WHAT'S EVERYBODY LOOKIN' AT?

Going on vacation is terribly disorienting. There is something unnatural about lying half-naked around an overly chlorinated cerulean trough with a horde of strangers drinking watery mai tais and punch. There's a reason why the Lord invented clothing and I think it has something to do with nausea.

The rare possibility of celebrating the proximity of a ripe brimful bosom is more than offset by the greater likelihood of tripping over the hairy anal crack of a hammertoed pensioner with gout.

 Southern California, I recently learned, is about as glamorous as Staten Island only five times more expensive. My travel agent assured me that the sunny shoals of Marina de Rey were abundant with the glittering fanfare of celebrity and allure. Instead the only siren song withing striking distance was the menacing din of the adjacent Los Angeles International Airport.

Between you and me, I'd just as soon stay at home. The food might not be great but it's edible and though my lawn chair doesn't appoint upon a pool at least I'm not surrounded by a quorum of preoccupied peons scrolling all day down their not so smart smartphones.

STEVE JOBS SAVED MY MARRIAGE

My wife has a rotten character. She's moody, selfish and temperamental. She's so quick to take offense that I usually find it prudent to simply nod in agreement no matter what she says.

She has no friends, or no corporeal friends to be exact since her Facebook page flashes and pings like a cash register on Black Monday. She can't cook, or won't, I forgot which, and she doesn't even eat unless you consider potato chips, gummy bears and chewing gum legitimate victuals.

Since the kids have grown our house has become a clammy mausoleum of stale, apathetic inertia. We haven't 'enjoyed' relations since the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, (I remember the date because we had CNN on at the time) and if my wife gives me so much as a peck on the cheek I nervously wonder if it signals the early advent of dementia.

And yet we remain together and our relationship is thriving in the robust, almost scintillating atmosphere of total détente.

Just a few short years ago the stew of silent resentment could be brought to a boil with the slightest provocation. The mere sight of my spouse was enough to remind me of the utter waste and futility of my life. And though resentments remain constant and while they continue to ferment into a particularly rancid stout, they are nonetheless muffled by the deluge of technological mediators. The fusillade of lap-top-hand-held doohickies are the thumb in our collective mouths and they keep the peace and quash contentiousness like an arbitrator with a fist full of Ativan.

Thank you Steve Jobs for your reasonably priced, well-designed and easy-to-use gadgets that help keep my romance alive.

Divorce can be so expensive.

THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

Ever since retiring I've tried to keep up on all the 'isms' that periodically tickle the noses of our privileged elites. There was Neo-Conservatism which was an ideology where the military was the first option among those who never served. There was Neo-Expressionism which was an art movement where paint brushes were the first option for those who never drew. In literature there was Post-Structuralism which declared the death of the author and after reading a few of the brilliant essays from that time, the author's demise as first option wouldn't have been such a bad idea. 

To this I'd like to add an as yet unpublicized though widely recognized tendency that in its tenacious ubiquity could easily qualify as one of the world's major religions.

I am referring to that primordial condition that I call F*ckedupedivism. 

F*ckupedivists come from all walks of life and every strata of society. Their belief system revolves around the basic tenet that misery should have lots of company and the more unwilling that company is, the better. These high priests of narcissism perform the sacred rite of drawing all those around them into the vortex of their own personal misery.

Practitioners of dysfunctional propinquity can be a clever bunch.  First impressions are notoriously unreliable since many outwardly reasonable people, upon closer contact, reveal themselves as F*ckedupedivists par excellence. These I would call the Marranos of Malcontent, those secret devotées to destructive human relationships who seem okay at first but who prey upon the innocent like heartworms and fleas.

One should be careful around these folks for they can be triggered by both the obvious as well as the innocuous. Money is a common prompt but so is sex, food, children and DVD rentals. Marriages rise and fall at the whim of F*ckedupedivists and the wiser spouse is always disadvantaged by the callow nature of their decency and their unforgivable naïveté. Friendships falter when F*ckedupedivists, insisting on surges of passive personal assault, play their hand too aggressively and fondness quickly dissolves into pity and ultimately into disgust. 

The first commandment of F*ckedupedivism is and always will be: Everything is Somebody Else's Fault. The rest flows like household sewage.

My wife Ray and I have the perfect union.

We get along, if not like newlyweds then at least like two affable roommates with bottomless trust funds. 

She has cable and a very comfortable couch, I have the Internet and occasionally we meet up on Facebook.

 

FAKE SPONGY SMUT AND OTHER CONTRABAND GOODS

My uncle Ned who among other things was a raging alcoholic and a small time thief, was a font of what we call out here 'idiot wisdom.' Most of it had to do with the genetic dispositions of certain immigrant groups, the sexual skills of the handicapped and the outsized role of Hollywood in the increased fluoridation of northeastern New York's water supply.

The fact that he was a jerk did not diminish his stature in the family as being something of an expert in the art of obfuscation. An occupational necessity in his full-time job as a drunk and part-time job as a crook, concealment to Ned was what chicken was to Colonel Sanders. "The best place to hide something is in full view," he used to say and sure enough my Aunt Jill-Mary never did figure out that she was cleaning her floors with Johnnie Walker Black.

I bring this up because of a recent scandal that has turned our little hamlet into Hamlet. There's a stretch of new development on Kingfisher Avenue where the old Masonic lodge and Ray's Puppets used to be. It's a winding block of two and three story condominiums that if you ask me would have looked more at home in some benign Socialist Paradise.

It turns out the developer, one Bogdan Ertsy - a former prizefighter from either Lebanon or Lisbon, I can't remember which - is an expert forger of valuable works of art. Who knew that larceny had taken such a rarefied turn?

Apparently for years he's has been pawning off fake Picassos, Dalis, Malaspinas, Modiglianis and a bunch of other so-called masters whom - excuse me - I've never heard of. Well where do you think this wiseguy was stashing his inventory? That's right, in plain view on the off-white walls of his vacant townhouses!

Counterfeit Malaspina painting seized by the FBI in Elmira NY 2014

Only a living, breathing genius could figure out how to sell this sort of crap!

JUST KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND GO PLAY GOLF

My son-in-law Rick is a decent kid. Being married to my little princess Fay is certainly no walk in the park. I love my girl to death but if truth be told, the girl has got a rotten character.

She's a lawyer - or as she insists on putting it, an attorney - and works for some fancy ambulance chasing firm in midtown Manhattan. Rick's an editor at one of the publishing houses, the name of which always escapes me. Between the two of them they make a nice tidy sum which may or may not go very far living as they do in a converted machine shop near Wall Street.

I raised my daughter to be strong - as a girl she was a bit of a tomboy - so I'm not surprised that it's her who wears the pants in that family. Rick doesn't seem to mind, he's the arty type and his head is always in the clouds anyway. He doesn't seem to have any interests outside his work. He doesn't know a Knick from a Met or a Jet or a Net and ever since they had their baby I started worrying about how the kid is going to be raised.

They named him Fidelio (?!) but I just call him Eddie. Rick carries him around in a sling and seems to be in charge of all the dirty work. He gives the baby baths, takes him to the park, changes his diapers and I swear, if he had tits he'd be feeding him too.

But here's the thing. I know the term effeminization and I can see this whole new trend toward the equal distribution of household labor. Some people see it as the total erosion of traditional manhood. I don't - I'm no neanderthal. What did Bobby Dylan say, the times they are a changin'? And hey, I'm the one who raised Fay to be the ball buster that she is (she's up for partner this year and I know she's going to make it). But the one thing that gets my hair up, the thing I simply can't abide in a guy is when he let's a woman drag him down into a stupid, domestic argument. 

I mean, who the heck cares if the commode is made of teak or mahogany? Does a man really have to get involved in deciding which Jamaican tourist trap hotel to vacation in? And what for crying out loud is a roasted beet and endive salad and why is ordering it at a restaurant have to become an international incident!? Believe it or not, these guys are already fighting over which pre-school to send poor Eddie to and he's only nine freakin' months old.

To hear Rick raise his voice defending his firmly held convictions about blinds versus drapes is like listening to the total decline of western civilization in slow excruciating motion. He can keep the ergonomic jogging stroller and the pastel blue baby bjorn, just pipe down with that shrill sanctimonious countertenor tone!

Men, stop fighting with your wives! You'll sooner grow hair on your palms and play shortstop for the Tokyo Tigers before you ever win an argument with a woman.