of this fact; my socks in particular. They used to be white, but no longer. My pants all have bicycle chain grease on the inside right cuff. The pits of most of my office shirts carry an odor that can only be described as tragically reminiscent of my ninth grade gym locker.

I suppose I could bag up all my filthy clothes and drag them along some weekend when I go to visit Sweet Annie. She has her own laundry facilities and would be more than happy to share. But we see each other too seldom and when together, prefer to do fun stuff rather than ironing.

As a last resort, I could take my laundry in later in the evening, after the cultural and moral wasteland that is daytime TV has ended for the day, but who wants to spend Saturday night watching a spin cycle?

So for now, at least, I’ll continue to smell funky. I figure, eventually the stench will grow bad enough that when I enter the laundry, everyone else will leave. At this point, I’ll be free to change the channel to PBS. Or maybe find a “classic” channel airing the Three Stooges.

Mike Taylor’s paperback book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is now available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in eBook format from Amazon.com. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Sometimes there’s just more bad news than good

Picture courtesy of "Scoop"

I’ve always hated those “good new - bad news” jokes. You know the sort:

Doctor: I’ve got some good news and some bad news about your tests.

Patient: What’s the good news?

Doctor: The good news is the tests showed you have only 24 hours to live.

Patient: That’s GOOD news? What’s the bad news?

Doctor: I forgot to call you with the test results yesterday.

Now that I think about it, that one’s kind of funny. What’s not funny is the “good news - bad news” news I heard the other day. The good news is, scientists may have discovered a secret to drastically increase the male lifespan.

This news comes from Korean researchers, who spent years studying the genealogical records of members of the Imperial Court of the Korean Chosun Dynasty. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is, the members of the Chosun Dynasty who lived longer were eunuchs, men who had been, well, altered in order to allow them to keep an eye on the temple virgins or whatever without facing the temptation an “un-altered” man might face. Others in the study had simply been the victims of “disfiguring accidents.” You guessed it; they had lost a part of the anatomy most men, if given the choice, would opt to keep.

According to Kyung-Jim Min, a researcher at Inha University, this evidence helps explain why women typically live longer than men. Apparently, male hormones — the sort that are lost along with, ahem, other things in certain surgeries or accidents — are responsible for cutting years off the lives of most men. (And yes, I’m aware of the grim pun contained in that last sentence.)

Min’s study showed the eunuchs lived 14 to 19 years longer than other men of the time, many making it to 100 or older in many cases. In fact, the incidence of centenarian eunuchs was about 130 times greater than it is in “normal” men, even those from modern, developed countries.

This gives rise to a question: Considering the already-increased present-day lifespan, could the addition of this, how should I put it? — lifestyle change — result in 130th birthdays for some guys? Maybe, but I’ll bet these guys would not be smiling at their birthday parties.

I don’t mean to imply manhood should be defined by any single anatomical addition or subtraction, but surely this at the very least factors somewhere into the equation.

I only wish I were making this up. But nope, Min’s research was published in the respected medical journal, “Current Biology.”

Regular readers of this column (don’t laugh, there ARE a few) already know I am afraid of death. I worry that, if there is an afterlife, things may go badly for me. I have not always lived an exemplary life. So my goal is to live as long as I can, preferably forever.

My long-range plan is to stay alive long enough that science catches up and I can have my brain transplanted into an immortal, android body. I would hate to miss that event by a mere 14 to 19 years, the amount of time I could, allegedly, gain by joining the Imperial Court’s cadre of unhappy sopranos.

So. Decisions, decisions.

Maybe I’d be better off just trying to raise funding money for faster android research. I’m not getting any younger. But when it comes down to it, I guess if Min’s option is the only one available, I’m not getting any older, either.

Mike Taylor’s paperback book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is now available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in eBook format from Amazon.com.

mtaylor@staffordmediasolutions.com

(616) 548-8273

There would be no Bible had Jesus said ‘I do’

There is no way Jesus was married.

I’m no theologian (as will soon become apparent) but I know this much: Jesus was a bachelor. Lately, some folks have been debating the issue.

At a recent academic conference in Rome, Karen L. King, a church historian at Harvard Divinity School, displayed a fourth century manuscript, written in Coptic (the official language of cops, I assume), that shows the Nazarene referring to a mystery woman as “My wife,” though not as part of a “Take my wife. Please!” joke.

Skeptical scholars at the conference noted the manuscript in question was written about 350 years after the crucifixion, whereas the four Gospels were penned much nearer the events related therein. In other words, King’s manuscript is in no way an eye-witness account and should thus be taken with a grain of salt.

Also, if Jesus had been married, the scholars say, surely Matthew, Mark, Luke or John would have mentioned it somewhere.

Theologians quote yards of Scripture to back up their assertion, but there’s really no need for that. Anyone who’s been married already knows Jesus was not.

I’ve said “I do” several times myself, so, though I’m no Biblical scholar, I am something of an expert when it comes to marriage. (Getting married, I mean, not staying that way.) Anyway, take my word for it, had Jesus been married, His story would have been far different from the one history relates.

I can just picture a typical day in the life of the married Savior: The sun is shining over the Sea of Galilee; there’s a gentle breeze blowing wisps of foam from the tops of the breakers as the fishing boats prepare to leave shore. Gulls cry in the distance. It is an altogether perfect morning.

Jesus downs the last of his second cup of coffee and turns to His wife, Edna (a nice, Biblical name). Edna, dressed in a faded, blue housedress and pink bunny slippers, is washing up the breakfast dishes.

“Well, I’m off then,” Jesus says, reaching for his hat.

“Are you?” Edna says, eyebrow arching. “Off where?”

“Fishing,” Jesus says.

“Fishing? For fish? Something that’ll put a little food on the table?”

“Um … well, no, actually,” Jesus says. “Fishing for men. You know. The work of my Father and all that.”

Edna wrings her dishrag, sighs deeply, pats her work-chapped hands on her apron. “And then?” she asks, understated menace clear in her voice. “Any plans for after ‘work?’”

“Well, I thought I might drop by the Den of Iniquity Lounge and hang out with the gamblers and thieves for a while. The dregs of the Earth need my guidance most, y’know.”

“Uh-huh,” Edna says. “And will there be girls there?”

Jesus scratches under his collar. “Well … you know … prostitutes and stuff, but let he who is without sin cast the first—“

Edna pelts Him with a rather large stone. “How about you get some carpentry done instead?” she suggests.

“But dear…” Jesus says.

“You can start with the loose door on the shed,” Edna snaps, turning back to her dirty dishes. “You’ve been promising to get that taken care of for 40 days and 40 nights!”

Jesus sighs, picks up his tool box, exits, muttering under his breath the whole time. Edna pretends to not notice.

And that’s pretty much how things would have gone had Jesus been married. So, see, even without the assurance of theologians, we can assume He was not.

Mike’s paperback, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in eBook format on Amazon.com  Contact Mike at (616) 548-8273 or mtaylor325@gmail.com.