i do need to apologize.

For about two weeks, i have not been very active in posting anything here, one or two maybe. My Facebook posts have been mostly sharing memories from previous Facebook posts.

i have been remiss.

There are two overriding reasons, among several other minor ones, for my absence.

The first is this book i’m working to publish. For over thirty years, Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings was a distant goal to work on when i was ready and put down when gathering information or the information i knew i would have to include just stopped me for awhile. i also got diverted with other jobs, personal relationships, other ideas for books, home projects, honey-do’s — i’ve discovered there is a major difference between “home projects” and “honey-do’s — other columns and posts, and, of course, golf.

Then i made it to the last couple of chapters for completion of the first draft. i’m on a roll, into it. Working almost a full workday five or six days a week, and some on the other day. The first draft is finished. The hard work is beginning.

i now have a job. Been a while. Love it. Gives me purpose. So my first priority for some time has been and will be the book. i will attempt to get partially back in the groove and with posts. But the book will be first and i will get to all of that other stuff after working on the book if the old man has any energy left.

The second reason is i am too sad. Social media, at least the one i use, Facebook, is really making me sad — i never was interested in Tweeting on Twitter because after all i cannot say or write the phrase in the beginning of this sentence without laughing out loud, and i don’t think i’ve said anything meaningful in 144 characters or less since i got out of high school (“I do” being an exception). Intelligent caring people i know are using Facebook to copy and paste baseless claims, or make their own up, fomenting division, throwing rocks at those they assume are their opposition, making bad jokes, and inflammatory statements because…? Maybe it makes them feel good. They haven’t changed anyone’s mind yet that i know of. Certainly not mine, and when i’ve joined the fray, i haven’t changed anyone’s mind either, that i know of. And dammit, i’m not talking about a particular group. It’s all of us using social media to be antisocial to anyone who doesn’t agree with us. Why are we doing this to each other?

Sad.

So once again, i am considering how to operate in this toxic climate of social media. There are good folks out there i would like to keep in my daily scope of things beyond the few i would without social media. i like to hear about someone’s good day, significant accomplishments, wife, husband, children, grandchildren. i like to see memories of the past. i want to know when someone for whom i care is ill, has family not doing well, and even that unavoidable thing called dying.

But it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wheat is grossly outnumbered and the chaff keeps bludgeoning me with direct or indirect hate and fear.

So i’m working on it.

i’m still gonna be around on Facebook and with my posts, and i will get to responding to all the comments on my stuff, but is likely i will not be as regular and there will be times i might just disappear for a while.

i wanted you to know it ain’t (necessarily) you, babe.

I do apologize.

Before all the holier-than-thou folks got upset about some folks kneeling during the National Anthem (No, i don’t like it, or even approve of it, but i spent 22 years defending their right to do that), i decided i wasn’t going to watch pro football except for the Chargers and the Titans.

This seems rather ridiculous because neither team had more than one or two players from the city they represented, but they were teams i had watched because i identified with their location, and in the Chargers case, identified with some of the players. When the Chargers left San Diego because the Spanos owners and the NFL wanted more money and with very few Titan games shown in the Southwest corner, i pretty much quit watching, not because of the pre-game controversy, but because the game has morphed from a sports event into money-making to the absurd point with an entertainment extravaganza complete with absolutely stupid replays and sideline, aka coaches, not coaching but running the game and because the NFL owners, management, coaches and players should be taking at least two-thirds of their income for “trickling down” to help folks in need or toward making this country better.

But that’s my rant. i also think the half-time entertainment is over the top and way, way over rated, and i don’t like smoke and mirrors and bangs and baubles and bobbing derrieres and half-dressed suggestive dancing — If i wanted that, i would go to a strip club in San Diego (one of the few things open in the Southwest corner) — and i sure as hell don’t like any sports events that have more commercials than playing time, regardless whether they are entertaining or not, which will not, will not have any influence on my purchasing the advertised product regardless of what the statistical marketeers have convinced the CEO of the company being advertised, and i don’t enjoy watching any sports event that lasts five to six hours as i have better things to do: hell, i could play a round of golf and still spend an hour or so on home projects unless i started writing a sentence like this and not being able to stop because i want to make ole Willie Faulkner proud.

Whew!

But yesterday, i changed my mind. i do want to converse about the game with my son-in-law and a couple of Friday Morning Golfers with roots in Kansas who root for the Chiefs.

But the real reason i changed my mind was because of basketball.

Yesterday, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a front-page story with a photo of a young man in a San Diego State Aztec basketball uniform. The headline read “Former SDSU basketball player named honorary game captain.” i was intrigued: a Southwest corner tie-in with a basketball twist.

i read the entire story, a rarity since i rarely read more than the headlines of the national, local, and business sections before critiquing the sports section as a short-lived sports editor should and ending my morning read with the comics section.

Mark Zeigler, the Aztec basketball beat writer for the U-T, wrote the story. Mark also writes stories on the Padres and Chargers, along with sports commentaries, and he has covered soccer in 16 Olympics and seven World Cups. In my opinion, he writes sports the way sports should be written.

This one is at the top in my book. i choked back tears several times. The “honorary captain” Trimaine Davis is a real hero, much more so than anyone who will be on that gridiron playing today.

This is a story that shows there is goodness, humanity, real sportsmanship in college athletics. It’s often difficult to find amongst all the stories about greed and physical prowess and money and self-centeredness and statistics.

It is also a story about Trimaine’s college coach, Steve Fisher. It makes me feel good i watch Aztec basketball. It even makes me feel better about a lot of college coaches with the hope they might, in some small way, emulate Fisher.

i won’t elaborate here as Mark Ziegler nailed it: https://enewspaper.sandiegouniontribune.com/desktop/sdut/default.aspx?&edid=6cf43dce-8f47-4d0e-b9e0-62628ca5840f

So, i’ll be watching the coin toss at the Super Bowl today. i’ll stay around and watch the game until my rear end gets sore from sitting or the game gets boring.

But i won’t be watching the half-time show.

Early summer 1970, the three chiefs of Military Sealift Command Transport Unit One invited their officers to have Sunday brunch with them at the Chiefs Club at the U.S. Fleet Activities, Sasebo, Japan.

We agreed.

When we arrived, we took the only available table for eight near the front of the large dining room, where they had set up a very large motion picture screen. The chiefs club was known for its ramen, and that is what we all ordered, along with Kirin beer, of course. The Japanese waitress cracked the raw egg on our bowls of ramen, and it cooked in the broth. Kirin was true to its slogan, “Ichiban.”

It seemed every chief stationed in Sasebo had brought his entire family to the brunch event. There were a large contingent of Japanese dependents and children all over the place. The huge dining room probably set well over 100, and the place was buzzing in English, Japanese, and the Navy mix of the two languages.

Then all became quiet as dining room lights dimmed and those on the screen flickered, signaling the movie was about to begin.

The five officers, the commanding officer, the two lieutenant doctors, the chaplain, and myself as the executive officer, were unaware a movie was in the offing when we agreed to the brunch. None of us and possibly everyone in the dining room, if not all, had seen the movie, released in the US in late 1968.

The very Italian dramatic music score began to play. The three main characters were introduced one by one with the dramatic, slow…er, drawn out introduction. Eli Wallach’s “Tuco” opens it up by killing  three bounty hunters and “The Ugly” flashes across the screen. Our table chuckled (Well, we all had downed two beers by then). Then, “Angel Eyes” Lee Van Cleef unmercifully murders a guy and Angel Eyes’ closeup is emblazoned with “The Bad.” Our table en masse was now laughing hysterically. Finally, Clint Eastwood’s “Blondie” shoots apart the rope with the noose around “Tuco’s” neck to split the bounty on “Tuco,” and “The Good” is declared. We all lost it.

We were rolling on the floor, pounding on the table, hysterical, howling in glee.

Managers come over and inform us we are disturbing the other good folks in the room, and if we didn’t quiet down, we would be asked to leave.

We quieted down, but i still laugh every time i watch the opening scene, the  middle, the closing scene, and pretty much everything in between. i like the movie in an amusing sort of way.

Yesterday, Friday not the 13th, had its share of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

That will be posted here later.

It was a good day up until the end.

We played golf with Pete and Nancy Toennies, a great matchup and with the rain last week and assorted obligations, it had been a while. Nancy and Maureen were in a cart. Pete and i walked, our preference. i began terrible and ended pretty good, much better than the other way around. This foursome has fun together and that is most important.

And then, we had a late lunch, early dinner at the Brigantine, the Coronado original. Covid and California had stopped such a treat before Christmas and dining, although outside, began again last week.

The Brig has been one of my go-top places since…oh hell, i lost track. i do remember Wednesday nights. The legendary JD Waits and i shared a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip below our patio where JD’s 25-foot Cal was moored. Wednesday’s JD and i would hit the Brig, have a Manhattan…or two, and then dine on their salmon with hollandaise sauce with a nice wine, finishing with a Courvoisier and a cup of coffee. Their margaritas were the best in town.

It changed of course. Went upscale, opened up a couple of more. The original expanded, got modern, prices went up. But the Brig is still my Brig. Had a couple of oysters on the half shell, still wishing i had ordered the half-dozen, and then a waygu beef burger with fries. As Bob Seger sang Brigantine, “You’re Still the Same.”

So we get home. i’m feeling cocky, and with my recent exchanges with Bill Hager about “Red Ryder,” i was ready for an oater. The news with its bleakness and it’s yanking our chain, and it’s selling stuff was what i put on briefly. Then, i quietly asked Maureen if she would mind my watching a western, adding if she did, i would go to the front room and watch one there. She said no, put in her ear buds, and began reading a book on her Kindle (i think: i’m still too stubborn to read anything that doesn’t have paper pages i can turn).

i turned to the Starz app, scrolled down to the “western category” and scrolled to the right, after a dozen or so, there it is: Bob Steele in “Ambush Trail.” Now i loved all of the western movies, even after they turned violent and bloody and gory and in technicolor or whatever they call it now. But the old oaters remain my favorite. And Bob Steele was my favorite. Oh there were about twenty or thirty western  heroes and certainly Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gene Autry were the most famous. My favorite was Bob Steele. Lash Larue would have been right up there with Bob, but Lash with his 18-foot bullwhip for disarming villains, was mostly in the Saturday serials by the time i got to watch him. Bob Steele was in movies. AND he didn’t sing. He just rode his beautiful horse, fought for justice, the American way, and against the villains, always fighting fair, and only winging the bad guys.

So i watched Bob Steele once again be instrumental in fighting and fighting and fighting (i think there were at least eight fistfights) for western justice ending up triumphant, with no singing.  He had a sidekick, Sam Hawkins, who was really Syd Saylor, who made bad jokes. The plot was twisted and not all that terrific, but it didn’t matter. i mean there were two people actually killed by the bad guys and there was not one drop of blood anywhere near that black and white screen. Nobody was bludgeoned to death or cut into pieces and the good ranchers were saved from the nefarious freight supplier (with horse and wagons of course)

i was in oater heaven.

Maureen would occasionally look up from her kindle and shake her head. i think she was wishing she had taken me up on going to the front room. i mean this lady, along with her younger daughter, watch all movies, especially hen flicks i have mentioned, classics, period pieces, English stodgy stuff, all Academy Award movies. i think i noticed her nose was turned up when i praised Bob Steele.

i went to Wikipedia. i found Bob’s story and his filmography. The guy was amazing. His first movie was silent in 1920. His last was in 1974. In between he appeared in more than 200 movies, most of them westerns. And he could sing, but he didn’t in the westerns.

So i brought out my computer and showed Steele’s filmography to Maureen. She was unimpressed. Looking for someone to understand, i showed the filmography to Sarah. She scrolled through about twenty and said “yeh.”

So the night didn’t end all that well. But then i got to thinking:

Okay, okay, the realism was lacking. i figure i’ve got enough stupid realism around me i don’t need it in movies. Yeh, the acting wasn’t academy award quality, but there are a whole bunch of academy awards for stuff i found…unenjoyable and that is just me being nice.

And you know what? Bob and his good guys won. He made me feel good about the world.

So i’m planning on watching more oaters. But it will be in the front room. By myself.