Questionable celebrity

Notoriety isn't something I covet.  I prefer to be in the shadows, always out of the limelight.  But there are people, whether because of their profession or because of some psychological need, who crave fame.  That's their choice and I wish them well.  But along with that celebrity comes an invitation to scrutiny that private persons don't necessarily deserve.

I've pondered this question when watching movies or television shows.  Sometimes I'll notice someone and wonder how on earth he or she made it this far.  I blame Jerry Seinfeld for this.  If he hadn't convinced a network to televise a show about nothing, these people might never have made it.  The following is a list of people and my questions about how they reached the limelight:

Jennifer López:  I know how she got this far, practically speaking -- she was a Fly Girl.  But like Taylor Swift, she isn't that talented as a vocalist, and at least Swift is a good songwriter.  Again like Swift, she can act, but beyond that her fame escapes me...unless we're talking about the dress:

P-Diddy/Sean Combs/Puff Daddy:  How in the heck did he make it this big?  I mean, aside from dating women who wear garments like López, for what is he famous? 

Cameron Díaz:  Another person who has marginal talent as an actress, but she's no beauty and doesn't possess any other discernible talent.

Andy Dick:  Anyone possessing that name either is a doofus for choosing it or a doofus for not changing it.  Again, here's another person with no discernible talent who's made a boatload of money.  He's not funny.  He's obnoxious in the extreme.  I just don't get it.

Bill Murray:  As a fellow Cub fan I probably shouldn't say this, but I really don't understand Murray's celebrity.  He tries too hard to be funny most of the time and when he is funny, he overdoes it so as to ruin what he's accomplished.  I know he's tried his hand at serious acting and he's done some credible work, such as in Lost in Translation.  I just don't like his schtick as much as other people, I guess.

Paris Hilton:  So if you're the heiress to a family fortune, make sex tapes and con a network into airing a reality show about your life, you become famous?  She all but gave Kim Kardashian the blueprint for how to make money without really doing anything. 

For now, I'll leave this list short.  There are plenty of others who deserve to be on it in my opinion, but I have a much more pressing task at hand:  How to cook snapper without ruining it.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

10.28.12

Today is the anniversary of the day I met the love of my life.  Our path was a twisted and tortured one, not one that met with the approval of many people.  Some have judged us, others have reviled us.  What matters to us is that we're together, finally.

Karen is to me the most wonderful woman in the world.  She is intelligence, confidence, beauty, grace and so many other wonderful things.  She is my partner, my lover, my friend, my cohort, my better half, my sweetheart, the darling of my heart.  I am the most fortunate of men.

I knew from the moment I heard her voice that I had to be with her.  There's a vibrance lacking in other people.  She is kind and considerate and thoughtful, yet snarky and sassy all rolled into one.  There is never a dull moment with her, yet every moment is one to be savored as one would savor a taste of fine wine.

By no means am I suggesting that we meet eye to eye on every little thing and have no arguments; far from it.  But we've learned from our mistakes and work to make our relationship stronger every day.  I come to appreciate new things about my girl all the time.

She has inexhaustible patience and supports me unconditionally.  She has rolled with so many punches Job should give up his aphoristic title.  She bears so many burdens with a smile that people would be hard-pressed to know that she suffers from anything.  She always has a kind word for everyone and goes out of her way to tell them so that she makes them feel better.  She is, simply, the best person I will ever know.

I love her from the deepest depths of my being.  I love her with all that I am.  I have loved her since before I was born and I will love her beyond the end of time.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Generals' update

It's been awhile since Sherman, Custer and Stonewall have ridden onto these pages.  As I write this, they are snoring away at my feet.  Thankfully the flatulent one, Custer, has decided upon a unilateral cease fire this afternoon, something he didn't do this morning.

Sherman has developed a crazy little habit of viciously attacking the vacuum cleaner while it's in use.  When it's not running, he runs away from it the second it's moved.  But when it's turned on, he turns into a quadrapedal version of Hercules and tries to bite it.  He still Belushis unexpectedly when it suits him, and lately he's been defending himself from the tyro Stonewall -- more on that anon.

Custer is a planet unto himself.  He has the most bizarre behavior.  Anytime I go up the stairs, he runs ahead of me, sometimes barking as he ascends the stairs, and awaits me on the landing or the top of the stairs to engage in a little friendly play, usually with my wrist in his mouth.  If I visit the bathroom, he guards me as I use the toilet, making sure no one can get between him and the toilet bowl, which is just a little disconcerting.  Again, it's not the same way Stonewall does it -- thank goodness -- as he actually looks away from me to make sure no enemies might attack me when I literally have my drawers down.

Custer's other habit is to join in on fights when Sherman and Stonewall are going at it.  Cus can be mindlessly chewing away in the corner while the maelstrom wages across the room and suddenly jump up and body slam Stonewall into the wall.  He and Stonewall engage in some pretty vicious fights over toys, but he saves his Third Man In routine for Stonewall.  He's by far the biggest pig when it comes to food, actually stalking Stonewall's food like a vulture doing lazy circles overhead while a lionness feeds on a gazelle carcass below.  If Karen or I bring a snack to the couch while we're watching television, Cus reprises his role of Guardian of the Porcelain Bowl but faces us, nudging ever closer to one of us.  He always has to be first out the door if the whole family's going somewhere...unless he doesn't want to go out, when he imitates a wrestler and flattens himself on the floor, betting me that I can't lift him.  Unfortunately for him, I can.

The only disconcerting feature to Custer's behavior is that he has to wear a diaper lined with two Kotex pads at night.  For some inexplicable reason, our boy Cus Cus is a bedwetter.  And when we go out and leave him loose, the odds are good that he'll leave a solid deposit on one of the rugs for us to find. 

Then there's the baby, Stonewall.  According to Karen, he's not a good specimen pure bred bulldog.  He's long, lean and tall and runs around like a boxer.  He loves to play fetch and will literally jump over Sherman or Custer to get what's thrown.  He loves to taunt them both with what he's recovered, deftly playing keep away until eventually the two gang up on him.

Stoney's still wild and for that reason must always be on a leash when we go for a walk.  Sherman can be left off the leash and if there are no children around, Cus can be let off the leash within a few yards of the house.  But Stoney's a runner.

The other problem with Stoner is that he loves to play rough.  He will go up to Sherman and just sink his teeth into his flank.  This provokes retaliation that usually winds up with Sherman humping Stoney.  That doesn't deter him in the least.  He views it as some sort of a breather in between playtimes.  Once he's caught his breath, he goes right back at it.

Stonewall's version of guarding me in the bathroom is to inspect me as closely as he can while I do my business.  It's not exactly private, but he's still a curious little puppy.

Stonewall and Custer share a weird habit of running to the freezer the minute they hear the ice being used.  I give each of them a piece of ice which they proceed to chew on the floor, leaving a small puddle.  Sherman has no interest in this.  Since all three of them were fixed, I can't make the connection between being sexually frustrated and eating ice.

When we go to bed, the three boys sleep on my side of the bed.  The choir of snoring that comes from our side of the room can be deafening.  There are times when the boys are asleep that we can't hear the television and have to turn up the volume.

All I know is that they bring such joy to our lives.  Yeah, they're hard work.  They're not exactly cheap, either.  But whenever we take them out for a walk, someone stops us to ask about them.  They love and adore us unconditionally.  They play with us and know when one of us is having a bad day.  As I tell Karen constantly, they're the best toys I've ever had.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Cooking

I love to cook.  Our Mother encourage me to learn everything I could about anything I could, and cooking was one more of the things that she taught me.  Truth be told, I think she did so more out of concern that I might find myself alone and wanted to be able to take care of myself.  No matter, I appreciated it as it gave me time with her and in the end I developed into a decent subsistence cook.

No chef am I.  The term gourmet is better applied to my reading tastes than any culinary ability I could ever possess.  Even so, I appreciate the skill, effort and knowledge it takes to be a good cook.  That explains my attraction to the relatively recent surge in interest in cooking shows.  I'm even aware of some of the luminaries of the culinary world like Mario Batali, Bobbie Flay, Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert and Wolfgang Puck.  Heck, I even read Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw on vacation.

I might be interested in being a chef if it weren't for cooking things I detest, like eggs.  I can use them in baking, but the thought of cooking an egg makes me gag.  Right there I'm disqualified from being a chef.

So a cook it is.  I have what I think are my specialties.  What they are in fact are things that are hard for me to ruin.  Thanksgiving turkey, blueberry pies, salmon -- things that I both like and have prepared over and over again.

One of my favorite memories is from my time in Spain.  At Christmas, four of us expats -- a Jew from Boston, a Colombian, a Mexican and myself -- were without a place to go, so I volunteered to make a Christmas bird.  What I'd forgotten to consider was where I was supposed to find one.  Somehow, and I don't remember how exactly, I was led to a store somewhere in the 'burbs of Madrid where they were sold.  I bought all the fixings and lugged them on the Madrid metro to Boston friend's house where I cooked the bird.  There was snow, although it was little frigid, but that turkey and stuffing transported me back to the Midwest and our Mother.

Another time, some of the guys from my dorm floor at school broke into a frat's kitchen during a frat party and stole some frozen turkeys.  Although I wasn't with them, they brought it to my house since I lived right around the corner.  I got all the ingredients for the stuffing and prepared a feast for my thieving friends a couple of weeks later.  Basically, we ate the evidence.

I used to bake but that was discouraged in an earlier relationship.  My efforts weren't appreciated because the items I made weren't to her and her family's liking.  I miss baking.  Mom and I used to make all sorts of things that were both tasty and festive.  Mom even wrote out a little booklet of our favorite recipes and illustrated it with her own works.  It was even laminated so that it wouldn't be ruined.  Subsequent moves have caused me to misplace it.  I hope someday to find it.

Our present kitchen is about the size of a large locker, almost too small for me in which to manuever.  I may take up cooking and baking again someday, but I think I'll need a larger kitchen.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Randon thoughts, a continuation

It's time for another two-fer.

There are some things I just don't understand.  I do not understand, for example, pinkie rings.  What possible enhancement to the human form do they make?  They're almost an afterthought.  In recent years, the West has seen more and more women wearing rings on their index fingers and thumbs, a borrowing from Eastern cultures that I find somewhat attractive.  But rings on pinkies?

Tattooes and body piercings confound me.  Unless one is a pirate, what possible reason is there to ink oneself up like a freeway billboard and punch holes in various body parts not called the ear?  I think it's downright silly on most people, including professional athletes, but it's outrageously stupid on women.  Discreet, well-hidden tattooes are fine I suppose, but when you have so many tattooes that wearing a sleeveless gown turns one into a NASCAR vehicle, that's just wrong.

How Helen Hunt qualifies as a love interest mystifies me.  I'm not talking about real life, because I don't know the woman.  Perhaps she's just phenomenal.  But the actress I see on television or the big screen leaves me cold.  Whoever thought it would be a good idea to have her as Tom Hanks' love interest in the movie Cast Away was missing a lobe or two.  As one wag put it, if that were the woman to whom I could come home, I'd have stayed on the island with Wilson.

The need to repeatedly verify one's identity to outfits like the cable company.  Yesterday I had to call our cable provider to have our service corrected and was passed around like a tray of canapés at a party.  I think I had to speak with four different people, some of whom were technicians, and at each stop I had to verify my name, address, mother's maiden name and social security number.  What conceivable harm could I do to someone's service?  It's not like they're the NSA responsible for protecting this country's nuclear secrets.  And why did each person have to verify my bona fides?  Once I was past the first person, shouldn't that have been enough.

Scrabbles stumps me.  For someone who loves words and chess, you'd think a strategy game involving words would be right up my alley.  You'd be dead wrong.

Why people smoke is another thing I'll never get.  Whoever thought that ingesting smoke into one's lungs would be either good for a person or pleasurable is probably the same person who has a cruch on Helen Hunt.

Cruelty to animals is a recent headshaker.  In Arkansas, some halfwit poured gasoline on about eight bulldogs and set them on fire.  Why?  Who knows?  Funny thing is, a kid was in the house and startled the jackass, causing the arsonist/murderer to drop the gas can he was using that was later found to be covered with fingerprints.  So far, a couple of dogs have died and the others all have injuries of varying degrees.  But why would someone torch docile, loving pets?

Drivers who feel the need to go faster than everyone else and weave in and out of traffic on busy expressways don't confound me so much as the fact that they don't die more often does.  What does confound me is the reasons for the behavior.  Are these people more important than the rest of us?  Do they care that their recklessness could result in the deaths of not only themselves but of other innocent people?  Probably not.

How the Chicago Cubs haven't been to a World Series since 1945 or won one since 1908 confuses me, especially when a francise like the Florida Marlins wins two Series in the last fifteen years, they're not even twenty-years-old yet and they have one of the worst fan bases in all of professional sports.  Come to think of it, this is a two-fer within a two-fer, since both the Cubs' woes and the Marlins' successes confound me.

Since when have political candidates had to endorse ads run on their behalf?  I must have missed the flashpoint that caused everyone to say, I'm X and I endorse this message.  Of course, the cynic in my says that's just so that they can distance themselves from ads put out by PAC's that are overly aggressive or downright slanderous.  All I know is that I woke up one day and everyone's saying this at the end of television commercials.

                                            ----------------------------------------------

For me, Autumn is the best season. The smells, the changing of the colors, everything about it excites me.  College football, with tailgating parties, adds to the allure.  Preparing for the holidays, the anticipation of both Thanksgiving and Christmas, is warming to the soul.  Sweaters, sweatshirts, hats and gloves.  It's not yet too cold for parkas and boots, but warmer wear is definitely needed some days.

Funny, isn't it, that for many people, Autumn is a melancholy time of year?  The year is drawing to a close, the harshness of winters awaits with the warmth and promise of Spring months in the future.  The days are shorter, the weather colder and wetter.  Especially toward the end of Autumn, while the transition to Winter is taking place, the weather can be downright abominable. 

The other seasons have their supporters.  Many people love Summer.  Try wearing a monkey suit in 85 degree weather and high humidity and appear presentable after walking from the train to a meeting.  Sure, when I'm in overalls in the backyard doing yardwork, the temperature and humidity don't mean a thing to me.   But when I'm in business mode, those factors are quite unpleasant.

Spring is fine.  Except for the late Winter that intrudes into the beginning of Spring.  And the rainstorms.  And the elevated pollen counts.

Winter, also, is fine.  I happen to be one of the few people who prefer Winter over Summer.  But Winter's extremes detract from its overall glamour.  The only time I hope for true wintery conditions is at Christmas and New Year's.  The rest of the time, I wish it were Autumn.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Alternate occupations

If I couldn't or didn't do what I do for a living, there are a couple of other occupations that I'd pursue.  Mind you, none of this is necessarily what's feasible, just things that I'd be interested in doing.  As professional athletes are fond of saying, I'd gladly pay them to let me do this.  In no particular order, here are five things I'd like to do if I were able to earn a living doing them:

Head coach of the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team:  Since we got screwed in Munich in 1972 by the combined forces of FIBA and the IOC, I have looked forward to the summer Olympics to watch our team give it to the rest of the world.  I'm all in favor of competition, but I'm not into rigged competition.  Between FIBA and the IOC, the rest of the world has been trying to figure out a way to make it so that it takes over what is truly our game.  Unlike hockey, where we have to fight hard to earn whatever we get, the world changes hoops and tinkers with the rules to level or, more correctly, unbalance the game to give them a chance.  The trapezoidal lane, no alley-oops, no refs touching the ball on inbounds plays, the shorter three-second rule...Munich, you name it, they've tried it.  Sure, on two other occasions the world won when we screwed up.  They won fair and square in 1988 and 2004.  But not in 1972.

Author:  I don't aspire to write the Great American novel.  I'm incapable of doing so for one simple reason:  I can't write dialogue.  The SGA will never worry about me applying for membership.  But I do enjoy writing, as evidenced by this blog.  I would like to make a living writing about things that I've experienced so I can share them with others, perhaps for their enjoyment or to spark their curiosity about things about which they may not have known.  I have some favorite authors, but it's not like I aspire to the lifestyle of Hemingway or the riches of Rowling.  I just like to write, and that would be a nice way to earn a living.

Photographer:  Whether it were nature scenes or portraits, I'd like to do that.  The problem with such a career would be my embarrissingly inept mechanical sense.  Perhaps after years of tinkering I'd get good with all the hardware, but the only thing that would recommend me for such a job is my sense of composition.  I like to look at photographs and since I'm utterly devoid of any creative DNA when it comes to painting or drawing or singing or composing music, photography would be the only visual or aural medium in which I'd stand a chance.  Besides, I hate to have my picture taken, which would be a huge drawback with being the head coach of the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team.

Bookstore owner:  This one is sending chills down my fiancée's back as I type the words.  She already thinks I have more books than I should -- I don't -- and the thought of my owning more than what I have now positively frightens her.  Of course, were she to look at it another way, the books wouldn't be in our house, so she'd have less clutter, as she calls it.  I love books.  Not all books, but I can lose myself in a bookstore so easily it's even more frightening than my desire to have a bookstore is to my girl.  Given that, perhaps owning a bookstore wouldn't be such a financially swift move.  Contrary to her opinion, I could easily sell the books -- provided, of course, that I owned my own copies of the ones I wanted. 

Tourism officer for Spain:  I'm already Spain's best unofficial and unpaid tourism officer, only Juan Carlos doesn't know it.  I love Spain.  I lived there for a year and consequently speak Spanish with a Castilian accent.  It has some of the best food in the world, the best landscapes and the most mellifluous language I've ever heard.  Those that say French is the language of love are tone deaf.  Take a minute or two and listen to a Spaniard speak Spanish.  Anyway, I love the country so much that I'd gladly be a tour guide for Americans there.  My enthusiasm would be infectious, my knowledge ever-growing and my love for the country and its people unbounded.  And we're not just talking tourist traps either.  In all the time I lived in Spain I never once went to a bullfight or a flamenco performance.  This cuts both ways, of course, because the charge can easily be made that I don't know as much about the country as I profess.  Be that as it may, I could recitfy that easily enough and would be an asset to the country's tourist trade.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Foods

Taste is, of course, subjective.  What one person likes another may not. 

There are two things about food that I'm adamant about.  The first is blueberries.  Blueberries are my favorite fruit.  There is virtually nothing that contains blueberries that I don't like.  Muffins, ice cream, cereal, milkshakes -- short of putting them together with meat, I love blueberries.  Why there aren't more foods containing blueberries escapes me.

A few years ago, the local Costco offered large clamshell packages of blueberries at a more than reasonable price.  I bought about a half dozen of them and ate them like peanuts. 

Imagine my joy to learn that besides being tasty, they're good for you.  Moderation be damned.

On the other side of the healthy eating coin is the other of my food passions -- pizza.  I'm a thin crust person myself, although I've been known to eat some of the other varieties of pizza when necessary.  No matter what the style, the one thing that needs to be on a pizza is pepperoni.  Without pepperoni, pizza isn't pizza.  In a pinch, I can subsist on sausage pizza, but only if the sausage is spicy. 

Whatever kind of pizza it is, forget things like pineapple and anchovies.  I don't know what heretic thought about putting those things on pizza, but those creations don't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as pizza. 

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Vacation blog ends

Tomorrow we awaken at the buttcrack of dawn to drive to Pensacola to return home from our first vacation.   Being a little distracted with all the preparations for our departure, I'm not inclined to resume my travelogue.  Face it:  I have two flights to make tomorrow, not to mention the drives to and from the airports, one of which is in a dicey part of town.

That being said, there are some casual observations about the trip that I can offload here.

First, I've never seen more white men wearing college garb while not attending a sporting event in my life.  It may come off as racist, but I'm used to seeing blacks do it.  But white men?  Egads...every restaurant, store, beachfront, airport, mall -- you name it, men well into their sixties donned their favorite college team's colors and logos.  I could understand it if it were at a sporting event.  But this goes beyond mere support of a team.  This is worn as if it were haute couteur. 

Next, this is ponytail heaven down here.  I've never seen so many ponytails on women in my life.  I'm a big fan of the ponytail.  But distressingly, I've never seen so many ponytails on men, either.  Barbers would go broke down here.

Third, sand has an invidious way of getting into whatever hole, crevice, container, vessel, glass, space or plane that will hold it.  It's like air...only it's version of bad smells is abrasions.

Salt water gets better after you've had to taste it day after day, but the first time you really get a mouthful is not fun by any measure.  Even so, salt water is somehow restorative if you have aches and pains.

Watching sports with the sound off is much easier than it looks if you know the sport.

Insane drivers are insane no matter where you go.  The only difference is in the usage of the horn and the length of that usage.  Rudeness is not regional.  Only the employment of rudeness is.

Sweet tea should be forbidden just like aquavit.  That's just nasty.

A sunrise is beautiful no matter what, but having it reflect over water enhances the experience.  Seeing such a sunrise with one's beloved is one of the purest joys in life.

Heat is tolerable, humidity isn't.

The people who ride jet skis typically are the same people who drive over the speed limit on the highways while the bob and weave through the rest of traffic.  They also don't wear helmets when they're doing this on their crotchrockets, either.

I'd have thought I'd seen more chew used down here.  Oddly, I haven't.

Finally, I have to find that book The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera, recommended by my girl's cousin.  From what I've witnessed, there's been no decline whatsoever.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Snorkling

Snorkling.  How fun.  Of course, you have to have the right equipment or, like me, you  become all-too-acquainted with sea water.  Gargling with warm salted water when I have a sore throat a throat is bad enough.  But the improper use of snokling equipment -- or older equipment that has seen better days -- makes for a rather salty experience.

The problem is that where we're staying is devoid of marine life.  The only things we get to see, besides the pelicans, herons and plovers, are ghost crabs and Sergeant Majors, some sort of useless fish that schools near the shore.  But the funniest thing I saw down on the bottom was the crab holes made all across the sand.  At first, all I saw were holes but the farther out I swam, I noticed that through either the crabs' efforts or the effect of the current, small domes sprouted up above the holes, with the holes still intact and visible.  The effect was to have dozens of sand penises across the bottom of the gulf.  We've dubbed it the Penis Farm as a result.

One of my favorite experiences here was watching the pelicans have breakfast.  These big, ugly, ungainly birds displayed a surprising grace as they would fly a couple of yards over the water and then swoop down, plunging their oversized, jai alai beaks into the water to earn their breakfast fish.  They would do this over and over again, hungrily seeking out their next scaly morsels. 

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Vacation blog starts

Vacation.  What a concept.  It's been so long since I've actually gone on a vacation of more than a long weekend.  Convinced by my girl's cousin to go with them to the Gulf Coast, I leapt at the chance to go to Florida for the first time.

What I didn't do was get too involved with the planning.  The law of unintended consequences resulted in little work for me in the planning stages but a done deal when it came to the consequences.  This started off with a 5.25a flight from an airport an hour and a little away from our house.  To reach the airport, we would have to drive through a seedy if not downright dangerous section of town...at about two in the morning, Saturday.  The expressways were mercifully clear of traffic, but when we arrived at the exit where we began to thread our way through downtown streets, the fun began.

Within four blocks, I saw a hooker.  The first clue was that it was a woman walking by herself with an oversized purse, notoriously high high heels and form-fitting pants in a broad checkerboard pattern.  The colors were barely distinguishable in the late-night lights, but think blue and orange...or brown and orange.  

A couple of blocks later were guys by themselves in hoodies slinking back to whatever holes out of which they climbed.  My girl asked no one in particular from where they'd come and I suggested that the hooker back a few blocks had probably serviced them.

Knowing the city as I do, and despite the fact that the GPS wasn't locating the long-term parking we had chosen, I found the street where the lot was located and turned to the west hoping there would be a reasonable explanation for its absence on the GPS.  Sure enough, there was:  The street on which the lot was located is the dividing line between municipalities, and the website erroneously named the larger city instead of the smaller suburb.

We got to the airport and proceeded to sit while we waited for departure.  A passel of navy swabs fresh out of the local training station were either being deployed to their new stations or sent for further training in another locale.  Parents and grandparents were dressed in shirts and caps denoting their relation to the Navy recruit:  Proud Navy Mom, Navy Dad, etc.  When we boarded, the tears flowed.  

The flight was on a smaller jet, but the seats weren't too bad, all things considered.  The funniest moment of the flight was at the beginning, when one of the flight attendants was showing how to use the breathing devices that would deploy in an emergency while her coworker explained over the intercom.  I'm not sure any of us needed an audible example of how to breath -- for a moment I thought we were getting a very public dirty phone call.

It only took an hour and a half to get to Atlanta.  Atlanta's airport is perhaps the largest and busiest commuter airport in the world, and I'm thankful we were there in the early morning.  We had to take a train from section D to section C, for crying out loud.  But that gave us the opportunity to see virtually every school in the SEC represented on someone's shirt.  The Big Ten made a meager appearance, as did the Big Twelve.  

We got on the flight for Pensacola with a very nice crew led by an attendant named Darryl who looked just like Tom Joyner, the DJ.  The other flight attendant resembled Taraji Henson, the actress.  Darryl was a hoot.  

We arrived in Pensacola to weather that was definitely un-Midwestern.  It wasn't humid, but it was hotter than our weather.  We found our car and headed off into the Floridian byways, hoping to find out way to Destin uneventfully.  The GPS helps a little, but it's the locals that give us the best dope.  Soon enough we're on the causeway headed to Destin.  A funny sign greets us before we get on the causeway:  Make Sure You Have Enough Fuel -- Long Bridge Ahead.  That begs the question:  Just how long of a bridge is it?

After we crossed the bridge we made a couple of stops and ate lunch.  Since we'd been up since the buttcrack of dawn, we should have been tired but, surprisingly, weren't.  After an hour or so, we got into Destin to find ourselves at the end of a long line of traffic due to the annual Seafood Festival that was to end the next day.  

Finally, we met up with the rest of our group at a bar and grill called the Whale Tails.  The sights along the coastline were breathtaking.  The white sand contrasted against the multihued blue of the sky and sea was something I'd never seen before.  Despite having been in Spain and seeing the Mediterranean, I hadn't seen white sands like this before.  

We got to the condo we were renting and quickly changed into our swimming togs.  My girl and I went swimming for a brief time in the Gulf.  Finally, I was in Florida.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Curiosities

The other day as I was driving home to work the guys at the local ESPN radio station got into a discussion about the identity of the person Carly Simon was singing about in her iconic song You're So Vain.  There was some debate about whether she had ever revealed the person's identity which, for people of a certain age, is mildly interesting. 

Being a naturally curious person myself, I find backstories infinitely intriguing.  Whether it be about people -- Jimmy Stewart lost his virginity to Marlene Dietrich and Walter Cronkite's mother dated Douglas MacArthur's father before marrying Walter's father -- or places -- Spain has two enclaves on the African continent while Cape Horn is named after the city Hoorn in the Netherlands -- or foods -- the ancient Mayans used cocoa not for chocolate but as a spice in main courses, I find these tidbits eternally enthralling.  That no doubt makes me a nerd of the first order, a candidate for Jeopardy and pretty good at Trivial Pursuits, but it's not something that garners much value socially.  It also explains why I need a twelve step program for the books I insist on keeping.

Alfred Hitchcock's movies are more fun for trying to identify him in those scenes in which he would be an extra than the suspense he generated.  The making of movies oftentimes is more intriguing than the finished product.  We all find some interest in who turned down what role and how certain movies got made.  For me, sometimes it's interesting knowing how faithful a movie was to the book that spawned it. 

Some people engage in trying to figure out what happened to Amelia Earhart.  The poem Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii is thought by some to contain clues to hidden treasures buried by Savanarola; this legend provides the plot for the excellent fiction The Rule of Four.

Of course, this type of inquiry can breed conspiracry theorists that contest the validity of the Zapruder film, believe 9/11 was a government-inspired attack and that Elvis is not dead. 

But for me, there's one curiosity whose secrecy not only exceeds all others but whose revelation I will have to await after the events of Revelations are over.  At the end of the movie The Quiet Man, Mary Kate Danaher, played exquisitely by Maureen O'Hara, whispers to Sean Thornton, played awkwardly by John Wayne, something that brings a certain reaction to his face.  Then he chases her across the stones in the creek that runs in front of White O'Morn, his ancestral home, and the panoply of actors' faces begins to play out.

The interesting thing is that no one besides O'Hara and Wayne know what she said to him, and Wayne's dead.  John Ford, the director of the movie, wanted a reaction from Wayne and told O'Hara to say whatever she wanted to him to get that reaction.  O'Hara did as she was told but swore with Wayne that what she whispered would remain their secret.  She repeated this in her recent autobiography.  Not even the great John Ford could get her to reveal what she whispered, and she'll take it to the grave with her.

For whatever reason, I'd love to know what it was she whispered.  She had a very heartily ribald sense of humor, and Wayne, Ford and the rest of the Irish cast shared it with her.  Knowing that, I'm sure what O'Hara whispered would be something to hear.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles