I stink at “Christmas-ing”… I’m the world’s worst at getting gifts, or even remembering to shop for them. And those facts are made painfully clear when I come into the office and see stuff like this:
A holiday treat and a ribbon, hot-glued to a greeting card. And not one of those cheap cards either, it’s a 3-D one…
This person gave similar cards to a dozen colleagues. While I was opening the card, another co-worker came by and was dropping off gifts for ten of his peers: candy and gourmet nuts from two companies in his hometown, which is 3 hours away. My boss got me a bottle of wine — called “Storyteller” — and a fancy winestopper.
Such great planning, such thoughtfulness on their parts. How do I reciprocate? With a big fat box o’ nothin’! I had to scramble to get a gift card for the one and only person who reports to me. (Gift cards – the last refuge of the lazy.) And by the time I got it, she was already out of the office until 2019.
I consider myself a fairly generous guy… I probably treat for lunch or happy hour drinks more often than most folks. But X(mas) does not mark the spot for me… unless we’re talking about a blind spot.
Believe it or not, I actually have to pay money to operate this blog. But I do it gladly so that you, the few, the proud, the dubbatrubba blog faithful, can get your semi-weekly dose of semi-coherent ramblings. You’re welcome (not sure if I should punctuate this with a question mark or an exclamation point…maybe I’ll do both)?!
The company from which I bought the dubbatrubba.com domain (surprisingly, there was no bidding war…) is always trying to sell “extras” to me. Their latest pitch gave me pause:
Whoa, I can actually get rubbadubba.com too? I’m thinking I should lock it down, and corner the market on goofy names. Perhaps later I can sell rubbadubba.com at a profit to Three Men In A Tub, LLC.
But what really got me was the fact that “dubbatrubba.com” isn’t considered a premium domain, yet “batrepellant.com” is.
Guess I’ll have to spend the weekend figuring out other ways to “monetize” my site.
Ain’t it funny how time slips away. And ain’t it funny how some isolated, seemingly trivial incidents from your childhood get lodged in your brain for decades?
In December of 1976, I was a wee lad of 11. And even in the three-network universe of my youth, pretty much anyone with a pulse could get a TV special or even a summer replacement series (looking at you, Shields & Yarnell). In that fateful winter month of our country’s bicentennial year (remember the red, white and blue fire hydrants?), skinny, buck-toothed magician Doug Henning appeared in his second TV special, the appropriately titled “Doug Henning’s World of Magic II.”
Michael “Little House on the Prairie” Landon was the guest host (Doug wasn’t much of an emcee.) And one of the guests was fellow magician/illusionist Ricky Jay, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. It’s been 42 years since that show aired, but I vividly remember the segment with Ricky throwing playing cards into the audience.
My siblings and I were so enamored with that trick (and Ricky’s showmanship) that we tried to replicate it… with absolutely zero success. But the concept of throwing playing cards seemed so weird that it became a running gag for us. In the ensuing weeks and months, we’d pick up a playing card, shout “Ricky Jay!” and throw it to the four winds… or at each other.
(It goes without saying that in the ensuing weeks and months, we could no longer play traditional card games because we managed to lose several cards from every deck we owned thanks to our Ricky Jay impersonations.)
Yes, we were easily amused… and maybe that’s the point. Throwing cards seems so tame (or, to use the current parlance “lame”) in a post-Jackass, Red Bull Stunt Team, Call of Duty, VR goggles world. But making your own fun can be the most fun of all. It’s the most memorable too… I guarantee you that if I picked up a playing card in front of my siblings and shouted “Ricky Jay!” it would still coax a smile out of them, four decades later. And that’s pure magic in my book.
P.S. Ricky Jay was quite the Renaissance man – in addition to being a master magician, he was also an accomplished author, actor and businessman (he and his business partner created the wheelchair that made Gary Sinise look like a double amputee in Forrest Gump). Check out his obit from the New York Times and the trailer of his documentary below.
As far as I know, there’s only one official “Olan Mills” portrait style photography image of my siblings and me.
Wait, that’s not the right photo. That’s one from the Awkward Family Photos website. I’ll wait right here while you spend the next 20 minutes looking through all those awesome shots….
Aaand, we’re back. As I was saying, there’s only one official family portrait photo of my siblings and me. And the only remaining print of said shot is in the possession of my older sister. (Don’t start looking for any birth order subtext or issues… I’m fine with this arrangement.)
I recently asked my older sister to text me a photo of the photo, if that makes any sense. Here it is in all its late 60s black and white glory:
That’s me in the lower right.
They say “every picture tells a story” (and by “they” I mean “Rod Stewart”), but you have to be careful with that today, because anyone and everyone can be a photo editor. You may look at that shot and say “what a lovely bunch of kids.” (You’d better, because it’s true!)
However, you’re not getting the full picture with the picture above. Why? Well, because when we four wee tykes posed for this photo, one of them clearly had to go wee-wee. Please note the placement of my hands in the full shot:
Nature was calling, but I couldn’t answer because the photographer charged by the hour.
I could be sad about the fact that in the one and only official siblings photo we have, I’m a bit too “hands on.” But I’m an optimist, and I’m going to look at the bladder as half-full instead of half-empty. Because this is really a photo of a trendsetter. Yes, it’s true, decades before Michael Jackson made the crotch grab part of our visual vernacular, I was doing it.
MJ was the King of Pop, but I was the King of Having to Pee. Long may I rain.
Did you know “misspelled” is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language? (People usually leave out the 2nd “s”.) Another commonly misspelled word is my first name. It’s Damian. But folks mess it up all the time. Not just strangers, mind you, but people who have known me for years. Granted, there’s also a name that’s similar, spelled Damien. But it should be easy to keep those separate in your head – I (DamiAn) am an Angel, and DamiEn is pure Evil.
I’m in the mentoring program at my alma mater, Xavier University, and they recently published a promotional video featuring my mentee and me. (I know why they did it… so other alums would say “geez, if that loser can do it, I can too!”) And of course they spelled my name incorrectly. (Warning: this video contains scenes of middle aged mediocrity.)
Poor Maddy. Not only did she get stuck with me as a mentor, but they also misspelled her first name.
It turns out that this misspelling has been going on for half a century. While going through the archives of the Jersey City Journal (I really need to find a new hobby), I found the obituary for my mom… and you guessed it, they messed up my name.
My co-workers… even folks I’ve worked with for more than a decade… often get it wrong.
Well, the joke’s on them now, because we just hired a DamiEn and I’m gonna forward all the emails with my name misspelled to him.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
Thomas Kuhl on We’re alive, because nothing happened.: “That is why we should celebrate every day when our feet hit the floor. Another to enjoy and share with…” Jun 25, 04:33
Thomas Kuhl on We’re alive, because nothing happened.: “This simply explains why we should celebrate every day our feet hit the floor. Another day to enjoy and share…” Jun 25, 04:31
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