Author: Larry Jones

I’ve been feeling a little down lately, partly about my crummy job and partly around the issue of self-worth.

Sorry to anyone who reads here and is tired of my more-and-more frequent whining. I love to laugh and have fun, but I haven’t been doing as much of that as I want. So here’s what I’m going to try:

I’m going to have hope. I’m going to hope that none of my selfish coworkers pull any annoying stunts that will make my job harder. I’m going to hope that my latest (and most obnoxious) boss moves on soon, leaving Upper Management chastened about their hiring practices, and looking for someone with more insight and compassion. In fact, I’m going to expect these things, which would be just the opposite of what I have been expecting lately.

Furthermore, I’m going to hope and expect that I will somehow find more time for playing music, and that I figure out how to hook up with like-minded musicians to play with. I’ll be hoping and expecting that the creative ideas I have inside me will pop out when I need them, when I’m stuck for a line or a rhyme, when I’m jamming and I don’t know where to go.

I’ll also be hoping and expecting that I’ll find a new day job pretty soon, something moderately satisfying and arguably ethical. I think I’ve been bringing myself down by expecting the worst every day. I don’t expect to fly like Peter Pan by thinking good thoughts, but maybe if I focus more on what could go right, I’ll be able to smile more each day.
I may not have much faith, but I can always hope, and maybe if I start the day expecting better things, I’ll even get to laugh and have a little fun.

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On a more somber note, can we all stop talking about “surging” the troops in Iraq? This is just another cheesy White House euphemism meant to conceal what’s really happening. During the Viet Nam conflict, they called it “escalation.” Maybe if we called it what it is, we could talk about it more intelligently. It is sending more troops to battle. Period. The lesson of Viet Nam was not that you have to win or the world will fall apart. The lesson of Viet Nam is that determined and dedicated locals can beat you no matter how much power you think you have.

The experts, and the President is not one of them, agree that more troops would simply be more targets. There is a civil war going on there now. Nobody is neutral. The locals are not “seeking a political solution.” Anyone you meet on the street is in one camp or the other, and our soldiers are in the middle. Our government has been dishonorable, and now we are not trusted. Everyone wants us to leave, and they will shoot at us until we do. Sending more troops to battle will only prolong the agony. Maybe President Bush wants to do just that: string the stalemate out until he leaves office, and let the next president extricate us. The voters clearly don’t want to do it this way. They have seen that this war is a monumental mistake, and they want out, now.

Will we kill a million people and spend a trillion dollars so that Bush can feel good about himself?

Do you typically have Thanksgiving dinner with a large group of family and friends?

If you do, you may have been subjected to the tradition of going around the table and everyone, in turn, having to say what they are thankful for this year. I know I have been. The thing is, I’m not thankful for everything, and so after a few years of that I ran out of things to say. Not wanting to be a party pooper or seem ungrateful, I started making stuff up. I think the last straw for my family was the year I said I was deeply grateful to Our Lord for clumping kitty litter. If you’ve got a cat or two you’ll know what I mean and how truly important it is, but for some reason Mrs. Jones and I have been eating Thanksgiving dinner alone lately. Not a bad thing, just sayin’.

Anyway, there is one thing I forgot that I am truly grateful for, and I want to express my gratitude here now, before I forget it again. It’s something I think about every day for a couple of minutes, and every time I do I get a little misty.

Thank God, thank heaven, thank the powers of the universe for thick, quilted bedspreads!

In today’s busy world, with the many pressures all of us are under, it’s tempting just to get up in the morning and stumble out of the bedroom, grab a cup of coffee, take a quick shower, throw on your wrinkled clothes from yesterday, jump in the car and drive to your crummy job, where you will spend your time serving the needs of others and making people wealthy whom you do not even know and who will never invite you to go with them to Rio on their private jets. Not that you’d go, but still.

But you know how wrong that would be, don’t you? Of course you do! Civilization is not the accumulation of money. It’s not reading and learning about Plato and Augustine. It’s not the construction of monuments and skyscrapers, or even landing on the moon. That stuff is good, but it isn’t the essence of Civilization. No, my friends, Civilization is the little things, the small courtesies and disciplines without which we would never have ventured far past the entrance of the cave. It’s chewing with your mouth closed, smiling at people you don’t know, turning things in to the Lost and Found, edging the lawn.

And yes, Civilization is making the bed.

It’s a basic tenet of civilized living that the bed must be made. It’s one of those seemingly unecessary chores that has to be done. If we don’t make our beds, if we can’t exert that small amount of discipline on ourselves, what’s next? Once we have abandoned that formality, perhaps we will decide that we needn’t tuck in our shirts because, hey, that takes a little time and effort, and makes you a little bit uncomfortable. And there we will be, out in public, looking slovenly. Why not pick our noses on the bus, then? Why not indeed. Someone doesn’t like it? How about a big punch in your nose, then, sir? In fact, since you have bothered me about looking sloppy, maybe I will just bloody your big nosy nose and rape your girlfriend. How would you like that?

You see how things start to fall apart when you get loose with the bed-making? But once you have made the bed in the morning, you will find that you are on the road to a genteel and civilized day. You can find your clothes for the day and lay them out on the bed. Noticing that they seem to be a bit wrinkled from being under the coffee table all night, you might select a different ensemble, or perhaps touch up the old one with a steam iron. Then, once you are out in the world for your busy day, you will want to be careful with your wardrobe. Nose-picking is discouraged, and fighting and raping on the bus is completely out of the question. Strangers take note of your good grooming (and your tucked-in shirt) and smile at you. You smile back.

All of which makes me thankful for my puffy quilted bedspread. The important chore of bed-making is made so simple! I just pull up the sheet and blankets, no need to go around and around my bed, tightening everything and making sure the entire assembly is laying perfectly flat so that a quarter will bounce off it. I toss the glorious bedspread over it, give it a quick snap and watch it float down on the bed, covering all the bumps and wrinkles (and sometimes the TV remote and the telephone).

It’s the little things, people. Think about it.

Almost midnight.

Then it will be the year 2007. 2006 didn’t do much for me. I have a little more hope here at the end than I did at the beginning, but then hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?

For some reason I can’t let go of New Year’s Eve as an important marker. It could be any day of the year — we’ve simply decided we will make this one is the last night of the year, and tomorrow the first day. It’s completely arbitrary, but I go along with it, I give it power. More power than my own birthday.

Do you remember when you were young and old people acted like they didn’t want anyone to know when their birthday was, or how old they were? They weren’t acting. What the heck was that all about, I always thought. But when you age you have to leave things behind. You just have to, even if you still feel like a young person, even if your childish curiosity still sometimes gets the better of you, even if you’re still naive about finance, or sex, or you’re shy at parties. I’d like to think that the only things I left behind were my foolishness, my fear, my inexperience, my intolerance, and it’s true I have left some of that baggage. But I have walked through many doors, and explored far into the labyrinth, and while I wasn’t looking someone came and closed a bunch of those doors, and now I can’t go back. I’m not sure I’d want to, but shit — I would have liked to be in on the decision.

So, like the ancient ones before me, I don’t pay much attention to my own birthday, because I just don’t want to think about the never-can-go-back aspect of life, or the number of doors that are closed behind me. I don’t want to be reminded of the things I didn’t get around to, or the ever-shortening time I have to do the things I think are important, or even to figure out what’s really important. If you’re young and you’re reading this, I know you can’t hear me, and you shouldn’t. You have lives to live. But if you’re not delusional you’ll probably arrive at some of these thoughts one day. The rest of you, well, maybe you’re the lucky ones.

I give power to this night, and so it is on this night that I feel time passing more than on any other night.

At midnight, the moment of Change, I go out into the street in front of my house. It’s a quiet neighborhood in a normally quiet town, although you wouldn’t know it on this night, because my neighbors and their neighbors and all the neighbors in all the neighborhoods are out making the biggest ruckus they can, and it is a hell of a ruckus, with yelling and singing and rockets and probably even small arms fire. But when I look into the sky I know I’m looking back through time, starlight from ages past coming to touch me from the endless void beyond our tiny spinning rock, and all the noise we can make; all the rockets we shoot; all the laughter and tears; the triumphs and hurt and all the self-conscious celebration, it all seems quaint, and sweet, and touching.

To all my bloggin’ buddies…

You can’t know how much you’ve meant to me.

You just can’t, OK?

I hope your Winter celebrations are going great.

I’m having my annual holiday wallow in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Those Precious Few who have been reading here for a while may have suspected that I am a sap, and I guess this proves it. Until a few years ago, this movie was almost in the public domain, and as a result every local television station in the country had a beat up, dog-eared copy which they ran forty or fifty times every December. In a big market like LA you could catch it any time you wanted, twenty-four hours a day during the whole holiday season. I viewed most of these showings. Gradually it became a “classic,” even though it wasn’t well-regarded when it was released in 1946.

Then somehow NBC acquired exclusive rights to it, and they a.) made everybody stop showing it all the time and b.) decided to exhibit it only once (or twice) a year. As much as I loved to watch the movie, I was OK with these limitations, because by that time I knew the entire movie by heart, and I think it’s fitting for it to be treated with a little more respect. NBC got a nice, cleaned up print of it, so it looked better than ever, too. Some of those old prints were so bad you could hardly see the picture, or hear the great dialog.

But I was not always able to watch when NBC felt like showing it, so a couple of years ago I bought the DVD. Most of the time I try to seem tough-minded and skeptical, but once I year I become a quivering mass of schmaltz, as I worship at The Church of Frank Capra. That’s what I’m doing tonight, as I write.

I don’t know for sure when I became aware of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” but it feels as if I have literally grown up with it. The life of George Bailey is so touching and there are so many indelible scenes in the film that I sometimes lose track if it’s a movie or a rerun of my own life. Sure it’s hokey, and I love the hokey-ness. I know it’s over the top and manipulative, but for a couple of hours each year I give up my heart, suspend my sophisticated disbelief and go along for the sweet, sweet ride.

The moment when George realizes he is in love with Mary Hatch (the fetching Donna Reed) gets my vote for Most Romantic Scene Ever Filmed, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat across a table from my brother and repeated Nick the bartender’s words: “Look, mister, we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don’t need any characters to give the joint atmosphere.” Has there ever been a more despicable villain than Lionel Barrymore’s “warped, frustrated” Mr. Potter? And surely we could do worse than a guardian angel named Clarence.

I’m not reviewing the film here, or summarizing the story, except to say that each person’s life touches many others, and even if you do only small things the world stands to be dimished if you were never in it. I wouldn’t be missed the way George Bailey was, or welcomed back so enthusiastically, but seeing this movie makes me want to do a few good deeds.

You know. Just in case.

To those who have suggested I write a song about my HugeCorp Blues:

I refer you to Jimmy Reed, who recorded this Al Smith/Willie Dixon composition 46 years ago. Click the little blue button to hear the song.

Jimmy was born in Mississippi in 1925 and was working in a meat packing plant in Indiana when he started making records in the forties. When I think about working that kind of a gig, I can only smile at my own job-related angst.

The blues got Jimmy out of meat packing, and he actually became a pretty big star in the fifties and sixties. He drank too much, though, and he left this world in 1976. If this song sounds familiar to you, it may be because his music has been copied by everybody in the business for the past forty years.

I can hear you, Jimmy.

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BIG BOSS MAN
Big boss man, can‘t you hear me when I call
Big boss man, can‘t you hear me when I call
Well, you ain‘t so big, you‘re just tall, that‘s all

Got me working, boss man, working ’round the clock
I want me a drink of water, but you won’t let Jimmy stop
Big boss man, can’t you hear me when I call?
Well, you ain’t so big, you just tall, that’s all

Well, I‘m gonna get me a bossman, one gonna treat me right
Work hard in the day time, rest easy at night
Big boss man, can‘t you hear me when I call?
Well, you ain‘t so big, you‘re just tall, that‘s all