Freddogg Off The Chain

Some people mumble when they talk others mumble when they don’t want to talk. Then there are the dead on parroting mimics not to be confused with the lazy assed speech slang and slurs which hide the reality that someone may be a dumb ass.
Throw on top of that that talking through the nose pompous delivery of public radio types and you have a typical day at a public high school.
I was an expert at deciphering mumbled slang interlaced with profanity because all you really have to do is hang back and pick out a few key words like gym and mother fucker.
“Yo Fred diesel like hit me wit a pass to the mother fucken gym cause I ain’t trying to stay all up in here messin wit fractions and other dumb shit.”
The words read are much like the words spoken except the above sentence would be just one long word.
My response, “no you can’t go to the gym” would be met with, ”ain't nobody listening anyway to no math from no dumb fat cock sucking white mother fucker” again delivered as one word and my response would be, ”Who Are you calling fat?” and back in my younger days I would run the riff,”Did I miss something? Did your mother walk into the room when I wasn’t looking?” but then too many people got correct and accountable so it was no longer appropriate to “play back” but mumbling is valuable because “you’re mother’s a beast“ mumbled, scores points but you can always deny it and claim, ”Oh yea, I’m a teacher like I’m going to say something like that.”
High school kids mumble to save face while staying out of confrontational trouble with teachers which they always lose because the way the system is set up they are always wrong.
‘Bark like a puppy one more time Mikey dog and you are leaving this pound called Geography for the Criminally Insane and you won’t be back in here for a week and I don’t care what the office says.”
Mumble mumble garble garble interlaced with jive assed mother fucker can be discerned in low base tones. This message is not meant to be heard but is the adolescent‘s way of saving face. An experienced self assured teacher will just let it go but the control freaked idiots escalate the situation but challenging “what did you just say?”
“I didn’t say nothing.”
“You didn’t say nothing? Oh, I think you did. Now if you want to appear so bad in front of your friends than have the courage to say what you think out loud instead of mumbling.”
“I didn’t say nothing Bitch! Can you hear that? “
‘Everyone in the class responds, ”Right on! We sure enough heard it!”
Then there is the kid who will parrot exactly what you say but go into that dorky white voice that every comedian uses when developing a white character.
“Now everyone stop talking and turn around and take out your books and I mean it.”
A kid who repeats those words in dork toned clarity will get actually applause from the class. Then it is back in the teachers face. The wrong response is “Are you mocking me?” The job ending response is “Bobby did your mother have any kids that lived?”
Once I had this exchange student Swedish girl and right before lunch I begged her to say “Today for lunch is flying saucers and beffaroni and don’t forget to pay for it,” in Swedish. She did and sounded exactly like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Movie.
A tall, fit and handsome black kid named Marvin with a big personality rolled out of his desk and onto the floor he was laughing so hard. The girl never talked in Swedish again even when she returned home.
But god got Marvin later with a little help from me because that is my destiny. About a week after the Swedish Chef incident Marvin was in the men’s room out of my class and someone with sized 14 shoes was sitting in the stall next to him. A student in all innocence looked under the doors of the two stalls and asked, ”Hey Marvin, who is that sitting next to you?”
Marvin didn’t hesitate, ”Big Foot!”

Big Foot was a 6’5” overly foot sensitive teacher who most students called Lurch when he was out of ear shot. Lurch snagged Marvin by the collar and dragged him to the office and the incident report was ugly but mostly bizarre.

A week later just before lunch Marvin asked me for a pass to the bathroom. “You want a bathroom pass,” I said slowly, loudly and deliberately. I had everyone’s attention.
I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out a jig sawed cut out of a giant foot.

The Swedish girl hit the floor and so did everyone else. I wanted Marvin to laugh too but he was lost in an embarrassment I didn’t anticipate. I apologized to Marvin which only made it funnier. So I stuck the foot in my mouth and got even bigger laughs.

Mumble in the Jungle

Freddogg

My first teaching job was at a Junior High in 1970. I’ll always remember sitting down to lunch in the faculty cafeteria. I remember being smart, full of ideas and observations, and intellectual curiosity. I remember being alone, because no one cared about any of that bullshit. I was stunned and disappointed and realized I had landed in the wrong place.

Then there was the first after school faculty meeting which was even more depressing, as people talked about innane stuff unrelated to intellect and ideas. It was then I vowed never to attend anymore of those meetings. I never believed in the word mandatory or captive audience. I rolled my career to the brink of termination many times by refusing to show up at meetings that did little else but justify the careers of people who didn’t teach inside a classroom.

I survived 35 years in the box thinking outside the box which is why I never got out of the box. Free spirits and original thinkers rarely rise up the organizational ladder and that goes for running the country as well. George W Bush I rest my case. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and I rest my case.

I was conscious when Adelie Stevenson ran for President against General Dwight D. Eisenhower and lost. The knock on Stevenson was he was an intellectual and I asked my grandmother what that meant and she said, ”a person who knows too much, dumb ass.” I was a kid in the single digits and realized that knowing too much disqualified a person from being President or Principal or anyone else in the public sector.

Hillary Clinton recently refuted claims that she used to be ugly saying back in high school she was a cutie. ( In a “What’s up Doc”? sort of way)

I taught a class in 1976 at a private school trying to push home the anthropological point that Ugly was not a reality but a personal evaluation and that nature did not recognize ugly.

Two young and beautiful looking athletic black men from Yeadon, Pa, who were great kids and never said a discouraging word to anyone, rose to their feet and said, ”Coach, your education has clouded your vision. We all know ugly when we see it and so do you. Dam man, what is wrong with Coach Fred?”

They were of course right. I also used to believe that there were no dumb people, I was certain we were all pretty much the same and that intellect was based on opportunity and experience.

Now I understand that some people are just functionally DUMB. They think dumb and say dumb shit and they may be rich but they still are dumb and Hillary can never claim cute but she’s not ugly either.

What do it all mean? Beats my dumb ugly ass!

Peace Freddogg

There is no question that we suppress parts of our History of which we are not proud and also over time slightly embellish and exaggerate stories that cast us in a favorable light. I don’t worry much about favorable light but I do amend a little to achieve humor while suppression of better left forgotten facts is sound advice for any adult wishing to avoid moping about with sloped shoulders.

Last Saturday I was walking out of Saint Cornelius the Centurion Church on the campus of Valley Forge Military Academy after the wedding of my teacher/coach friend and former student young enough to be his wife. The setting was beautiful with an air of opulence and privilege and brought me back 31 years to the last game I ran point as the Head Football Coach at a school for emotionally disturbed adolescence.

We were war painted up and playing a disciplined Valley Forge team that also used post graduates so I didn’t feel so bad having a 19 year old tailback. Ever since I tapped into the mentality “football is a battle in which we take no prisoners” my team had achieved six shutouts and scored at least 38 points a game.

We were beating Valley Forge 38 to 0 in the closing minutes of the last game of the season and trust me with all their discipline and things they taught their kids the fact they were losing to a team of players from a school for the Emotionally Disturbed athletes who turned Disturbance into a face painted badge of honor was not lost on them or us.

Tight end Jim Murphy looked over at me and pointed to his chest. We had the ball on our own 25 yardline and we supposed to run out the clock following the football rules of good sportsmanship for pussies with big leads.

I nodded back 'yes' to Murphy which meant the never used Murphy pass which we ran at the end of each practice as a joke because football is nothing if not boring which is why I insisted on going Looney Toone at the end of each practice with my crazy team.

We can out in a straight T full house backfield and there were fake reverses and real reverses and imitation fumbles and bodies and imaginary balls flying around all over the place. While this was going on Murphy was just running down the field like he was going for a hotdog.

Eddie “Hart Attack” the Quarterback ended up with the ball and threw it 70 yards to Murphy who caught it then backed into the end zone for the final scores of 45 to 0.

My kids were emotionally disturbed so they celebrated with over the top inappropriate fashion which involved a war dance around an imaginary fire. The Valley Forge coach called me a "Pussy" and I just nodded towards the scoreboard like,
So waht does that make you?"

My assistant Coach Tim, who I knew since high school, looked at me laughing and said, ”that was so wrong! They’re going to get you for this!”

“No they are going to get you, ”I said. “I’m moving to Lewes, Delaware. “

So Wrong for So Long

Coach Freddogg

No one respects spirituality in others more than I do. No one took more shots over 12 years of Catholic school and religious indoctrination than I did. I know if the pantheon of gods is divided into categories that the god of football is Catholic. There is just too much earthly empirical evidence to refute that claim.
I know that Bishop T.D. Jakes is an oratorical genius. “Born Agains” scare me but I don’t mind them even though there is no such thing as a born again Catholic boy.
I don’t forward feel good emails even if I like the people and the message is nice especially if it is a god forward because I figure if any to all of the stuff is true god is the ultimate high speed Power Book of the universe and doesn’t need the cyber support of mortals.
The United States constitution is murky clear on the issue of separation of church and state. There is the establishment clause-government can’t favor a particular religion- and the free exercise clause-the individual is free to believe what they want-and if you want god back in the schools there are schools where he/she roams without a hall pass.
I don’t understand why so many people are so concerned about what happens inside pubic schools from prayer to patriotism but any outreach advertisement that solicits mentors to come in and work with young people goes unanswered. What is that all about?
Last week I talked to a black man who has a Jesus chain around his neck. I taught this man’s three children. I love this guy and I can see his faith makes him stronger and that he actually lives the brotherhood concept every day not just Sundays. But he doesn’t preach he just represents.
I know, as do professional people in the social reclamation business, that alcoholics and drug addicts are not beating their demons without dialing 1-800-spiritutality for inner strength.
I taught high school for 35 straight years and there were mornings I had to go in after learning that a tragedy the night before had claimed the life or lives of students. I have watched as “grief counselors” came into the schools but what was needed was the option of the spiritual community for kids to access. I’m against religion in public schools but I could see the need for that type of “freedom of choice” contact.
The rule of law is in place to protect the whim of “majority rule” because as my grandmother taught me “if everyone around you is clamoring that something is a “good idea” it most probably for certainty is not!


Peace Out! Father Freddogg

“Jehosaphat the mongrel cat Jumped off the roof today
Some would say he fell but I could tell He did himself away
His eyes weren't bright like they were the night We played checkers on the train
God Bless his soul he was a tootsie roll But he's a dead cat just the same” John Prine

I watched Hard Ball’s Chris Mathews last night- My age from Philly North Catholic—I never heard of him must have been on the debating team-- and John McCain sit on a stage at Iowa State last night wondering why people out that way never seem to have a worry or have acne.

I would have said, ”anyone feel a draft in here?” Followed by “we’re bringing back conscription with no deferments so we can prosecute the conflagration in Iraq with all the diversity that makes Iowa State such a great University that will go on to beat Texas Tech this weekend and they would all cheer except the intellectuals who would mumble “them bitches ain’t drafting my ass!”

Mathews asked the audience how many of them supported the war in Iraq from the beginning and continue to support it. He asked them to stand. Hundreds of students rose and everyone cheered then cheered some more, while some of the sitting guys checked out the butts of coeds because that’s how they roll.

McCain was like “thank you, thank you, I love America” and I’m thinking ‘Thank You John, no really, now just go away because if you stay in this contest you will be the first to lose a presidential race to the Hildabeast, the big Shill a woman who looks like Bugs Bunny or a young man with an African father and Utah mother, Barack Obama, a name that rhymes with Jomomma.
Mathews asked all the students to remain standing who planned to join the military after graduation. They all sat down except for the ROTC people on those fat scholarships that pay for everything, a small social price for wearing a dress uniform every Wednesday on campus.
Pull the poor troops out and young mothers and 45 year old reservists then draft and send Middle American’s college children and that will force this current hang around and wait for shit to blow up policy off center. Shoot send the University of Miami football team to Baghdad and tell them it’s their house and watch them stomp some Sunni butt but don’t mess with no Kurds cause them bitches can fight back, know what I sayin yo?

Let John Prine take us home because it seems we’ve been down this road before
“We are living in the future I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper Fifteen years ago
We're all driving rocket ships And talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry And standing in soup lines
We are standing in soup lines”

Freddogg

My brain is a storage house of Google images long before “Google” meant anything besides “to tickle inappropriately.”
Back in my early high school days there was this girl and I’m sorry to say I can’t remember her actual name because everyone just called her "Guns” after the Academy Award winning 1961 adventure classic “The Guns of Navarone” starring Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn.
This film showed big menacing guns sticking out of the face of a rocky cliff , they were long, pointed, loaded and dangerous. Our girl “Guns”, sporting a 1961 industrial strength wired brassiere that came to sharp points at the end, had gigantic breasts I guess, because that’s how she got her nickname and she didn’t like it but there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. In modern parlance I’m sure the girl had issues although by today’s standards she’d be Queen of the Gym.
There are recent in depth articles in the New York Times and Time Magazine about early onset puberty caused by chemicals in the environment sometimes that environment being the habitat of the nuclear family.
Some poor little girl had breasts pop out early and pubic hair develop but then her voice began to deepen so her moron parents took her to the Pediatrician and if you learn anything in life you learn those people don’t know shit they even hire Hispanics to assemble the plastic toys in the waiting room.
The girl was referred to an Endocrinologist who discovered her testosterone levels 100 times above normal while her dad looked like Barry Bonds in a one size too small Under Armour shirt.
Turns out that moisturized daddy was rubbing testosterone cream on his body and the girl was absorbing it through her skin. Talk about a parent in need of an ass kicking.
Middle Schools always reminded me of the movie “The Howling” where normal people transformed into werewolves or as we call them in Philly “WereWuffs”. There are guys with squeaky voices while other sound like Obscene phone callers before caller I.D. sent them all to chat rooms and fantasy football leagues.
There is a link below that will explain to you all you ever didn’t want to know about this topic.
Puberty is weird and it’s amazing it works as well as it does. I knew this kid fat smart kid nick named Blub and when he was in third grade he stood on second base at the Little League Park and proved to everyone he had early onset pubic hair. Mothers were horrified but Blub wanted to prove a point which I guess was “you are never too young to flash signs to the catcher!”
Then there was this one other kid and his nickname was Moonie and he was smooth like a Right On Cue Ball speaking of which Moonie had delayed onset puberty and wanted to prove it one day on the basketball court but everyone ran away shielding their eyes.
When this is for real it is tragic and not funny but you will never stop kids from making cruel jokes. And that is its own disorder.

Howling At The Moonie

Freddogg

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/science/17puberty.html?8dpc

What do you call a sexually excited 45 year old man alone at a keyboard impersonating a 12 year old girl in a chat room? That’s right, an FBI agent. And what do you call the 27 year old heterosexual fully employed male about to be duped and arrested? A freaking internet predator that’s what, as entrapment and the Patriot Act uncover a sleazy side of life previously unknown to all except urban smut peddlers and franchised pep show providers who went 24/7 before 7/11 was even a concept.

Last week in my home community the strangest, sickest and silliest thing happened and it certainly isn’t funny but in a way it kind of is because no one got hurt.

A local guy was arrested in another state and extradited back to Delaware to face internet predator charges. The worse news is not that his intended target was a 45 years old federal agent with back hair and not that his picture was all over the newspaperS. No, the worst news is he was voted out of his fantasy football league and his team went on the auction block causing a bit of a bidding war because I guess since fantasy is the way he rolls he was a pretty good owner.

The guy even went so far as to object to his disenfranchisement on the message board saying such things as “And I thought you guys were my friends.”

Isn’t a fine line this world of point and click and drag and drop fantasy? So much of America is sitting down staring into windows with a wireless mouse in the right hand. Fantasy leagues and fantasy games and misrepresentation in a chat room are all too closely connected if you ask me.

This guys sex life and life in general has just been downgraded to doubtful as everyone awaits CAT Scan results of his head.

Peace

Coach Freddogg

“Cory Lidle's doomed plane didn't just crash into anybody's apartment.
It exploded into the empty bedroom of Kathleen Caronna, the Manhattan woman who was critically injured when a balloon knocked part of a lamppost onto her head during the 1997 Thanksgiving Day Parade.”


Some people do have all the bad luck and if it weren’t for bad luck they’d have no luck at all.

But what the freak is up with this woman. A six story balloon goes untetethered and drops a lamppost on her head then nine years later a Yankees pitcher flies a plane into her Upper East Side apartment purchased with a Macy’s Parade payout settlement.She can thank her lucky stars she wasn't home. That was fortunate.

Sometimes bad luck can bring worse luck but if it doesn’t we call that good luck. Like the girl who went through a red light and sent me into a roll over accident which was my bad luck and I was hurt with some ugly injuries which was more bad luck but all my parts and internal organs stayed together which was good luck which is why I ain’t complaining about it.

Sports analysts talk about making your own luck through preparation but I remember during a Florida Hurricane a tree fell on a car and killed a boy whose first name was Bowden named after his grandfather Florida State football Coach Bobby Bowden. Coach Bowden’s life has been mostly fortunate and filled with good luck but he'd trade every minute to erase that one moment of bad luck.

I believe bad luck is an unrelenting part of life which is why when things are going good we should be happy because the time is coming when all luck changes from good to bad then back to good and ultimately we die and if there's a heaven well that will be the ultimate good luck and if not well ain't that a bitch.

Father Freddogg

The Catholics taught me that we are all made in the image and likeness of god.

"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together
See how we run like pigs from a gun, see how we fly, Im cryin'

"Koo Koo Ka Jiffy Lube"

There are mirrors and cameras everywhere and digital camcorders and phones that take pictures.
I can go to a gym with all walls surrounded by mirrors and never once look back. I can get my hair cut and never look at myself, I just always respond, ”Yes, that looks good.”
Am I insecure suffering from low self esteem? Not at all, I just prefer a well fantasized idealized version of myself but only for myself. I don’t care what others think for the most part because in all realities what difference does it make?
I was sitting at a bar a few years back WHEN some slovenly undesirable clam eating scum bag across the way identified himself as a Principal from Pennsylvania. Now why would he do that?
The he looked across at me and said, ”You’re that guy from the newspaper. You are very clever and funny but if you were a teacher at my school you’d be fired. And then he said I was much fatter in person than my picture and why didn’t I use a picture that showed me as I really was and maybe I wasn’t so cool as I portrayed myself.
I ignored this idiot because I knew all his observations to be incorrect and meaningless but he kept nagging. Finally, I turned to my electrician friend and country philosopher, Doc Pepper, and said, ”I think I’m going to go over and dislodge old fat boy from his bar stool.”
"You don’t get to do that, ”Doc said. “You can be a teacher all the kids love and the writer everyone thinks is honest and funny but you don’t get to throw visiting principals from out of state off of barstools. It’s just not allowed.”
Last Sunday I was sitting in the Eagles pressbox feeling annoyed that almost all sportswriters never played a down of football in their lives but they knew everything and were hypercritical of the athletes. And without warning I hit a key on my new Mac Powerbook and I was staring at myself staring back at myself with my nose dissecting the screen like the prime meridian. I started pounding keys until I faded to gray and went away.
What is all this self reflection all about? Are you happy? Do you possess a realistic self image? Can you face survive high definition on liquid crystal? Who gives a flying fudgsicle?
I’m better now!

Peace Freddogg

Rhinos are prehistoric, which means before man could squawk, ”Don’t look now but a slope headed Rhino is sniffing his own horn and pawing in the dirt while lining up your sorry ass” and yet they remain fascinatingly funny.

Growing up in Philadelphia a loser male who wanted to “lay out” a fat “girl to women” would always employ the Rhino reference. I don’t know how many times I heard “Screw you and the Rhino you rode in on” but I don’t think my mother appreciated her four sisters-in-law cracking wise to me in that way.

Water Buffalo was also something I grew up with. I never heard a fat boy called a water buffalo it was always girls. And warthog was out there along with groveling down by the water hole.
I think the television program Ramar of the Jungle had something to do with all that and later Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Merle Perkins always had the engine on idle while his lackey Jim enticed a Rhino to “charge the jeep.” High school guys always referred to sex as “charging the jeep” and had the same success rate as Rhinos caught on film. I was going to insert a Rhinoceros Habitat joke except I really don’t know where they live? I suppose out in the open because otherwise during mating season they’d look like Sonny Bono on a skiing shortcut.
Today’s animal rights activists would think enticing a horny Rhino to charge a dirty brown jeep was cruel and unusual and it certainly qualifies as unusual but where does cruelty come in for a creature without a concept.
I had a nineteen sixties freaky friend who had a Siamese cat named Acid. Bill was always high and always amazed and at least he got the most from his drug purchases not like today’s burnouts.
Acid would gallop around the carpeted apartment clopping loudly like a show pony and hurl himself into the walls because as Warren Zevon wrote, ”I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all.”
“Acid is amazing!” Bill would always exclaim his eyes bugged out of his head and the cat lived to a ripe old age because he never had to endure rehab and was never allowed outside to attack jeeps.
Once at my high school students in a creative writing class were asked to describe and liken teachers to members of the animal kingdom. Man did those kids get into it and boy were some teachers offended.
I got off easy as the friendly household Golden Retriever but the Warthogs, Rhinos and Water Buffalos were not happy.
Gotta go, time to charge the jeep! I need a jump! The battery is dead!

Freddogg

I was standing on the visitors sidelines some years ago at the University of Delaware as Georgia Southern decided to “go for it” on fourth down and two yards. They came out and lined up over the football and a Delaware fan screamed, “Tackle all the black people!” I just burst out laughing because it was funny!

Last week a Captain in the New York police department, at a morning roll call, said. ”We are having trouble at a certain subway stop with muggings. The victims are always white and the perpetrators always black therefore your orders are to frisk all black people on the platform because after all it’s a white neighborhood and what are they doing there anyway?"

Some officers were outraged, others appalled, a few outraged and appalled. Others just laughed and said, ”that bitch is crazy.”

A few years ago back in the high school where I taught an administrator sent a memo around to teachers in bold black letters. The memo read “There’s trouble brewing and it seems to involve young black males.”

All teachers were told to stand out in the halls between classes and be on the lookout. I always stood out in the halls because I’m fat in a fit world, always on the lookout for social contacts, friendly greetings and simply saying hello to kids.

Deshawn who played football came walking past me and said, ”Hey Fredman, what are you doing, looking for young black males?” I didn’t like the insinuation that I was profiling or recruiting sprinters for a relay team.

Later in the day a fight erupted which involved only black males from one community versus another. I suppose Caucasians could have joined the conflagration but none did.

A black friend of mine is an executive in the financial market and drives a two door Acura with a spoiler and pretty nice rims as well. He gets profiled because sometimes jar headed town cops think he’s a drug dealer.

Cops and feds sit along I 95 and by bridges and tunnels profiling their asses off all day long. ‘You pulled over a Windstar with soccer ball decals on the back? What kind of moron are you. You are making it rough on the other black officers out here”!

I’ve had kids of color refuse to come into a class the first day if they were the only person of color or if the class were all people of color. I walked into a class of Honors European History and saw all Euros in the seats. I asked, “where is the Honors African History class, and was told there was no such animal and I said, ”Why it gotta be an animal?’

And forget Hispanics they are dumped in the dumb downed classes until they learn how to speak right!
Back in the 1980’s the city public schools of Cleveland passed a rule that every basketball team had to include two white people. There was a cartoon in the newspaper of two white guys sitting at the end of the bench with boom boxes on their shoulders. I laughed because it was funny.

The good news is in Philly they love McNabb and hate Owens and I never heard a single fan mention color other than Green and Blue.

Freddogg

I published a book in 1992 and in a very clever marketing ploy let me just say that you can’t have one, in fact, they are not for sale. And that’s because boxes and boxes of them are gone to where I don’t know and there are only four left and I have them.
My book titled “In A Class By Myself” was really popular with people who don’t like to read. Leon of the Lewes Ale House wrote “That Bitch is Funny” but the high school where I taught wouldn’t put in on the shelves because of “language and dialect issues” and I sometimes struggle with that shit but I can’t help the way my characters speak and my grandmother always said, ”Fuck them religious reactionary right wingers and property owning pecker heads on the moral high ground. When’s the last time any of them got a joke. Just get out there and write for yourself and while I’m thinking about it get out of here because it’s Two O’ Clock in the afternoon, don’t you have a job or something?”
The book is in the rare books section of University libraries from Duke to Iowa State and also in a few federal prisons. There are 22 stories with illustrations done by my clever and talented wife who said, “That’s you on the cover now can you please take me somewhere that doesn’t involve a ball so I took here to a high school wrestling match.
The book is self published because I refused to acquiesce to the recommendations of regional publishers who said things like “this actually is quite funny and clever but is that really how you spell maby?’
The stories are hilarious and hard hitting too bad no one new can read them.

John Finnemore Freddogg

A guy in a professional football pressbox an hour before the Dallas at Philly game is arguing with his mother on the cell phone. It sounds like mom is planning a wedding or dinner cuase the guy keeps saying “black tie” followed by innane resoning as to why “Black tie” should not be required then he says “Mom you are not going to feel uncomfortable because of what somebody else is not wearing.”
I turned around and said,”Unless it’s pants.”

Then he says “Optional is the perfect compromise and formal attire is also under interpretation.”


Anyway, who talks to thier mother like that? And what mom doesn’t shout back into the phone,”Why didn’t you tell me you were gay? You may be America’s only gay Jewish professional football writer.”

I’m thinking compromise rhymes with circumcise words to the wise for all young guys with or without black ties.

Peace

Freddogg

A fat white flat headed grandpop.

Son Jack is getting married today and I must shed my white socks and become the Blue Blazer Kaki Pants loser guy in slippery black socks. Years ago I heard comedian Thayton Allen say every time he word black socks he felt like the leading man in a stag movie. Black Socks just don’t go with white jockey shorts.

Back in 1969 I stood in the back of Saint Michael’s church in Levittown as the recently married black sock wearing loser groom in the receiving line. I always hated ceremony because I just don’t trust sincerity.

A 380 pound best friend neighbor to my in-laws misnamed “Flow” ‘huggy beared’ me in the line and said, ”I actually like you. Prove to the rest of these people that they are wrong about you.”

I thought that was hilarious and when my brother got married his wife’s family was equally suspicious and boy were they right. And they really didn’t like me because I laughed when Nancy told me she had been crowned Miss State Tractor Queen of the Pennsylvania Combines.

Susan and Nancy are so much smarter and nicer than their Fred Boy husbands so I guess those fears so many years ago were well founded but 37 years later we’ll both show up at the wedding wherever it is but we ain’t doing no Mexican Hat Dance, Bunny Hop or Dreaded Hokey Pokey.

Last night Susan’s totally blind uncle ask me if I had put on weight, which I haven’t, he just thought I sounded bigger when the sound of his voice bounced was deadened by my body.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit drinking.

Freddoggie Daddy