She's back.

To honor the completion of her freshman year at Western Washington University, I've composed this tribute to my first-born and her joyous homecoming.

Sung to the tune of “Back in Black,” by AC/DC:

Zoe’s Back

Zoe’s back.

Her shit is stacked

In the hall and on the kitchen counter.

Yeah, she’s hangin’ loose.

Trying to choose:

Watch Grey’s or nap for half an hour?

She’s got a job.

I hope by God

She can stick it out for sixty days or so.

It’s for the Y.

Your little guy

Has a brain that’s just like Zo’s.

‘Cause she’s back.

Oh, my back.

Yeah, she’s back.

You know it, Jack.

Well, she’s baa haa haa haa haack.

Baa haa haa haa haack.

Zoe’s back.

Her crap is still unpacked.

Back to our shack

Comes the power pack.

Six meals a day, not including snacks.

Yeah she loves to hang

With her gang,

Instagramming selfies with the cat.

Well she watches sports

Always in her shorts,

Only gets up to pee and refill Goldfish.

This soon will end.

When we send

Our angel off to pull her weight.

‘Cause she’s back.

That’s a fact.

Yeah, she’s back.

Step on a crack.

Well, she’s baa haa haa haa haack.

Baa haa haa haa haack.

Zoe’s back.

From the land of Hacky Sack.

Please insert Angus Young solo in its entirety. 

‘Cause she’s back.

She gives us flack.

Yeah, she’s back.

She wants some slack.

Well, she’s baa haa haa haa haack.

Baa haa haa haa haack.

Zoe’s back.

Pour me a Coke and Jack.

It's Yearbook Season.

Since it’s that time of year, let’s talk a little today about milestones.

Last night was my fourteen-year-old daughter’s eighth grade “promotion” ceremony. The word “graduation” seems to get tossed around so much these days. Between preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school, yesterday marked our ninth such ceremony. 

Holy sweet father of T-ball trophies, what's next? At this rate it won't be long before maternity wards start broadcasting “Pomp and Circumcise” through the corridors.

So yeah, the past couple of weeks have been heaped with one everyone-gets-a-badge-uation after another.

(At this point, please insert the inquisitive tones of “Dateline’s" Keith Morrison): But there’s another historic way station lurking in the milky dusk of a bygone decade—

Twenty years ago this week, on June 17, 1994, O.J. Simpson performed his hour-long Ford Bronco infomercial. With his friend Al, a wad of cash and a gun to his head, Simpson took 95 million of us on a slow ride to the intersection of Holy Shit I Never Knew O.J. Was a Psycho Boulevard, and like, Sepulveda.

Along with most of the world, I initially believed the whole situation was a misunderstanding. How could this All-American football-star-turned-actor possess the capacity for such savagery? 

As a kid, I worshipped the guy like subsequent generations idolized Micheal Jordan and Tom Brady. I’m not proud of this now, but check it out—I even wore his shoes:

Originally intending to write exclusively on the Broncoversary and my childhood worship of O.J., once I pulled out that old yearbook, I was instantly distracted. To hell with O.J. Simpson, I thought, let’s talk about something more relevant. 

Think back to those warm, waning June days, when the work was done, and our sole responsibility was attaining as many heartfelt dedications as could be crammed into a 64-page hardbound time capsule.

Every adolescent message you are about to read was written by classmates now in their fifties. Since so much time has passed and most legal statutes of limitation have expired, I decided to include names. You may see something you wrote thirty-six years ago. Let’s just hope you were nice to me.

The following are excerpts from the pages of the 1977-78 Olympic Junior High annual.

I still haven't tried Caryn's recipe because the only place that sells giggles is Whole Foods, and they're organic and really expensive.

Happy yearbook season.

A Life of Service? Roger That.

This is the fifth in my series of Rolling-Stone-reporter-wannabe interviews, entitled... I've always had a hard time with the title...so let's just call it, "Friends with great stories."

For the past six months, my teenager has been hard at work on her life story, also known as her eighth grade portfolio. The girl's only fourteen but holy sweet mother of toner cartridges, this juggernaut has grown to the size of the Chicago phonebook! 

How's that for an old man joke? I've been practicing.

My point is that, regardless of how long we've been alive, everyone's got a story to tell. And heavens to mergatroid, a few of us have carved out lives with such colorful chapters, I feel obligated to share them.  And if I had to find a common denominator, I'd say my friends who've sacrificed the most, those who've lived lives of compassion, have had the most amazing journeys. 

Yada yada, Yoda. Post that beautiful meme to Facebook and move along.

I met Rog (pronounced Råhjhhj) in a high school weight lifting group. We were on the football team, and the coach had made it unofficially mandatory to take his P.E. class. Rog and I ended up working out together (I use the term "working" more loosely than a Limbaugh jowl) and spent fifty minutes every day making fun of the coach and pulling up our tube socks. 

We cracked wise as our chubby leader spat coachisms out his frothy mouth cracks, his polyester shorts buzzing like a little table saw where his thighs ground together. He clapped his meaty hands and snorted out football clichés: "Get strong, Trojans! Hum babe! I see a band of  warriors in this room who are gonna pin their ears back and lay some wood to Kennedy High School on September 9!" 

Lay some wood? Yeah, when September 9 finally rolled around, think balsa wood. 

"Owoooohhh! Let's get it on!" That was the dude we called Mole Man, our own version of Rudy, yelling from over by the squat rack. He was about five feet four and you could set your watch by his robust testosterone geysers. "Let's go, men! Hurts so good!"

During our two years together playing for mighty Troy, the team compiled a 2-16 record, amounting to a winning percentage of just over eleven. Didn't hurt very good to get beaten 54-6 by Evergreen, but a few hushed sideline jokes among the less serious salved the emotional contusions of being physically dominated on a weekly basis.

From an early age, Rog was drawn to stringed instruments. I used to love this picture until I found out it was taken at senior prom. At least he took some heat off the guys who brought farm animals.

After graduating in 1982, Rog opted to postpone college to address some lingering rock 'n' roll issues, playing bass for a year-and-a-half in '80s cover bands like this one called Splash:

Compelling concept for a band, no? That's him on the far left. Did Rog get a tad distracted playing"Mr. Roboto" while his low slung bass rhythmically assaulted his Speedo-covered loins? Perhaps, but it never…showed?

I know, too far again. But now for the good part, where our guest is allowed to talk. 

Rog, after eighteen months purging your rock demons and singing high harmony on "Hungry Like the Wolf," you experienced, shall we say, a total eclipse of the heart, and decided to go to college. When the money ran out, you applied for an Army ROTC scholarship, altering the course of your life significantly.

Definitely. The two-year academic scholarship bought me an obligation for four years active duty. My original plan was be a tank driver (I LOVED those things), but the Army had other ideas.

Since I didn’t want to go into the finance branch of the Army or to the Air Defense Artillery, my military science professor said my options were limited to two: medical school or law school. That summer I took the LSAT (the morning after seeing KISS and WASP in concert) and did well enough to get admitted to Gonzaga. 

Wow, I'm sure you weren't the first scholar propelled by KISS toward academic excellence. Actually, you probably were. Anyway, after meeting your awesome and beautiful wife Marci during college and marrying her while in law school, you graduated in 1990 and passed the Washington State Bar Exam, thereby beginning your military obligation.

After attending JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia (Judge Advocate Generals are lawyers trained in military law), Marci and I were given three locations to choose from: Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort Drum, New York or Panama. 

We both immediately vetoed Fort Polk, also known as swamp city. I liked the idea of Panama, but Marci—always the mature person in the relationship—mentioned that the United States had just invaded Panama the previous year, and she wasn’t too keen on living there for three years.  

Sounds reasonable. So it was Fort Drum by default, then.

Yeah. It was the home of the 10th Mountain Division, and had I done a little more research, I would have known that the chances would be very good that I would be going to some of the world’s favorite hot spots of that time.  

Like Somalia?

Like Somalia. We knew it was possible, since I was an Army lawyer. We go where the soldiers go.

And that's exactly where you were sent for six months in 1993.

I was there between April and September. To give you a feel for the situation, the Black Hawk Down sequence of events occurred three weeks after I left. 

We were the “QRF” or Quick Reaction Force, meaning our troops would get deployed to any trouble spots in Somalia that a general deemed worthy of messing with. My job was to handle everything legal. Early on, that meant writing wills and powers of attorney for soldiers. 

I also paid a lot of claims for damage that we (the Army) caused as a result of our own negligence. Let me explain the distinction: if combat action resulted in damage to property, we didn’t pay. But if our helicopters were training in an empty desert and one of the wire-guided missiles left the grid and hit a building, I'd be paying out a claim. 

Here's an example: At one of our road checkpoints, a young soldier accidentally discharged a round. The shot went through the windshield of a waiting car, killing a young Somali man.

I heard about it immediately and flew to the scene the following morning. Accompanying me in the helicopter were a paralegal, an interpreter and a security detail, plus a guy carrying ten thousand American dollars, which was the maximum I could pay on a claim.

We got to the village and I met the father of the deceased man. He was a a highly respected elder, looked about a thousand years old and arrived with his own entourage of five or six guys. 

Through the interpreter, I told him how sorry the United States was for his loss. I listened to him rant about what the Americans were doing there and why was his oldest son now dead? Not a lot of fun, but then I get to tell him the good news—I had a whopping $10,000 US for his trouble.  

He was insulted, which he should have been. I sure as hell would probably have swung away if the roles were reversed, and this was when I heard for the first time about “blood money.”  

This guy told me he didn't want our money. In the Somali culture, if an oldest son (and primary family breadwinner) is killed, custom demands that the responsible party provide one thousand camels as compensation.  

As this was being explained to me by the interpreter, I started thinking—I could save the government some money. The camels in Somalia looked awful; they couldn’t be that expensive. How hard could it be to round up a thousand and deliver them?  

I told the guy I'd look into it. We got into the helicopter and headed back to the base. When I got there, my boss told me I was out of my mind and that I would not be going out on the open market trying to buy camels (Precedent alone for this would have been disastrous.).

After a few days, I flew back to the village with the bad news. When the old man and his peeps showed up, the money was laid out on the table. I told him the US government is not in the business of camel herding, and that while I was deeply sorry for his loss, our laws and customs only allowed me to pay this amount.  

The old man got all pissed off and stormed out of the building. About an hour later, he came back alone, telling my interpreter he urgently needed to see me. I invited him in and he told me he would take the payment, but he couldn’t appear to be leaving with money at the risk of being robbed.  

He said in order for it to work, he needed yell and storm out again, just in case anyone was watching. The guy stuffed the cash into his underwear, signed a release and yelled for another five minutes. Then he walked out and down the dirt road that runs through town, never to be seen again.

Did you perform any other duties while in Somalia?

When I first got there and we weren’t being shot at or mortared, I would go out to the orphanages. We would bring soccer balls and supplies and spend time with the kids. I got close with one named Mohammed, and I still have his photo.  

He would visit me when I would sit in front of the embassy accepting claims.  I saw him every week for about two months—gave him candy, a Walkman, some cassettes—then he stopped coming. Soon after that we started taking rounds at the embassy, and I never saw him again. Chances are he ended up killed or working for Al Qaeda.

Over the ensuing twenty years, in both in active and reserve duty, you performed virtually every type of service for the Army—labor law, trial defense, even environmental law. Yet when you finally retired in 2009, you returned to another hot zone in a civilian role. Describe that.

I signed a contract with the State Department to perform “Rule of Law” work for a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan. We were basically sent to establish or re-ignite legal systems. The problem was, no lawyers or judges were around anymore; nearly all of them had left the country for places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. 

All that was left were old lawyers who could not afford to get out of the country. During my time there, I worked on getting lawyers trained (there was a law school nearby that taught Islamic Sharia law.). The program took four years to spit out lawyers. so there was no quick fix.  

What little was left of the court system there, like every other political or administrative system, was corrupt. Tons of dollars were thrown at the problem. Every politician starting at the top of the food chain had their fingers on the money, and took a piece of the pie as the funds worked their way down to the town or village that needed a new police station or courthouse. Often times the money wouldn’t make it at all. 

Then there was the question about which law to apply—traditional Anglo Common Law or Sharia. We also had to compete with the Taliban shadow government, who had their own, Sharia-based court system. 

All in all, my opinion of what we were doing there was not good. My little piece of the picture indicated that our efforts were simply prolonging the inevitable, since there would never be a traditional court system with prosecutors, juries, and defense attorneys. I was more than a little disenchanted with our role and how I was handled as a contract employee.

Interesting. Speaking of "shadow" court systems, let's talk about the shadow job you've been performing for the past fifteen years when you weren't deployed to war zones and counseling soldiers.

Yeah, the “Big Job” working on the Seattle Mariner Grounds Crew.  On average I work around forty to fifty games of the 81 game home schedule. I started in September 1999. Head groundskeeper Bob Christofferson, a.k.a. the "Sod Father," started the next year. Since then, he, I and the rest of the crew have become like family. Most of us were around in 2001 for the All Star Game and the playoffs.

And if I'm not mistaken, 2001 was the last time the Mariners did make the playoffs, yes?

Yes, and there's a reason. The grounds crew started dancing in 2002. Coincidence? I think not. The baseball gods are NOT happy with us. Many of us on the crew want nothing to do with the dance, since we believe it has run its course.  

However, we are told there are many fans contacting the front office and marketing clamoring for the fat guys to get out there and shake it. We haven't danced all season, but it looks like we're finally going to succumb to the pressure.The choreographer was at the ballpark last night.

Anything else you'd like to mention before we sign off? 

One last thing. Marci has been incredible throughout the last 25 years. There was at least one time during my career that I could not tell her where I was going, and that had to be hard on her. I left her with our one-month-old son when I went to Somalia. I have been on numerous other deployments where she was left to be the sole parent to both of our sons for extended periods of time. She has never complained or asked me not to go.

Thanks, Roger. And thank you, Marci. 

Maya Angelou: Someone Who Knew Why.

I like to see the children say, 'I never thought of that before.' And I think, ‘I've got them!'"

-Maya Angelou

Here are some of her occupations: San Francisco’s first woman streetcar driver (at 16!), 17-year-old teen mom high school graduate, opera singer who toured Europe in the ‘50s, film director, civil rights activist…

…there’s so much more she did, too, like speaking six languages and performing in Broadway plays, but let’s talk about her poetry.

While she’s best known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her biographical tale of growing up in the Jim Crow South, throughout her life she jotted down poems to distract herself from the trauma of childhood sexual abuse and racism. It was first published in 1983, but no one is really sure when Ms. Angelou first wrote “Caged Bird”:

…The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing…

If you get a chance, do a little research on this woman. Seriously, this is one of the most amazing people to ever breathe oxygen. When the hell did she sleep?

Maya Angelou’s death made me remember how powerful poetry can be, how it hits a sweet spot in us not reachable by music or traditional prose. As good as a song may be, I tend to focus on the melody and lose the lyrics. I can immerse myself in a good novel, yet it doesn’t strike with the emotional cadence of poetry.

My friend Jame Richards took things a step further. In Three Rivers Rising, she recounts the 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood. After a dam fails and unleashes twenty million gallons of water on working- class Johnstown, the story unfolds from the perspectives of a wealthy teenage girl staying at the resort on the hill above harm’s way, and her forbidden boyfriend whose family resides in the valley below.

The subject matter alone is intriguing, but here’s the cool part—it's written in verse:

Celestia

…Father says he comes for the fishing,

but in truth he comes to keep an eye

on other businessmen.

I have never seen him hook

a worm or tie a fly.

I cannot imagine him gutting a fish

or scraping scales.

The only scales he knows

are for banking and shipping.

But his partners and rivals decided

it was time for fresh air,

exercise,

peace and quiet,

away from the filth and crowds of the city.

So, even at this pastoral lakeside resort,

my father will not miss

the glimmer of a business deal

spoken over rifles or fishing reels…

It's a craft that can veer in limitless directions. Ever read a poem by Charles Bukowski? The guy was no Hallmark Card, but man, could he hit a nerve:

…there is a place in the heart that

will never be filled

a space

and even during the

best moments

and

the

greatest

times

we will know it…

That’s an excerpt from No Hope for That. 

Thanks for making every day seem like Monday, Chuck. Remind me to look for that refrigerator magnet at your website.

Let’s end on a high note. I would be committing felonious balonyous if I didn’t hoist Theodore Suess Geisel to the top of the turtle stack.

Horton. The Grinch. The Lorax. The main dude in Green Eggs and Ham who never states his name or species. Dr. Suess is nothing short of my idol, crafting his made-up words and simple rhymes into lessons on morality, loyalty and positivity:

Today you are you,

That is truer than true.

There is no one alive

Who is youer than you.

If you haven’t read Oh, the Places You’ll Go, give it a gaze. And hey, since it is the season, the hardback edition is a great gift for that special graduate.

Today we celebrate the life of an extraordinary human, one who wasn't afraid to take a few chances. How about if we honor Ms. Angelou’s memory by venturing into the scrawling out of a poem or two. 

No big whoop; anything you want, even if the first line contains “Nantucket.” Let’s see what you’ve got.

Rest in peace, Maya Angelou. Here’s to the poets.

It Wasn't Exactly The Grapes of Wrath.

“Now there’s a First World problem.”

Would you consider that term a cliché—just another empty, overused slogan in a jingo-slathered world?

Or do you look at it more as a credo—a helpful, underutilized reminder to just chill the hell out?

I try to take the second approach, but occasionally, bona fide hardships do arise:

If the mood strikes, can I change Siri’s voice to Bill Murray’s? Nope.

Sometimes Safeway runs out of Lindor milk chocolate truffles, and the only choices are caramel and white chocolate and dark chocolate. And who's the closest person I can yell at? A kid stocking yogurt four aisles over. Freaking inconvenient.

Excuse me, this burrito is supposed to have the chicken on top, not inside. I guess it's not taco time after all, so I’ll try and keep it together while you unstuff my burrito.

But yesterday, things got even more uncomfortable for the comfortable. Some new pipe fittings under the house decided to resign without notice, leaving the family without water for a day. Yes, you heard me correctly—an entire day. 

Even though 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation and hygiene-related causes, it’s amazing what something like this does to a crew that's accustomed to clean hot and cold water on demand. Let’s just say of the three dwarfs who currently live at our house, two of them have been named Grumpy for the past couple of days.

And here’s a quick tip from Dopey, the oldest dwarf: Don’t try your hand at pipe repair when in close proximity to electricity. While the jolt was nowhere near Bundy-level, it still tingled like a peck on the cheek from Old Sparky. 

I attempted to salvage my wounded provider status by hauling an old jug of distilled water out of the basement. Ever since the Y2K crisis passed without incident, it has waited faithfully to provide the family with emergency hydration support. The cat sniffed at the dusty plastic, sneezed and shuffled over to the toilet. Okay, teeth brushing only, then.

Hopefully, this is something that’s reparable in one day’s time, but hey, if it isn’t, I know one person under fifteen who could learn a little something about patience and flexibility.

In today’s First World, the busy signal no longer exists.

Facebook and the Seven Deadly Sins.

How can I put this? Let’s just say I’m not the most secure mattress on the roof of the station wagon, so I’ll need your bionic grip as we breeze down today’s freeway.

Incidentally, isn’t if funny how people think they can simultaneously drive and pin an eighty-pound cushion to the top of their car with nothing but one sweaty paw?

Yeah, sounds funny until someone gets his eyebrows waxed by a windshield-speckled Beautyrest, right?

Anyway, today I want to talk about something of which we’re all guilty, that I noticed yesterday as I rode the bus home. While ninety percent of the passengers stared cloudy-eyed at their iMasters, sitting next to me was a woman with two small children. Was she holding anything manufactured by Samsung, Apple or Hewlett-Packard? Nope.

Did she tell them to “shut the hell up and sit still or your Gameboys stay in Mommy’s purse and you’ll be stuck with your iPods.”? Negatory.

Get this: she talked to them. They even joked around a little and drew some stuff.

Good Lord, what backward behavior on vehicle of mass transit. Laughter can prove so distracting when zeroing in on the perfect Snap Chat. Oh, the humanity.

Humanity. Hmm, let’s visit that word for a smidge. When we as a society choose to remove ourselves from the humans around us, to sever the communal connection, doesn’t that diminish our collective humanity?

I’ll go ahead and say yes, it does. In fact, I think that despite the repressive environment of his era, the 4th century monk Evagrius Ponticus nailed it when he penned the original seven deadly sins. These were the seven forms of self-idolatry where the subjective reigns over the objective.

In other words, social media has rendered us even more profoundly self-centered than we were in the age of rotary phones and vinyl records. Since I don’t participate in the Twittershpere or Instagram Nation, I’d like to use Facebook to illustrate my point with each of these vices:

Greed—For the realtors among us, must we incessantly post the latest listings? Some may call it networking; I would deem it Amway-inspired acquaintance alienation.

Sloth—Isn’t it just a bit lazy to wish someone happy birthday on Facebook? I understand that a card can set you back, sometimes over three dollars, and that’s B.S. (before stamp).

Pride—I’m guilty of this one, but I’m trying to improve. Not only have I posted every image ever shot of my daughter playing hoops, I even slapped one up of her sleeping with her ball. What gets me are the memes I see like this:

I did this in Photoshop. Please share if you’re proud of me.

Lust—I agree, after seeing all those selfies, your new boyfriend is super hot, and it’s always a solid backup plan to tell him in twelve point Helvetica on my newsfeed page.  

Envy—I agree, after seeing all those selfies, your new boyfriend is super hot. Oh yeah, and thanks for showing me the nachos you guys had at TGIFridays, because I’d have to go really far to get those, which makes me super duper envious. Just wait until you see my tuna casserole on Thursday. It’s got crushed potato chips on top. Bam!

Wrath—This was on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page a while back: "Free speech is an endangered species. Those ‘intolerants' hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us.”

All of who, Sarah? The two other Einsteins who use “intolerant” as a noun?

Gluttony—I was recently de-friended by a high school classmate who complained about Obamacare after posting several photos of her beautiful new home with its exquisite views. When I mentioned the irony in my always-delicate manner, she took offense, as did her entire family who joined the fracas. In another twist of irony, I blame Obama for one less Facebook friend.

Make no mistake, I like Facebook. I like the babies and the nature imagery and the cute stuff our kids say. I like Throwback Thursday and Man Crush Monday. As a matter of fact, I wish there were something for every day of the week, like "Toilet Peep Tuesday" or "Stop Using All Those Hashtags Because It's Really Stupid Sunday." 

And I’m sure I’ve offended at least a couple of my Facebook friends who think I’m talking about them, but I’m willing to risk it.

You know me—anything to save the sinner.

To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before.

I'm getting a physical exam tomorrow—first one since 2010.

Yeah, big mystery why I’ve put if off for four years, right? Since turning fifty, I’ve been nothing short of pathological in formulating solid excuses for not walking the two blocks for a checkup:

a) I have to lose some weight first. The scales are out in a common area of the doctor's office, like between the paper cutter and master sharps bin. Everyone in the vicinity can hear your weight barked out by the nurse, so this time I'm giving her two choices—she either weighs me naked like I'm accustomed to, or she steps on the scales for some reciprocal humiliation in my best Don Pardo voice.

Here’s another idea for the nice folks at the clinic: how about we meet in the lunchroom around noon with a karaoke mic and the doctor can announce that I have the BMI of nacho cheese lasagna?

b) I know women’s exams are more invasive than men’s, but I’m still a quivering wimpster when it comes to the hidden finger wag. I’m always worried that I’ll do something involuntary, like giggle or tilt my head. 

c) Since I’m of an age, I’m not highly delighted about receiving input from this fella:

Does the gloved hand seems hostile to you? It mocks me.

It could be worse, though. I've heard that the older models were made of wood and powered by gerbils.

Seriously, I need to stop whining about some temporary discomfort and just be glad I've got the means and access to quality preventative health care. 

How long is that thing, anyway? Please tell me that pressure gauge or whatever it is, pulls over before entering the express lanes.

It’s time to be an adult—an older adult in fact; no more procrastinating, no more lame excuses. The asstronauts are sipping Tang, pre-flighting for their Journey to the Center of the Land of the Lost. 

Please bring them home safely.