I DREAM OF BARACK WITH THE LIGHT GREEN HAIR

It's not bad enough that our president must endure scurrilous allegations about his birth, nationality and religion.  It's not enough that he is constantly barraged by the spittle-flecked ranting of the lunatic Right or that he is demonized by his opponents both inside and outside of the government as if he were Lucifer's community organizer.  It's not even enough that he was called a liar during his first State of the Union address.  For more than a year, President Obama has faced a grievous insult to his person and office that has made these other affronts seem like pleasantries.  I refer, of course, to the Chia Obama.

How is it that I never saw this travesty until a late-night commercial knocked me off my chair on Sunday?  The "product" was released in April of 2009 by Joseph Enterprises, Inc., which, besides the Chia Empire, has marketed the Clapper and the "Ove" glove.  The company's founder, 77 year-old Joseph Pedott, denied any racism in creating the novelty and said he even voted for Obana in '08 despite being a life-long Republican.  The item was quickly pulled off the shelves of many Walgreen's stores, but is still readily available at CVS, Target, and multiple online venues for the upcoming holiday season.

Personally, I don't believe Mr. Pedott had any racist intentions with Chia Obama.  The concept is simply too wacky to be a deliberate slur.  What I find amazing is that an entire commercial concern, staffed, I assume, by sane and savvy businessmen could come to believe that a proper and patriotic way to honor the leader of the free world was to crown him with a sod toupee.

I also dismiss the accusations of slander because Chia has recently seen fit to endow other symbols of America's greatness with green Afros.  Presidents Washington and Lincoln now sport the emerald 'do as does the Statue of Liberty, the latter requiring a rewrite of Emma Lazarus's famous poem:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore beset by cranial pastures,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost with turf-topt noggins,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Most astonishing of all is that this enterprise has come about without a nation-wide onslaught of derision.  Where are SNL, The Daily Show, Colbert, Letterman, Leno, and Conan regarding what would seem to be the comic bonanza of the century?  I'm a sporadic viewer to be sure, but weeks and months of monologues should have been sparked by this phenomenon.  It was said after 9/11 that the US had lost its sense of irony, but this isn't some arch witticism aimed at intellectual snobs - it's the proverbial barn door whose sole purpose is to be peppered with rocks.  I'm less afraid that the president is being disparaged than that the entire country is losing its sense of humor along with its sense of perspective. 

MERCHANDISE FROM CLASSIC FOREIGN FILMS

With the nationwide release of Toy Story 3 last weekend, a whole new generation of kids will be emptying their parent's wallets for Woody and Buzz Lightyear action figures, lunch boxes, underwear, can openers, and whatever other junk Disney-Pixar can plaster their pictures on.  And the producers are only too happy to add this windfall to a strong opening box office for a synergistic marketing-palooza.

What few people realize is that this is hardly a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to mainstream films.   Our company, Jules et Jim et Ronco Novelties, Inc., is proud to offer you these selected items from our extensive catalog of classic foreign film merchandise.

THE SEVENTH SEAL CHESS SET

Whether you're playing chess with Death or worse, your mother-in-law, you'll love this finely crafted set with hand-carved pieces based on characters from Dante's Inferno and a board made from the shards of a discarded tombstone.  Carrying shroud is optional.

GRAND ILLUSION NECK BRACE AND MONOCLE 

So you think you're an anti-war protester just because you've waved a sign at a few rallies?  Show your true feelings by sporting these snazzy accessories worn by Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) in Jean Renoir's powerful WW I fable.  They're sure to catch the eye and win the heart of like-minded pacifists of the opposite sex.

Un Chien Andalou eyeball razor trick

C'mon, nobody really believes that Luis Buñuel slashed an eyeball in the opening sequence, but the illusion is highly disturbing.  This gag is the perfect icebreaker for your next party and is guaranteed to make your friends spill their drinks and toss their lunches.  It comes with three prosthetic contact lenses and a 6 oz. bottle of vitreous humor.  Razor not included.

LA DOLCE VITA MODEL HELICOPTER WITH STATUE OF CHRIST

Taking your kids to a Fellini movie is like taking them to the dentist - it's wise to bring along a distraction.  This beautiful scale model will provide hours of fun for your children while you ponder the cinematic mix of religious cynicism and cultivated decadence.  The statue is detachable and has a magnetic base for dashboard mounting.

THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN BABY CARRAIGE

The Odessa steps are no match for this sturdy conveyance designed for our company by Inglesina™ and based on its popular Classica Pram Carriage w/ Diaper Bag Marina ($1,100).  Add armor plating for an extra $500 to put your mind at ease about those Tsarist troops.

THRONE OF BLOOD ARCHERY SET

If you've ever spent any time on an archery range, you know how boring it is to shoot at a circular bullseye target.  Our set includes a 30 pound fiberglass bow, 2 dozen arrows, and a life-size straw figure of Toshiro Mifune as Lord Washizu in full samurai armor.  Macbeth was never this much fun!

METROPOLIS TOY ARMY OF DRONES

While the rich live in luxury and ease, your set of 200 identical drones perform slave labor deep underground.   You lead the rebellion that brings them to the surface to destroy the existing order.  Hopefully, this will work out better for you than it did for Germany.

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD SLEEP AID

Just pop this DVD into your deck and hit play for hours of restful sleep.

THE MOST DANGEROUS STREET SIGN IN AMERICA

The Drake Passage around Cape Horn, the direct North Face route up Everest, El Camino del Muerte (the Death Road) in Bolivia - all of these legendary paths are fraught with peril and require consummate skills and iron nerves to navigate.  But none has ever aroused the level of sheer dread or demanded the degree of reckless bravado as this crosswalk in Brookline, Mass.

Don't let the benign residential surroundings fool you.  Hardened explorers and fortune hunters alike would rather circumnavigate the globe eastward than risk their lives in a foolhardy attempt to reach the west side of St. Paul Street directly.  Even the riches of Coolidge Corner with its multiple cell phone dealers and chain drugstores would not be worth the danger involved.

It wasn't always this way.  There was a time when young children were not afraid to approach this intersection, when the elderly and infirm made their way to the opposite sidewalk without a care.  What insidious transformation turned an innocuous crosswalk into a horrifying gauntlet of doom?

It was, my friends, the well-intentioned addition of this sign.

Prior to its installation, there was a tacit understanding between drivers and pedestrians"  "I won't stop, so don't cross if you're within range."  Even if a vehicle could only intercept you by travelling at Mach one, stay put.  "All clear" meant all clear a mile or so in either direction.  I'm told that in Canada, cars are required to stop for anyone in a crosswalk regardless of circumstances or signage.  Such a person wouldn't last a half-hour in Massachusetts.

Boston drivers are reputed to be the worst in the world and I'm inclined to agree.  New York City drivers are more cutthroat, but at least they're predictable in their ferocity.  Italian drivers are lunatic daredevils with no regard for traffic legality, but are skilled enough to get away with it.  Boston drivers are both feral and capricious; there is no method, only madness.  From the time a child in these parts can tie his own shoe, he understands this instinctively, and acts accordingly.

The addition of these signs in local crosswalks has ruptured this delicate equilibrium.  No longer is crossing the street a strictly Darwinian skirmish, but an odd experiment in Newton's laws of mass and acceleration as modified by local legislative and judicial fiat and open to interpretation by every jerk in a Subaru Outback who's yakking on his Blackberry.

Where once there was certainty, there is now paralyzing indecision and not only on the part of the pedestrian.  This sign is less a traffic directive than a reject puzzle from the old quiz show, Concentration.  The last thing a person piloting a quarter-ton of metal should have to worry about is solving a rebus.

The first challenge facing the approaching vehicle is to actually see the word "YIELD" embedded in the inverse red triangle of its corresponding highway sign.  The Traffic department has apparently gone to great lengths to make the word as small and indistinct as possible.  And as hard as it is to read, it is equally hard to define.  Technically, "yield" means giving the right of way to other traffic.  If you can avoid the crosser by cutting harmlessly behind him by a few microns, you've technically "yielded."  Wouldn't "STOP" be more appropriate?

And the walker icon is even more ambiguous.  It's either a plump elderly man with osteoporosis and his pants pulled too high or a mime in a beret doing that "walking against the wind" routine they're so fond of.  He (or she) does seem to be in motion which means anyone just standing tentatively off the curb is not covered by the "YIELD" order, so feel free to hit the gas and continue on your way.

As for the "within crosswalk" addendum, does that imply that if you step beyond the actual dotted lines, you're toast?

My anecdotal experience is that the majority of drivers pay no attention to the sign unless annihilation is a certainty.  If you can bob and weave your way around a crosser, the onus is on him to get out of your way.  In other words, there's little difference between traffic behavior before or after the sign's deployment.

The crosser, however, is now always in doubt as to whether a driver will respect or even understand the sign.  Occasionally, a car will slow down to read it, giving the pedestrian the false impression that it's safe to cross.  Having disdained the sign as another unwarranted governmental intrusion into the life of its citizens, the driver speeds up, forcing the crosser to fly across the street in blind panic.  In response, the driver slams on the brakes to avoid a potential collision and spills his four-dollar Venti Caramel Macchiato all over his pants.  What usually follow is a vehicular Alphonse and Gaston routine with upraised fingers and horns taking the place of exaggerated courtesy.

Please, Brookline Traffic Department, get rid of these signs before someone gets hurt.

SENATE REPUBLICANS BALK AT LARCENY REFORM BILL

WASHINGTON - GOP senators emerged today in nearly unanimous opposition to the larceny reform bill passed in the House earlier this week by a margin of three votes.  The thirteen-hundred-page piece of legislation would place severe restrictions and oversight on the unlawful or fraudulent removal of another's property without the owner's consent.

"This is just another grandstanding effort on the part of Democrats to make us seem out of touch with Main Street," said Sen. Ron Furcover (R) of Texas.  "The truth is that our colleagues across the aisle are trying to stifle free enterprise under the self-serving premise that theft is somehow 'wrong.'"

"It's independent operators and small businesses who will suffer the most under the provisions of this bill.  If you impose too many restrictions on car thieves, they'll quit the business and swell already bloated welfare rolls.  This would cause additional hardship on chop shops which would be forced to purchase their 'raw materials' at higher prices on foreign markets.  And hasn't the Slim Jim industry suffered enough from those new OSHA regulations?"

Other senators objected to the speed with which the measure was being brought to a vote.  “This bill needs further debate,” stated one opponent.  "There has simply not been ample opportunity to dither and dither until the whole matter collapses in a heap of bipartisan ennui."

The most controversial provision calls for an HGOB, or Hot Goods Oversight Bureau to monitor the fencing of stolen property.  Democrats claim that this will allow for greater transparency of these transactions, although in deference to Republican criticism, they stopped short of insisting on a regulated exchange.

According to Sen. William T. Overture (D) of Wisconsin, "This will insure more equitable taxation and relieve the burden on the average citizen...well, I mean unless it was his stuff that was 'relieved' in the first place."

But even this compromise is unacceptable to critics.  "The liberal establishment and the Washington insiders are hell-bent on increasing the size of government," said Harry "The Shiv" Barlow of the Canarsie Institute and Social Club, a conservative think tank.  "Why do we need a costly bureaucracy when Big Louis and Tommy Four Fingers can cut their own deal much more cheaply?"

There is much speculation about the influence of well-funded lobbying groups on the debate.  Supporters of the bill point to large campaign contributions and gifts made to opposition senators by QAPAC, the Questionable Acquisition Political Action Committee, including late model Cadillacs and junkets to Sicily.

"There was absolutely no quid pro quo involved.  These are scurrilous charges meant to distract the public from the real issue which is governmental interference in the unlawful practices of its citizens," said Sen. Phil McCoffers (R) of Nebraska, who was awarded QAPAC's coveted Charles Luciano Medal at their convention in Jersey City last Month.

Despite the best efforts of opponents, a vote is expected in early June or as soon as Senate officials can locate the missing rostrum and several green "Aye" voting buttons.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF VAMPIRES

Nostalgia, like arthritis and constipation, is a curse of the elderly. Some get teary about the house they grew up in or the joys of their high school years.  Others yearn for their first car or the songs that accompanied their courtship.  Personally, I pine for the days when vampires didn't look like J Crew models.

It's hardly news that the undead have returned as a major force in popular entertainment.  The Twilight series of books and movies and the HBO series True Blood have captivated a new generation of gore-addled youth.  But compared to their predecessors, this crop of vampires is a pretty anemic lot.  I've only seen a few episodes of the TV series and a couple of trailers for the movies, but what I have seen is about as scary as a Clearasil ad.  The "children of the night" have devolved from Dracula to Dawson's Creek of the Damned.

My love of the bloodsucking genre dates back to my childhood when Chiller Theater on Channel 40 in Springfield would show horror double features on Saturday nights.  The movies were the classic 1930's films about the unholy trinity - Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman - along with their sequels, "Return of...", "House of...", and "Bride of..."  My first vampire role model was the great Bela Lugosi, who played Bram Stoker's Count with a debonair malevolence yet to be matched.

But for sheer terror, you cannot beat F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922.)  I first saw it in a college course on German Expressionism and nearly ripped the writing board off my lecture hall seat from fright.  While the film is technically primitive, the brilliant Max Schreck endowed his vampire with a repulsive exterior that perfectly matched his soulless interior and evil inclination.

Which brings me to problem number one with contemporary vampires; the notion that they can be good as well as evil.  A good vampire is as ridiculous a concept as a helpful tornado or beneficial dose of the clap.  Once you allow them moral ambiguity, you effectively neuter the species and turn their gruesome behavior into nothing more than an alternative lifestyle.  Where's the conflict?  A vampire saga used to be a battle where heroic but fragile mortals fought against more powerful and thoroughly depraved creatures bent on enslavement and exsanguination.  Today, it's just a cross-cultural teen romance with some supernatural arm wrestling thrown in.

Not only are today's hemoholics well intentioned, they are sometimes cast as the sympathetic victims of anti-vampire prejudice.  Aren't there enough real issues of bigotry and hatred to be dealt with in the world?  Can't we have one fictional realm apart from Santa's list where there's a general consensus on who's good and who's bad?

Once you allow a vampire to be just like you and me except for an unusual eating disorder, you drain the genre of its primal terror and diminish its ability to be cathartic.  I also think you lose the fun, but that's likely a factor of my age as are my other preferences for how the undead should be portrayed.

• Vampires don't have gooey romances with mortals.  Even during the censorship-heavy thirties, it was all about sex and blood, not dinner and dancing.  Vampires don't have "relationships" and never discuss their feelings.  They don't have any.

• Vampires don't shop at Urban Outfitters.  Draining blood requires a more formal look than a trip to Starbucks.  A frock coat with black pants a la Schreck is acceptable, but the full Lugosi monkey suit and cape is preferable.

• Vampires come from Eastern Europe.  I know it's the era of globalization, but what else has Romania to boast about? The rec room of a split-level in Dayton is no place to stow a coffin.  Home should be a castle in the Carpathians with a weekend retreat in Berlin or London to stock up on fresh provisions.

• Similarly, Vampires speak with an accent.  Lugosi's Budapest-flavored speech and drawn-out cadence were the result of never learning English properly, but the effect is unsettling.  No one is afraid of a vampire who sounds like a GAP clerk or Delta Airlines pilot.

• Vampires don't drink artificial blood.  You might as well have them swig Red Bull.  I'm not a natural food fanatic, but the organic stuff right from the source is the only way to go.  Which would you prefer, biting a beautiful woman's neck or dropping by 7-Eleven for a six-pack?  "Try new Plasma Lite® - more taste, less clotting."

Immortal though they may be, I don't expect the vampires of yore to make a comeback soon.  Kids today won't even watch a black-and-white movie much less a seventy-five minute parlor drama starring a tuxedoed Hungarian with halting English.  But back when visual effects were in their infancy, there was a greater reliance on mood and character to make the audience shriek, and I doubt any of today's blood-sucking millenials have that power.  You don't need garlic or wolfbane to scare them off; just threaten to block their Facebook pages.

TUFTS UNIVERSITY'S "TAKE AN UNDERGRAD FOR COFFEE" APPEAL

On Tuesday, I received a letter from Lawrence Bacow, president of my alma mater, Tufts University. He asked me to become a participant in the school's Student Ambassador Program - well, me and 93,000 other alumni, but I'm still honored and humbled by the offer.

According to the letter, "Our graduates provide valuable models for Tufts' current students and faculty, who look to them for guidance and inspiration." How do they know I can guide and inspire? Are they tailing me? I thought I saw some guy duck into an alley when I turned around suddenly the other day. He could have some incriminating shots of me spilling mustard on myself at the deli - there's some fine inspiration for the students.

I wish I had known about this sooner; I would have dressed better and shaved more often.

The letter goes on to say, "The Student Ambassador Program connects some of the university's most thoughtful and engaged students with graduates who can share unique perspectives on Tufts." I do recall some unique perspectives from my college days. There's the view of the third-floor bathroom ceiling in Carmichael Hall that I experienced while sprawled on the floor from too much cheap bourbon. And up on the library roof, there was that spectacular scene of Boston at night as it was being stomped into rubble by a giant Richard Nixon (1969 was a bad year for lefties but a great year for acid.)

"In the next few weeks a student ambassador will contact you with an invitation to meet for an hour to hear your thoughts on Tufts...The conversations this program fosters will help us learn how we can best support our alumni on their lifelong professional and personal journeys." Regular cash stipends would be nice, or maybe they could just cover my cable bill.

I think I'll accept the invitation when my student ambassador calls. It might prove useful for him or her to hear about my time on the Medford Campus, and I'm all for the university being more responsive to the needs of its graduates.

I'll start off by imparting all the life lessons I learned at Tufts to my young colleague:

• Don't take girls to Paul Newman or Warren Beatty movies.
• If you mislabel the page numbers in the middle of a ten-page paper, it becomes a fifteen-page paper and professors are none the wiser.
• Dark beer is the perfect complement to a Reuben Sandwich.
• Theater majors are easy.
• A fifteen-page paper becomes a twenty-page paper if you gradually expand the margins and triple-space around quotations.
• Mutton chops are seldom a good look.
• "Adult Entertainment" has nothing to do with age or maturity.
• You can make a pipe out of anything.
• Choose some old disgruntled professor who's being forced into retirement to be your advisor. He'll sign your degree sheet without looking too closely.
• Don't drink cheap bourbon.

For the most part, these precepts hold up well today. It's true that Paul Newman is dead and thus not the box office draw he once was, and Warren Beatty now looks like the villains he played against in Dick Tracy, but you can swap in some new pretty boy and the rule still applies.

When we get around to discussing ways the university might better prepare its graduates for the real world, I'll make a suggestion. No student should be granted a degree of any kind without first becoming a licensed plumber or electrician. Drains will always clog and light fixtures will always short out, but your comprehensive knowledge of Melville won't fix either. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the pipe wrench clobbers them both.

As for improving alumni relations, having collected the equivalent of Latvia's GNP from us for four years, Tufts might show more personal interest in our wellbeing. I'm not asking for much - an occasional phone call or letter, a nice card around the holidays - just a sentimental little something that says, "I'm thinking about you beyond your capacity to fuel our endowment."

And the Student Ambassador Program is a step in the right direction. I have no doubt that it's an altruistic endeavor on the part of the school and not simply another sleazy ploy to bleed the last possible cent out of its former students and sharpen the scythe for the current crop. In our hour together, I'm sure my ambassador and I can cover all the issues raised by the president's letter in a lively give-and-take over lattes at Starbucks...provided, of course, that Bacow picks up the tab.

Selling Coals to Newcastle; Adventures in Pointless Marketing

In recent years, the most popular concept in the advertising world has been viral marketing, the use of social networks and word-of-mouth to increase brand awareness and sales. Lately, I've been besieged by a different form of advertising that I like to call sterile marketing, the targeted promotion of products or services to consumers who haven't the slightest interest in or use for said goods, or the necessary funds to purchase them. I can't understand why companies spend years and fortunes analyzing demographic patterns, economic trends, and sales data to pinpoint their most likely customers, and then decide, "Nah, forget about them. Let's go after this bozo instead."

About a month ago, I received a fancy invitation from Ferrari of New England to test drive the latest model of their California series (see my earlier post "Dear Ferrari of New England...") I had never made inquiries about the car or contacted the local dealership about taking one out for a spin. Furthermore, I'm currently unemployed and as likely to buy a Ferrari as a timeshare at Windsor Castle. Yet not to be outdone, Maserati of New England has recently sent me a similar offer.

Why me? Even when gainfully employed, I was never in the financial stratosphere where such purchases occur, and I've never owned one of those Beryllium or Manganese American Express Cards which entice their holders with high-end promotions. Perhaps these firms discovered my fondness for all things Italian, although in practical terms, it's now limited to Louis Prima and Chef Boyardee. I do like small European cars, but the only way they could know that was if they traced the burned-out clutches from my '85 Rabbit. Whatever the reason, I'm just waiting to hear from Lamborghini and Bugatti before I rate the world's best performing sports cars that I can't afford.

People's exhibit #2 is a catalogue that was sent to my wife by The Pondguy, purveyor of supplies for ponds, lakes, decorative pools, and water gardens. In this one comprehensive volume can be found such useful items as "Faux Boulders", "Cascading Waterfall Kits", and the indispensable MuckAway™ pellets which release "natural bacteria designed to...convert muck into an odorless gas." It's too bad they don't work on the human digestive system.

However aesthetically pleasing or effective these products may be, they are of limited interest to city dwellers. It's the rare condominium apartment that has its own cascading waterfall, and the only "pond" we have to deal with is the sewer overflow during winter storms. There's Jamaica Pond, a small body of water about three miles from our home, but it's cared for by the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation, and I assume they've got their own catalogue.

Across this vast country though, there must be thousands of people who own property with ponds. There are plenty of wealthy folk with fountain-ringed palazzos and golf course grounds keepers who would surely find these products helpful. What breech of commercial sanity drove The Pondguy to hawk his wares to a women's clothing retailer and an out-of-work television editor?

But at least we're alive. My favorite sterile marketing scheme was from the Easter Seals 2010 fundraising drive. Last week, two large identical envelopes came to our house addressed to Mr. Felix Brawer and Mr. Morey Hunter, asking for donations to this worthy cause. The gentlemen in question, my father and father-in-law, passed away several years ago and were thus disinclined to contribute.

Don't think it's so easy to rectify this situation. I have tried for years to get their names off various mailing lists with only limited success. Apparently, companies and charitable organizations don't like to lose potential customers and donors, whether they're breathing or not. I once had the following phone conversation with a certain charity which will remain nameless.

Solicitor: "Could I please speak with Felix Brawer?"

Me: "May I ask what this is in reference to?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm only authorized to speak with him. Is he at home?"

"He's not, but..."

"I'll call back at another time. When would be convenient?"

"There's really no good time because..."

"Is there some other way we can contact him?"

"Possibly. Do you know a good medium?"

"Excuse me?"

"Or perhaps a necromancer?"

"I don't understand."

"Mr. Brawer is deceased. I'd appreciate it if you would take his name off your mailing and phone lists."

"I can't do that without proper documentation."

"I have to provide you with documentation, or you'll keep calling and sending him mail?"

"That's our policy."

"Good luck with the campaign."

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the final frontier of advertising - pitching the dead.

A Geezer Manifesto

Having reached the milestone of three score years, I find myself faced with the challenge of how best to spend my remaining time on Earth. My first task will be to drag out this period for as long as possible, wringing every last nanosecond out of my potential lifetime. I will do this with a positive outlook, improved diet and exercise, and plain white envelopes stuffed with twenties for the Grim Reaper.

Of course, the simple pursuit of longevity isn't enough for a fulfilling existence. A life must have purpose and direction; there must always be meaningful goals, self-sacrifice, and higher aspirations than one's own selfish desires. I guess that rules out just waiting around for the Bruins to win the Stanley Cup.

But the pitfalls are many in our dotage. Old age has a habit of making us ornery, entitled, and, um...indiscreetly loquacious. The inevitable aches and pains of senescence can cause even the most stoic soul to become whiny and irritable, and I was already there at eighteen. The increase in irrational and offensive speech may also have a physical basis, but I think it's mostly that oldsters don't give a damn what other people think. Entitlement is a thornier philosophical issue.

Many subscribe to the belief that wisdom comes with age. Sorry, but only wrinkles, cataracts, and memory loss come with age, so you better have some wisdom before you get here. Many also believe that experience is the best teacher. If so, how do you explain old guys in whale pants? In fact, hanging around the planet a long time does not rightfully confer upon you anything other than the nickname "Pops."

And yet, we expect deference as we get older. We demand blind acceptance of our opinions, inflated praise for our accomplishments, and complete tolerance of our foibles. In return, we'll take your seat on the subway and complain if our soup isn't hot. Forgive me, my fellow geezers and geezettes, but this is neither becoming nor fair. I hereby pledge that I will not fall victim to this syndrome, and I swear to uphold the following ten principles of proper geriatric behavior.

1) There is no age-related immunity for the "ten items or less" restriction.

2) All grandchildren are created equal. Your Kenny is not superior because he can sculpt an airplane from his boogers.

3) Eyebrows should be trimmed before they resemble furry welcome mats.

4) Success or failure in the bathroom does not have global implications. It is not necessary to have daily briefings or issue press releases.

5) Automobile turn signals were not installed as holiday decorations nor is their use optional.

6) "When I was your age" is not the opening clause of every sentence in the English language.

7) No whale pants. Ever.

8) A thermostat is a device with settings below eighty-five degrees.

9) Once whiskers turn gray, clean-shaven or full beard are the only acceptable looks. The two-day growth is allowed if you're in a back alley sucking down Thunderbird.

10) There is no such thing as "The Divine Right of Codgers."

I WAS A GRAMMAR SCHOOL KLEPTO

It's hard to know why a man turns to a life of crime.  A broken family?  Grinding poverty?  Hanging out with the wrong crowd?  Or maybe he's just a rotten seed, destined from birth to be a blight on humanity.

I have no excuse.  My family was stable and loving, we were solidly middle class, and my friends were harmless dorks.  The biggest hardship of my youth was hay fever.  The mean streets of Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, and Murder Incorporated were a world away from my idyllic New England home.  So I must have been born bad; nothing else can explain the reign of terror I visited on my second grade class.

It started innocently enough.  In the spring of 1957, my class set up a beautiful miniature farm.  It had a farmhouse, barn, and silo made from construction paper, and a large population of plastic poultry and livestock.  Within a few days, that population started to dwindle.

Why cattle rustling?  Because like most fledgling criminals, I was burdened with a first-class set of model trains.  My layout included a farm which was not nearly as well stocked as the one at school.  I figured that I would borrow a couple of cows and return them the next day.  Even though I forgot to bring them back, nobody seemed to notice.  That afternoon, I lifted three chickens and a goat.  I just lingered a while before heading out to recess, and when the classroom was empty, I stuffed them in my pocket.  As before, there were no repercussions.  Even my parents seemed oblivious to my farm's sudden productivity and my remarkable success at animal husbandry.

I grew headier with each heist.  I soon left the farm behind and started moving small school supplies - rulers, scissors, and the like.  But even the thrill of unlimited paste wasn't enough.  I got greedy.

As part of a science unit on weather, our teacher, Mrs. Pierce, constructed a milk carton anemometer.  We took it outside one windy day, and she timed the blade rotations with a gleaming silver stopwatch.  It was love at first sight.  I had to have it.

I spent that night in feverish preparation, devising a scheme so diabolical that Sherlock Holmes himself would be baffled.  At exactly 2:55 the next afternoon, as school was letting out, I asked Mrs. Pierce if I could see the watch.  When she left the room for a moment, I bolted.

Ingenious, no?

For the next few hours, I went into a timing frenzy.  How far could I run in a minute?  How long could I hold my breath?  What I should have been timing was how long before the jig was up, because soon after, I dropped the watch on the sidewalk and broke the crystal.  I could no longer tell Mrs. Pierce that I simply forgot to give her back the watch before I left school - the linchpin of my scam.  Despite this setback, I was determined not to crack, to play it cool as long as I could.

Which turned out to be not that long.  When my father came home from work, he found me banging my head against the side of our porch.  He asked what I was doing, and I said, "Trying to kill myself."  Keen observer of human nature that he was, he got suspicious.

After a call from the school, he had the facts but decided to sweat it out of me anyway.  When my father got seriously angry, he would speak softly and slowly, but with menacing intensity and volatile sarcasm.  He also possessed an extremely potent version of the hairy eyeball which could extract a confession faster than the Spanish Inquisition.

"I understand you got a stopwatch at school today."

Deny everything.

"A stopwatch?  What stopwatch?"

"How about the broken one we found in your jacket."

Oops.

"Where did you get it?"

"My teacher gave it to me."

That was true.

"Why did she give it to you?"

Uh oh.

"She gave it to me for being a good student."

Even at seven, I knew I was in it deep.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Deeper and deeper.

"Well, we'll just have to call her up and thank her for giving you such a wonderful gift."

He reached for the phone.  I folded like an origami crane.

"Wait a minute!  Let's talk."

Game.  Set.  Match.

Justice followed swiftly.  I received a thorough spanking, lost a few month's allowance to pay for the watch, and was forced to apologize to Mrs. Pierce.  I'm convinced that only part of the punishment was for the theft; the rest was for the dimwitted way I'd committed it.  My father, who'd led a fairly wild youth on the streets of Paterson, NJ, was likely more embarrassed by my ineptitude than my criminality.

And so with chastened heart and sore behind, my career as an evil mastermind came to an end.

NOW THAT YOU'VE LOST WEIGHT, WHO ARE YOU?

Congratulations!  You've made it!  There is no more glorious moment in life than getting on a scale after months of dieting and seeing your target weight in the window.  It's winning the Nobel Prize and heavyweight crown on the same day the Sox take the Series and Juliette Binoche invites you to bed (assuming you're a prizefighting physicist from Boston who's smitten with Juliette Binoche.)  Now that you've reached the pinnacle, what's next?

Start by soaking up some adoration - you've earned it.  Let words of tribute and laudatory speeches fill your head until it bursts from the pressure.  Glory in the discomfort of naysaying colleagues who once ridiculed your efforts and now betray their hypocrisy with oily praise.  Treat compliments from overweight friends with a shrug and assure them that they could do the same if they wanted to.  It's utter malarkey, but it provides them with a reprieve and earns you a merit badge in humility.

Given your accomplishment, you are allowed to do some bragging without tarnishing your halo.  This can be subtle and non-verbal, such as wearing tight clothes to your final Weight Watchers meeting, or more overt:

"Really, Officer, I was doing forty-five in a school zone?  Because that's how much weight I've lost."

Yes, revel in this moment because it's over in a heartbeat, and once it's gone, it ain't comin' back.

People will quickly accommodate themselves to the new slimmer you.  Their praise will fade, and as long as you stay at your current weight, it will no longer be discussed.  But there will always be an undercurrent of jealousy and a lethal lode of suppressed schadenfreude waiting to erupt the minute your self-discipline shrinks and your waist expands

After all, you're expected to keep the weight off.  All the effort you put into reaching your new size is now required just to keep you there.  The term used by the diet community is "maintenance," which is like referring to Marine boot camp as an invigorating spa treatment.  Maintenance is going to the dentist twice a year and changing the oil in your Camry.  What's demanded of you is a life of constant denial and perpetual vigilance, all without the benefit of friendly encouragement or positive reinforcement.  You're already trim; nobody cares.

Further, you've lost the support of your diet plan, that rigidly defined program that got you here, and you've reawakened those demons who were previously soothed by your overeating.  The temptations of the world didn't disappear because you were losing weight and righteously avoiding them.  Burger King flourishes, potato chips are as popular as ever, and Hostess hasn't gone out of business.  That sound you hear?  It's the footsteps of your old weight hunting you down.  Don't look back.

In short time, the joy of the new you is replaced by the fear of becoming the old you, and it's not idle paranoia.  You should be very afraid; the statistical rate of recidivism among dieters is somewhere near 90%.  And even if you beat the odds and remain steadfast, your anxieties will quickly spread from the physical to the existential.  For once the blush is off the rose, it's not so easy to figure out who the rose is. 

At the same time you were losing part of yourself, you were also losing part of your self.  If you were heavy for an extended period of time, it's likely that your personality and behavior were informed by your shape.  Maybe you were defensive or withdrawn in response to your weight, or you possessed an oversized persona to match your oversized bulk - the Chris Farley Syndrome.  As you became thinner, your need for these character traits also diminished, confusing your emotions and blurring your identity.  By the end of your diet, you might not know who you are anymore.

An old friend who lost over a hundred pounds a few years back, said of his transformation:

"Everything changes along with your shape, how you move, sit, get in and out of a car, and ultimately how you perceive yourself.  You're a different person, but that person is an alien, someone you're not totally comfortable with."

He eventually regained the weight.

If you're unsure of who you are, your friends and family are even more bewildered and often resentful.  You've changed the comforting role you played in their lives and taken away whatever superiority they felt because of your former girth.  If you were boisterous before, they miss your constant antics and bonhomie.  If you were introverted, they now dislike your good humor and optimism.  They've remained the same; who are you to rattle their world by becoming someone else, even if you don't know who that someone is?

Congratulations.  You've made it.

GOOD BYE MR. CHIPS AND GOOD RIDDANCE

At the tender age of fourteen, I abandoned hearth, home, tube, and fridge and went off to boarding school for three years.  When I arrived at Williston Academy in the fall of 1964, I was a chubby lad of 160 lbs., but after three months, I was twenty pounds lighter and three inches taller.  The inches were a consequence of puberty; the pounds were victims of circumstance.

Before I wallow in the Dickensian details, it's only fair to note the benefits I received at Williston.  I was given a solid general education with a strong emphasis on writing and literature.  With no TV available, I discovered that there just might be something to this book-reading thing.  I also developed a keen interest of theater since the Drama Club was one of the few places a sports-challenged dweeb could meet girls.

For Williston, like most New England prep schools of that era, was strictly single gender.  Apart from plays, the only contact we had with women came during the occasional Saturday night dance.  These two-hour affairs were more tightly chaperoned than Sicilian mob trials and afforded all the intimacy of a subway platform at rush hour.  Your escorts were chosen by the sole criterion of height, and more often than not, this was bungled.  Many was the night I found myself dancing cheek-to-sternum with some mortified amazon from our sister school.  Prep school may have sharpened my mental skills, but socially, I was one evolutionary step shy of Neanderthal.  As a result, I spent most of my first semester at college gawking at female classmates like a randy village idiot.

The lack of women was only one of many rigors at Williston.  Boarding schools in the 60's came fully equipped with an exhausting and rigidly maintained schedule of studies, athletics, and vicious hazings.  There were daily room inspections, a mandatory dress code, and a dearth of fellow Jews.  Because the school was founded by a dour Congregationalist minister, attending chapel was mandatory six days a week.  To this day, I'm one of the select few of my tribe who knows the words to "Onward Christian Soldiers."

But those hardships were like a week on the Riviera compared to what passed for food at Williston, and I use the word "food" in the broadest possible sense allowed by the English language.

Meals were taken in a large communal dining hall tastefully decorated in Early American Penitentiary.  It could have easily been mistaken for Leavenworth except that the inmates wore blazers and sported more pimples than tattoos.  The room held fifty long rectangular tables, each seating nine students and one faculty member.  Food and drink were served in bulk from indestructible stainless steel platters and pitchers - clearly a time before Martha Stewart had any influence on "institutional" decor.

Like classes, meals at Williston were for instruction, not pleasure.  Apart from providing basic sustenance (dubious at best), the partaking of food was seen as a means to manners, civility, and restraint.  Since the actual food was merely an adjunct to these lessons, it was treated with the same joyless severity as logarithms and gerunds.

However fresh and savory provisions may have been when they arrived at the Williston kitchen, they were soon taken to task by the school's culinary Marine Corps.  Under the stern leadership of head chef Albert Boudreau, the staff didn't so much prepare food as beat it into submission.  Chicken was shaken down and bullied by these gastronomic goons until nothing remained but grease and bones.  Crisp string beans were strong-armed into limp, colorless straw, and potatoes were clubbed into mush right out of the sack.   Serving this stuff wasn't merely an affront to the palette; it was a violation of the Geneva Convention. 

Our biweekly "treat" of roast beef was cooked so far beyond well done that science has yet to find a name for it.  It's as if the recipe came from The Solar Core Cook Book:  "Place meat in preheated oven at 15,000,000° F and roast until nuclei are sufficiently fused."  The remains were then stored in steam chambers until the texture became indistinguishable from an all-weather radial.  Once it was certain no vestige of flavor remained, the meat was cut into thin grayish-white slices and stacked on cold metal trays.  It was served with a brown sludge-like gravy consisting of equal parts beef drippings, butter, flour, flour, flour, flour, and flour.

Another feature of the Williston dining experience was the requirement to wait tables for a three-meal rotation every nine days.  Apparently, it wasn't enough to be nauseated by the culinary horrors tableside, you had to witness first hand how meat and produce could be cruelly transformed into hardened criminal fare.  You also learned the brutal lessons of natural selection as you and forty-nine other crazed students fought with Darwinian fierceness for the clean dishes and silverware needed to reset the tables before you were late for class.

In such a place at such a time, weight loss wasn't a sign of deprivation, but a blessing.