I’m trying real hard not to hate my son

Before I get started this week, let me just say I love my son. I love him, well, like a son. He was a good kid from Day One, and has grown into a good man, the kind of man a father can be proud of.

That said, I sometimes want to throttle the little twerp--not because of anything bad he does; he’s an adult now and whatever mischief he gets up to these days I’m no longer privy to, which suits me fine.

So why the desire to throttle? I guess there’s no way to soften this one. I’m jealous. It’s as simple as that.

He’s living the life I always dreamed of, but never achieved. Yeah, I know, I know, we’re all supposed to want the best for our kids. And I do, I do. Really. But sometimes, when I’m sitting around in my tatty bathrobe, lunching on Ramen noodles and Fresca, I can’t help but envy his life.

Jordan’s a rep for one of the (formerly) Big Three car companies. As such, he travels all over the country to cities like Miami, Dallas, San Francisco, New York and Boston. He spends his days discussing the merits of the F150 versus the Camry, and being paid well to do so.

In the evenings, he hangs out in expensive hotel bars with beautiful car show models, many of whom he’s dating on a regular, though generally casual, basis. He’s a good-looking, somewhat shy, kid who wears expensive suits and shiny shoes. Girls like him.

It helps that he’s the type of guy who doesn’t seem to know he’s good-looking and doesn’t seem to care that he’s wearing expensive suits or shiny shoes.

He calls, e-mails or texts me at least twice a week, which is nice. He also sends me photos of the places he’s visiting and the people he’s hanging with, which is not so nice. Why? Because they’re far better places and far better people than those that populate my miserable little life.

My friends are all middle-aged, soft-around-the-center geezers, like me. When we get together, we sit around, gripe about the state of this country’s health care system, and wonder where all the good jobs have gone. We drink cheap, domestic beer and dress in clothes from Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, my son is hobnobbing with gorgeous blondes, the sort who land bit parts in toothpaste commercials. His last girlfriend was an actress who appeared in a few horror films, usually as the coed who runs screaming through the sprinkler system wearing flimsy negligee before being hacked to pieces by a chainsaw-wielding maniac. Not exactly Meryl Streep, but still…an actress, man!

The closest I ever came was dating Sally Hoffmeir, who played Anna in our high school’s production of “The King and I.” Sally was cute, and went on to teach third grade. A noble career, but less glamorous than running through sprinklers with the cameras rolling and a chainsaw loony in hot pursuit.

Oh, I know I shouldn’t complain. I have a good life. My friends may be for the most part old and ugly, but if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that’s the main reason we fit so well together. Birds of a feather and all that. And although The Lovely Mrs. Taylor will never star in a slasher flick, she’s pretty enough to, and she remains a far better woman than a schmuck like me deserves.

So I suppose I’ll just try to be happy for my boy, even when he sends me photos of his band of merry makers frolicking on a Key Largo beach while I’m shoveling a foot of snow off the driveway.

It won’t be easy, but being a parent never is.


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

Calvin Klein, Manolo Blahnik, Mike Taylor; great names in fashion

I don’t want to be the one to say women are crazy. I like women, I really do. They look better, smell better and even (with the possible exceptions of James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman) sound better than men do.

They don’t come by these traits naturally; women must work at setting themselves apart from men. They do this by wearing uncomfortable clothes, makeup, perfume, painful shoes, constrictive undergarments … women suffer for their beauty.

And if Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek has his way, that suffering is about to expand exponentially.

Klarenbeek recently announced he has developed a new type of jewelry to add to the rings, necklaces, pins, studs, earrings, hoops and piercings women already employ.

Now, guys, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, great, another piece of useless, overpriced junk I’ll be expected to buy come Valentine’s Day.” Not to worry; I’m guessing most women, even those really bent on improving their appearance, will not be in a hurry to adopt this one.

What is it? Designer contact lenses with tiny crystals attached via wires! Yep, you read that right; the contacts have little bits of shiny glass hanging from them. The glass is attached by wires, directly to the contact lenses.

The idea is to give the appearance of tears streaming down the wearer’s face. Now, I’m guessing if I put contacts with wires attached to them into my eyes, generating the appearance of tears will be the least of my worries.

And I’m not even sure why a woman would want to look as if she’s been crying. Still, women are mysterious creatures and if this is the wave of the future I’m willing to go with it.

To that end, I’ve developed a line of accessories to wear with Klarenbeek’s contact lenses that will further accentuate the overall “look.”

First up are my nasal electro-plugs. These are two little metal buttons, each containing a battery, that are stuffed up the nostrils. When the wearer sniffs in hard, the plugs generate a brief electrical shock, causing the wearer’s nose to run. This heightens the illusion of crying.

I’ve also developed eye drops that cause the delicate tissue surrounding the eyes to puff up and turn a bright shade of red, assuming the wired contacts don’t already do this to the wearer’s satisfaction. (The drops are basically just a 50/50 solution of bug repellant and ammonia. I’m working on getting the patent.)

Finally, and still under development is my coup de gras, the “head spike” – a six-inch railroad spike that is pounded into the wearer’s forehead, giving the appearance of serious cranial injury. There are still a few bugs in this one and I’m awaiting FDA approval, but I’m hoping to see it on department store shelves by Christmas, 2009.

The starting price on Klarenbeek’s wired contact lenses is about $325. All my accessories will be available for less than fifty bucks. Except for the head spike. The gold-plated version will run about $100 and the less expensive, though still attractive, chrome model comes in at $75.50. A bargain in anybody’s book.

I don’t claim to understand fashion or women, but that doesn’t mean I can’t profit from them.

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

Full of sound and fury, signifying the lack of a good night’s sleep

After 15 years of marriage, The Lovely Mrs. Taylor has suddenly noticed I snore. Or rather, she says I snore. I don’t exactly believe she’s lying, but as I’ve never heard the snoring myself, I can’t verify the veracity of her claim.

If I do snore, I’m certain it is, like me, quiet, dignified and possessed of a certain poetic, rhythmic beauty. Forget that Mrs. Taylor describes my nocturnal auditory emissions as “a rogue elephant trampling a phalanx of inebriated tuba players.”

She’s just being mean, and maybe getting back at me for the times I’ve mentioned her snoring in this column.

The difference is her snoring does not bother me. I actually find the gentle susurration of her nighttime breathing to be somewhat soothing. (And by “gentle susurration” I mean like the chainsaw solo in that Jackal song.)

Yeah, it’s loud. But like I said, it really doesn’t keep me awake. I grew up in the city, sleeping through a cacophony of ambulances, fire trucks, bar patrons stumbling home at 2 a.m. and the steady, unending red-light-green-light cadence of traffic. I actually welcome the racket.

Mrs. T, conversely, is a country mouse, the noise of which, by the way, she can hear a mile away. She can perceive the beating wings of a butterfly across an open field, the echo of the moon traversing its eternal east-west passage across the night sky.

She was raised in a silent countryside and if she could, she would sleep in a padded, soundproof vault deep within the bowels of an abandoned nuclear missile silo.

She hates noise. And the noise she hates most—more than Sam I Am hated green eggs and ham—is the noise of my snoring.

So last week Mrs. T brought home a little bottle of anti-snore spray. It’s cleverly packaged to look like a fire hydrant, to “put out” the noise of my snoring, get it?

I’m wary of taking any over-the-counter medication, especially something I don’t really, really need. But I love The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I don’t want her to start sleeping in the guest room, so I gave the stuff a try.

All it takes is a couple quick “puffs” shot into the back of the throat before turning in for the night. According to the package, the spray has about 65,000 ingredients, but it tastes pretty much like water, so what the heck.

The package also claims it’s not habit forming (which is the same thing Big Tobacco said about cigarettes until the Surgeon General made them stop lying).

At any rate, the stuff for the most part works, according to Mrs. T. What snoring I still generate is minor, compared to my former output, she says.

Now if only we could do something about the noises emanating from our weekly Chili Night, we’d be all set.


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

Disappointment can be a wonderful thing when it comes to house shopping

I love my house. It’s small, drafty, older than Madonna’s lingerie collection, and in need of both minor and major repair throughout. It was built about 100 years ago by the first doctor to establish a practice in rural Lakeview, the Mayberry-esque community I live in.

Doc Marston did a lot of the construction work himself, or so say the old timers down at McKenna’s Pub. Everything was custom built; windows, doors, archways. So it’s impossible to get new storm windows without having them made to order. That’s why it’s drafty.

Despite the problems, I love the place. It has “character,” a polite word realtors use to describe a home like mine. That’s also the word overly kind teachers use when talking to parents about their kid, the one the teacher suspects will grow up to be featured prominently on the FBI’s most wanted list.

In other words, it’s not always a good thing.

But I live here and I have no intention of moving until The Lovely Mrs. Taylor finally forces me to toddle off with her to Florida, where I will no doubt end my days playing golf, wearing plaid Bermuda shorts and keeping an eye out for ‘gators.

That’s the plan, anyway.

That plan almost changed last summer, however, when a house near ours went up for auction. It wasn’t just any house, but the house I have been dreaming of since reaching the age of reason (in my case, late last August).

The auction house listed it as an “executive home,” realtor-speak for “You need an ‘executive income’ to consider buying this one.” This house, however, had been sitting vacant for years. The bank wanted to unload it and now.

We saw the house frequently, as it’s on our regular evening bike route. We loved the huge lot, the sheer size of the place, the gargantuan indoor swimming pool, fireplaces, rec room, sunken living room, slate flooring … I could go on, but you get the idea.

We did a walkthrough. It needed work; that was obvious. It had, after all, been setting empty for years. Ceilings were cracked; bees had set up shop under the eaves; a beautiful house for all that, but definitely in need of some TLC.

My father-in-law, Big John, who knows a thing or two about contracting, gave it the once-over, shaking his head the entire time. Apparently, there was a lot of stuff going on Mrs. T and I didn’t notice; serious stuff that needed serious work and would cost serious money.

In the end, we decided to not bid on the house. The guy who did got it for a song, about fifty grand. Word around town is he’s sunk over $100,000 into repairs so far and is still hemorrhaging cash like crazy.

The roof had to be completely replaced, as did most of the support beams. While the contractors were doing that, the fireplace fell into the living room. The pool plumbing was mysteriously absent. The pipes in the crawlspace were rotted and everything was (yuck alert!) flushing into the basement. Workers have been pounding away out there for months now and the place still isn’t habitable.

Somehow, I’ve managed to get over my disappointment at not landing my dream house. I consider it a bullet dodged.

And I’ve re-learned to love my own diminutive, drafty domicile. After all, it has character.


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

It’s tough getting through the Christmas eating season

Christmas is over and 2009 is just hours away. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad. Glad, glad, glad. Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays, but they’re killing me.

One Christmas I could handle, but this year—by the time you read this—I’ll have had five. I blame my big, fat, Catholic family. There are just too many of us.

My first Christmas—the only one that’s totally stress-free—comes Christmas Day. The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I wake up late (we can do this now that the kids are grown and out of the house). Mrs. T bakes cinnamon rolls while I drink coffee. We eat the cinnamon rolls and open our presents while “A Christmas Story” plays silently on the television and the gas fireplace pretends to warm the living room.

Later, we go out for Chinese.

That’s it. Simple. Peaceful. Perfect.

The next day, the kids and grandkids come by for our annual Mexican Christmas. We’re not Mexican, but by this time the kids—who have spent the previous two days with various in-laws and step-parents eating turkey and ham—are ready for something different.

The house fills with the sublime chaos of overexcited children hopped up on a potent mix of candy canes, cookies and Mrs. Taylor’s homemade fudge. Something usually gets broken, but who cares?

Tacos are eaten, presents are opened, batteries are installed, Legos are chewed into unrecognizable lumps by the dog, and a good time is had by all.

By the time everyone leaves, I am exhausted, stuffed with refried beans, and happy.

The next day, we gather at my in-law’s home for The Lovely Mrs. Taylor’s family’s family Christmas. My mother-in-law is a magnificent cook, and we all enjoy a “traditional” Christmas feast, usually to shameful excess.

Presents are again exchanged and opened. More food is eaten. Mrs. Taylor packs up a few leftovers for consumption in front of the television later that evening and we somehow manage to waddle out the door and squeeze into the car for the drive home.

The next day, we again go to the in-law’s house, this time for Christmas with the members of the family who come in from out of town and couldn’t be there the day before. We eat. We open more presents. We eat again.

Mrs. Taylor operates the fork lift now required to move me from the sofa to the car and back home again.

The next day, I visit my folks’ to exchange presents with them. They insist on feeding me because I’m “looking a little thin.”

I am not looking thin, nor have I looked anything like thin since the early 1980s, but telling them this does no good.

The next day is New Year’s Eve. Looking for all the world like a manatee with a thyroid condition, I don my black suit and accompany Mrs. Taylor to a New Year’s Eve party where—you guessed it—we eat.

The sound of bells ringing in the New Year is obscured by the squeal of my belt stretching beyond the manufacturer’s recommended tolerances.

I’ll be stopping by the gym Monday to renew my membership. I have 51 weeks until next Christmas’ eating season begins again. By then, if I work real hard, I should just about be back to my weight of seven days ago.


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

Do you have a shirt that makes you feel groovy?

“Do you have a shirt that you really love /One that you feel so groovy in?

“You don't even mind if it starts to fade / That only makes it nicer still.

“I love my shirt, I love my shirt / My shirt is so comfortably lovely.”


The folk singer Donovan penned those lyrics back in the late ‘60s, but the sentiment expressed therein rings as true today as it did nearly four decades ago. Does to me, anyway, in large part because I do have a shirt that I really love, one that’s almost as old as Donovan’s homage to casual menswear.

I purchased it the summer of 1976 at a Detroit Goodwill store, three days after our nation celebrated its bicentennial. It’s cut like a Hawaiian shirt, made of 100 percent cotton, and it’s yellow.

When I first bought the shirt, it was waaaaay too big for me; I employed it as a sort of quasi-jacket, usually over a T-shirt. Over the years, the shirt has shrunk considerably, because these days it fits just fine.

A few buttons have fallen off here and there; I’ve replaced them with new ones that more or less match the originals. The bright yellow color has faded—after an estimated 2,080 washes—to a watery sunflower.

But as Donovan said, that only makes it nicer still.

I wore the shirt a lot back when The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I were dating; to the movies, at picnics and barbecues, even the family pool party. Mrs. T (who back then was still known in some circles as “Julie”) never expressed an opinion about the shirt one way or the other. I assumed that, like me, she really loved it.

Then we got married.

All of a sudden I started hearing comments like, “You’re not going to wear that, are you?” or “Yellow is not your color!” or “Can I cut this up for rags?”

Every time my favorite shirt went into the laundry hamper, I had to remain vigilant until it was returned to the closet. On more than one occasion, I discovered it folded away with the old clothes marked for Mrs. Taylor’s spring yard sale.

“Oh,” she would say, the picture of dewy-eyed innocence, “do you still want that old thing?”

“Yes,” I would say. “I want to be buried in that old thing.”

“It looks like somebody already was.”

And so the shirt war rages. Mrs. T devises ways to dispose of the shirt, I heroically rescue it. She’s Snidely Whiplash, I’m Dudley Do-Right, and my poor shirt is cast as Sweet Nell. If she could, Mrs. T would tie my shirt to the train tracks and wait for the 10:15 express.

In fact, it recently came back from the laundry room looking exactly as if that had happened. On the right side near the bottom hem, about a dozen little holes have appeared. How they got there, Mrs. T says, is a mystery. They look like the work of her father’s shotgun to me. I didn’t even know Mrs. T could shoot.

But if she thinks a few little pellet holes are going to keep me from wearing my favorite shirt, she’s nuts.

The big New Year’s Eve party is coming, and I have my outfit all picked out.



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

That’s right; I’m teaching the dog to cook

I’ve mentioned my new dog a couple times in recent months and know I’m probably pushing my luck with those readers who hate cutesy “animal stories.” But I feel I must post one final canine update here before abandoning the subject entirely.

And I have to do it now because Prince* has recently demonstrated some behaviors that are so unusual, so un-doglike, that it’s only a matter of time before he becomes more famous than Elvis and stops granting interviews to small-fry writers like me.

I knew the day Prince first arrived at our home that he was smarter than the average hound. He knew all his basic commands—sit, heel, come, speak and so on. Also, he picked up new instruction almost as fast as I could give it. Provided there was a treat involved.

More impressive, Prince demonstrated a spirit of adventure, dragging me via leash throughout the neighborhood as he marked each tree, bush and fire plug for future reference. If he possessed opposable thumbs, I’m sure he would have been drawing up topographical maps to aid those canines that might one day follow in his footsteps.

Also, he early on showed an aptitude for science, and not just the theoretical kind. Using techniques he developed himself, Prince is able to produce copious amounts of methane gas, usually in the evening while the rest of the family is trying to watch television.

Though he has yet to find a commercial use for this abundant fuel supply, I’m certain it’s only a matter of time.

Finally, and most remarkably, Price has taken an interest in cooking! It’s true.

At first, he showed only a passing curiosity. If I was in the kitchen fixing dinner or making a grilled cheese sandwich, he might wander by, look in and sniff, then move on. But as the weeks passed, he became increasingly fixated on the goings on in the kitchen.

Lately it’s reached to the point that every time I walk toward the kitchen, Prince excitedly falls in beside me. Once there, he stands in the doorway, watching enthralled as I slice turkey, peel potatoes or dice onions. He seems entirely fascinated by each movement I make.

Occasionally, I’ll toss him a small fragment of whatever I’m cooking, but this doesn’t really interest him. He just gobbles up the proffered tidbit as fast as he can, usually without bothering to chew, then resumes his vigilant monitoring. His concentration is laser-like in its intensity.

I don’t know what good can come of Prince’s education in the culinary arts. Despite his obvious love for cooking, the same lack of opposable thumbs that hinders his map-making is sure to hurt him here.

Still, if he’s this dedicated to the idea, maybe I should just leave a couple pounds of ground chuck on the kitchen floor, along with a carton of eggs and a few vegetables... Who knows what recipes Prince might develop?

* It’s official; I’ve lost the naming war with The Lovely Mrs. Taylor. As reported previously, I loathe the name “Prince,” and have campaigned strenuously to rename the dog “Max” or “Buddy” or “Dave”—anything but Prince. Mrs. T, who campaigned not at all, likes the name Prince. Guess who won? (Hint: The dog’s name is still Prince.)



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