The mailman is making me feel older than I want to be

Were it not for the U.S. Postal Service, I wouldn’t mind getting old.

I was never a great beauty and I’m happily married, so I’m not overly concerned about losing my rugged good looks. I’m not thrilled with the prospect of eventually dying, but it doesn’t keep me up nights either. I’m not even resentful that my body no longer performs as it did when I was in my 20’s. In fact, considering the lousy maintenance I’ve put into it, my body’s doing better than it has any right to do.

Like I said, aging wouldn’t bother me, were it not for that blasted mail.

It started a few years ago, just before my 50th birthday. The envelope looked ordinary enough, but contained what was to be the harbinger of all the bad mail to come; an invitation to join the AARP.

AARP, for you kiddies, is the acronym for the American Association of Retired Persons. When I got the invitation, I still considered myself relatively young.

The AARP disagreed with this assessment; according to their experts, I was not even close to young. According to the AARP, I was old. (They used fluffy euphemisms like “golden years” and whatnot, but it all comes down to the same number of facial wrinkles.)

The AARP wanted me to join with millions of other geezers (by paying monthly dues) and reap the wondrous benefits of cheap prescription drugs and discounts on time shares in Florida.

I made up my mind to send an angry letter to the AARP telling them what they could do with their offer, but being old and confused, I never got around to it. I didn’t send them any dues, either, but that hasn’t stopped them from renewing their invitation every couple weeks. They know it’s only a matter of time.

A short while later, the coupons started showing up. Suddenly, inserted amongst the offers for 10 percent off razor blades and feminine hygiene products were coupons for things like hair dye. Hair dye for men.

My hair (miraculously) does not need dye. Not yet. I’m getting a little grey at the temples, but that’s about it. My hair works just fine, thanks.

And of course, there have been numerous offers for free samples of Viagra.

See above response to hair dye offer.

And Rogaine.

I have hair, it’s not too gray. Let the hair thing rest, already! You’re making me paranoid.

Then last week it happened. I knew it would. I got my first offer for a great deal on a “mobility scooter.”

How old do these people think I am? I’m 53, man! I still listen to Korn cranked to the max on the car stereo. I play tennis five days a week and ride a bicycle every day there’s not snow on the ground.

A scooter-mobile may be in my future, but not my immediate future. When (and if) I need one, I will call you. Meanwhile, leave me alone and let me enjoy what few (relatively) young years I have left!

On the other hand, I have noticed my hair seems just a little thinner, right in front there. It could be my imagination, but maybe I should hang on to those Rogaine coupons.

Just in case.


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

I may not look great now, but just wait until I die!

It was bound to happen; inevitable, really. In our appearance-obsessed culture, where it really is considered better to “look good than feel good,” how could it not?

I’m talking about – brace yourself – plastic surgery for the dead. Yup. You read that right.

I suppose in some ways this is just a natural extension of the mortician’s art. For years, undertakers have done their best to make old Aunt Hattie look “lifelike” for the wake. Makeup, hairdos and toxic chemicals have all been employed to give the dearly departed a healthy glow he or she probably never had in life.

We’ve come a long way from the days of putting a couple pennies over the eyes and calling it good. Today’s funerals are a multi-million dollar business. Not since the ancient Egyptians has a culture been so obsessed with putting a pretty face on that final ferry ride with Charon down the river Styx. (Which is actually a Greek reference, not Egyptian, I know. Just roll with me here, professor.)

Anyway, while we haven’t yet revived mummification, we are following a similar, though more modern route to the same end; namely, trying to look our best while moving from this world to the next.

Two of the services being offered by post-mortem plastic surgeons are lip plumping and breast augmentation. I know, I know, I couldn’t believe it either.

Plain Janes who somehow managed to get through decades of life looking the way God and nature intended can now enter the afterlife with Calista Flockhart lips and Dolly Parton ta-tas.

And it’s not just for the ladies. Guys, too, are opting for afterlife wrinkle reduction surgery, hair coloring and pec implants.

With regard to those implants it’s important to note – if you’re planning on cremation – they have a tendency to explode when heated. You may want to arrange to have them removed first, unless of course you want to go out with a bang.

Naturally, all this stuff costs a whole lot more than a couple pennies on the eyes, but just think how jealous all those wrinkly, thin-lipped, small-ta-ta’ed living people left behind will be!

OK, does anyone besides me think this is nuts?

When I kick the bucket, I don’t care if the Lovely Mrs. Taylor stacks me in a corner, puts a rubber cigar in my mouth, a pinwheel beanie on my head and lets the cats use me as a jungle gym. (There’s actually a chance she will do just that.)

I won’t care. For once, it won’t matter how I look. In fact, I’m rewriting my will this afternoon. I’m leaving specific instructions for the undertaker to leave my shirt untucked, my hair uncombed, and my face unshaven.

I want to spend eternity in comfort. I’m hoping Heaven has no dress code. And if Heaven’s not to be my final destination, well, how I look will be the least of my worries.


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

Gauging the end of winter by the retail outlet displays

It’s official – winter is over. This may come as a shock to those of you with a foot of dirty snow still lurking in your driveway like a rotten tooth in need of pulling. But it’s true. Winter is over.

How do I know this? I can read the signs.

Remember back in early July, when the stores put out their Back to School displays? Then came August, when the Halloween and Thanksgiving stuff went up. And who can forget September; the official start of the retail “Christmas Season?”

Well, it’s happening again, but unlike all the aforementioned rushed seasons, this time around I don’t mind.

I went grocery shopping last Sunday with The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, and – according to the store shelves – summer is not only “just around the corner,” it has arrived.

Gone are the gloves, mittens, hats, coats, sidewalk salt, shovels, windshield brushes, woolen socks and portable heaters.

In their place are tiki torches, cans of bug repellent, backyard water slides, pink plastic flamingoes, patio furniture, big yellow boxes of sidewalk chalk, and – the Holy Grail of summertime purchases – barbecue grills.

Oh lordy, I do love barbecue grills.

I hate shopping more than the president of Marilyn Manson’s Fan Club hates polka music, but I could spend all day checking out barbecue grills and never get bored.

In fact, that’s exactly what I tried to do this past Sunday, before Mrs. Taylor’s incessant sleeve pulling and pitiable whining parted me from my beloved outdoor department.

Oh, I don’t need a new grill. I bought a new one last summer and I’ve taken very good care of it. It’s a humble little thing, ideally suited for Mrs. T and me. There’s no reason to even think about replacing it.

Still, it’s hard not to dream, especially this time of year. There are just so many grilling options out there; it’s mind boggling.

When I was a kid (back before electricity, running water or parenthetical asides) backyard grills came in two varieties – cheap metal saucers that gave about two years service before rusting away to nothing, and beautiful, brick monstrosities built by homeowners who had no intention of moving again, ever. Both types were powered by charcoal or wood and could either cook to perfection, or incinerate, depending on who was sitting in the driver’s seat.

The grills I saw Sunday were astounding extrapolations on those antediluvian devices, monuments to the masculine yearning to scorch meat over an open fire, as did our Neolithic forebears. Charcoal, wood, propane, natural gas; all were viable and available fuel options. I didn’t see any units powered by nuclear fuel cells, but it’s only a matter of time.

One grill in particular caught my eye; a colossal, stainless steel monolith with four side burners, a detachable counter top, and a small vegetable sink built in. The available cooking space was listed in square feet instead of inches. I almost wept. Mrs. Taylor kept pointing to the price tag, but I was having none of that.

Summer, after all, is here. And a man must dream.


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

Just once, I’d like to wind up with the Creature instead of Frankenstein

I love to wheel and deal. Unfortunately, I stink at it. My first bartering experience came at age eight, when I traded my Creature of the Black Lagoon model for a model of Frankenstein’s monster with a missing left foot. The foot had been replaced with a Popsicle stick wrapped in electrical tape.

My Creature was practically new; I’d only put it together a week earlier. The Frankenstein was old and had been repainted about 30 times. That’s why I made the trade; I liked the way it smelled. (I have no idea how many brain cells I killed in those days sniffing model paint, but I’m guessing it was a lot, judging by my current mental faculties.)

It wasn’t until a day later that I realized I’d made a bad trade. The first of many.

Since then, I’ve traded good cars for bad trucks, nice American-made guitars for cheap Korean instruments that happened to have a cool blue sparkle finish, and once I even swapped an expensive pair of cowboy boots for a pair of faux alligator loafers. That one seemed pretty brainless even at the time, but I was burning with “barter fever.”

In the long, long ago, before the Internet, making a bad trade was something that happened only occasionally, at a car dealership, maybe, or a flea market. With the advent of sites like Craig’s List, the chance to make a bad trade is omnipresent.

Last week I noticed an online posting for an oak dining room set, exactly like the one The Lovely Mrs. Taylor has been wanting for the past ten years. Better still; the seller was willing to swap the set for a used laptop computer, like the one gathering dust in my closet.

I emailed the seller with details and she accepted the offer; the following Sunday, I would deliver the computer to her house and we would trade even up. She assured me the table and chairs were in “near perfect” condition.

That settled, I posted our old dining room set on Craig’s List, asking what I thought to be a fair price. Within ten minutes, I had five offers, a sure sign I had – as usual – lowballed the deal. Mrs. T had instructed me to charge more, but I wanted to make sure the old set sold before the new one arrived.

Come Sunday, I delivered our old table and chairs to the buyer. He paid full price without complaint or haggle, another sure sign I had undercharged.

Mrs. Taylor pointed out that, should we not like the new set for some reason, we would now be forced to eat dinner sitting on the floor.

“Have I ever steered us wrong?” I asked. Mrs. T remained silent, undoubtedly trying to tally the number of times I have done just that.

Her fears were put to rest when we arrived at the seller’s house. The chairs were in excellent shape, as was the table’s base. The table top itself had been carefully wrapped in plastic and foam padding, to prevent scratches. The seller offered to remove the plastic so we could inspect the table top, but since we were transporting the thing home in the back of a pickup, it seemed best to leave the padding in place.

Back home (after a 90-minute drive) I reattached the base to the table top with the bolts provided, then turned it upright. Carefully, we peeled back the plastic and foam covering, revealing a surface utterly ruined by what appears to be spilled fingernail polish remover.

This was almost a relief to me, as things had been going far too smoothly until this point and my making a good trade is one of the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse. With the tabletop’s finish thus battle scarred, the trade now fell comfortably into the category of “bad.”

Oh, it’s still a nice piece of furniture and I can refinish it to make it look new again. But still, for just a minute there, I thought I might be the one to wind up with a Creature of the Black Lagoon instead of a one-footed Frankenstein.


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

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.