It’s time….drumroll please….to release another new song to the millions of people reading this blog. Okay, maybe not millions. Maybe just one lonely guy in New Jersey who really has nothing better to do with his time. (Hang in there, Bob, things will get better.) But hey, one Len Vlahos fan can’t be wrong, right?

This is the third song recorded in my sad excuse for a home studio that I’m ready to share. It was written while sitting on a rooftop in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I was waiting for my then girlfriend — she’ll remain nameless — to come over. I was a block from the beach, and when I looked to my left I could just make out the sand and water, and when I looked to my right, the sun had just set and was throwing a painter’s pallet of colors across the sky. It was one of those perfect moments in life, where everything just feels right. Such moments might be few and far between, but they’re the reason we get up each morning, hoping that today is the day we experience just one more.

I play all the instruments save the drums, which are played by Tim Cook. (They’re an Apple Loop, and I just assume Mr. Cook is the man behind the kit.) My two favorite things about this track are the dobro and piano on the chorus.

Anyway, here’s A Simple Song. Enjoy.

A Simple Song
Words and Music by Len Vlahos
(c) 2023

Have you seen the color
Of the six o’clock sky
The way it looks is the way I feel
When I see my baby walking on by

Magenta brush strokes
On a canvas of faded blue
Ooh when she holds me tight
That’s the color my heart is painted too

[Chorus]
And I love her
Sure as the sun is gonna go down
Oh when I hear her voice
That crystalline, angelic sound

Everything seems to stop
This time of the day
And my chest just popped
‘Cause I see my baby walking this way

[Chorus]
And I love her
Sure as the sun is gonna go down
Oh when I hear her voice
That crystalline, angelic sound

That is my simple song
It’s short but it’s mine
Here comes my baby
Don’t be wasting any more of my time

We humans start planning our future from the time we first learn to speak in complete sentences. “Someday I’m going to go to Mars!” or “I’m going to remove my big brother’s brain and replace it with a monkey brain.” We’re not, at that young age, aware that these are actually bucket list items. In case you’re not familiar with the term, a bucket list is a catalog of those things you want to do at least once before you die. (Morose? Sure. Why not.)

Our bucket lists get refined as we get older. The monkey brain falls off somewhere around fourth grade, maybe getting replaced with “I’m going to be a left wing with the Colorado Avalanche.” The older we get, the closer to death, the more achievable the items on the list become. For example, summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa has been on my own bucket list for a long time. Now, at 57, not only does it seem less likely, but really, it seems like an awful lot of effort and expense to walk up a hill. It’s still on the list, but it’s fallen out of the top spot, and I can see a day in the not-too-distant future where it will drop off the list all together. (Visiting Bora Bora, however, is still in the top three.)

Having goals you can accomplish is much more satisfying, and as you get older, your bucket list reflects that. This is how and why Kristen and I found ourselves on a sheet of ice to try curling last week.

How Curling and I Found Each Other

When my first wife and I separated in February of 2002, it was at the height of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. If you’ve ever been through a tough break-up, you know how painful it can be. When you’re married, it’s that times a thousand. I found myself feeling antisocial that winter, spending most nights on the couch, zoning in front of the TV. And what was on the TV? What seemed to be on the TV every hour of the day? If you said Seinfeld reruns, you’re probably right, but I’m talking about Olympic curling. (Try to keep up, okay?)

If you’re not familiar with curling, it’s a strange little game. Invented by the Scottish (who also gave us golf, the bastards), curling is a weird, icy version of shuffleboard. Or so I’m told. I’m old, but not so old that I have any idea how to play shuffleboard. In curling, there are two teams of four players, and they take turns sliding heavy stones (42 pounds each!) down a sheet of ice toward a target with a bullseye. The team with the stone closest to the center of the bullseye, scores points. What makes it weird is the sweeping.

After the stone (colloquially called “the rock”) is released from the slider’s hand, his or her teammates run ahead of said rock (running on ice, by the way), using a special broom, to sweep in front of it. The main goal for the sweeper is to create friction and heat in the path of the rock, giving the throw extra distance. At the Olympic level, sweeping can add as much as ten feet, or so we were told. Heavy use of the broom can also slightly alter the direction of the stone.

Watching curling on television was, for me, almost hypnotic. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. Something about the sport was just…beautiful. With each Winter Olympics since 2002, I’ve tuned in to watch the curlers from around the globe. I would often joke that curling was my last chance to stand on an Olympic podium. (And yes, as a kid, winning a gold medal was definitely on my bucket list.) I mean, how hard could it be? Can’t anyone do this? Isn’t it like bowling? Or shooting pool?

Everything I Needed to Know about Curling

If I had stopped think about it before Kristen and I signed up for an introductory course at the Rock Creek Curling Club in Lafayette Colorado, I would have remembered that I’m terrible at both bowling and pool. But stopping to think about things is not really my signature move. Here’s what I learned about curling in our 75 minute session: It’s hard. Really hard. Let me break it down for you.

1. You’re given a pair of curling shoes (hello again, bowling), one of which has grips on the bottom, the other, teflon. Have you ever slid a teflon pan on a sheet of ice? (You have? Really? You might want to re-examine some of your life choices.) If not, it is virtually frictionless. So while one foot stays anchored, the other wants to slide every which way. Even standing is a challenge at first.
2. Like every sport, the adherents have developed their own lingo. There’s a hogline, the hack, the house (no, I’m not sure why curlers are fascinated with the letter H) that each have their own unique meaning.
3. When you squat down with your grippy foot in the hack (like a sprinter’s starting block), you push off while holding the rock in front of you, your weight over the teflon foot, and your other foot trailing behind. Just before you reach the hogline, you let go of the rock, transferring the momentum from your push to the stone — but NOT pushing it with your am — sending it down the ice. Only, the ice is 100 feet long, and you need a lot of momentum to move 42 pounds 100 feet, even if it is on ice. How Olympic curlers send that thing careening at bullet speed is beyond my comprehension.
4. People are really nice. I play hockey (not very well), and I’m just not used to that.

Kristen and I were intrigued by our first lesson, but we’re going to hold off before pursuing recreational curling more seriously. Maybe in a year or two, but maybe not. I will say that any hope of Olympic glory in my sunset years evaporated in a puff overheated curling ice. But I did cross something off my bucket list. Bora Bora, you’re next.

It’s time to let a new recording of an old original song out into the world…

When my dad passed away a few years ago, he left some money to my brother, sister, and me. The money didn’t last long. My wife and I paid down some debt, put some away for our kids’ college education, bought a car, and took a family vacation to London. With the last little bit, I bought a used iMac, a couple of decent microphones, two good speakers, and a digital audio interface (for you gearheads, it’s a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20). I downloaded Logic Pro X audio editing software and found an amazing series of training videos on YouTube from someone who calls himself MusicTechHelpGuy. (The videos were so good, I supported MTHG through Patreon for more than a year. I’m believer in supporting the free content we love). I went through the entire training course and re-learned the art of recording and mixing.

I say “re-learned,” because I spent a fair amount of my teens and early 20s in recording studios. At both The Loft in Bronxville, New York, and Ace Studios in Atlantic City, New Jersey, I learned how to mic a drum kit, how to EQ a vocal track, what reverb and compression did, and a whole lot more. But that was a long time ago, when the world was an analog place. (I suppose the actual world is still analog, but you know what I mean.) Sound recording today is decidedly digital. The concepts are the same, but the tools to get the desired result are orders of magnitude more powerful, and more complex.

When my band (Woofing Cookies) wanted a “stereo tambourine” sound on our song Girl Next Door in 1985, we set up microphones on opposite ends of the studio and watched as Scotty, our singer, ran from one side of the room to the other, jingling all the way. (If you listen to the track through headphones, you can hear the tambourine moving from the left side your brain to the right and back again.) While it might be less fun today, the same effect is cleaner and easier to do.

Armed with my new-found knowledge, and my shiny new tools, I set out to record some of the songs I’d written over the years, songs that hadn’t otherwise been recorded in a way that was satisfying to me. I have six “finished” so far (really, no song is every finished) and it’s’ time to release one into the wild.

The first of these songs I’ll share is called She’s Nearly a Saint. This was a song written about a woman who barely knew I existed, and who definitely never knew this song existed.

I think her name is (was?) Carol Costa, and she had the unenviable job of booking bands at CBGB, the legendary punk/rock club on the Bowery in New York City. I remember watching Carol handle all of the bands, all the egos, all the bullshit, with style and grace. It left enough of an impression on me to write this song. Of the hundreds of songs I’ve written over the years, ten, maybe twenty, are worth remembering. This might be my favorite of them all.

My vocals are pedestrian at best (though made slightly less horrible by a magical feature in Logic Pro called “pitch control”), and I play all of the instruments other than the drums. (The drums are Apple loops, which are basically prerecorded drum tracks you can mould to fit your project.) Anywho… here, for your listening pleasure, is She’s Nearly a Saint. Enjoy!

And Carol Costa, if you’re reading this, thanks for all you did at CBGB to help nurture young musicians, including me.

She’s Nearly a Saint
Words and Music by Len Vlahos
(c) 2022

[Verse 1]
Phones ring
Voices meander like waves beating up the air
None of those voices ever sing
She wonders if she even cares

[Chorus]
She’s nearly a saint
No one notices when she scrapes the ground
She’s never had the time
To hear pleasant sounds

[Verse 2]
Every garage roars
Take me in and give me your home
Her tired sympathy is getting bored
Why won’t they just leave her alone

[Chorus]
She’s nearly a saint
No one notices when she scrapes the ground
She’s never had the time
To hear pleasant sounds

[Bridge]
Run away
Hide away
Go away
Sneak away
There’s got to be an easier way
To face each day

[Verse 3]
Her ears ring
Deafened by noise of boys playing with toys
But the noise is nothing
Maybe it’s why she’s so silently annoyed

[Chorus]
She’s nearly a saint
No one notices when she scrapes the ground
She’s never had the time
To hear pleasant sounds

My son Luke’s hockey team — eleven and twelve year-old kids — had their final game of the season last night. They had played the same team, from Durango, earlier in the day, when they skated to a 4-4 tie. (In youth hockey, non-elimination games can end in a tie.) The two teams were very evenly matched, and both groups left everything on the ice. 

Hockey clubs are like anything else in this world. There are good clubs — nice parents, coaches that teach their skaters to play a clean and honest game, and good natured kids. And there are bad clubs — a culture that values winning over everything else, coaches that tolerate overly aggressive and violent play, and parents who shout horrible things at the kids from the opposing team. Durango was not only in the former camp, but one of the classiest clubs we had the pleasure to encounter this season. 

After the tie game, a few kids on our team went out to dinner, returning to the rink for what was a quarterfinal game in the Avalanche Cup, the final tournament of the season. The winning team would play tomorrow, the losing team was done for the year.

Only when we arrived, we received word that, between the two games, the father of one of the Durango players had unexpectedly passed away. Hockey teams are like families (we spend five days a week together for seven months), and the sad news had clearly rocked the Durango family. 

But the game, like the show, must go on. The Durango kids took the ice with a fierce and emotional determination.

Part way through the first period, the father working the penalty box for Durango leaned over to me and pointed to a kid on the ice. “See number XX? He’s the player who lost his dad.” (I’ve removed the # to protect the privacy of the player.)

I was blown away. The courage shown by this young person, suiting up and stepping on the ice, was more than remarkable. Penalty Box Dad and I agreed that in some ways, hockey might have been just the distraction the player needed. But either way, even though I didn’t know the kid, I couldn’t help but feel proud of him.

The game was, of course, tied (2-2) with under two minutes to play. That’s when number XX put the puck on his stick and scored the game winner. And if that’s not enough of a Hollywood ending, that goal completed his hat trick. That’s right, hours after finding out he’d lost his father, number XX scored all three goals for his team, propelling them on to the semi-finals.

My heart breaks for what that young man will feel over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, but I also know he’ll always treasure the performance he gave tonight. The love and adoration heaped on him by his hockey family when he emerged from the locker room after the game, left me verklempt. It was an incredible thing to witness.

Our kids played a great game, I was proud of each and every one of them, especially Luke. He played hard the entire season and really grew as a skater, a defenseman, and a person. And while I never want to see him, or his teammates, lose, I couldn’t help but feel really good for the Durango team and their number XX.

And oh yeah, I hockey

Just as I was getting ready to graduate high school way back in 1983, also known as the Pleistocene Age, the Violent Femmes self-titled debut album was hitting the shelves in record stores. (For younger readers, record stores were where you went to buy vinyl discs on which music was magically stored.)

The spare, three-piece arrangements; the scratchy, angst-filled vocals; the trebly, hard plucked bass-lines; the driving rhythms, played almost entirely on a snare drum, were like nothing I’d heard before. I can still remember dancing to Gone Daddy Gone, featuring a xylophone — a xylophone! — at the Left Bank in Mt. Vernon, New York. My only regret was having never seen the Femmes live.

So when Kristen said, “Hey, Stacey and Chris are going to see the Violent Femmes and Flogging Molly at the Mission Ballroom in October, You wanna go?” I didn’t hesitate before answering with an emphatic “Hell yes!”

Thick

There were four bands on the bill: Thick, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Violent Femmes, and Flogging Molly.

After meeting the aforementioned Stacey and Chris for drinks and a bite to eat at the Blue Moon Brew Pub, we arrived at the Mission Ballroom a bit late. My apologies to Thick for missing their set. As a guy who spent his youth playing in bands, I feel I’m being disrespectful when I arrive late for a show. Trying to atone for my sin, I checked the band out on YouTube after the fact. Their music is fun, melodic punk that kind of remindes me of both Husker Du and Hole.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

We did arrive in time for the second band on the bill, who promised to be a cheesy, gimmicky act that, I had been told, takes classic/standard songs and “punks them up.” I stood with arms crossed and eyes rolled as the lead singer, Spike Slawson, took the stage with a ukulele. By the time the full band joined Slawson on stage, I was completely hooked.

The Gimme Gimmes, featuring notable punk/alt rockers from other bands  (including CJ Ramone), tore through a set of covers that included Olivia Newton John’s Have You Never Been Mellow, Elton John’s (no known relation to Olivia Newton) Rocket Man, and Science Fiction Double Feature, the song from opening credits of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Best of all, MFGG did a punked out cover of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane. This held special meaning for me, as my band, Woofing Cookies, did a tricked out version of Jet Plane in the early-/mid-1980s.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of Slawson, who completely owned the stage. His banter was funny, the aesthetic was campy, and the music kicked ass.

The Violent Femmes

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes did their job; they put me in a great mood for the Violent Femmes. This is the band I was here to see, the reason we had shelled out our precious (and dwindling) money for tickets. The lights went down, the crowd cheered, and the band — including two of the original three members, Gordon Gano, now sporting a mullet, and Brian Ritchie — took the stage.

“Daaaaaaaaaaay, after daaaay…” Gano’s haunting vocal, the opening line in Add It Up, filled the theater. When the song kicked in, the crowd went wild.

Violent Femmes at the Mission Ballroom in Denver

But for some reason, that song was the highlight of their set. Don’t get me wrong, the band was incredibly tight, and they played most of what we’d come to hear, but there was something missing. Maybe it was having to follow the Gimme Gimmes, who might just be the best party band since Those Melvins. Maybe it was Gano’s lack of connection with the audience (other than one heartfelt comment about Jesus after the band played a spiritual bluegrass song, he said precious little to us). Or maybe, just maybe, the band, with the exception of Brian Ritchie, wasn’t having all that much fun.

Whatever the reason, I found myself looking forward to the set ending. Again, they were good, and the songs are still great, but there was just something missing.

Flogging Molly

I’ll admit to not being very familiar with Flogging Molly‘s catalog. Other than The Worst Day Since Yesterday, my knowledge of the band wasn’t much more than an overall impression of their music. I liked what I’d heard, but had never really sought it out. That changed Wednesday night.

When the seven piece Celtic-punk combo took the stage, they owned — abso-fucking-lutely owned! — the Mission Ballroom. Front man Dave King, with his gray hair, beard, and mustache, and gray suit over a black shirt, looked more like a professor of Irish history than the leader of a high-octane rock band. Each song was more energetic than the one that came before, with King wooing the crowd between numbers. The entire set made you feel good. It was the same feeling I have at the end of an episode of Ted Lasso, that I’ve seen something meaningful, that the world isn’t quite as fucked as it appears to be.

And the band never let up, not for an instant. It was the kind of set where most of the audience sings along with each and every song — other than the one new tune Flogging Molly debuted, which was also great — and the kind of set where you can see that the band is having fun. They even stayed on the stage when the lights came up and Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” came over the PA, with King strutting and lip-synching along.

Where the Violent Femmes seemed like they were in the house to play some songs for us, Flogging Molly was in the house to play music they loved, and well, if we happened to be there too, and wanted to have a good time listening, all the better.

In short, Flogging Molly was one of the best live bands I’ve seen in a long time, and maybe ever, and I cannot wait to see them again. With any luck, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes will open that show, too.

At the end of The Lost Boys, a most excellent teen vampire flick from 1987, the character of Grandpa (played by Barnard Hughes) says:

One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach… all the damn vampires. 

That’s how I feel about science. Or more specifically:

One thing about living in the United States in 2021 that I just can’t stomach… all the damn science deniers.

Let me just say right off the bat, this post is not about politics. Well, not entirely. While some people are in fact denying science for political and financial gain, my focus here is on the science, not the politics.

So, what has me grinding my teeth today?

Is it the Flat Earthers? Sure, anyone in 2021 dumb enough to actually think the Earth is flat — I’m guessing most of the Flat Earthers are in it for the shits and giggles, but at least a few of them must be true believers, right? — is an idiot. If that’s not clear enough, let me say it again. ANYONE who actually believes the Earth is flat is a complete and total idiot. Really, don’t trust them with sharp objects, cars, or, God forbid, guns. I mean, just watch a ship coming over the horizon and you’ll see the Earth is round. The ancient Greeks figured it out and I promise, you can, too. So no, Flat Earthers are not the genesis of this scree.

Is it the Climate Change deniers? Okay, this group pretty much always sets my teeth on edge. 97% (or more) of accredited scientists agree that the climate is warming as a direct result of human activity  (also known as anthropogenic climate change), and that without intervention, it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I screamed at my computer screen when I saw a news story about people in Louisiana who are losing land to Climate Change — the land they live on is literally disappearing under water — and yet some still denied the science.

Someone close to me once observed that “Climate change is only a theory, a projection.” Yes, but it’s a projection made by people who have an understanding of how climates change and evolve.

Insurance agents use actuarial tables to figure out when I’m likely to die. Do they know specifically when I, personally, am going to die? No. But they do know the average life expectancy of a fifty-six year old, American man of Southern European ancestry. It’s their job to know. Or consider a building inspector who disapproves of the load bearing walls of a newly constructed home. Do they know for a certain whether or when those walls will collapse? No. But I’m sure as shit not going to inhabit that space because some moron is brazen enough to deny the science (and math) behind construction.

Insurance agents, building inspectors, and almost any other professionals you can think of, have expertise in their field. Just like the scientists who are warning us that our behavior is causing the climate to change. So yeah, it pisses me off. But it isn’t what pissed me off enough to write this specific post on this specific day.

The culprit today is Governor Ron Desantis of Florida (and by extension, Texas Governor Greg Abbott). He signed a bill into law that prohibits a local municipality or school from creating a mandate that citizens or students must wear a mask. “It should be a matter of choice,” he said. He’s even threatening to withhold money from school districts and school boards if they attempt to institute a local mask mandate.

To quote, completely out of context, one of my favorite lines from The Final Revival of Opal and Nev  by @DawnieWalton (which I read, and loved, while on vacation):

Motherfucker! What?

(The book is a great novel about a lot of things, though science isn’t one of them.)

This is a pandemic. If only the people who want to wear masks wear masks, the pandemic isn’t going to end. All we’re doing is giving the virus more time to adapt and change.

Am I saying there should be a nationwide mandate, right now, that all people wear masks in public? No. I’m saying FOLLOW THE ****ING SCIENCE. (I think I need to make t-shirts.) If there’s a surge of hospitalizations in Broward County, and the local officials want to close the schools, or require masks, the governor needs to get the hell out of the way. (To understand how pandemic preparedness should work — the first thing governments should always do is close the schools — read Michael Lewis’s excellent book, The Premonition.)

Science is not about politics. It’s about truth. Sometimes it’s an absolute truth — the (round) Earth spins on its axis, the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, and unchecked viruses spread. Sometimes it’s an accepted truth — life on Earth evolved from simpler to more complex organisms, the universe began with a Big Bang, and the climate is warming due to human activity. People with no expertise in the science behind these truths (absolute or accepted) have no business claiming such truths are false. Such people are dangerous.

The moment you hear a politician denying credible science, vote them the fuck out of office. Hell, impeach them. Or maybe we should revert to a pre-enlightenment way of handling things and just have a good old fashioned stoning. (No, I’m not suggesting anyone actually stone Governor Desantis, though maybe someone should get the uptight asshat stoned. That might help.) And by the way, I have two school-age children, so I fully grok the inconvenience of pandemic restrictions. But I also love my kids and want them to grow up in a rationale world that values truth over than expedience or convenience.

Thus endeth the rant, though

I will leave you with one interesting scientific tidbit called the Mandela Effect. It describes what happens when a group of people, often a very large group of people, misremembers a quote or historical event. Perhaps the most famous is Darth Vader’s utterance of “Luke, I am your father.” Though many of us remember it that way, Darth (and yes, he and I are on a first name basis) actually said “No, I am your father.”

The title for this column came from one the most famous quotes in the brilliant television series Breaking Bad, when Jessie (played by @AaronPaul_8) says, “Yeah, science, bitch!:” Only he never actually said that. The quote was “Yeah Mr. White! Yeah, science!” My brain, suffering from the Mandela Effect, misremembered it. And you know what I say to that… Yeah, science, bitch.

I grew up in a neighborhood with a ton of kids. There were four Morrison children, four Murphys, two O’Connors, four (or five?) Finnerans, at least five and maybe seven Sullivans, and ten Fitzpatricks. You can tell by the names and numbers it was an Irish Catholic neighborhood, and I was the lone Greek kid. (I explore my Greek roots with Dmitri, the character I wrote in The Girl on the Ferris Wheel, my collaboration with Julie Halpern.) Ethnic homogeneity aside, Colonial Heights was a great place to come of age.

When we weren’t watching Gilligan’s Island and Brady Bunch re-runs, we were outside playing. We founded our own kid detective agencies, solving vexing neighborhood crimes; we emulated Fonzie and Evel Knievel, setting up ramps to jump our bicycles over garbage cans; we played Ringolevio, a game somewhere between hide and seek and all-out neighborhood war; and once every four years — notably in 1972 and again in 1976, when I was seven and eleven respectively — we staged a neighborhood-wide kid olympics.

The real Olympics was a big deal to us. It was the era of Mark Spitz, Frank Shorter, Edwin Moses, Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner, and the controversial US vs the USSR basketball gold medal final. (We were still a bit too young in 1972 to fully comprehend the horror of the Munich Massacre as it came to be known.) The Olympic Games dominated conversation, igniting our imaginations and our sense of national pride. None of the athletes — all amateurs — were known to us until the games began; by the time of the closing ceremonies, they were our heroes.

We went into our yards to try our hands at long jumps and high jumps. We took to the streets with 100-yard dashes and races around the very long block on which we lived (our marathon). We even had an ill-fated attempt at pole vault, using a broom stick. When it was time to award medals, I don’t have a specific memory of this, but I’m pretty sure we tried to sing the national anthem while decorating the victors.

It was amazing.

Flash forward half a century.

While my younger son is showing some interest in the Tokyo games, it’s not the same.

First, there are simply too many distractions. It was pretty easy for us to choose the decathlon over Greg and Marsha. Would we have made that same choice if we had RoBlox, Minecraft, and Mark Rober?

Second, even though I know it was probably something of a sham internationally, the athletes in the 1970s were amateurs. They competed for love of the game and love of country. After the Olympics, they went back to their lives as college students, actuaries, and truck drivers. Yes, the best of the best wound up with endorsement deals, but money was not the primary concern. Speed, agility, strength, and above all, mental fortitude were the currency of those games.

Third and finally, and here’s where you can call me especially cranky, do Beach Volleyball and Skateboarding really have a place in the Olympics? Don’t get me wrong, the competitors in each of these sports are insanely talented and train incredibly hard to be the best their nations have to offer. But both contests seem out of place. Skateboarding started as a counterculture expression of teen angst. To watch a panel of august judges to try to put that angst in a box is as ridiculous as enshrining rock and roll in a hall of fame. (Yeah, don’t get me started.) And isn’t beach volleyball a thing to do with your friends late in the afternoon when the sun is setting and the beer is flowing? That they Olympic Committee constructs a fake beach in a stadium makes it seem an awful lot like BASEketball

Interestingly, without my prodding, my son is asking to watch the traditional track and field events. He wants to see the long jump and hammer throw, the pole vault and the 100M. (He was all about Usain Bolt in the last Olympics.) He’s also interested in swimming and archery and was in awe of the female gymnasts on the uneven bars.  Maybe it’s his half-Greek blood (the other half, Irish, suggests I’m a product of my upbringing) that draws him to those classic contests of human physical and mental endurance. Whatever the case, it’s sad to me that he and his brother don’t view the games with the same fervor my friends and I once had. What I can’t figure out is if the games have changed, the times have changed, or I have changed. Probably all of the above.

Lastly, I can’t post about the Olympics without giving a shout out to the only Vlahos to ever compete in a modern Olympics — I like to think my ancestors in Ancient Greece were fierce competitors, but given my genetic allergy to sports, the ancient Vlahai were likely water bearers for the real athletes — my nephew Zach Vlahos, who was the cox in the men’s eight boat in London in 2012. I think of him every time I tune in.

I’m twelve days into my new life as a full-time writer, and here’s what I’ve accomplished so far:

1. Played ice hockey, on three separate occasions,  in the middle of the day.
2. Played one round of weekday golf.
3. Slept until at least 9 a.m. all but one day.
4. Read each morning before getting out of bed. (I just finished an advanced reader’s copy of The Quiet Zone by Stephen Kurczy, and am now re-reading The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, MD,  the classic 70s treatise on the physiological benefits of meditation and other stress relieving techniques. Guess who is going to start meditating soon…)
5. Played cards almost every night (a great game called Oh Hell!) with Kristen and her parents.
6. Played a crapton (that’s a technical term) of piano. Since COVID began, my moment of Zen has been to learn songs I can play and sing on the piano. (I’m not especially good, but it brings me great joy. If enough people want to see it — you know, like a THOUSAND — I’ll recored myself singing something and post it. And really, like a THOUSAND!)
7. Watched Richard Branson fly to the edge of space.
8. And right now, playing with one of our two new kittens (Vlady) who is determined (hell-bent, I would say) to stop me from writing.

Something tells me I should he working harder.

Except….

From March 2020 through June 2021, I worked harder, longer, and in a more pressure-filled environment than at any time in my life. March through June of last year, I worked 80+ hours/week. That dropped to 60+ for the balance of 2020. All of that while facing the very real possibility of bankruptcy for our business. I published two books into the pandemic, both suffering as a result. I got COVID (serious enough to land in the hospital for four nights) last November. While Kristen and I were able to sell the business in December, which was a happy ending, the process of doing so left me reaching for the metaphorical Xanax. And finally, I helped the new owners of Tattered Cover settle in by opening not one, but two new bookstores before June 30 of this year.

In other words, I’m tired. Really freaking tired. My mind and body need to heal. I don’t think I realized just how much they need to heal. I’m allowing myself a less rigorous schedule through mid-August, and will hit the ground running after Labor Day. (We have a big family vacation in early August…more on that later.)

Of course, I haven’t been completely idle since July 1. In addition to the aforementioned leisure activities, I also:

1. Incorporated my agent’s comments into my new manuscript, finishing a not insubstantial revision, and sending it off for said agent’s review. Our plan is to go out on submission in September.
2. Reached out to at least one institution of higher learning to inquire about teaching/facilitating a writing workshop.
3. With my agent’s help, started to foster relationships with editors who might have ghost writing/work-for-hire gigs for which I can audition.
4. Began work in earnest on a SkillShare.com session for new writers (look for that to be live by the end of August), including outlining the entire course, and crating a first draft of the video introduction.
5. Mostly cleaned up my home office, unearthing some great old (personal) video clips, letters, and other memorabilia.

So, have I learned anything from all this? Actually yes. I can accomplish quite a bit of meaningful work as a writer, while also leading a fulfilling life. And yeah, I get it, hockey and golf are not entirely fulfilling. But recreation is the first step on this journey, not the last.

My schedule of writing, and work related to writing, will no doubt increase, and increase a lot, by this fall. Bring it on, I say. Even twice as busy as I am now will still be a helluva a lot better than the alternative. And, without new streams of income (from writing) our money will likely run out this time next year, so I’m highly motivated to succeed.

Strangely, I’m not really anxious, or maybe not as anxious as I should be, or maybe not as anxious as I will be, about any of this. And you know what? That’s a good thing.

It’s here.

It’s finally freaking here!

When Kristen and I sold the Tattered Cover Bookstores in December, I agreed to stay on to help the new owners open two locations. That work is done, and as of today, July 1, 2021, my vocation is now full-time writer.

This is not retirement. Our kids have developed a nasty addiction to food, shelter, and clothing that will require money. It is a job. Just a job at which I really want to succeed.

In addition to my own books, I’m hoping to take writing-for-hire assignments, develop avenues of passive income related to writing, and maybe even teach. The goal is to stitch together enough streams of revenue to support our family. I have one year to figure it out.

Am I nervous about it? Yeah, of course. But I’ve managed to publish four of my own novels, and a fifth in collaboration with Julie Halpern, while working a series of very full-time days jobs and raising two kids. Now that I can devote all my energy to writing, I’m more excited than anxious, more hopeful than terrified.

I’ll be writing more in this space about this journey, and will likely engage more in social media, too, so stay tuned. In the meantime, let the writing begin.