Miscellany

If you're among those old enough to remember when LIFE magazine came out every week, (our ranks are thinning) you might recall that every week LIFE published a final-page photo feature entitled "Miscellany." It was usually a funny picture someone had taken of someone doing something either silly or out-of-the-ordinary.

In the tradition of LIFE magazine's old "Miscellany" page, I offer the following bits and pieces for this Monday morning:

It occurred to me that up until a certain age, say, 16, boys' fantasies tend to revolve around cars. From 16 to oh, maybe 50, their fantasies revolve around girls, then women. After age 50 it's back to cars.

Speaking of boys, girls, men and women, I'll bet you didn't know that the song My Boyfriend's Back, recorded in 1963 by The Angels, was actually written by three guys.

Does anybody really believe that those "tests of the emergency broadcast system," which invariably interrupt your favorite song on the radio, really serve any purpose other than fulfilling one more stupid government regulation on broadcasting?

Why do automakers bother equipping cars with "high beam" headlights? When was the last time you actually used them?

While I'm on the subject of automakers, whose stupid idea was it to start equipping new cars with a spare tire just about big enough for a "My Little Pony" tricycle?

There's an old song by Dire Straits called Expresso Love. It has a line in it that goes like this: "I was made to go with that girl/Just like a saxophone was made to go with the night." It's kind of a clumsy line, but I've always liked it because of its truth: for some reason jazz never sounds better than it does late at night.

A long time ago I turned to my friend Debbie Therrien, whose name was Debbie Wells in those days, and I said to her, "You know what I hate?" And she replied, "Practically everything!" Well, that's just not true. I may hate practically everyone, but I don't hate practically everything.

Which leads me to some recent encounters with people that buck the trend:

(1) On July 2 I interviewed author and columnist Kathleen Parker, who just published a book entitled Save The Males: Why Men Matter/Why Women Should Care. Kathleen and I were on the phone for about 45 minutes, and while she's probably getting tired of hearing me say this, as we were talking I fell in love with her at least four times, the same amount of times I fell in love with her while reading her book.

(2) Earlier this summer, after having moved back to Washington, D.C. last year, I tracked down my old friend Holly Inder, whose name was Holly Brayton when we first met four presidential administrations ago. Holly's and my encounters in this old life have been few and far between. When we were both much younger than we are now, we dated for about two weeks, then went our separate ways, literally. She went to Africa and I went to Europe. We both married other people, on different continents but on the same day. Now she's raising three kids in Virginia. I haven't seen her since 1994 and we're still trying to arrange a get-together, but she has one of those telephone voices that lifts your heart. I can't wait to see her again. Viva Holly.

(3) I've been working out at Bally's gym in Hyattsville for a year now, and I just made my first friend there. His name is Rob and he works in the music business. He looks like someone who just failed an audition to fill in for ailing Ronnie Wood on the next Rolling Stones Tour. We're already talking about hitting an Indian buffet after the gym one of these noontimes.

(4) I love the way black women past a certain age here in D.C. tend to address me as "Baby." I offered my seat on the Metro to a fiftyish African-American lady the other day, and she replied, "No thank you, baby. I'm just getting ready to get off." I like that.

(5) Seven years ago I met a woman on Match.com named Tanya. We dated through the summer that led up to 9/11. She was living in Glen Burnie, MD at the time, and I was living in Towson. Shortly after 9/11 she dumped me. My guess is that she met someone else on Match.com whom she liked better. Doesn't matter. I just found out that she's currently living about four miles from where I live. We're meeting for a beer tonight. No hard feelings, but I am planning to punch her in the mouth. If she sticks around after that, I'm willing to kiss and call it even. And I'll pay for the beer.

(6) One of my favorite people in the world is a guy named Doug Parker. I think there's only one thing in the world we disagree on: he likes the San Francisco Giants and I like the San Diego Padres. Other than that we're pretty much of one mind on most things. I've known Doug even longer than I've known Holly, and have gone even longer without seeing him; I last saw Doug in California in 1985, a few months before I came east and met Holly. Doug and I roomed together for a while when we were two starving radio-station guys, he a disc jockey and I a newscaster. He lives in Reno, Nevada, where what's left of my family is having a reunion in October which by the way will coincide with my birthday on Oct. 12. I'm going to stay with Doug. It will be the first time we've slept under the same roof since we shared the "Quick-95 Refugee Camp" in 1984. Set the giggle-and-twitch meter on 12; we have a lot of catching up to do, Doug and I.

Okay, there you have six happy "people" stories. Clearly I don't hate everyone. Meanwhile, Debbie Therrien is now telling me she hates everyone. Live and learn.

Why is it so easy to get married and so hard to get divorced? It ought to be the other way around. If you consider that most people go through life taking the route of least resistance, I'm sure there would be a lot less divorce if it were.

I always laugh when people claim that the CIA is secretly running America, or controlling other governments. I was a federal employee for more than a dozen years. I didn't work for the CIA, but I knew plenty of people who did, and I handled lots and lots of classified documents in my job. What people don't seem to understand about the CIA is that, in the final analysis, it's just another bureaucracy. I wouldn't trust the CIA to deliver a pizza. It would wind up on the wrong continent.

Has anyone bothered to notice that the Jews and Muslims slaughtering each other in the Middle East are actually the same people? There's no feud like a family feud.

I got an e-mail last week from Michael Burgess in California, which I knew was going to be both foul-mouthed and insulting, so I deleted it without reading it. I told him I hadn't bothered reading it. He replied to that and I deleted his message. I told him I hadn't bothered reading his reply. He replied to that and I deleted his message. I told him to save his breath and quit flaming me because I wasn't reading his flamers. He replied to that and I deleted his message. Finally, just to shut him up, I quit telling him to shut up. Now I have just one question: Michael is 51 years old and I'm wondering what he wants to be when he grows up.

Starting late Saturday evening and then concluding on Sunday morning, I watched the movie Summer of '42 one more time. This little film is always going to have a special place on my shelf of favorite movies, because it concerns a 15 year-old boy with a terrible crush on a 22 year-old girl (once was the time I would have written "22 year-old woman," but I've reached the age when 22 year-old women look like girls to me.) I first saw this movie the year it came out, 1971. I myself was 15 then, and the story really hit home. For that reason it still does. But what mostly struck me on the re-watch this weekend was the performance of Jennifer O'Neill. Yes, of course she was dazzlingly beautiful at the time, but there's more to it than that. Her acting talents weren't exactly overburdened by the role, but she infused it with a combination of fresh-as-a-daisy and vulnerable-as-a-rose that simply shimmers. You can't take your eyes off her, and in the next-to-last scene when the film's ironic climax (no pun intended) takes place, the poetry is perfect. Up until this moment the whole teen-introduction-to-sex thing has been pure slapstick; now all of a sudden it's heartbreaking. It's perfect and she's perfect. I have to say that the book Herman Raucher based on his screenplay was much funnier than the movie because you get to hear the narrator making smartass comments to himself. But the film has its funny moments. Still, it's odd; when I read the book I thought the most heart-rending line was its very last sentence. I guess that's partly because there was no way Raucher could render in words alone the incredible visual poetry of Hermie and Dorothy's silent embrace. I'll be watching this movie again, and maybe weeping.

More in a moment.