100 Percent

You know those tacky beach stores with all the same names in Myrtle Beach and beaches like Myrtle Beach all across American coasts?

Wings. Eagles. Pacific. Bargain Beachwear.

These are often a point of ridicule, deservedly so with their "Surrender The Booty" T-shirts and Corona swimsuits with all the Corona sunglasses and flip-flops and underwear and women's hygeine products (OK, I made that last one up).

But never let it not be said that these places, to me, are awesome.

Where else can you get a pair of sandals, swimsuits, a pistol-replica lighters, beer sleeves, beach chairs, Samurai swords, sunglasses, tattoos and Chinese throwing stars ... all in one place?

And, these days, it's gotten to a point where something made in China is almost somehow so American.

Being on the beach made us realize that our beach chairs were in need of replacement. You can only wipe out and have a chair fold in on you so many times before you realize it's completely rusted out and needs to be retired.

I made sure to replace them before I left. You know, in one of those places that's "Going Out Of Bizness!" and has been "Going Out of Bizness!" for years now.



I think these look pretty sleek and classy. They say comfort and coolness and pride and South Carolina official state flags.

Apparently, however, my son is not impressed.

After returning home from the beach, I pulled one of the chairs down near the road to sit in while I drank a beer and watched the boys ride their bikes up the street. My 7-year-old son decided he liked the idea of sitting in one of these new chairs and "relaxing."

Less than a minute later, he'd had enough.

Enough, in fact, that he came to the conclusion that these chairs aren't as advertised. With just one look at the tag that was still attached.

"Sorry, Daddy. It just isn't comfortable to me. Even though it says 100 percent."

Picture In A Frame

Every working day, for more than five years now, this picture has been in front of me. There, not-so-noticed, as I talk on the phone and type and complain and get yelled at and get praised and fall asleep with my head in my hands.

At first, I put this picture in a frame and put it on my desk so that I could marvel in the babyhood of my only son.

I was 27. Now, I'm 33.

It's usually covered with a layer of dust save for the few occasions where I take a moment to lick my thumb and clear the frame.

Over time, my only son became my oldest son. He's grown, along with his brother.

The other day, as I took a moment to pick up the frame and take a good, conscious look at it for the first time in years, it struck me that I've only passingly, unconsciously acknowledged this image that has looked back on me eight hours a day, five days a week for the past eight years.

A lot has happened with this picture on my desk.

When a man thinks of his work and reflects upon it, he wonders whether he's been successful. Whether he's made the right decisions.

I've failed some days. I've listened to the pregnant pause fully aware that the next words could be "you're fired."

I've recovered.

I've succeeded some days. I've earned a confidence both within myself and from others that I can do no wrong.

These days are neither.

I've settled in to a certain sustainable level of mediocrity. Just grinding away so that I can come home and throw a baseball with my kid. It's just the formula the calculus of the corporate machine has rendered for me.

(I'm sure one day I'll look back on that with the feeling that I was just making excuses).

I look at the picture; my son has grown older. That's what I usually think when I glance at the picture.

But the other day, for the first time, I realized that I have grown older, too.

More wrinkles. More gray hair. I guess a little less hair, too.

Each day I've grown older. For better or worse. Spending so much time at a place where when the lamp goes dim in my darkened corner it takes me weeks to remember to replace the bulb. It's strange to watch yourself stay young as your life marches onward.

The thought of the picture struck me so much I decided to take it home. Just to make it real somehow. Home, where it's real. Not lost in the empty, half-hearted, pursuit of sustenance.

I'm going to take it back with me. Because I can't keep it here. I can't remove something beautiful to me simply because it has the capacity to remind me that I might not have made the best decisions.

I've been a father for seven years. I've been married for ten. I've worked and lived here in this town for most of them.

I was away from work this past week. During that time, my oldest son asked me if he'd always lived at our house. I told him he had.

It made me think about how they give you this baby from the hospital and you strap it into a car seat and drive 25 mph on the interstate and come to realize years later that there was no return policy even if you had a receipt.

And that how you spend your life is all about the choices you make with each passing second and the faith you have that you've made the right choices.

Now, as I look at the picture, I wonder if I've made the right choices.

Maybe. Maybe not.

In any case, I know that, today, at this moment, whatever I've done with my life thus far has made it so that new pictures interest me just as much as the old ones.

Transformers Not Transforming, Slurpees Not Rocking

Usually you can count on two stalwarts of Americana to come through during summertime.

7-Eleven and Burger King.

They've always got the best summer movie tie-ins.

"Star Wars." "Spider-Man." "Superman."

Burger King handles the toys. 7-Eleven covers the awesome summer Slurpee cups.













This year, though, they've come up short.

While Burger King did a serviceable job with the "Spider-Man 3" toys (a Spider-Man that turns black in cold water was fun) and while they picked the right heart-of-summer movie in "Transformers" ...

The Transformers don't even transform. That about sums that up. What's the purpose of a Transformer that doesn't transform?

And the Slurpee cup. It's legendary. The big movies. The athletes. The entertainers. The cartoon characters.

But I have to say that while "The Simpsons" is an American icon, a "Simpsons" movie cup is underwhelming. "The Simpsons" isn't iconic, blow-your-face-off summer movie material. And the cup -- though it cleverly plays on the Kwik-E-Mart "Squishee" element used in the cartoon's caricatural stereotype -- is smaller than usual and just generally boring.

It's a shame.

7-Elevens are transforming themselves into Kwik-E-Marts. That's cool, I guess. At least they're transforming.

30, Not 20, Something

I think I might just start laying out my driver's license every time I buy beer.

I'm 33 years old. I figure that most people have to think I'm at least 21. That the days of me trying to hustle my way through a grocery store checkout line with a case of Miller Lite and hoping I don't get carded are over.

Especially when I've got a collection of Spider-Man fruit snacks, SpongeBob cheese crackers and Darth Vader lava explosion Pop Tarts following the beer.

Or I suppose I would have bought that when I was 19, too.

But, no.

I get carded, I would say, more than half the time I buy beer.

And that's OK. Not because it makes me feel young. You are how old you are no matter what other people think about you. Nothing changes the predictable and unyielding reality of simple mathematics and deductive logic.

I sympathize with the fear of being a guy with a job being busted by some underage informant. The dose of fuctitude you must feel when it happens.

Kind of like when I got arrested at age 17 for having one beer at a St. Patrick's Day festival and was only about five feet away from a trash can to throw away the foam at the bottom. In truth, I didn't really care much for beer at the time. I hadn't planned on drinking another one. But I wound up drinking heavily later that night because I was so depressed that I got arrested.

And, do you know that they sent me on a prison tour with rapists and murderers as escorts who smashed chairs above our heads and patted me on the butt and told me they hoped I would make it in because they'd like to have some "white ass?" And that they showed me the room with the dangling light bulb where everybody gets fucked in the ass? And that I had to shred documents for the American Red Cross to prove I cared about my community?

I've got nothing to hide, obviously. I'm more than a decade past legal drinking age.

But let me tell you ... when that case of beer goes across the conveyor belt, I can't help but think a pair of eyes are burning a hole right through me.

It never fails. I always feel like I'm committing a crime. Always.

Maybe it has something to do with an experience my wife and I had at a Harris Teeter grocery store when we were dating in college. I had just turned 23 a few days before. My wife was 21. We wanted to buy some Woodchuck cider and the lady behind the counter asked for my I.D.

I told her I didn't have it, but maybe I could show her my student I.D. She would have none of it. My wife showed the woman her I.D., but the woman said that she couldn't sell it to her because maybe she was just trying to buy it for me. Which, really, I don't think is really any of her business.

I went out to my car and found my license in the trunk. I brought it in. The woman called the manager over, who studied it intensely, looking at it, then at me, then back it, then back at me. I told him, "23."

He looked at me, like a cop would if he were trying to intimidate you, and said, "I'm just doing my job." He stared at me until I acknowledged that he thought he was just doing his job. I remember deciding that, rather than walk out because they were rude to me, I was going to make them sell me the alcoholic beverage. Which, ultimately, they were forced to do. I've never returned to Harris Teeter. I also wasn't saavy enough at the time to complain to upper management.

In any case, it's not like I'm totally off-base with this. After all, I'm being examined for potential criminal activity. That's just the truth of it.

So, I'm done with it. I'm just going to lay out my I.D. no matter what. You know, get that feeling when you witness an accident and you're all cooperative with a cop and everything.

And you know what will happen next?

Some kid's going to say, "Oh, sir, you don't really think you have to do that, right? I mean, you most definitely look waaaaay older than 21."

To which I'll say, "Look, I've been on the inside, man. They pound you in the ass in state prison. With this single light bulb dangling from the ceiling and everything. And I don't want you to have to go there. But if you want to make it easy on me, I appreciate that, too."

And I imagine he'll just think I'm a psycho.

Which isn't the worst, I suppose.

'Autobots ... Roll Out'

Isn't it usually the case that if the villains rock ass, then the good guys tend to get lost in their shadow of awesomeness?

As much as I love Han Solo and Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader steals the cult of personality in that double trilogy.

Kind of the same with Agent Smith, but Morpheus keeps things smooth for the good guys.

Remember the Decepticons? How they could fly and they had that bad-ass symbol and Megatron transformed into the big, huge Luger smoke wagon?

I had a Decepticon sticker on my Tacoma until it wore off. I bought the Decepticon sticker (a couple years ago) because it was the only one I could find.

The thing is, I've been meaning to put an Autobot decal in its place but haven't gotten around to it. Because I don't care how cool the Decepticons are, Optimus Prime is quite simply and officially ... The Shit.

Protect.

Destroy.

Optimus Prime protects us, and when he decides to lay the wood, it's quite a thing of melodramatic beauty.

I can't say the Michael Bay "Transformers" is a fine piece of character development. It was a bit disjointed and the battle scenes kind of disconbobulated. And I'll always compare any reconstruction of larger-than-life, childhood nostalgia to how good Bryan Singer could have done it.

But Optimus Prime was the truth.

No lie.