Dreaming of an alternate Wheeling

This light sleeper usually wakes to find all but scant details of his dreams have sifted away to extinction, so bear with me here.

Very few people dream of Wheeling, West Virginia, especially not the chrome and polish version my brain designed and constructed early Monday morning.

As for Wheeling, don't ask why. Maybe I've absorbed too much Chris in the Morning from Northern Exposure and can't shake his recollections of the hometown he fled.

Maybe I just need some time on the road, and my memory drifted back to Ohio's best end point, where the driver immediately leaves behind the river for a tunnel under a West Virginia mountain.

Along the road leading to the river crossing sat the foundries and dry docks that I associate with ports and rivers commonly navigated by cargo ships.

With my father riding shotgun -if Wheeling was our destination, then gambling was probably Dad's goal - the bridge I've crossed so many times was as similar as the multi-tiered promenades lining the east bank were not.

Tiered levels of hotels, restaurants, tea rooms and other facilities filled the space between the mountain peak and the river bank, stretching out from the bridge's moorings.

A little loitering in hotel and casino atriums later, we ended on a ferry traveling north toward Pittsburgh, on a section of river too rough to form part of the usually placid Ohio I know. And really, the whitecaps slamming against rocks marked this river as more Niagara than Ohio. Tourist cruises would be at your own risk, and captains would be scared off by the hulking wrecks that preceded them.

So was I really in this composite West Virginia and does a single thread of plot dangle from pieces of this dream?

I know better than to shut my eyes waiting for a sequel.

2006: A dimly lit, triumphant year of Tom Waits

Forget the year-end platitudes, celebrating politicians and scientists for their accomplishments. My year-end list ends with one name and Tuesday's release of new music sealed it. For whatever happened in 2006, the soundtrack is almost entirely Tom Waits (with a little Jenny Lewis and TV on the Radio sprinkled into the mix).

But the croaking bard of California beat them all this year. I expected the two albums Waits released on the same day in 2002 would not be soon surpassed, but the moment rumblings of a tour reached my ears in late Spring, that changed.

But here are the highlights:

1. The nine-city tour through the South and Midwest, bringing his unique show within travel distance for many fans who never saw him before (and for the many hipsters who snapped up tickets yet don't know the first song from Tom Waits, but I digress). I wrote about the Louisville show it August, so I'll just repeat this sentiment: for any music lover, it's a great feeling to cross off the top musician on your list of people to see perform before they/you die.

2. bootleg concerts trickling onto the Internet from said tour, casting some songs I found unbearable in a fresh, forgiving light through new musical arrangements.

3. Orphans, the 3-disc box set which overloaded the diehard fan with new material and a sampling of rare cuts (though the suicide bomber, Bush-bashing "Road to Peace" is overwrought and immediately stale; he addressed the issue much better with 2004's "Day After Tomorrow").

For years I wondered why Waits, who churned out songs for soundtracks and tribute albums with great ease, never assembled them for a proper album. He trumped all of that by burying the non-album tracks among new tunes.

4. The countless interviews and live performances on television. For a man with a reclusive reputation, he got around in 2006.

Maybe it's my own mood and position that drive my immersion in all things Waits.

But right now, Sinner's Grove isn't a bad place to hang out with hard-luck, wayfaring friends. At least its soundtrack is great.

Good luck fog

A good, thick fog casts the world in new light - and leads to near-accidents I'd be nowhere near in normal visibility.

It hung thick this morning. The region draws its share of regular fog, but this it camped out in the trees and made for interesting navigation on a morning with more 5 a.m. traffic than any other in the year.

With the third floors of buildings across the street completely shrouded.
For once, I could not attribute the fogginess to heat bleeding out of the apartment through ancient window glass.

I watched briefly through the haze as the bargain hunters swarmed into the nearby Target's parking lot. It was an Allegory of the Cave moment: If through the fog I can only see headlights flashes from cars driven by Black Friday shoppers, do the shoppers really exist?

A walk across street confirms they do indeed, Plato ... and you'll join Socrates if you get between them and the last Extreme Tickle Me Elmo.

All of this is a symptom of a work day with little to accomplish by tacking three inches onto a few half-written columns, composing a paean to Tom Waits in 2006 and burning CDs for friends.

A hawk's breakfast, five miles and a dozen stinging leg muscles later ...

Call it an unsuspected omen, but something kept the cat out of his usual haunts. He sat rigidly on the bedroom window sill; my cat knowledge is cursory, but they only tense up with purpose.

I wiped the window clean of his condensed breath to find the attraction, and saw a squirrel circling the trunk of the closest tree.

Then my eyes caught the real attraction: A red-tail hawk with talons clenching a long branches that loomed even closer. It gingerly stripped away the skin from a rodent, pecking at the red pulpy meat without a care in the world (I'm purely guessing on this).

Until the squirrel got bolder than any rat with a furry tail every should. It stopped circling and made a swipe toward breakfast, but the hawk jumped, hovered for a second with its full wingspan on display and quashed any further interruptions. Finishing its meal, it loitered for a few moments in the taller branches, then split toward the thicker foliage by the Olentangy.

Whether a giant bird less than 10 feet away or thoughts of his succulent prey enticed the kitten, I'll never know. I was too worried about collapsing in the middle of my first five-mile run, the Turkey Trot, less than an hour away.

At 1.9 miles beyond my best running distance, I had doubts. And the course is a dream at this point; I remember little, beyond the smell of cow pastures with a quarter mile to finish. A dense crowd dispersed slowly; the first mile passed before I gained freedom of movement and no longer feared trampling anyone.

I just kept driving, never stopped though my head filled with thoughts of stripping off the hooded sweatshirt weighed down in sweat urged on by an usually bright, balmy November morning.

Time on the clock was 45:30, if you wondered. A little more endurance, and I could have pushed closer to the eight-minute-mile mark. But not this time. As with the first 5K, I just needed to know I could finish. Now I know, and races longer than the 5K's 3.1 miles no longer intimidate.

On my way out, I drove the same streets I ran, watching the long column formed by the slower runners then walkers of all speeds. They stretched out for more than two miles. It was a strange sensation to see them taking the same steps I took only 20 minutes before, to feel nearly at rest when they trudged the final mile uphill to the finish.

Behind the waning pack, a crew packed up the water station and after the last walker, only a police cruiser held back the phalanx of anxious holiday drivers confined in a single lane.

No Thanksgiving for Ethiopian lions

The American president pardons a pair of turkeys for Thanksgiving in a gooft ceremony, while an Ethiopian zoo poisons rare lions under its care, send their bodies to a taxidermist to sell them because it cannot afford them alive.

I'm no PETA fanatic, but something seems mildly out of whack here ... or maybe another zoo could purchase the lions.

Two fingers stiffened on a pastime like no other

Nine months and a world of change since my last frame, I eagerly returned to the neon-fired spectacle of Capri Lanes, among the last kitschy, old style bowling alleys in Columbus.

With old traveling buddy Alicia and Kent, her boyfriend, in town, I felt happily obligated. Before she uprooted from East Campus to the grid of West Hollywood (and later, Newport Beach), we rolled at Capri regularly. A smallish alley with propagandistic bowling murals on the wall, Capri represents a much gentler atmosphere than the big box bowling meccas further in the suburbs.

In built-out Orange County, I learned, bowling alleys are endangered species, buildings with giant footprints not capable of churning out tax revenue like an office tower on the same site. For those that remain, it's a task just finding a parking spot, much less a open lane.

Aside from a small Sunday night league and a couple too caught up in PDA to leave the scoring table, we rolled two games undisturbed but for our own bawdy commentary.

Returning to the alley always includes one problem: two fingers no longer accustomed to the ball's weight, strained more with every hurl of an alley ball. With Capri's full arsenal to choose from, I failed to pulled the magic, spare-snaring ball from their racks, and alternated between a pair that let the hitch in my delivery guide them to 7 or 8 pins a turn for 20 frames.

When we left, my left hand looked gnarled and arthritic. It wore off sometime during dinner.

Even though I narrowly broke 100 on the second game, it seemed a small cost to bear.

Default medal for a scarce age group

Huffing up the last hill into the staging area for the Conquer the Creek 5K run Saturday, I had few other thoughts beyond rehydration and a bagel to quiet my stomach.

The race organizers had other plans. After a run where level, dry ground barely made a presence and I was just glad to get in the car with my 30:19 run time, they wanted to know my age -- and wanted to give me a first place medal for my age group.

I replied as any gracious plodder on his fourth 5K would: "Are you kidding me?"

That was enough to halt the abdominal cramps and hoist a smile - and not the usual post-race smile at morning sunshine burning through the clouds a half-hour too late.

Now, let's qualify that: all other able-bodied runners between 20 and 29 either:
1. Ran the 10K (Maybe next year, baby).
2. Were downing their first beer on the long tailgating road leading to OSU-Michigan.
3. Showed better judgment than to runny a hilly, mud- and obstacle-covered course with temperatures in the 40's.

While a few woman in that age group ran, not a single other man bothered. I had to age bracket to myself.

A 14-year old finished about 10 minutes ahead of me, illustrating the impact of hard-living and in my case, not running regularly until pushing 30.

I may never taste the sweet nectar of 5K victory (natural stockiness and running are pieces from separate puzzles), but victory by default was by no means a beggar's feast.

PlayStation 3, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

PlayStation 3 first-nighters dutifully filled chairs in their rain gear outside Targets, Wal-Marts and every other store given a tiny allotment of the next-generation video game platform.

And world turned all attention to its release. Seriously.

In Buckeye Country, it's hard to tell the difference between PlayStation lines and OSU-Michigan tailgaters starting early.

Robbers in Putnam, Connecticut knew the people in line had money, if not credit cards, to buy their $600 machines, so they did what they do, and even shot someone who refused to pony up.

A aide for former Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina) tried to pull some strings with a Wal-Mart. John Kerry's 2004 wingman claims to have mentioned wanting to get one in front of his staff, and apparently one of them thought he meant the kids wanted one on opening night.

Sorry Senator, but being a vice presidential candidate isn't enough. Joe Lieberman would decry the violent video games in the first place, so we can't use him as an example. All Dick Cheney would need to do is show up in Deer Hunter Orange and bare his teeth. The employees would rush to give him one.


But America has gone PlayStation 3 crazy, though once Christmas passes, the new platform will become more readily available.

As someone utterly indifferent to video games since the lamented passing of Sega Genesis, I have a hard time understanding the urge, unless it's just to buy one, immediately post it on eBay and enjoying the swift profit. Otherwise, sitting in the rain for video games .... Well, do the math on your own.

The confidence game

All manners of metaphysical thoughts about confidence rattled through my skull. I tried to think of the last time well-honed confidence pulsed in these veins; aside from a stretch in late August/early September, it has not made a regular appearance in some time.

As I shyly sat amongst party goers last weekend, I realized how rarely I felt confident anymore. Without being medicated (draw your own conclusions, dear readers), it's hard to make a move some days.

So what happens when confidence shatters? Must a time limit expire before the trashman stops to sweep up the shards?

And if the pieces have been tossed in the trash, can confidence be rebuilt from shaky ground where it originally sprang?

Nothing tests confidence like failure, whether in love, job or as a pet owner (the failure I'm striving not to become at this moment).

Right now, I'm groping around to see if I have any pieces left. As scratched as hands have become with a cat in the house, I wouldn't mind getting jabbed by some leftovers right now ...

Heckler's farewell

Random calls on a Thursday rarely produce such excitement. A transferred call and I find my latest column under assault by a reader who just didn't comprehend what I actually set out to say. That's fine - ignorance makes the world spin. But when reader just wants to rant, I cut to the chase and move on

When she said she had a problem with my editorial, the timing failed to line up - any lingering complaints about the excoriation propping up our candidate editorials were moot. The column under criticism was a piece about Columbus moving up in the world and leaving behind its "Cowtown" label.

Houston and Kansas City are Cowtowns, she said. Aside from an honorary cattle drive through Houston earlier this week, neither town clings to that connotation much anymore. It's just a slice of heritage in a steel metropolis.
"Cowtowns made American what it is today and people like me just want to poke fun at that way of life. As long as there are cows in Columbus, it will always be a Cowtown".... it's already faded enough from memory that I must recite her angry words in generalities.

Anyway, the rant was too far along for my witty interjection about the major herds that still roam at Ohio State's agricultural facilities. Any structure of conversation long ago collapsed on itself, and the caller raged on from the debris pile.

When the heckler launched into the "You should move to New York City or Los Angeles" portion of her diatribe, I stopped listening and cut her off with my single-best conversation-ender in years:
"As long as I annoy people like you, I think I'll stay in Columbus. Have a nice day."

Hecklers ... you have to know to deal with them, and when to shut them down with a word.

The dye was passed

UN Ambassador John Bolton raises the ire of many people, but for me, the only genuine reason to oppose his nomination comes down to one simple thing: white mustache, brown hair.

That mustache is a freak of nature, some mutation never meant for a man, especially one broadcasting American interests to the world. Don't give me that "It's my style" line, either; it looks ridiculous. No more than the vain men with sluggish toupees, you fool no one about your age.

Slap some brown dye on that strainer and we'll talk, Mr. Ambassador. If you survive the nomination process, a line item in the budget does not seem unreasonable. Attach a mustache dye rider to a bill if you must; that's an expense the American people will forgive.

Or let it go -- as long as you're not sporting a nasty scar underneath it (the sole reason my father keeps his intact), you'll live through it well. Your upper lip might feel colder in the short term, but your nation will no longer have to endure the travesty of those walrus bristles.

WWWD (And it isn't even Michigan Week yet)

The annual OSU pre-Michigan fever pitch began its deafening roar early this week.

"Go Bucks" became Central Ohio's official conclusion to phone conversations; if state government weren't in transition, the Statehouse might produce a resolution signifying that as our official telephone valediction.


Fine. Let it begin. But can we please stop wondering What Would Woody Do? A staggering amount of adults in this town look to heavens and talk of "Woody looking down."

Go ahead, I'm waiting for the laugh track on this one or for someone to break character by giggling (a la Jimmy Fallon on SNL). I'm not going to get it, though. But they'll probably just print a few hundred thousand bracelets with WWWD and watch the Scarlet and Gray Zealots snatch them up at $5 apiece.

So what would Woody do?

I'm glad you asked, because it's simple.

He'd act as anyone who had been dead for 20 years and suddenly became reanimated would ... by feasting on the flesh of the living (tailgaters, that is - he's got hundred of thousands available for the taking and would probably have volunteers given who he is) then stagger back his final resting place in Union Cemetery, swooning from the blood alcohol content of his victims.

But seriously, let the man rest in peace.

And let the zombies loose on the tailgaters - if police are strictly enforcing the open container, it would help that climate out.
After all, no one wants to run from zombies with a bellyful of Natural Light.

Provisional ballots and stickers with cheap adhesives

The line of 20 would-be voters stretched out into the rain; by their expressions, most hoped the guy handing out Democrat sample ballots in the parking lot would catch pneumonia.

Rolling out of bed minutes before I stood in line, I dumped wet food into the cat's bowl, I trudged down the street just as our forecasted day of showers began. I expected a problem plus many more beyond mine, so I thought the poll workers could deal with this scenario at first ballot.

The poll workers gave into us at 6:30 a.m. and immediately wished the throng still stood outside (when I left 25 minutes later, the line had expanded across the church's courtyard). In short: Something complicated the process for every other voter in my precinct. My flaw - new address, same precinct. Hello, provisional ballot status. I half-heartedly hoped someone would challenge my address so I could walk them across the parking lot and invite them in for the continental breakfast (toast, yogurt and cranberry juice).

But I was going provisional; sweet talking doesn't work on poll workers, especially those with wedding rings. I voted that way in '02 on a tiny punch card behind a heavy curtain. I had no problem taking up that little metal poker again. It was getting to the ballot that posed the problem.

A small stack of paperwork later, I found my curtain-free booth, punched the screen with my thumb three dozen times, grabbed an "I voted" sticker, which by 9 a.m. already began to peel away from my shirt pocket at its edges.

At least I got to jump in the shower when I got home, removing the taint of bureaucracy and glitch-filled technology standing in the path of my civic duty.

Next time, the vet appointment is for me

Strange mail has found me ... with

Relying on my usual experience with anything medical, I expected an additional invoice for what insurance didn't cover. Then it hit me: my insurance doesn't offer a feline plan. No plastic window in the envelope to portend more money going out the door.

I instead found a pleasant letter from the office manager of the vet clinic. Probably a form letter, but personal enough in tone that read it.
It didn't take me too long to winnow down one reason why: on the one-mile trip, I drove past four other animal hospitals.

But the letter itself told other stories, mainly about medical care. Pets get pampered. People get pummeled.

When was the last time a doctor took the time to right a personal response after a first visit? Or any visit?

Perhaps if employed by one of the pharm companies whose calendars, pens and other logo-covered junk litters every exam room. Otherwise, you're lucky if they stop in long enough to find out about your ailment

They don't have to care, really; payment is certain once you're in the door, because unless is downright awful, few eagerly switch their allegiances. The doctor's office became so impersonal and bureaucratic that people avoid it until their health demands treatment.

The exam room at the vet hospital, on the other hand, spotlighted a poster of several dozen cat breeds (I found out my cat's patterns closely resemble that of a Turkish van, also known as the swimming cat, also known as a perfect explanation for his love of water).

"American medical care: Pets before people." Ladies and gentlemen, we have a motto.

Election's end ... Now what do I do?

When Wile E. Coyote finally caught that damned monosyllabic roadrunner, I have a half-memory of the coyote wondering what to do with the bird now that he achieved his lofty goal.

Welcome to my life in the election's final week. With the exception of new Democratic pariah John Kerry, I'm one of the few people associated with politics to have an empty plate during crunch time. The letters went to press, no endorsements left to run and whatever mistakes snuck through will wait until after the election for their corrections.

Now that the pressure fades, I welcome the ranting callers who just want to vent at whoever answers the phone at this bastion of the "liberal media" - or at least that's what they tell me.

I just want someone to talk to ... well to listen to; I don't talk a lot when the topic is bias against Republicans and it isn't so gently peppered with profanities.

But right now I'm lying to you and myself. Let them go far enough, and I'll reply with my own string of Anglo-Saxon words and hang up abruptly. My customer service skills only go do far...especially with my part in the election concluded.