Garrison Keillor's Blog, page 82

Life is good if you have your health and not all bad even if you don’t, which is sometimes forgotten in an election year, what with the high-pitched oratory on behalf of the embittered rich and people with ingrown toenails and what not. Apparently we are on the verge of losing our Second Amendment rights and will need to defend ourselves with tent stakes and bug spray. So I’ve heard people say.

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Summer weather leads toward cranial relaxation and you know it and I know it. You walk out your front door into the heat and an 800-pound anvil falls out of the oak tree on your head and flattens you like a pancake. It’s the anvil you bought because it cost $150, which is a good deal for an anvil that size. You put the anvil up in the tree because you didn’t want your wife to know. You already had two anvils, and it’d be hard to explain why a man requires three. And you walk under the tree and see the chain hanging down and you’re like “What’s this?” and you yank on it and your last thought on this earth is “Oh, for dumb.” This is what 90 degrees can lead to. You go to the bus stop and a man in a yellow plaid sport coat sells you a house in Mexico for $6,000. A stucco house with a red tile roof: He shows you a picture. He swipes your credit card on his iPad and you board the bus and realize there’s no address on the deed. And it’s dated Aug. 10, 2106. And the taxidermy business he sold you along with the house, turning deceased pets into bronzed statues, how is that going to work if you can’t find the house?

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The word “loser” is spoken with such contempt these days, a man might like to forget the losses in his own life that taught him something about good judgment. The money he invested in that casino in Atlantic City that went bust, the university course he enrolled in that promised to teach him the secrets of success but instead he wound up unemployed and 40 grand in debt, the candidate whose hat he wore who turned out to be tone-deaf and deluded — dumb, dumb, dumb, and yet his loved ones did not chortle and point and do the nyaa-nyaa. They put an arm around him and said, “This is how we learn.” And it is.

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I saw one of my novels at a yard sale last week, and it appeared to have been used as a coaster. The interior was quite pristine, but there were rings on the cover where wet glasses had been set. It was on sale for 35 cents. Had I known I was only writing a coaster, maybe I wouldn’t have worked so hard on the themes and motifs, the connotations and so forth, but that’s just the way life is. There’s a lot of wastage. No way around it.

Read the full column at the Chicago Tribune’s site →

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It is the most famous ducktail in America today, the hairdo of wayward youth of a bygone era, and it’s astonishing to imagine it under the spotlight in Cleveland, being cheered by Republican dignitaries. The class hood, the bully and braggart, the guy revving his pink Chevy to make the pipes rumble, presiding over the student council. This is the C-minus guy who sat behind you in history and poked you with his pencil and smirked when you asked him to stop. That smirk is now on every front page in America. It is not what anybody — left, right or center — looks for in a president. There’s no philosophy here, just an attitude.

Read the full column at the Chicago Tribune’s site →

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The father of the graduate is a footman at the festivities, a porter, a supernumerary. Through cunning and perseverance, he has accumulated the pots of gold required to raise a girl nowadays, supply the wardrobe and the array of lotions and emollients, pay the string of retainers and therapists, foot the bill for class trips and team sports and top-flight electronics, and now, as the daughter processes through the crowd in the gymnasium, as the mother quietly weeps, the father sits, holding a spare hankie.

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We trooped off to the Memorial Day service in light sprinkles Monday and listened to the speeches and wished it would rain hard, for the interest. The usual themes of ancestor worship and Pax Americana, and then a moment of silence and Taps, and we dispersed, feeling we’d not honored the fallen as they deserve to be. For one thing, we were a crowd of somber stiff-legged old people and they were eager young men who kept pictures of beautiful broads in their lockers and fully expected to beat the odds and return home safely and resume their romances with Betty and Veronica. Rather than speak of honor and loyalty, we should’ve hired a pack of lovely young mammals to whirl around in the Lindy Hop. Long-legged dames in flared skirts hoisted up high by sailors, exposing their white undies, and swung around and slid between the gentleman’s legs — that’s how the fallen would wish to be remembered, as Gene Kelly.

Read the full column at the Denver Post’s site →

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When your hearing gets so fuzzy you hear the word “peanuts” as “penis,” it’s time to stop in at the hearing-aid shop, lest one day you go to the ballgame and get arrested for indecent exposure. A reasonable man will do this. A man who prefers to live by what he imagines is a danger to himself and others. You tell him his pants are on fire and he grabs you, thinking you asked him to dance, and now your pants are on fire too. This is what we are seeing in America this year, and soon we shall find out if a majority of people prefer to be deaf. The Republican Party constabulary has rushed to embrace Mr. Btfsplk, a man whom they loathed, scorned and despised a few months ago, and now begins the campaign to make Mrs. Clinton seem so despicable that Mr. Btfsplk will shine a little by comparison.

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It’s good to hear that Bill Clinton will be put in charge of revitalizing the economy in a Hillary administration and be sent to troubled areas such as Appalachian coal country and inner-city Detroit, and not just promote literacy or physical fitness, the usual First Lady things. But I hope that at state dinners and other major White House events, we’ll be able to read about what he’s wearing.

Read the full column at the Salt Lake Tribune’s site →

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The TSA lady at Nashville airport said, “Thank you, sweetheart” as she handed back my ticket and driver’s license — which sort of amazed me. Up north where I’m from, a woman would not say that to a strange man unless at gunpoint and then only reluctantly. It made me feel good. It is very seldom that a federal officer expresses affection to me. I’m sure the TSA did not train her to do that but her upbringing won out over indoctrination. Her mother told her to Be Sweet and she was.

Read the full column at The Eagle’s site →

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