Category Archives: Friends

I Knew Him When He Was Just Bill

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An old friend and brother in the Iota Xi chapter of Sigma Chi (George Mason U) is making a name for himself.  Bill "Will" Carter used to be Sen. John Warner’s press secretary and completely changed careers a few years back when he went to New York to try his hand at acting.  He’s in California now and is starting to get some juicy roles, including a role in Running with Scissors in a scene opposite Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow.

There’s a nice article on Bill in the latest Mason Spirit alumni magazine, and it is absolutely awesome to see Bill making it after such a big gamble.  Still, he’ll always be "Billy from Appomattox" to me.

Self Flaggelation

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Quit snickering, the title is self-flaggelation not self-flatulation.  Every time there’s an election I think of this term as it relates to one of my oldest friends, Dimitri (Jimmy) Kesari.  Jimmy and I went to high school together and from the go he was more involved in politics than anyone I’ve ever known.  He talked me into running for Student Body president my senior year, got me elected and got himself elected secretary.  Of course he then ran the student body behind the scenes while I stayed busy flirting with the girls on the student council.

Jimmy’s an arch-conservative and has walked the conservative walk his entire life.  He went to Grove City College which is so conservative that they proudly refuse to take any federal funding so they don’t have to play by the government’s rules (at least that’s what he said).  After college he started a solid wast recycling business in Northern Virginia and hired me to keep an eye on all the ex-cons running his heavy machinery.  I survived that for about six months before deciding I valued my life too much to continue dodging front loaders and hydraulic mulchers that mysteriously seemed to attack the only college kid in the yard.  Eventually Jimmy had a split with his business partner and he went into politics, which is where the self-flagellation comes in.

Jimmy became a campaign manager for a couple of different hard-right conservatives running for the House.  Even in conservative Virginia these guys were unelectable so Jimmy’s guys would get something like 12% of the vote. Each time I’d talk to Jimmy after an election he’d say things like, "The campaign was a big success.  The last time my guy ran he got 5% of the vote and this time we doubled him up to 10%."  The man is a conservative martyr.

Now Jimmy’s working for Right to Work and running their state level political operations.  I talked to him this summer and he was getting ready to spend a month away from his family in October working the hotbed states.  Although our politics are very dissimilar I know that in Jimmy’s case the conservatism is heart felt and he does walk the walk, which means I’ll enjoy disagreeing while never losing respect for him.  I can’t say that about a lot of people in politics these days.  I haven’t talked to him about it but I can almost guarantee you he’s not too happy with the way the Republican Party has steered its course of late.  For his sake I hope he’s back home right now enjoying his wife and kids and refueling for the next fight. 

Section 67, Grave 2711

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Img_04801986 was the first time that intimate death entered my life.  Until that point I had never had anyone close to me die and then in the span of a couple of months my Grandpa died and one of my closest friends from high school was killed.  I was reminded of this two weeks ago when I visited Arlington National Cemetery and found the headstone (Section 67, Grave 2711) of my friend Louis Robinson, Jr. (L CPL, US Marines), who was killed August 31, 1986, a week after his birthday and the same day his child was born.

We, my friends and I,  never really knew the circumstances of Louis’s death, but we were told that while stationed out west he was waiting for a transport flight to go to Tennessee to be with his wife for the birth of their child.  He went to a park with some buddies and was having some beers.  Another Marine was at the park with his family, and after being told by his wife that Louis had offered their young son a beer (according to the story his buddies said he was joking around) he went back to his car, got a gun out of the glove box and shot Louis in the chest.  Louis’s buddies threw him in a car and took off for the hospital, lost control of their car and ran over a sidewalk and into a storefront.  He never made it to the hospital alive.

I’m not sure how much of this story is true, but I can tell you that it wouldn’t surprise me too much if it was.  It has all the earmarks of the silly or stupid crap we did in high school.  We always seemed to get ourselves in little jams by acting like stupid kids while cruising the streets of DC and the suburbs.  Heck we’d even been caught in the vicinity of gunfire twice before.

We laughed off all our misadventures.  After all we were invincible, as yet untouched by the truly horrible punishment that life can mete out.  Sure we all had a little something we could point to as painful: divorced or alcoholic parents, bad break-ups with girlfriends, a car crash or two, but few of us really believed that true tragedy could, or would, touch us.

Louis’s death changed that.  I can’t speak for my other friends, but it rocked me to the core.  The invincibility that I’d felt disappeared and was replaced by hesistance for the first time that I can remember.  Not that I had never felt fear or uncertainty before, but I felt a truly visceral fear for the first time ever.  Events that I had previously looked at as a crazy kind of fun — can you believe we just did that? — I now viewed as events that I had miraculously survived — how the hell did I not die?

One of my closest friends died doing the kind of thing we’d done for years.  Silly, juvenile, stupid and totally within the norm for your average 19 or 20 year old American idiot.  It saddens me to no end that he died before he outgrew that stage of life, that he never had the opportunity to become a real man, to watch his kids grow up, to experience the pain and joy that it is to be a parent and an adult member of society.

And it shocks me that it has already been 20 years since he died.  To be honest I didn’t realize it had been that long until I saw Louis’s headstone, and it really knocked me for a loop.  I have no idea what became of his child or his wife; she was from Tennessee and none of us met her before the funeral or saw her after that day.  The fact that Louis was a black city kid from DC and she was a white country girl from Tennessee made the situation a little awkward, and I’m not sure if she stayed in touch with Louis’s family.  Unfortunately I know for a fact that I didn’t and that is something I regret to this day.

Now I’m thinking of my own kids.  They’re just now entering their teenage years and I’m wondering what kind of trouble they’ll get into.  What stupid, short-sighted, totally inane mischief will they perpetrate?  Should I share my own misadventures in hopes of making myself an object lesson, or do I risk giving them the wrong idea?  I have no idea and I guess Celeste and I will just have to do what parents have always done: play it by ear and do our best to minimize the damage. And hope to God that good luck is hereditary.

I really wish Louis had lived to face these hopes, fears and questions himself.  We could have talked and  laughed about it over a beer with all our other friends.

There’s Bad Beats and Then There’s BAD Beats

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Allinben
Before moving to Winston-Salem I played a lot of basement poker, usually at my friend Kevin’s house.  I don’t get to play with them much any more, but they keep me in the loop via email.  For the last two years a bunch of them have been going out to the World Series of Poker and it usually leads to some funny stories, and most of them have to do with "All-in Ben" (that’s him to the left), the craziest and loosest player in our group.

Kevin just got back from WSOP and here’s this year’s story in full from Kevin’s email:

"Just got back from Vegas.  Have an all-in Ben story.
 
Ben sits down at a Texas Hold-em  $25-50 No limit "CASH" game.
Starts with $3,000 in cash.  Builds his chips to just under $8,000.
 
The Hand heard around the world!!!
 
Ben:  pocket 7’s
player 2:  pocket 9’s
player 3:  pocket A’s
 
Player 3 bets $500 pre-flop and Ben and #2 call.
 
Flop:  7,7,9
 
Ben checks his 4 7’s.
#2 bets $1,500 with full house.  #3 raises $1,500 with AA77.
$3,000 for Ben to call so he raises "all-in Ben" to $7,400
 
Player#2 raises $1,500 and player #3 calls.
 
Main pot that only Ben can win is just under $24,000.
 
Side pot $3,000 for player 2&3.
 
As the turn card comes, Ben is thinking of the new van he is going buy, pay off other gambling debts, prob. buy Erica something.
 
Turn card is A.
 
Player 2 bets big and #3 raises big.
 
River card comes and it changes Ben’s life forever:  9
 
Player 2 bets big and player 3 raises and player 2 re-raises.
 
Side pot at about $100,000 and main pot just under $24,000.
 
4 9’s beat 4 7’s and A’s full of 7’s.
 
Player 2 wins $124,000."

I Know One of People’s Hottest Bachelor’s for 2006

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============================================
 You may need to use a people search engine in order to find whoever you are looking for, unless you’re at a college with a directory of people who are employees.
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Archie_kaoThat guy to the left is Archie Kao who was in my fraternity (Sigma Chi at George Mason University) back in the day.  Archie was a great guy to know in school for many reasons including the fact that he was an absolute "chick magnet."  He and a bunch of the other guys in the fraternity helped us put on some of the best parties on campus in terms of the women in attendance, which didn’t hurt when rush season came around.  Archie was also president of the student government and a great guy in general.

Now he’s been selected as one of People Magazine’s hottest bachelors for 2006.  That selection helped him end up on the Today show earlier this week as part of a very, uh, interesting "dating game" bit with Al Roker.  Despite the decidedly "in touch with his feminine side" slant of the quotes attributed to Archie he has yet to catch the ration of s*** I’d expect from all our fraternity alums who participate in email exchanges, but I expect that to change.  Or maybe not: I think most of us who are married with children and rapidly entering middle age are probably just a little bit in awe of Archie’s continued success in the bachelorhood field.

If you know a fine lady who likes daytime activities (Archie: "I like daytime activities. On one date we played tennis, then went to
a museum. Another girl took me sea kayaking. It was amazing.") and has "Oprah-esque qualities" point her Archie’s way.  Help bring him over to the new fraternity of marital obligation and parental oblivion.

Change is Good?

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I caught up with one of my college roommates today.  Tony and I are both pretty bad about picking up a phone and calling so we can go long stretches without talking, but we always pick up right where we left off.  The big news is that he and his wife Amy are expecting their first child which begat his other big news which is they sold their townhouse and are moving into a big house.

Towards the end of our conversation he mentioned that he checks out my blog every once in a while and he can’t believe how conservative I’ve become.  I think he used the term "fascist bastard" in there somewhere (you have to understand that Tony is from Scotland and taught me everything I know about cussing, which is alot) and he also wondered aloud how disappointed my mother must be in me.

I’ll admit I was a pretty liberal punk in college, but once I got out in the real world and started paying attention to things outside of my own little corner of the universe I definitely lost some of my leftist viewpoints.  On the other hand I retain enough liberal ideas that I’d say I’m far from conservative.  Still it was interesting seeing a glimpse of myself from the perspective of someone who knew the then me and the now me.  Sometimes I miss the former but I’m thankful I made it to the latter since if my old self had held sway on my life path I’d probably be living semi-nude on a commune eating tofu and carrots. Yes, the whole world is better off not having to suffer through that.

Five Middle-Aged Men, a Minivan, and Four Days

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Last Friday, St. Patricks Day, I drove down to Savannah, GA to meet up with some friends for a long weekend of golf, poker and fishing.  You know you’re middle-aged when the prospect of having to tool around town in a mini-van (my marvelous Mazda MPV) didn’t scare anyone off.

I arrived at the Savannah airport at the appointed time, 6:30, only to find out that the flight was delayed.  Five hours later they arrived, but it wasn’t so bad because I got to watch some meaningless NCAA game in the Phillips Seafood bar while the score showing my alma mater George Mason beating Michigan State in the first round of the NCAA tournament appeared in the corner of the screen.  First victory ever in the NCAA’s for GMU, yippee!

The guys landed and I had a cooler of beer in the back of the van for them.  I labeled the very large cooler "Mike’s Beer" and the small cooler "Jon, Kevin, Dave and Karl’s Beer".  Mike does love his Bud Light.  An hour later we were at Dave’s house in Hilton Head (Port Royal) playing our first hold ’em mini-tournament.  Then it was off to bed so we could get some decent shuteye before our 8:30 tee time.  That was the second sign that we’re getting old; we actually slept between poker and golf.

After golf (very ugly for all involved except Dave who won 7 skins) it was back to the house to get cleaned up and head to Savannah for a night on a casino boat.  Silly us for cleaning up since the clientele was, uh, interesting.  First bad sign, literally, was the sign at the gangplank that said "Absolutely no concealed weapons allowed" quickly followed by a guy scanning everyone with a handheld detector.  Next bad sign was the overwhelming smell that was suspiciously like the worst fraternity houses I’ve visited.  Then we came across the first patrons decked out in bling that didn’t deserve the second bling to qualify for bling-bling and we were a little scared.

The boat’s air conditioner wasn’t working so within minutes sitting in the card room was like taking a sauna with 400 chain-smokers.  Things got a little better when the boat left the dock and hit the open water, but that’s because about 30 people instantly became nauseous and headed for the open-air upper deck.  We all entered a $100 no-limit hold-em tournament and were doing pretty well, especially since most of the other patrons apparently thought watching one night of poker on ESPN qualified as experience. And I’d say most of them didn’t get past third grade math. 

So what happened?  Well I got knocked out by a guy with two teeth who called my all-in (I had A-Q and my ace was paired up on the board) while holding a J-9 and then caught a gut-shot straight on the river. That’s poker though, and honestly I took out someone with a lucky card myself so I can’t say much.  Still we all were getting taken out by rednecks with horseshoes surgically implanted in their derriers.  Kevin was doing great until the conditions got to him and he went all in on a horrible hand, but that was because he felt so sick he could barely see straight.  Mike ended up finishing in the money (6th place) so it wasn’t a total failure.

Then we were stuck for four hours until the boat went back to shore.  In those four hours we were able to witness the fine spectacle of society’s Wal-Mart crowd getting increasingly drunk and rowdy.  Some guy called his wife a bitch and they started to have it out.  Then a white guy called his black friend the "n" word, which his friend seemed fine with but a woman from a black family sitting next to them took great exception to and a spat broke out between her family and his crowd. 

I escaped to the upper deck for some fresh air, but that didn’t last once the karaoke started.  An old, drunk redneck named Steve went up and requested some Credence Clearwater Revival and the DJ spent a minute finding it while Steve returned to his seat.  When the DJ announced "And now we’ll have Steve singing (I don’t remember what he requested)" Steve looked up and yelled "What the f— you talking about?" The DJ said, "Sir, you requested the song and you get to sing along with it."  Steve said, "I don’t wanna f—ing sing it I wanna listen to it."  The DJ told him that there wouldn’t be any words because the Karaoke version only includes the instrumentals since you’re supposed to sing along to it.  Steve asked him "What kind of f—ing DJ are you?" and the DJ just gave up.  When no one else requested a song the DJ put on a top-40 loop and when Steve heard words I thought he might fight the DJ for "lying to him about not having no goddamn words in the f—ing songs."  That’s when I got the hell out of there.

Thankfully we were back on land at 1 a.m.  We drove back to Hilton Head and then crashed.  The next morning, Sunday, we got up played some poker and then at noon took a fishing charter that Dave had set up.  It was probably 50 degrees with a 15-20 MPH wind blowing and we froze our butts off.  The captain didn’t want to but convinced him to try going to a spot offshore, and after weathering five-foot waves for 1/2 hour we saw his wisdom and had him take us back into the sound. We managed to catch four fish that had a cumulative weight of about four ounces, but I had the best time because my college roommate, Bobby, called me on my cell to do a play-by-play of the last 13 seconds of GMU’s win over Carolina in the NCAAs.  I might have jumped off the boat if my knees hadn’t locked into place hours earlier.

We got back to the house about six on Sunday and everyone took hot showers to try and warm up.  We ordered pizza and then played hours of poker…probably the highlight of the weekend.  Kevin and Mike played another round of golf Monday morning but the rest of us slept in and packed to leave.  That afternoon I dropped them off at the airport and had a great time driving home, laughing my ass off the whole way.  I kept thinking about five middle-aged guys driving around in a mini-van trying to cut loose and hitting every snag you can imagine.  It was a blast.

Forget Cookies, Those Little Girls in Green Should Be Selling Cars

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Today was a good email day.  My friend Rich emailed me this thought about the Girl Scouts:

In trying to figure out  "just how outrageous" the cost of Girl Scout
Cookies might be, I decided to match the cost per ounce of Tagalogs
against the Lexus ES 330.  Here is what I found:

Tagalogs cost 50 cents an ounce.
The Lexus ES 330 weighs 4,540 lbs or 72,640 ounces.

The Sticker price is : $32,300 or 44 cents an ounce

I would have to pay $36,320, or $4,020 more than sticker price for
the Lexus if the Girl Scouts sold it.

Wow the all NEW 2007 Limited Girl Scout Lexus ES 330 — this is where
the Girl Scouts should do there fundraising…..

1 Car = 10,377 boxes of tagalogs, less work, who knows?

Did I mention that Rich is one of the smartest people I know and taught me just about everything I know about marketing?  He might have a future as a Girl Scout leader…I’d pay big bucks to see him in uniform.