How To Write for the Internet

Please ignore the following paragraph (I'll explain below).

The sex of any individual, that is the sex of everyone, is determined by chromosomes. Charlie Sheen's sex was determined that way. So was Sharon Stone's sex, all the Playboy models' sex and Lady Gaga's sex, too. Lindsay Lohan's sex, for instance, was determined very soon after her mother became pregnant by means of a sex act. Jennifer Aniston, all of the Kardashian girls, Justin Bieber and Kate Gosselin – all of those sexes were determined in much the same way. So if you're looking for explanations of what determines sex, that's it.

Sorry.

When writing for the Internet, there are two ways to be successful. One is to write entertaining, topical, well thought through articles on subjects that appeal to many people.

The other way is to cram as many of the most popular keywords that people search for into every article you write.

The instinct for a writer to get as many readers as possible is a strong one. Anyone who has studied literature knows that such luminaries as Shakespeare, Dickens and Twain were blatant self-promoters. All three were eventually regarded as celebrities, or as close to celebrity status as was possible given the meager media outlets of their primitive times.

I have no doubt that they would be keywording their wordsmithy tushes off to get their work out there if Internet technology were available in their day.

So I ask you: Who am I to put myself above them?

A few other things to remember about targeting the Internet:

-- Since search engines send so many people to your little chunk of the Web who really have no interest in being there, you might want to begin your article in a way that makes it difficult for them to know when to bail on it. For instance, if your topic is auto repair you could begin with how the term “auto” came to be, with references to automatons, automats, auto-erotic asphyxiation – subjects in as wide a range as you can imagine. This will keep the reader hoping for something that he or she likes while piling up your “time on page” stats.

-- It's very helpful if you have an exaggerated opinion of your opinion. So be sure to work on that.

-- People almost always should be doing something else while they are reading your work, so it's a great idea to make your Web page look like work material, maybe a spreadsheet or a pie chart. You must keep at it. Writing entertainingly for a pie chart is a specialized skill, developed over years. (One I'd like to see those three big literary names mentioned above try, I'll tell you.)

-- In the face of enormous competition to get eyes on your page, insinuating yourself into the mainstream news is a big advantage. If you can save someone's life, or find money and give it back, that will put natural human curiosity about “pseudo-celebrities” to work for you. However, if you're thinking of doing something heinous to get on the news, let me stop you there. We see a big spike on criminals' Web sites for a few minutes but then authorities take them down, so that ends up being lose-lose.

-- Try to keep up with current profanity and ways to show disrespect (I actually stopped at the term “dissing” someone, which is woefully outdated I know). If you don't, you'll never be able to understand the comments that readers write about your work.

So, as a veteran with weeks of Internet experience, I feel privileged to pass on my knowledge to a new generation of Internet writers. And for those of you who have made it this far down the page only to find that my article was not what you for looking for, I say this:

Gotcha!

Warning: Valentine's Day Is Not for the Timid

On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, seven men in Chicago were lined up against a garage wall and machine-gunned to death by murderers allegedly sent by Al Capone.

For them, at least it was over quickly.

Valentine's Day has seen many massacres of the heart since then. It begins with the best of intentions. Kindergarten teachers make it a class project. “Let's make our own little Valentine's cards for our classmates.” Of course they intend to include everyone, but the awkward feet shuffling and “I thought you were checking that list” looks start when the cards are dispersed on the big day.

For some mysterious reason they find that there are no cards for Lawrence with the permanent snot drip or “Cootie Connie,” the girl with five identical school outfits. Last-minute, store-bought cards signed by the teachers are the kindergarten precursor of years and years of super-sized kitty litter and Campbell's Microwaveable Soup-for-One.

Middle school, high school, college, the working world … each has its own little traps of love, lust and infatuation.

For every heart-warming Valentine story of true love, I believe I can show you one of discomfort (at best) or despair (at worst). Something like these from the pages of Cosmopolitan Magazine:

You Don't Look Dutch
A new guy surprised me by planning the perfect Valentine's Day date: a romantic dinner followed by fireworks show on the beach. Everything was great until the check arrived. He asked me, “Should we split it or do you just want to pay for your meal?” After dinner we took a walk on the pier. He bumped into a girl, who was obviously his ex-girlfriend, and after talking and laughing for about 20 minutes without including me he finally said, “Oh sorry, this is my friend, Kat.” We broke up the next day. - Katrina

Come On, I Mean He Saved the Union!
After a long dry spell, I was psyched to finally have a new guy in my life so we could spend Valentine's Day together. Call me corny, but I was hoping I'd get flowers or chocolate — you know, what every girl wants! Instead, he gave me an old Abe Lincoln bobblehead that looked like it came from the bottom of his closet. I honestly didn't even know what to say, so I just mumbled “thank you.” After a few more bad dates, I pulled off Abe's head, and kicked that boy to the curb. - Adrienne

Naturally, it's easy to find stories of stupid men in these situations. It's part of our basic DNA to give dumb gifts. (I kind of like the Abe Lincoln gift that Adrienne got, for instance.) But that street goes two ways.

I have heard many secret stories from guy friends regarding the horrors they have experienced on this day for celebrating love. You never hear of those stories because Valentine's Day is widely regarded as one for the girls. The flowers, the chocolate, the diamonds, the heart-shaped-anything-you-can-imagine. It feels vaguely unmanly to complain about getting the smelly end of the day.

But it happens all the time.

There was Mary Lou, who promised to meet three different guys for Valentine's dinner only to decide, after the reservations had been confirmed, to go with the four-star restaurant and the two-star guy.

Angeline was famous for ordering lobster and a splitting headache, requiring her to leave immediately after her dessert truffles.

Stefanie tried to wrangle four meals from four guys and take all the food home in those swan-shaped aluminum foil things.

Donna required a limo.

Every year, Lorraine had a boyfriend for a limited time only … from just before Christmas to just after Valentine's Day.

Paula … well, Paula was a sweetie.

Which brings me to my unexpected conclusion. (Unexpected to me, at least.)

Even though I started out to warn those of you who have not yet been struck by that little twerp's arrow, I realize that I'm still a believer. Kind of. Some of the time. More or less.

It only takes one really great Valentine's Day to almost erase all of the terrible ones. Just like it only takes one great love to make us forget all the mistakes we met along the way.

I Think Inside the Box

I can't draw. However, if there were a Museum of Masterfully Finished Coloring Books I would be very well represented there.

As a child, my crayon-rendered portfolios were filled with blue skies, green grass and perfectly aligned red brick walls. There was never a speck of color outside the lines. That's what we all thought we were supposed to do.

One day, as we concentrated so diligently on our work, the purple-grass/orange-clouds people took over. The “creative” types who saw the world not as it was, but as their fertile minds could create it. Suddenly there was poetry that didn't rhyme and those oddly shaped Michelob bottles.

They were thinking outside the box.

The Star-Spangled Banner now took twice as long to sing because the singers kept adding wild notes between the melody.

New age baseball managers started inventing positions. Now they had fifth starters, spot starters, long-relievers, left-handed specialists, short men, middle relievers, set-up men and closers.

Budweiser came up 36 different flavors of beer.

Call it “The Picasso Principle.” It goes something like this: The farther away from the norm that a person can think, the closer to genius he or she is. People who, in a less tolerant age, would have been institutionalized in madhouses were now writing, directing, legislating and designing football uniforms for the University of Oregon.

And I'll admit that those of us who liked to stay inside the lines started to feel a little left out.

But here's a little secret. Not all of those outside-the-box ideas are genius ideas – even when geniuses think of them:

- Thomas Edison built a machine to hunt down ghosts.

- Alexander Graham Bell spent the last 30 years of his life (and a small fortune) attempting to create sheep with six nipples instead of the sheep-standard two.

- Leonardo DaVinci invented shoes that would theoretically allow a person to walk on water. (Seen any water-walkers lately?)

- The Japanese inventor who had a hand in bringing us the floppy disk, CDs, DVDs, digital watches and karaoke machines has a new invention – a spray for a woman's most delicate regions that makes her irresistible to men.

But if some of our great minds have hit a few foul balls, these inventions by lesser lights ought to earn their creators a permanent home in The Out-of-the-Box Thinking Hall of Fame:

- A well-known U.S. company has “a serious product” ready for release (so to speak): Underpants that hide the smell of farts. (No word on its sound-muffling capabilities.)

- Fake breasts that contain milk. Dad wears them so that he may enjoy the bonding experience (but not the tugging experience) of breastfeeding his child.

- The baby mop, which is a wider version of the standard mop, but with no handle. You gently place it under your not-yet-walking toddler, and he or she begins to earn his or her keep as each movement mops the floor.

- Umbrella shoes. Yes, they're tiny umbrellas on the toe of each shoe to keep your feet (but sadly not your ankles) dry.

- The banana guard, which is a plastic receptacle shaped exactly like a banana (but available in designer colors) that can hold the uneaten portion of your peeled banana when it's just too much for you to finish all at once.

- The nose-shaped pencil sharpener. I'll say no more on that one.

- The safety coffin, which offers an escape hatch in case you wake up after a huge mistake has been made.

Actually, that last one makes a lot of sense to me.

So, okay – I will acknowledge the great advances that some of these forward-thinking ideas have brought us. Microwave popcorn is far superior to the old-fashioned Jiffy Pop shake-it-over-a-flame method, for instance. And Velcro … well, you just gotta love that.

But we worker bees deserve some respect, too. How would these magnificent minds know where the box they want to think outside was if we weren't already in there plugging away? And after all, we're the ones who basically serve as the ultimate judges for all of these great ideas, right?

You don't agree? Ask the outside-the-box thinkers who came up with Ben Gay Aspirin, Bic Underwear or New Coke.

26 Things That Might Not Be True

You've heard them your whole life.

“Facts” and inside information that you really have to wonder about.

There are the multiple explanations for the facts of life, for instance, from birds dropping babies down chimneys (is there ever really an age when that seems plausible?) to sharing a straw to using the rest room of the opposite sex.

True, in the particular case of procreation, the truth turns out to be even more bizarre than most of the fiction, but that's a discussion for another day.

There was the story that aspirin in a Coke had the same approximate effect as LSD. And the rumor that Walt Disney was frozen after his death (he was cremated, but substitute Ted Williams and you're closer to the truth). And myths like giant alligators in the sewers, muggers who steal kidneys, tee-totaling college students and on and on ….

I come to this topic genetically, I think. One of my uncles once described my Grandfather Huber as “the biggest mass of misinformation” he had ever met. And so I bring you these nonfacts. Some I have heard over the years, and some have occurred to me as interesting ways to change the world if I were in charge.

Also ... I've included three true items just for the fun of it. See if you can pick them out.

1. All birds can talk, but so far only parrots and a very few others have chosen to.

2. Left in the sun, mayonnaise becomes mustard.

3. The arrow was invented decades before the bow, and was originally used simply as a pointing device.

4. Worldwide, women named Stella are taller than men named Mickey.

5. Coke the drink once contained coke the drug.

6. People who can't sing also can't bake.

7. During the American Revolution, over 600 people were executed for keeping the “u” in words like colour and flavour.

8. The word “stout” was invented as a way to describe King Henry VIII without insulting him.

9. Everyone in Ireland knows everyone else there.

10. The first man to milk a cow spent the rest of his life in prison as a pervert.

11. Benjamin Franklin proposed that the turkey be the symbol of America, not the eagle.

12. Every McDonald's has a secret VIP room where gourmet burgers and fries are served by supermodel waitresses.

13. The French horn got its name from the punch line of an off-color joke.

14. As he took office in January 1981, Ronald Reagan was under the mistaken impression that he had promised all Americans free sausages.

15. Babe Ruth is one miracle away from being declared a saint.

16. Potato chips were invented by a chef who was trying to spite a complaining customer.

17. More automobile accidents are caused each year by bees trapped inside the car than by texting and cell phoning combined.

18. No drummer has ever lived to be 70.

19. Small portions of the King James Bible were actually rewritten by William Shakespeare.

20. Two out of five men think of brassieres when they hear the word “infrastructure.”

21. In Argentina they sell men's suits that expand or contract with you as you gain or lose weight.

22. Voters in Delaware will decide this March which name is correct: cougar, puma, mountain lion, catamount or panther.

23. People in glass houses hate being told what to do.

24. William “Bill” Fontaine was named Meteorologist of the Year for coming up with the term “Thundersnow.”

25. Before prizefighters were known as “boxers” they were called “spaniels.”

26. The most interesting man in the world always drinks beer. In fact, it's kind of a problem.

So there is my contribution to what government agencies and political campaign managers like to call “disinformation.” If you were playing along, the actual true information is contained in numbers 5, 11 and 16.

What If Your Religion Is Wrong?

I choose to believe in a higher power, mainly because that's the smart move.

If I'm right, I tip my hat and strut on through those Pearly Gates into an afterlife filled with non-stop fun with my favorite people for all of eternity. At least that's my heaven, your results may vary.

If I'm wrong, there's no one to apologize to. It's just a sigh, an “Oops!” and a move on to the next thing (or no thing, if that's the case).

My god has an odd sense of humor. Or maybe one just so advanced that mere mortals are at a loss to explain it, other than to say that he “works in strange ways.” Among his best jokes are hammerhead sharks, college football's non-playoff BCS system and sex. (He never really thought we'd figure out that last one on our own … or if we did that we'd actually do it.)

But I think his very best joke is the invention of religion.

Now, I should be clear on this point … no matter what religion you believe in (or don't believe in) there is a chance that you are absolutely right.

However, given the odds, it might be a slimmer chance than you think. That's just the sort of thing that gives my god the giggles. You see, my god made the universe so grand and so overwhelming that it is impossible for humans to comprehend or even imagine. You know how dogs can't understand algebra? It's something like that.

The more we try to figure it out, the more fun it is for him. Each path we create to salvation and each bizarre practice or prohibition we establish to please him … pleases him.

And we just keep amusing him with our fervent shots in the dark:

There are 19 major world religions. These 19 can be subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups. Within these groups, there are 34,000 separate ones just within the Christian heading.

Here's a quick rundown of our Top Dozen Guesses:

Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
Secular/Non-Religious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
Hindu: 900 million
Chinese Traditional: 394 million
Buddhist: 376 million
Primal/Indigenous: 300 million
African Traditional: 100 million
Sikhism: 23 million
Juche: 19 million
Spiritualism: 15 million
Judaism: 14 million

It stands to reason that every true believer in a religion believes that religion is the one true religion. But simple math (not even algebra) tells us that the vast majority of the people on Earth who consider themselves members of a particular religion are just plain wrong.

That's hard to accept, and so sometimes people want to stress how strong their faith is by stating what they think is stronger than faith. They say they know.

This leads to statements like: “I know I'm being saved because I've accepted Jesus,” or “I know I will be with Allah by becoming one of his martyrs,” or “I know Zeus will smile down on me because I killed my third-favorite goat for him.”

What they don't realize is that knowing is the opposite of faith. Faith is believing what you do not know.

The strongest, most well-meaning faith that humans are capable of mustering doesn't change the basic truth: No one knows.

All this doesn't mean that people should run out and switch religions. (I have found that my influence on the world is substantially less than that, anyway.) But maybe just a little tolerance is in order. People whose beliefs are different from yours may be just as good and kind and faithful (and right) as you are.

As for me, I think I'll continue to put my faith in a god that knows how to have a good time.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Things That Make No Sense to Me

With age comes wisdom. Or so I was led to believe.

But the truth is, unless you're a cult member (they have answers for everything), the questions that occur to you over the years far outweigh the knowledge you acquire. The existence of a higher power and life after death are a couple of the bigger mysteries that enter our minds with the passing years.

Those two are more or less out of my league. However, I can address just a very few ... a tip of the iceberg so to speak ... of the lesser things in life that baffle me:

Bottled Water
I may be penny wise or frugal or just plain cheap, but I just can't bring myself to purchase water in a store. How does this sound for a business plan? Charge people a tidy sum for virtually the same thing they can get for free at home. Give it a fancy name, French if you can think of one, and you can charge even more. And, oh yeah, package it in a material that kills the planet like … oh … let's say ... plastic.

Calculus
I could access ancient records of my grades to prove this, but suffice it to say that I can't even understand enough calculus to give you an example of how baffling calculus is to me. Wait a second … here's something I sort of remember: Calculus has “imaginary numbers.” Even with an infinite number of numbers available, calculus feels the need to imagine more numbers. Come on, calculus! I mean … really?

“Stock futures are up four points before the opening bell.”
I'll admit that I don't know the first thing about the stock market. Well, that's not strictly true. I do remember learning in sixth grade that people jumped out of tall buildings when it crashed in 1929. (Some lessons you learn in school are just too cool to forget.) But even given my ignorance of the subject, isn't this statement about the same as saying, “The Phillies lead the Mets 4-0 as we prepare to start the first inning.”?

Peas
I realize that where food is concerned it's quite literally a matter of taste, but to me these are like eating tiny balls of snot.

Foosball
I have never understood the amazing appeal of this pretend soccer game where you twist poles to spin attached players who attempt to push the ball into the goal. To me, it's a tremendously cumbersome simulation of an unpopular sport on an unwieldy table. But I have resigned myself to the fact that this is an indication of some kind of defect in me. Almost everyone I know loves it … I don't … I now concede that they're probably right.

And there is one more item that I'll bring up as part of my “Hall of Fame of Things That Never Made Any Sense to Me” …

8-Track Tapes
For the benefit of those of you under 45 or so, I'll explain that these were approximately 4-inch by 8-inch cartridges filled with a theoretically never-ending loop of the greatest music from the mid-1960s through the 1970s. Just about every car I rode in during those years had an 8-track player in the glove compartment and a back seat filled with the tapes. (I believe Led Zeppelin tapes came with every player.)

The sound was pretty good, but the one (I would call it major) flaw was this: The lengths of the tracks did not coordinate with the lengths of the songs. The music would fade out in mid-song at the end of one track, there would be about a 3-second silence, followed by a mechanical click (or clunk, if you prefer), 3 more seconds of silence and then a fade in continuing where the music left off.

Having heard these albums on 8-track enough times, a person started to believe that the pause-click-pause was part of the songs. (It was a dumber, more innocent age, I'll admit.)

I have a hard time envisioning today's iTunes generation putting up with that sort of flaw. But what made the 8-track so difficult for me to understand even then is that for most of the time that it was popular there was a far better alternative.

Standard cassette tapes existed. You know, the mini reel-to-reel inside that little plastic case. I know they were available because I had one in my car. These were the obvious, no-brainer choice ... technologically superior, musically non-interruptive, smaller, easier to store, longer playing time with better sound and … I'd better stop here before I blow a gasket.

I'm suddenly reliving a 30-year-old argument with my 8-track-loving friend, Tony.

Feel free to chime in with some things in this wild world that make no sense to you!

How to Make New Years Resolutions

I'm tired of failing.

From now on my primary New Years Resolution is to find activities (or to stop activities) that I actually have a very good chance of doing (or not doing). And there is one major criterion I used in choosing my goals:

I've whittled my vices down to my three or four favorites and I'm not even going to touch those. The world and I will just have to learn to deal with those together.

I suggest we confront my precious remaining character flaws the way politicians confront the politically perilous problems related to entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare:

“Yes, they undoubtedly need to be fixed, but meanwhile look over there, doesn't that gay marriage just make your blood boil?”

That is to say we should ignore them.

With that provision, here are some of the things I'm going to do my best to accomplish in 2011:

I resolve to use more obscenities.
It seems that while I wasn't paying attention the world became a much rougher and coarser place. Some people say it started over 30 years ago when HBO brought George Carlin's “Seven Words You Can't Say on Television” to … that's right … television. Others believe it's a more modern Internet phenomenon. Either way, I've noticed that no one seems to pay attention to my anger any more. The “I am SO mad at you” face that had served me so well for decades has lost its mojo. My theory is that tossing in a few canine-related slurs, attacks on motherhood and F-bombs just might be enough to get my fits of temper the attention they deserve. I'll let you know how that goes.

I resolve to patronize more all-you-can-eat buffets.
My informal study has found that nearly 90 percent of waiters and waitresses hate their job. Not only is the self-serve buffet the perfect way to eliminate an unpopular task (in much the same way that the automobile eliminated the job of horse-droppings-collector), but given recent reports that terrorists may be targeting these gardens of gluttony, frequenting them is really the best way the average citizen can fight the forces that would see America fall.

Now, let me be very clear on one seemingly related point -- bartenders are a vital part of our society and we need as many of them as we can possibly get.

I resolve not to learn to play a musical instrument.
They're really hard, but more importantly the neighbors shouldn't have to go through all those horrible noises as I learn, only to be charged exorbitant prices to hear me play once I master the instrument.

I resolve to get no more than four haircuts this year and zero manicures.
In all honesty I'm doing that now, but these end-of-year articles require a certain amount of padding.

I resolve to wait until the last minute whenever possible.
People who wait get such a bad rap. “Procrastination” is treated as if it were the eighth deadly sin in just about every culture in the world. What few of us seem to realize is that very often jobs that you put off doing wind up not being necessary to do at all. For example, I once put off asking a girl I liked out on a date, and by the time I got all my ducks in order she was married with two children. See what I mean? Basically, people who jump on their every assignment immediately, end up doing a lot of work that isn't needed. And isn't that the textbook definition of “inefficiency”?

I resolve to watch an entire soccer game.
I know what you're thinking. “Jack, you said that these resolutions would be easily achievable. Why are you forsaking us now?” That's a valid question, and it's why I saved this one for last. The fact of the matter is that although I firmly believe in the overriding principle of painless resolutions, self improvement that comes too easily tends to be devalued over time. I've found that the utter anguish experienced in just the two-to-three hours it takes to watch one of these let's-pretend-we-have-no-arms “games” provides just the right amount of difficulty to validate this entire list.

Well, those are the issues I aim to tackle this year. I'm sure yours will be different, but in compiling your own New Years Resolutions just keep your eye on the main theme:

Real change comes when change is real easy.

My Favorite Santa

When I was about 6 years old, my 4-year-old brother and I were stunned, shocked, flabbergasted, dumbfounded and I might even go as far as to say our breath was literally taken away. What could cause these reactions in two so young?

Santa Claus came to visit us at home on Christmas Eve.

I can still remember very clearly watching him walk through our front door on Reedland Street in Southwest Philadelphia. And, thankfully, just in case that memory starts to fade we have home movies of the whole event – Danny and I agog in our pajamas (I think Danny even had a nightcap on, in the style of Ebeneezer Scrooge.)

He explained that he wanted to come by to congratulate us personally on being such good boys all year, but couldn't stay long because he was about to go out on his rounds. We totally understood. He had small gifts for mom and dad and a whole bunch of aunts and uncles who just happened to be visiting when Santa did. It was truly thrilling to see him, and even more so when he came through with everything we'd hoped for on Christmas day.

Now, that's definitely a hard act to follow, but oddly enough, he's not my favorite Santa.

That honor goes to my good friend Wayne.

He and I went to school together and we both worked at Gino's in Collingdale when we were 16. Now, I think that Wayne was born looking 15 and just aged normally from there. And that's really at the heart of how he got chosen to play Santa at Gino's – he fit the suit.

We were making around $1.25 per hour under some sort of 1970s federal program called “sub-minimum wage.” Work at Gino's could be fairly strenuous, whether sweating over the hot grill or (especially) cleaning the Kentucky Fried Chicken pots. So when Wayne was offered three times sub-minimum to sit in a chair and pretend to like children, well – he agreed faster than you can say “Ho, ho, ho.” (Which it turned out he was really great at saying. One of the best I've heard til this day.)

His first few days were uneventful. He was a little self-conscious to start, but he found his rhythm pretty quickly. Aside from getting peed on twice, Wayne considered this the best job he'd ever had. (We should note for the record that his low-pay/hard work regular Gino's gig was the only other job he'd ever had.)

Then one foggy Christmas Eve …

I got a phone call from Wayne. He sounded kind of funny. He said he needed a ride from Gino's, or more accurately from the bar a few doors down from Gino's. Uh-oh.

Here's his story, and I'll leave it to you to decide on its plausibility:

He's leaving Gino's around 5 p.m., as innocent as the day he was born. Just as he's about to get into his car (to go to church in his original version, a detail he later dropped) a gentleman about to enter the tavern yelled to him, “Hey, Santa, come on in and let me buy you a beer!”

Of course, no one ever expects Santa to be 16. And no 16-year-old could ever resist sneaking into the adult world in such a perfect disguise. What was he to do other than have a beer?

Maybe it's out of guilt for being there, but it seems that buying Santa a beer (and shots) is a very popular idea among Christmas Eve bar patrons. The drinks were lined up before him like liquid frankincense and myrrh.

Wayne had the good sense to call for a ride and I had a great Santa story to tell over and over.

He went on to buy his own suit (or permanently borrow Gino's, I never found out which), and play Santa for many years to come. Once he was even helicoptered into the King of Prussia Mall.

One day he was running late and forgot his white gloves, which sort of led to him forgetting to remove one other thing. This resulted in my second favorite Wayne as Santa story.

No one near the main entrance of the MacDade Mall knew quite what to say when one observant little boy looked at the ring on Santa's right hand and shouted out, “Look, mom, Santa Claus went to Monsignor Bonner High School just like daddy!”

After that, Wayne pinned the white gloves to the Santa suit sleeves.

Halloween: The Oddest Holiday

“I was amazed to think that you would take the candy with you, too.”
- A Halloween break-up, described in Richard Shindell's Are You Happy Now?


Of all the holidays or semi-holidays or special days on the calendar, Halloween is by far most bizarre. I know, that's not really breaking news.

But have you ever sat down and thought through this celebration of the unwell, the unloved and the undead? It's a particularly unique festivity when you compare it to the happy, sunshiny ones like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Its origins may go back as far as the Roman Empire, but it's more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which acknowledged the end of the “lighter half” of the year and marked the beginning of the “darker half.”

Not to bum you out but that darker half is starting … oh ... right about now.

Western Christianity loads up early on the side of holy with back-to-back holidays in November. Between the fairly exclusive club honored each All Saints Day on November 1, and the much more inclusive All Souls Day on November 2, you would think that just about every human being who ever lived is covered.

But not so.

For every action there is a reaction, and so evil must have its day. And as evil has been known to do, it launches a pre-emptive strike on October 31. Many communities experience some form of “Mischief Night” on the 30th, too, but so far that's not an official event. (Still, you may want to mentally prepare yourself to deal with soaped windows, toilet papered shrubbery and/or egged houses.)

The pull of the dark side is strong. Only the holiest of holy parents prevent their children from trick-or-treating entirely. This usually results in years or even decades of intense therapy in later life attempting to answer the question “Why couldn't I at least be a bunny or a princess?”

Personally, I have gone out as a scarecrow, a cowboy and Dr. Zorba from the TV show Dr. Kildare, among others. I have it on good authority that even a big star like Frank Sinatra loved Halloween, and apparently went out for many years as different characters, including a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.

Still, no matter how dark the origins of Halloween are, most kids are in it for the candy. (I have a theory on the connection between the dental industry and Satan that involves Halloween candy but that is for another day.)

For now, let me ask you this: Might Halloween candy be a gateway food leading to a society of brain-munching zombies?

Hmmm … Stephen King, eat your heart out.


* I'm very proud of the fact that I've completed this short piece on Halloween without once mentioning Christine O'Donnell and witchcraft … oh, damn … there goes THAT resolution! Well … be sure to vote this week.

The Importance of Lying

“Everything I tell you is a lie. I am lying now.”
- The conundrum of logic that caused a 23rd century computer to explode in confusion in an episode of the original Star Trek


It starts with the Tooth Fairy and it doesn't end until they tell you how good you look in your casket.

After food, clothing and shelter, I believe that lying is the most important human need.

Most of us don't realize just how much we depend on “inoperative statements,” which is the ingenious way that lies were described during the Watergate scandal. I recently saw the movie The Invention of Lying (as a big Ricky Gervais fan, I'll give three stars) and it got me thinking. (This is always a dangerous situation.)

It seems that a world filled with nothing but the truth would be a very scary place. What we're talking about here goes far beyond the well known “Does this make me look fat” question. We have all come to know that the answer to that must be something leaning very strongly toward “no.” The closest answer to “yes” that you can get away with is “Don't be silly,” and that only works about half the time.

To see just how much we depend on non-truths, think of your response to questions like these:

“Got any spare change?”

“How old are you?”

“How much do you weigh?”

“Is this seat taken?”

“Did you enjoy the yogurt hoagie I spent all afternoon making for you, honey?”

It may be that the best lies are the ones we tell ourselves:

“If I comb my side hair just right no one will notice that I'm bald.”

“The tighter the jeans the better I look.”

“Of course I'm an excellent driver.”

“People find my sarcasm very endearing.”

“These N&Ns are just as good as the more expensive candy.”

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the lies we tell ourselves. Sometimes these self-deceptions are the main motivators that help us get out of bed every morning.

Lying is so much a part of our lives that we have developed countless ways to say it, including: fabricate, misinform, stretch the truth, mislead, bear false witness, fudge, distort, deceive … and my favorite way of confessing without really confessing, “I misspoke.”

On the Mount Olympus of Lying we have politicians. We've all been excited by the amazing new ideas on which they campaign, only to be disappointed by the same old methods by which they govern.

But when you think about it, the incredibly consistent dishonesty of politicians is really the fault of voters like you and me.

We don't like to hear bad news, no matter how true it is.

Just ask Jimmy Carter how gloom and doom plays with the voting public. His famous “malaise” speech led to what Wikipedia describes as “one of the least successful” presidential re-election campaigns in American history.

That's mainly because, right there in the other corner we had … Ronald Reagan!

Ron was there to tell us that we were the shining light we always knew we were. Hostages in Iran? Freed! Economic morass? Trickle-down prosperity is right around the corner. So, what else can I do for you, America?

And just as would-be band leader Harold Hill fooled River City into self confidence in The Music Man, President Reagan made Americans feel better about themselves. And that felt great.

So who can blame politicians for telling us what we want to hear?

There are honest politicians. They're the bankers and salesmen and mechanics who never quite made it into office.

Just to be clear, I'm not in favor of all lies. Providing false alibis for murderers is not a good idea. And swearing that, in spite of record cost-cutting measures, you've taken all the safety precautions in your offshore drilling project is a definite no-no.

But the next time you catch someone in a small prevarication (how's that for a fancy way of saying “lie”?), cut that person a little slack. For the next lie that's told may just be your own.