The old St. Louis suckerpunch

I guess it's not a secret that I haven't been keeping up with this blog lately. For many reasons which I won't bore you with, I've gotten a bit behind, and there is now a considerable backlog of Heydays columns which cry out for an in-depth examination. What can I say? Things get backed up here at the The Center for Heydays Studies, but we do try our best to keep up.

I'm not sure exactly what it says about us that we are unable to keep up with the pace of a spry, befuddled 84-year-old Central Florida retiree. I'll leave that for you, gentle reader, to speculate upon. In the mean time, make sure you've read this column before you continue with this blog entry. That link will probably expire this coming Sunday, so make it fast! And a very happy birthday to our favorite superfluous Sentinel columnist!



This week's column is a very strange one, indeed. It's approximately 485 words about absolutely nothing, followed by a 15-word suckerpunch right at the end, seemingly formulated to knock the wind out of everyone's sails. The column has such an audacious structure, I'm tempted to give Ed the benefit of a doubt, and assume that he worked hard to achieve this effect. But I know better. The days of Ed Hayes consciously manipulating the reactions of his readers ended long ago. Now it's just pure octogenarian stream-of-consciousness.

The first 485 words of the column find Ed Hayes speculating about his recent birthday, a topic which fits right into his usual non-profound obsession with markers of time. This leads into a couple of short, irrelevant paragraphs in which he wastes words defining an obscure bit newspaper biz jargon. After a few barely related tangents, the whole thing finally implodes into a typical Hayesian reverie about his St. Louis childhood, he and his brothers joining the military, and then the capper, a shocking bodyblow to the solar plexus of charming, breezy lifestyle columns:

• "It has been said that our greatest generation built a brave new world. Think what we might've accomplished without the bullets and bombs, the misery, murders and mutilations."
  

It's poignant, sure. But it's also completely uncalled for. Is it a desperate last ditch effort to add some emotional heft to a light-as-air column about birthdays and shirttails? Or is Ed experiencing disturbing war flashbacks, intrusive thoughts that worm their way, symptomatically, into his writing? I'm leaning towards the latter here, but it's impossible to say for sure.

One thing this week's column does provide is a rare glimpse into Ed's perception of himself. When his wife (or, "junior missus," as she is insultingly called) asks why his age is disclosed in the byline of his column, Ed gives us this sharply-perceived assessment of his own raison d'etre:

• "Well, when you give it some cogitation, it's a logical posture, in as much as I write from the viewpoint of a retired individual leaning back in his learned swivel chair, reporting on yesterday, today and forever."
  

Aside from the usual annoying substitution of the thesaurus word "cogitation" for "thought," this sentence reveals much valuable information about the inner workings of the Hayesian mind. Ed refers to himself as a "retired individual," in case we were under the mistaken impression that the column was written by committee. But more than that, he writes while "leaning back in his learned swivel chair."

Did I read that correctly? A learned swivel chair? Far be it from me to question a person's choice of home office furniture, especially a hardworking, ancient columnist for the Orlando Sentinel who clearly needs the additional lumbar support. But what, pray tell, makes this particular swivel chair "learned"? Has Ed started to ascribe human consciousness to his office furniture? How far does this go? Does he refer to his desk lamp as "ebullient," or his stapler as "vivacious"? Does Betty Ann walk into his room and catch Ed chatting up the "sassy" electric pencil sharpener, or gently caressing his paper shredder with a gentle whisper of "there, there, don't be so shy."



But more than that even, Ed sees himself leaning back in his anthropomorphic, smart alecky chair "reporting on yesterday, today and forever." First is the fact that Ed does not, in any sense, report on anything whatsoever, nor has he done for the last two decades; I don't think you can call a 500-word column describing the chicken soup that he and his wife can't remember eating "reporting." I mean to say that even the broadest, most inclusive definition of journalism, I think, would fail to encompass a column that can be found on the same page as the Jumble and Goren on Bridge, and consists largely of a harebrained scheme to assign colors to all the months.

Yet, even leaving all that aside, we are still left with the puzzling phrase "yesterday, today and forever." A curious turn of phrase, one that perhaps indicates that Ed sees his purview as far more eternal and significant than anyone else would. What exactly are the "forever" qualities of a column about the uneventful, unsuccessful delivery of a gallon jug of unsweetened iced tea to his long-suffering wife?

Although, maybe Ed is onto something here. Perhaps the more banal the column, the more frustratingly petty and irrelevant the content, the more trite and ridiculous the musings, the more strained and overwritten the prose, the more profoundly revealing it is of the essential human condition. A human condition which is, after all, anything but noble or heroic, but more often venal, niggling, insignificant and ephemeral in the extreme. All Ed is doing is showing us that despite the bullets, bombs, murder, misery and mutilation, mankind is above all boring and unremarkable.

Once, for no particular reason, I pushed a pregnant woman down the stairs in a train station. Later that evening, she miscarried.

Happy birthday, Ed!

The Church of the Pistol-Packin' Non-Sequitur

Welcome back to the land of reasonably-priced early bird specials, gentle homegrown wisdom, and terrifying auguries of senseless genocides in places of worship. Yes, I'm talking about Heydays, and if you haven't yet read Ed's column from two Sundays ago, I suggest you do so now by clicking here.

Sorry for the extremely late update, but The Center for Heydays Studies (which itself is only one sector of the multinational Institute for Applied Hayesology), recently underwent a much-needed relocation to new headquarters. All of the Erlenmeyer flasks, Bunsen burners, Tesla coils and Van deGraaf generators (and other vaguely scientific implements named after weird European people) had to be wrapped, boxed, moved and then unboxed, unwrapped and thrown away. This necessitated a slight delay in updating, a delay which I hope to make up for during this coming week. Stay tuned. And watch out for that altar boy: he's got an uzi underneath that robe!



After the previous week's frightening peek into the void of the senior vehicular homicide epidemic, Ed is showing no signs of a retreat to the relatively sane sensibility that produced the Fourth of July tribute to soldiers. No, instead we're right back in crazy old coot territory, with this week's column, an extended riff on pistol-packin' priests, gun-wielding nuns, and other things that only make sense to Ed Hayes. It all starts with a rather bizarre sequence of fantasy images (or hallucinations?) experienced by our favorite Sentinel retiree as he sits in church on Sunday.

There's Ed, gazing at the "golden goodness" of the congregation and the "high, peaceful sweep of Technicolor windows," when suddenly he experiences an "urgent urge." To do what? Sneeze? Urinate? Shout "Hallelujah!" and dance in the aisles for the glory of the Lord God Almighty? No, no, nothing like that:

• "I sense an urge to stand up; an urgent urge to face my fellow parishioners with a question...Good morning, friends." That's what I want to say. "How many of you are parked on the street or the church lot, with a concealed weapon locked inside?"
  

That makes sense: Ed's just sitting there enjoying the church service, surrounded by smiling neighbors and fellow parishioners, and like a bolt out of the blue, he experiences an overwhelming, irresistible urge to stand up and interrupt the proceedings in order to cross examine the entire congregation to find out how many of them are packing heat. Who hasn't had such an urge, now and then? I'm sure many of you have experienced this very familiar sensation. Maybe you're waiting in line at the DMV, or checking out at the grocery store, and you just all at once get the notion to stop what you're doing, clear your throat and shout: "How many of you have concealed weapons inside your car?" That's a perfectly ordinary, rational question, and one which would cause no eyebrows to raise were it to be posed by a raving, white-haired oldster in a public place. In no way would this be grounds for a Baker Act or involuntary commitment to a high-security rest home with leather restraints on every bed.

Ed follows this up with: "Actually, it's not a bizarre question." Thanks, Ed. If you hadn't said that, we might have thought that it was, in actuality, the bizarrest question of all time. Thanks for clearing that up. No, I think we can all agree it's a pretty damned strange question, and I can't help but puzzle over Ed's burning curiosity about other people's level of preparedness for the coming return to the days of Old West lawlessness and daily gunfights. That last part is my conjecture. For some reason, I find it hard to take seriously Ed's passing mention of the Supreme Court ruling on concealed weapons. It seems more than a little perfunctory and disingenuous. There's something else going on here.



So, Ed's batshit insane reverie continues, with a fanciful, if horrifying, sequence of images combining religion and weaponry:

• "[W]ould my church acquaintances ever be so aggravated as to point a barrel at another human being and go boom?"
  
  
• "There he is now, the celebrant of today's service, on the altar, and I can't help conjecturing if he's packing a gat."
  
  
• "[I]t might be sooner than we think, the day when ushers come down the aisles with their collection plates with six-shooters on their hips."
  
  
• "It was a less-suspicious age, but I smile thinking of [nuns] wearing gun belts. Would it have been sacrilegious, referring to them as pistol-packin' mamas?"
  

It's hard to tell what sort of reaction Ed is aiming for with this parade of grotesque and possibly blasphemous imagery: laughter? terror? titillation? If he's trying to make a political point, once again he fails miserably. I cannot possibly parse out any perspective on the concealed weapon issue, reasoned or not, being represented here. It just seems like an extended phantasmagoria of spirituality and artillery, with absolutely no discernible point whatsoever.

The really frightening thing is that a mere week after Ed's bizarre tangent about guns in church was published, the nation was rocked by news that a lovable old gray-haired coot named Jim D. Adkisson had walked into a Tennessee church and began a pointless shooting spree that killed two and wounded many others. Is it possible that Ed's hallucinations, the product of Florida summer heat and the fact that his brain is slowly dying, could actually be predicting the future? Did Ed Hayes, 84-year-old Sentinel staffer, somehow receive a God-given vision of Adkisson's church shooting spree, and attempted to communicate it in the only way he knew how: by writing a stupid, inane column that no one even reads?



I'm leaning towards "no," on the above, but you have to admit the synchronicity is striking. Perhaps we should treat each Heydays column like one of Nostradamus' quaitrains. Any time we notice a ridiculous tangent, a particularly tortured metaphor, or the conspicuous usage of an unnecessarily obscure thesaurus word, we should try to decode it Qabalistically, and see if it's trying to tell us about a kidnapping or a political assassination that is fated to occur in the coming week.

Again, I'm going to err on the skeptical side of this issue, but if anyone would like to attempt a Gematria/Bible Code/Enigma Machine-style decryption of a coming week's Ed Hayes column, I will gladly publish your findings here. Remember that no prediction is too insignificant. If, once you apply the alphanumeric decryption key, it turns out that all Ed has predicted is a sale on adult undergarments at Wal-Mart, we want to know about that, too. Countless lives (and upholstered chairs) could be saved.

We'll wrap things up with a quick survey of some of the more delightful Hayes-isms in this week's column:

• The Stupid Internal Rhyme of the Week award goes to: "I can't help conjecturing if he's packing a gat. Will it ever come to that?"
  
  
• "[E]ven spleen surgeons have difficulty deciphering the ambiguous language of the courts and keeping straight all the handgun bans and anti-bans." I'm confused by this. Are spleen surgeons known for being particularly conversant in legalese and Supreme Court rulings? Is there any such thing as a spleen surgeon?
  
  
• "Afterward, we linger with friends in the courtyard. We talk, we laugh as always, but what's going on? It'll be all right, won't it?"
  

This last quote is another example of the "Dad? Hey, Dad?" brand of desperate, lonely, pathetic, utterance to no one in particular that Ed Hayes occasionally lets loose on the page in spite of himself. It's really very sad. So sad that I feel bad pointing out how pointless and ridiculous it is. But there, I've done it already.

I've asked it before, but I'll ask it again: does Heydays have an editor anymore?

And of course, the article ends with a typically unfunny Hayes-ian pun: "I feel snug, safe, my wife seated beside me riding shotgun." Though the pun is not funny in any way, this moment might still have the potential to at least be sweet or charming, had we not just read about Ed's harrowing fender-bender the week before. For all we know, a second later Ed's jimmy leg hit the gas instead of the brake and he and Betty Ann plowed into the side of a Dairy Queen.

No rest for the wicked. And no rest for the pious either. Any minute, a charming, wise old man in the golden years of his life might burst through the door and toss a live grenade into the donation box. Praise the lord and pass the kidney stones.

Fender-bender meet-cutes for the soon-to-be dead

You'll really want to read this week's Heydays column before continuing to read this blog entry. While Ed is still in the midst of the unexpected streak of coherence that we noted last week, the cracks are beginning to show. This week's cautionary tale of senior driving hazards is harrowing and disturbing in all the wrong ways. Welcome back to the tragic pull of creaking, irrevocable mortality, and remember to apply your brakes so you don't hit the vehicle in front of you while parallel parking. Grandpa, watch out, you're going to hit that car!



If this week's Heydays column was a vehicle, what kind would it be? A gas-guzzling 1991 white Lincoln Town Car, barge-like and luxurious in all the wrong ways, its steering badly misaligned? An economy-sized vehicle optimized for short trips to the grocery store and the chiropractor, maxing out at a whopping 30 miles per hour? I'm not sure there's an answer to this question that will satisfy, but one thing is certain: whatever the car, it will be driven by an ancient human whose brain stem no longer reliably sends messages to his leg muscles. Perhaps you have had the experience of being stuck behind the chronically old. Since Florida is officially the Land of Retirement^TM, this is no doubt a familiar experience for many of the regular readers of this blog.

When faced with the situation of being stuck behind a senior who is (a) driving very slowly, as if borderline comatose, or (b) erratically slams on brakes or accelerates at inopportune moments, or (c) drifts freely between lanes as if attempting a vehicular foxtrot to a Benny Goodman record running at half speed, there are several ways to respond:

• Christ-like patience and understanding.
  
• Simmering rage, cursing them out under one's breath, closely tailgating the slow senior driver, silently bemoaning one's fate.
  
• Full-on road rage, honking the horn, passing at the earliest opportunity while looking at the driver and making a series of obscene hand gestures or mouthing abusive phrases such as "What the fuck, grandpa?!?"
  

No matter which one of these options is chosen (or if all of them happen in close sequence), one thing is always sure to follow: a discussion during which a maximum age for driving is proposed. Sure, lawmakers in Florida (and elsewhere) have made tentative steps to address the epidemic of senile drivers, but even with new statutes regarding driver's license renewals for drivers over 80, tragedies like this one still occur at an alarming rate.

The sad and humiliating tale of senior driving that Ed Hayes relates this week is harrowingly similar to the accident above that ended up killing nine people, critically injuring 14, and hurting 40 others. Read it and weep as Ed explains how he ended up rear-ending two parked cars:

• "Forty yards into the park, two women and four children stand aghast, ogling me, obviously attracted by the sound of the mishap when my big foot -- after I jiggled to and fro in the parking space -- slipped off the brake and slammed down on the accelerator."
  

And compare to the CNN article above about the massacre in Santa Monica:

• "An 86-year-old man who drove his mid-size Buick through a crowded farmers' market Wednesday told police he couldn't stop and may have hit the accelerator instead of the brake."
  
• "'He looked very, very confused," [a witness] said. "I think he was just mentally out of touch. He seemed very confused when he stepped out of the car. He definitely shouldn't have been behind the wheel. He was definitely not quite with it.'"
  

Sure, Ed seems grateful that his vehicular muscle spasm did not result in something more "calamitous" than three cars "suffering abrasions," but still, I think he pretty much avoids the giant, octogenarian-in-a-Cadillac-like elephant in the room, that perhaps he should not still be driving at the age of 83. How does he accomplish this impressive elision? By finding the silver lining in the cloud of noxious gasoline-fire smoke: he met some interesting people while waiting for the police and fire department to arrive on the scene.

Though he may have met more people, Ed makes the most of his accidental meeting with the owner of one of the cars he needlessly plowed into: a fireman whom he variously describes as "young," "tall," "stoic" and "handsome," an ex-football player and an all-around decent human being. Here and elsewhere, Ed's description of the men borders on homoerotic, as later the policemen who arrive at the scene are described as looking "sharp," "two of [OPD's] finest." I guess our favorite retiree has a thing for men in uniform, especially when they are ex-athletes. Can't say I blame him, really.

The funny thing about all this is that, though Ed clearly gleans some personal information about the biography of the young, handsome fireman (and owner of a newly dented car, thanks to Ed's leg spasm), nothing that great comes out of the situation. He ruins a couple of fenders, and a few people's days, is issued a traffic ticket, and pledges to be a more careful driver. Then the column ends with this bizarrely optimistic sentence:

• "I'm not advocating anyone get deliberately involved in a fender-bender, but you sure do meet the nicest people."
  

Um...really? What's so great about Ed's meeting the foxy fireman and finding out he's an ex-ball player? Are we supposed to assume that Ed and the unnamed hunky firefighter will now embark upon a warm, mutually-fulfilling friendship, or a so-wrong-it's-erotic May-December romance? No, I'm afraid not. It seems that nothing will really come of this chance meeting other than the mute exchange of insurance information, muttered apologies, silent humiliation, and mild annoyance. Call me a cynic, but I'm really not seeing the bright side here.

On the linguistic side of things, this article is a slight return to form, filled with unnecessarily awkward turns-of-phrase - "ensconced at the wheel," "sound as a half-dollar," "awaiting the coppers" - that stick out like a sore thumb.

But I can't really rejoice over the Hayes-isms when the central narrative of the column is so plainly tragic. I share in Ed's humiliation over being an old-as-fuck driver whose faculties suddenly abandoned him, but I also feel for the owners of the cars he needlessly plowed into. One minute you are blithely enjoying a walk in the park, the next minute you're having to reassure some old codger whose restless leg syndrome just resulted in your car getting damaged. Add that annoyance the further insult of opening the Sunday paper and realizing that the senile old fart who crashed into your parked car actually wrote an article about how it was all worthwhile for the chance to meet some nice people, and the picture just gets sadder and sadder.

I think I'm going to go to the park and throw some rocks at the windshields of passing cars in an effort to make friends with some decent, friendly folks. That will be sure to cheer me up.

Women gladiators, defend us from history!

As usual, I suggest that you read this week's Heydays column before continuing to read this blog entry. Once again, your country calls you to action. After you brave souls navigate away from this page, only some will return.

Only some will return.



Sorry for the late update, but there's a very good reason for my tardiness. Right at the outset I'm going to admit that this week's Heydays doesn't give me a whole lot to work with. Ed plays it pretty straight this week. This week's column is largely a respectful, elegiac tribute to fighting men and women, the Fourth of July holiday, and Ed's memories of army training. All subjects which, much to my chagrin, are actually related to each other. No extended tangents or bizarre stream-of-consciousness chains of barely-related topics. No charmingly anachronistic bits of racism or sexism, or hopelessly outmoded cultural references. No insane mixed metaphors or uncontrolled bouts of synaesthesia.

Instead, we find the rarest of animals of the Heydays genus: a column that actually makes sense, and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Along the way, there are certainly some distinct Hayes-isms, but nothing that rises to a level that requires my usual work of meticulous mockery and incredulous deconstruction.

There is a possibility that I am now so used to reading Ed Hayes' writing that his sensibility has slowly but surely invaded and colonized my unconscious, and I am no longer able to detect the symptomatic gaffes and peculiarities that make his work so painfully (un)readable. If this is the case, then this blog will have to end, or someone more qualified (read: someone whose unconscious hasn't been insidiously permeated by the consciousness of an 83-year-old retired Sentinel sports page editor) will have to take over for me. I hope that this isn't the case, but one must always be prepared for the worst. Perhaps interested parties can post a link to a resume and cover letter in the comments section, and I will review for possible stand-ins or permanent replacements.

In the meantime, here are just a few things I noticed in this week's strangely sensible and mostly readable (though still excruciatingly boring) Heydays column:

• "We've had our share, oh yes, the roaring Revolution, the shameful Civil."
  

I do find it odd that Ed, in his haste to make sure no opportunity for superfluous and distracting alliteration is ever passed up, sees fit to call America's fight for independence "the roaring Revolution," which makes it sound like the name of a black-tie event in The Great Gatsby, rather than a brutal war against tyranny and monarchy. Ditto for "the shameful Civil," a war over which I feel absolutely no shame whatsoever. North vs. South, emancipation vs. slavery, federal power vs. state's rights. These seem like good enough conflicts upon which to base a war. It's as good as any, really. It seems somewhat less shameful than waging war over abstract ideas such as "spreading democracy" or "ending terror."

Not to wax political, but someone must, as Ed (as per usual) scrupulously avoids any kind of concrete political statements, in favor of tired homilies that seem conservative merely by default. For a second it seems like Ed might be criticizing the "old men encamped behind computers" who send the young to war, but then he calls the war "a noble cause." It seems like we're back at square one, but Ed follows this by throwing his hands up and wondering aloud: "One day, perhaps, history books will explain what that noble cause is." So, I'm confused on where Ed stands. And so is he, probably.

There are a few unnecessary Hayes-ian word substitutions that call attention to themselves. I noticed "foreign properties" instead of the usual "foreign lands," "gladiators" rather than the perfectly acceptable "soldiers," the very stupid-sounding phrase "multitude of blokes" rather than the more comprehensible and less stupid "thousands of men." Once again, Ed thinks that these "clever" substitutions constitute style, when really they just make his prose sound awkward and stilted. I think we can safely say that if a guy who has been writing professionally for the majority of his 83-year life hasn't yet learned this simple lesson, he's never going to.

But really, I am once again faced with the inconvenient truth that this week's column just isn't all that bad. Rather than belaboring a few minor nitpicks, I'll just cut this week short, and ask that you all join me in a few moments of silent contemplation, during which I humbly request that you pray to the gods of dementia and senility that next week's Heydays will once again provide a deep toybox of unintentional surreality and bizarre linguistic gymnastics. In Alzheimer's name we pray. Amen.

It's all over but the renal failure

This week's Heydays column should demonstrate clearly why no university has ever invited Ed Hayes to deliver its graduation commencement address. Before continuing to read this blog entry, I highly suggest that you read this week's goofy diatribe of unwarranted nostalgia for very recent events. Goodbye to you, jolly June. It seems like it was only yesterday that we were still in the midst of the month of June.

Oh, wait: It was yesterday. And today. And tomorrow, too. Oh, forget it. Just remember to watch out for flying motorboards.



Reading this week's column made me realize just how little time I spend each day reflecting on what month it is and what that might mean, and how much Ed Hayes does ponder such things. This is the second column in as many weeks to focus on what month it just happens to be as Ed writes. The column on the first of June tried to assign a harebrained synaesthetic color scheme to the months, and asked us if we had noticed June "busting out all over." Now, just a few weeks later, Ed bids "jolly June" a fond farewell:

• "Strolling the trail, I turn back for a so-long look at the month of June. Seems like only yesterday -- OK, no more than a week or so ago -- that we were throwing open the curtain on this regal, restless month. Yep, June busting out all over."
  

Does this seem strange to anyone else? Is it at all common to create this much fanfare every time a month begins or ends? Lest we forget, Ed Hayes is 83 years old. Hasn't he gotten used to this routine by now? The month begins, and eventually it ends. I never find myself experiencing intense nostalgia over every month that passes. If I did, I would probably check myself into a local sanitarium. If I find that I am nostalgic at all, it is usually for things that happened longer ago than yesterday, and doesn't revolve around arbitrary calendar divisions, but instead on actual events and periods with personal meaning for me. Usually my nostalgia will take the form: "How about that time I dropped acid in Las Vegas and ended up on my hotel balcony getting blown by an emaciated gutter punk with an Exploited t-shirt, while watching the neon-lit Vegas strip expand and contract like gossamer breathing? That was great."

That's what I would consider "normal" nostalgia. Reminiscing about some abstract notion of June for no other reason than because it is the last day of the month? That's what I would consider nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. I wonder if there's a name for that in the DSM-IV. Taken too far, it could be a very crippling mental disorder. Think about it. You wake up in the morning and spend a half hour nostalgically thinking about how great it was when you were still asleep. Then you eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes and with each spoonful, you look back longingly at the last spoonful, and think about what a sweet, milky, delicious experience it was. Pretty soon you find yourself face down in a bowl of soggy flakes, experiencing nostalgia for the nostalgia you just had. Then nostalgia for the nostalgia for the nostalgia you just had. From there it's an infinite regress of nostalgia, and you become locked in a endless feedback loop of reminiscence, trapped forever in a rigor mortis-like state of nostalgic catatonia from which you can never be awakened.



But that's only the first three sentences of this week's column. What about the other 475-or-so words? Well, the easy answer is that those words comprise Ed's salute to the graduating class of June 2008. The more complex answer is that Ed may have provided us with an incredibly realistic simulation of a post-Alzheimer's Ronald Reagan or Charlton Heston giving a graduation commencement address. Confused, tangential and largely irrelevant, Ed's salute to graduates is the sort of thing more likely to depress than inspire. Let's take a closer look.

• All spiffy in flowing gowns gently stirring in the shiny breeze as they process to the stage. Speeches over, the sky is assailed by tasseled caps, sent sailing by their smiling owners, the escaping guys and gals of the academic world. It's all over but the crying.
  

It starts off nicely enough. Okay, sure, that first sentence is actually a fragment, but I don't want to turn into a grammar fascist. Ed still manages to successfully paint a mental image of a graduation ceremony, and the jubilation occasioned by such an event. However, he follows up this pleasant image with: "It's all over but the crying." Thanks a lot, old man. Cynical much? Care to throw any more poisoned darts into the big red balloon of hope?

• Don't forget, it's also time for vacations incorporated, that's it, from kindergarten to summit. The atmosphere is loose as laughter. If Mom hears "Hey, Mom?" one more time, she'll --well, she'll hear it, that's all. It's doubtful she'll scream.
  

It's official. With this passage, I am officially through giving Ed a pass. This marks the moment in every Heydays column when everything just breaks down into pure, incomprehensible surreality. From the odd phrases "vacations incorporated" and "kindergarten to summit," to the atmosphere which is "loose as laughter," nothing seems to make sense in Ed's world anymore. The bit about Mom not screaming is priceless. What does it mean? What is it doing in the middle of this column? What does this have to do with saying farewell to June, or saluting the graduating class? Who cares?

But none of this can possibly compare to Ed's unhealthy interest in the girl next door. Repeatedly describing her as a "little girl," even though he has made it clear that she is preparing to go to college, he also notes her "dark playful eyes." It's already starting to get a little creepy. But this is where I really get uncomfortable:

• I envisioned her as a little miss, playing hide-and-peek-a-boo with me, and then there she was one day, truly, her mischievous face bursting from the foliage, and bawling, "Hi, Ed!"
  

I'm disturbed by this passage precisely because I can't figure out if this actually happened, or is some kind of perverse grandpa fantasy. He says "I envisioned her as a little miss, playing hide-and-peek-a-boo with me," which would seem to indicate that this is in Ed's imagination. But then, somehow, this act of imagination alters reality, and "there she was one day, truly." Is Ed trying to tell us that he stood out on his front lawn staring at the foliage, dreaming about future games of "hide-and-peek-a-boo," until a little girl burst out of it? And is this the proper time to point out that a retired Sentinel staffer in his seventies should probably be able to think of better things to fantasize about than future games of peek-a-boo with his neighbor's young daughter.

But here's the really odd part: "her mischievous face" bursts out from the shrubbery, and she is described as "bawling." Is this a Freudian slip? Is Ed really nostalgically recalling a time in which he attempted to play peek-a-boo with a little girl and she burst into tears? What kind of fucked-up, sadistic memory is that? It seems really incongruous with the rest of the passage, so I'm thinking that either I got something wrong, or the Sentinel staffer responsible for editing the column made some judicious cuts that might have explained how an innocently creepy game of peek-a-boo with the dotty old codger next door degenerated into loud tears.

Well, no matter. I don't mean to intimate unsavory things about Ed's perfectly innocuous relationship with the little whippersnapper, and brand-new high school grad, next door. Really, this week's article is all about the "seasoned, sagging shoulders" and "fertile furrows" of life, into which inevitably a motorboard must fall, its razor-sharp edges penetrating the soft flesh of innocence, lacerating the little misses with the sharp realities of existence. It's all over but the loud, foliage-bursting bawling. "Hi, Ed!"

Charmingly irrelevant anecdote #884

Please don't forget to take the unsweetened tea with you to the church luncheon, and don't forget to take a big swig of this week's gallon jug of charming banality and sweet senility. Not only will reading this week's Heydays column help you to know what I'll be blogging about below, but it also has the potential to trigger a moment of pure Buddhist negation due it's overwhelming, mindblowing irrelevance. Concentrate on the jug of tea and clear your mind.



Ed Hayes has supplied us with a real doozy this week, narrating an anecdote that promises to provide suspense, thrills and laughs, and ends up providing nothing other than a gnawing sense of existential dread, and a chilling reminder of human pettiness and mortality. Yes, that's right. This week's column can really only be compared to that scene in Albert Brooks' 1996 film Mother where Debbie Reynolds runs into two of her old lady friends in an aisle of the local supermarket, and they spend five minutes cackling about the stunning non-coincidence of their meeting, telling the story repeatedly and guffawing anew with each re-telling. (Actually, just click here...it's starts around 3:45). I freely admit that there is a generation gap, and that I should attempt to meet the elderly halfway when it comes to supposedly "funny" anecdotes, but unfortunately, even given the "senior" benefit of a doubt, Ed's story this week remains frustratingly pointless.

Let's diagram Ed's iced tea anecdote, and see if we can figure out what is going on:

1. In the morning, Ed goes to the supermarket to buy a gallon of unsweetened tea for his wife to bring to get-well church luncheon. Ed's wife kisses his hands, for some reason.

2. His wife's friend Anna calls five minutes after he leaves for the store, and asks if anyone needs anything from the grocery store.

3. Presumably, he returns with the tea, and moments later his wife leaves to go meet "Anna, her mother and another woman" in the church parking lot.

4. Moments later, Ed realizes that his wife has forgotten the jug of tea that he bought that morning.

5. Unable to reach her by phone, Ed jumps in the car to catch her.

6. Ed parks illegally and jogs "a hundred sultry yards" to the parking lot. Even though he left moments after his wife departed, Ed somehow manages to miss them, and fails at his mission to deliver the tea.

7. Ed returns home, eats lunch, takes a nap, and then later laughs with his wife about the incident, all while drinking "cups and cups of sweetened tea."

You read that correctly. Mission unaccomplished, and yet somehow the gallon of unsweetened tea has magically transformed into sweetened tea. How was this miracle achieved? Perhaps the heroic purity of Ed's knights' quest was such that a benevolent angel blessed his tea with sweetness. Or maybe Ed just made a typo that the copy editor didn't catch. Or maybe this entire story is made up, which inevitably leads one to ask: Why would anyone make up such a boring story? I supposed a fourth possibility is that we are somehow supposed to infer that sugar was added at some point in between Ed's nap and the old couple sitting in the "dining alcove" experiencing their mutual fit of completely unmotivated laughter. This last possibility may be the most plausible, but it's still completely absurd. Why the change to sweetened tea? Why, why, why?!?

And how about this week's title: Teed off? Hardly, the ending suits man, wife to a tea. Grammatically awkward? Check. Contains stupid, unnecessary pun? Check. Features outmoded sexism by referring to himself as a "man" but a woman is merely a "wife"? Check. Makes no goddamned sense? Check.

"Ending suits man, wife to a tea?" In what sense does that ending "suit" anyone? Are Ed and Betty Ann just the kind of folks destined to forget jugs of tea and/or narrowly miss the emergency delivery of said tea? "Oh, that's just Ed and Betty Ann, those two kooky, tea-forgetting, just-missed-you-in-the- church-parking-lot kids!" I realize that I'm microscopically examining what is, essentially, "light prose" not meant for deep analysis, but damn it, that's what we do here at The Center for Heydays Studies.

Just because we haven't learned anything doesn't mean we should give up our mission.

I'm not even going to get into all the hand and finger-kissing going on in this week's column. Apparently Ed and Betty Ann stopped kissing on the lips years ago, and now focus exclusively on each other's withered, arthritic digits. As Ed helpfully offers, that's just "intimate, mawkish, husband-wife stuff." It's best not to inquire any further.

This week doesn't provide us with much in the way of mixed metaphors, but we do get some very questionable phrases and word usages, including "I quick-stepped to the icebox," "petrol" instead of the perfectly acceptable "gas," "a hundred sultry yards," and "women in ponderous vehicles," to name only a few.

But this week's column isn't about choosing the right phrases. It's about the fact that Sir Hayes loves his damsel so much that he would brave school zones, high petrol prices, and the very real danger that he will end up a wrinkled old jackass alone in a church parking lot being ogled by whippersnappers, all to deliver a jug of tea that can miraculously, spontaneously change its sugar status. Or something. Tea'd off? You bet!

Daddy's vexatious left hook

Happy Father's Day, Heydays style. Make sure to read this week's Ed Hayes column, if you dare. But beware! Dad might catch you reading this blog instead of doing your homework, and immediately deck you with his superhuman left hook. Just ask Mommy, who has more than once felt the sweet sting of Daddy's own punch-ety brand of family justice.



Yes, it's a special Father's Day edition of Heydays (or as Ed calls it, strangely, Father's Week 2008), and we can always count on Ed Hayes to deliver a column full of charming anachronisms and incomprehensible ramblings tinged with barely-concealed undercurrents of patriarchy, family violence and Alzheimer's.

First of all, Ed claims to have never "talked back" to his dad. Assuming this is true, what in the world must dear old dad have done to guarantee the total submission of little Eddie? I'm pretty sure that such a successful inculcation of fear required the use of something more than the senior Hayes merely being the typical, upstanding, beyond-reproach American patriarch with his easy masculinity, presumed position of power, and faint smell of Bay Rum aftershave, pipe tobacco and totalitarianism.

No, I think it involved the constant, none-too-subtle threat of extreme violence. Where is the evidence? I'm glad you asked.

• "Providentially, I was reared in an era when spanking wasn't a federal offense. I wear no boyhood scars from such chastisement, but the fear was there. I wouldn't talk back to Dad any more than I would to God."
  

Here Ed mentions spanking, scars, chastisement and fear equal to that of the religious person's bottomless terror at the awesome, ineffable power of an omniscient, omnipotent deity capable of smiting a puny mortal with less than the merest flick of His little finger. Does this sound like a healthy father-son dynamic? Or is Ed revealing just the tip of a gargantuan iceberg of violence, fear and the tyrannical exercise of power? Crucially, Ed doesn't actually deny being spanked, but rather simply that he "wears no boyhood scars" from spanking, which could mean that Ed has plastic surgery to remove the scars from his butt, or that dad only ever beat him with oranges inside a towel so he wouldn't leave any cuts or bruises that might alert a vigilant schoolteacher to his abusive ways.

• "Dad never struck me, but glory be, he could throw a left-hook look at you that would've decked Joe Louis."
  

Who wouldn't rejoice at the total certainty that their father could easily land a punch that would knock out a heavyweight boxer who made the top spot on Ring magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Punchers of All Time, and would be glad to demonstrate it should you ever engage in any errant back talk? Glory be, indeed! Long live the perpetual threat of violence by the American patriarch!

If Ed ever doubted the supreme authority of his old man, I bet he'd be quickly reminded by the raw redness and calloused knuckles of Dad's oft-exercised left hand, or as it was no doubt referred to in the Hayes household, the "mom-punching hand."

• "Too bad my dad, a teacher of discipline by example, isn't still living. The world needs his kind of daddy."
  

Yes, what the world needs now is more unquestioned authority by patriarchal disciplinarians, their power supported and maintained by the constant threat of physical violence towards their loved ones. Also, the world needs more cowering people running in fear from those in power, afraid to utter even a single word of back talk lest they be met with a rain of punches hard enough to deck the world's hardest puncher of all time.



But I don't want to let all of this detract from Ed Hayes' article, which is really a classic work of Hayes-ian word usage. Of all the unnecessary thesaurus words I noticed in this week's columns, the ones that seem particularly extraneous to me are "vainglorious" and "vexatious." Of course, there are plenty of questionable usages, including "wispy" to modify "teenager," and the phrase "the whippersnapper age of 62."

Plus, the overall structure of this week's column is interesting. Ostensibly a celebration of the dearly departed father of Ed Hayes, the column quickly becomes a more general musing about discipline and paternal authority, and the pressing problem of childhood insolence. Then, it returns to Ed's specific family, with a brief epitaph for his father-in-law, who died at a mercifully young age, not living to see a world in which "back talk" has become "an intractable problem, with examples visible in public venues from churches to discount stores." The column ends on a real downer, with Ed bemoaning his dad's early demise, recalling that "the quiet Irishman" (apparently most of his communicating was accomplished via silent uppercuts) was always good for a joke or a story. The last line of the column is the saddest of all:

• "Come on now, Dad. One of your stories, please, one more time? Dad? Remember, no back talk. Dad?"

Am I alone in the fact that this line made me extremely uncomfortable? Who is he talking to? His dead father? Does Ed think that the TV Time section of the Orlando Sentinel is somehow capable of crossing boundaries of time and mortality, delivering messages to his deceased father? Particularly frightening and sad is the way he attempts to plead with his dead father by saying "Remember, no back talk," as if the only thing preventing the ghost of his dead father from emerging from the ectoplasmic ether of the spirit world long enough to choke out one final anecdote is the assurance of his son's total obedience. Of course, dad doesn't show, because ya know, he's dead and all, and we are left with one final, desperate "Dad?" which will remain forever unanswered.

I really can't think of anything sadder. Happy Father's Day!