TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

I dream every night; vivid dreams in full Technicolor, with casts of thousands and Cecil B. DeMille production values. As is the case in the world of dreams, they often lack a cohesive story line. For example, my dream may have me walking out my front door to find that my lawn has been replaced by a swamp which I must swim through naked until I emerge on the other shore to find myself in a ballerina costume, riding a flying elephant, on the way to an important meeting while listening to Liza Minnelli cover ZZ Top songs. (Yes, the 60’s were really good to me)

A couple of nights ago, however, I had a dream that I found very disturbing. I was convicted of a murder (which I was guilty of, although I don’t remember who I expunged) and subsequently sentenced to death in the electric chair.  In my dream I remember being strapped into the chair, the wet sponge being placed on my head before the helmet was locked in place, and the switch being thrown. I remember feeling the first jolt of electricity, and my jaw clamping shut. Everything went black and I woke up in a green tiled room. I was strapped to a gurney with a doctor standing over me. The doctor was the character actor Neal McDonough who has played the bad guy in about 800 movies. He was smiling pleasantly as he tapped a syringe. He explained that the electric chair didn’t kill me so he was there to administer a lethal injection.  As he plunged the needle into my arm I woke up and made a note to myself to lay off the Bloody Mary’s right before bedtime.

I was curious as to what this dream might mean so I went to the ultimate authority on dream interpretation – www.dreammoods.com (actually, it was the first site that popped up when I googled “dream interpretation”.) The pros at Dream Moods said (and I quote): “A dream about your own death indicates a desperate desire to escape the responsibilities of your everyday life.”

Duh…

I think all of us would rather be independently weathly, sitting on the beach, drinking Pina Coladas and reading Danielle Steel novels. I decided to probe a little deeper. Since I murdered someone in my dream, I typed in “Murder” and got back this quote: “You may have some repressed rage at others.”

Duh…

I can think of at least three people I’d be very happy to “expunge” at this very moment. Finally, I decided that most unique aspect of the dream was that there was a character actor in it trying to kill me, so I typed in “actor” and got back this quote: “Seeing an actor or an actress in your dream represents your pursuit for pleasure.”

So…according to Dream Moods, my dream is telling me that I’m a shiftless homicidal narcissist.

I can live with that.

MY PROSTITUTION CONFESSION

The eyes of the entire world have been on Elliot Spitzer after it was revealed that he spent over $80,000.00 on prostitutes. (Side Note: If I spent $80,000.00 on a prostitute, I better not only get laid, she better build me a friggin house.)

Since it’s probably only a matter of time before the hot spot light of national attention is focused squarely on me (in my personal little megalomaniacal fantasy) I thought it would be prudent to be proactive and go ahead and reveal my one and only (I swear) encounter with the sordid world of prostitution.

The year was 1993. I was singing with a 120 voice men’s chorus at the time and we were getting ready to take a three week concert tour in Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. Prior to the trip we were warned that one of the side effects of the burgeoning capitalistic economy in Russia was a very thriving market for prostitution. (Don’t you love it when we take our American values overseas?) We were told that as a large group of foreign men traveling together, we should be prepared to be propositioned.

We were not disappointed. The hookers were as thick as…well…they were as thick as hookers at a Shriner’s convention.  During a trip up an elevator in one of the hotels we stayed at, a woman crept up behind one of the guys in our group, reached around him, and stuck her hand directly down his pants. So much, for dinner and drinks first.

Two weeks into the trip, I remained un-propositioned and it was beginning to affect my self esteem. However, that all changed when we arrived in St. Petersburg.

A bit of background information is needed to explain the rest of the story: We were told not to drink the water there. Bottled water was not as prevalent as it is today, so we drank a lot of soda. However, the only soda we could find in Russia was Orange Fanta. Many of us returned from Russia with a slight orange tint to our skin.

One night I was lying in my hotel room about 1:00 a.m. unable to sleep because I was very thirsty. I didn’t want to drink the tap water so I decided to get up and go downstairs to the bar to get an Orange Fanta. I walked up to the bar completely unaware of the other patrons. I ordered my soda and turned around to leave. That’s when I noticed that I was the only man in the room. There were at least 30 scantily clad working girls gathered around tables in the bar. None of them were talking and every one of them was looking directly at me.

In the subsequent 15 years, I’ve told this story many times. When I get to this point in the story, the punch line is always; “and a dozen Orange Fantas later I finally made it back to my hotel room.” But that’s not really true. It was actually two dozen Orange Fantas later before I made it back to my hotel room. Ok…that’s not true either. You might think it would be provocative to have 30 women staring directly at you, but trust me, it’s not. I can say without any hesitation that it is the most terrified I have ever been in my life. I’ve heard women talk about being looked at like a piece of meat. I may not know what that’s like, but I do know what it’s like to have women look at me like I’m a giant American dollar sign.

What I actually did was grab my Orange Fanta, run as fast as my little legs would carry me back to my room where I crawled under the bed, sucked my thumb, and cried for my mommy.

My son has heard me tell this story many times. When he was an undergrad, he spent a semester in Russia as a foreign exchange student. What did he bring me back from Russia as a gift you ask? A bottle of Orange Fanta with Cyrillic writing on it, of course.

(If you didn’t see that coming then you haven’t been paying attention)

I’ve kept the bottle of Orange Fanta proudly on my office book case since then to remind me of my undercover trip through the seedy underbelly of Russian prostitution.

I’m happy to report that I’ve been prostitute free since my return to the states. We don’t seem to have many prostitutes here in Oklahoma. I’m sure they exist. In fact, they say that in Tulsa all of the prostitutes congregate on 11^th street. But I don’t think it’s true, because I’ve driven up and down 11^th street very late on Saturday nights for hours at a time and I haven’t seen a single prostitute. However, a friend I met there named Trixie wanted me to give all my readers a “shout out.”

Now that I’ve gone ahead and made my prostitution confession public perhaps I can avoid the media circus that has been visited upon Mr. Spitzer. That is as long as no one finds out about my trip to Spain with the same group in 86.

HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY TO THE JORDANMEISTER

My son’s birthday is the day after St. Patrick ’s Day. I believe this to be a huge cosmic joke resulting in Jordan having to spend every birthday of his adult life with a hangover.

Tomorrow my son turns 25 (Jordan, please remember that green beer only tastes good going down.)

This seems completely impossible. Even as I type this, my fingers are having a difficult time putting together that particular combination of “2” and “5.”

For me, this can only mean that death is imminent, but that’s ok, because I can die a happy man. I can die a happy man because my son has become everything I have ever dreamed he would be and a thousand things I didn’t have the imagination to dream.

His childhood couldn’t have been easy. Growing up a minister’s kid is not a walk in the park. All eyes are on you, and they never look away. When Jordan was five we became house parents at a home for unwed pregnant teenagers. Between his fifth and eight birthdays, Jordan lived with approximately 80 pregnant teenagers.

The chances of him being mentally and emotionally stable now are so small they cannot even be calculated, and yet, astonishingly, he is.

When Jordan was eleven he stood by my side through my divorce, and through me leaving the ministry. For much of that time he had to be the adult. He kept me grounded and whether he realizes it or not, he really saved my life. That’s a lot for an eleven year old to handle.

Since then he’s accumulated an accomplishment or two along the way. Allow me to brazenly and unashamedly brag:

• During his senior year he was nationally ranked in the top ten high school debaters in the United States.
• He graduated from Baylor with a 4.0 GPA and was named outstanding graduating senior in the University.
• He is currently teaching at Baylor while he finishes his PhD in neuroscience.
• He is happily married to the world’s greatest Daughter in Law and he is a very good husband.
• He runs marathons to raise money for blood cancer research.
• He is the hairiest human being on the planet meaning he possesses more testosterone than Chuck Norris.
• He brews really great beer.

My favorite thing about my son may be that he is an even bigger smart ass than I am, and while it may be an odd thing to say, this truly warms my heart.

So happy 25^th my son! And remember Jordan, drink lots of water and take two aspirin before you go to bed tonight.

Here are few current pictures of the Jordanmeister:

WHO KNEW THERE WERE SO MANY TELEMARKETERS ON XANGA?

Based on the feedback I got from telemarketers on my last post about telemarketers, I am the biggest dick in all of Xangland.

Just to be clear, they don’t think I have the biggest dick, they think I am the biggest dick.

So before I go on, please allow me to state for the record that I now believe that all telemarketers are imbued with the reincarnated spirit of Mother Teresa,  that they are essential to the survival of our planet, and that they smell like Honeysuckle after a summer rain.

I also have begun to live by the words of the ancient Chinese philosopher How-my Phone-ring who said; “Ignorant and slothful is the man who turns down the offer for a free siding appraisal.”

Don’t believe they think I’m a dick? Allow me to quote from some of the responses I received:

“Wow…You are a dick. Why don’t you try being a little more patient? …Oh yeah, and please don’t have kids. If you already have kids, God help them.”

“I take offense to everything you have said in this post. I myself am a telemarketer. I am a human being. I am not vile, nor am I a scum-sucking leech, residing at the Mariana Trench level on the scale of basic decency…If you would rather pay my tuition so that I don’t call and “annoy” you, I will gladly accept… Otherwise, I would appreciate you not acting so offensively next time.”

“Be nice. There are people who have died and now reside in the 7th circle of hell, and their crimes were being mean to telemarketers, so now they must spend eternity making cold calls. Learn from this.”

“Hey Dude, I’m a telemarketer and I think I should let you know that it might not be wise to open any packages that are left on your front porch for the foreseeable future.”

Ok, I made up that last quote, but it’s apparent that I offended a lot of people, and that really wasn’t my intention.

I don’t object to telemarketers as people. I’m sure there are many wonderful people in the telemarketing profession, but I do object to the industry as a whole. I feel very strongly that unless you know me personally, calling my home to try and sell me something is a violation of my privacy and is ethically wrong. And my opinion about that isn’t going to change.

With that being said…to all of the telemarketers out there that I offended, please accept my apology…

…and please stop leaving death threats on my answering machine.

TELEMARKETERS: HUMAN OR NON-HUMAN? THAT IS THE QUESTION

I got in trouble with my wife the other night for the way I answered a phone call from a telemarketer:

Caller ID: Service Master Carpet Cleaning Service

Me answering phone: “Thanks for calling but we have dirt floors”…click.

Now, come on…that’s kind of funny, isn’t it? My wife didn’t think so. In fact, she implied that I was being a complete horse’s ass.

Whether or not I was being a horse’s ass is really dependent on whether you think telemarketers qualify as human beings, or if you think they are vile, sub-human, scum-sucking leeches, residing at the Mariana Trench level on the scale of basic decency.

Although I tend to think of them in the later category, I know in my heart that they are just people who are trying to make a living by calling obnoxious people like me. That’s why I don’t scream or curse at them, or threaten to hunt down their families and assassinate everyone gangland style. Rather, I try to find creative ways of expressing my frustration with receiving 42 phone calls every evening.

I’ve employed the tried and true method of saying “Yes, I’m really interested, would you mind holding on for a second while I grab a pencil so I can take some notes?” and then setting the phone down and going back to watching TV just to see how long they will actually stay on the line. But that’s only fun so many times before it becomes cliché.

On many occasions I’ve picked up the phone and in my best Don Pardo voice said; “Congratulations, you’re the 10^th telemarketing call tonight! You’ve won a chance to interview for a real job!” 

Ok…perhaps I am a horse’s ass.

I’ve put our number on do-not-call lists. I’ve patiently and pleasantly thanked them for calling and then asked them to remove our name from their files. I’ve even made up sob stories to make them feel bad; “I’d really like to purchase your product, but since I’m a quadriplegic and attached to a respirator after the explosion in the mine, I can’t really reach my wallet to get to my credit card right now.” And yet the telemarketers continue to call in larger and larger numbers.

Obviously, I could turn the ringer on my phone off, but my wife’s mother who lives nearby is not in the best of health, and we don’t want to miss an actual important phone call. I’ve also thought about just dropping our land line and using only our mobile phones. That was until something happened the other day more horrifying than an IRS audit…I got a telemarketing call on my cell phone. It was one of those where there isn’t a real person on the line, but a recorded message instead. I’m sure the call was generated by a program that dials consecutive phone numbers, but the point is that the last bastion of telephonic privacy has been breached, and I feel as violated as a newcomer to a maximum security prison who makes the mistake of bending over to pick up the soap in the shower.

I can’t run, I can’t hide. They’re like zombies in a George Romero movie; clawing at the windows and doors, trying to find a way into my home until I break down and buy the damn porcelain cow figurines or the UFO insurance.

My wife suggests that I should be careful because if I keep continuing to be a jerk, someday, telemarketers will be the only phone calls I’ll ever receive, and that I just might appreciate the company.

In the meantime, this is the greatest prank ever played on a telemarketer:

http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/