I’d like to start this morning by thanking the show business community for staying alive today. Your continued breathing and consistent cardiac rhythm mean I can go all the way through Tuesday with eulogizing anybody. Last night it occurred to me that Billy Mays should have been pitching a product designed to alleviate the hassle of having suitcases fall on ones head. I would have called it “Mighty Helmet.” Right. Someone would have dubbed me “Mighty Tool,” but enough self loathing for one post.

     It’s been a quiet week here in Saint Joe. Our ostriches have been fixed and things are relatively normal. Living in a shore town means that we try to make money off of the tourist season. This year’s scam, er I mean attraction was the placing of fiberglass animals all over our little downtown district. Bears, lions, cows, pigs and the occasional ostrich. This is a variation on previous attractions. Several seasons ago the city put up carousel horses, painted and sponsored by local businesses. Someone unbolted one and stole it. The horse was a good 5 1/2 feet tall and several hundred pounds, but off it went. This year we got circus animals. Two little girls decided to ride it. Pudgy, heartless children who just wanted the poor ostrich to be crushed. Broke his legs. Someone in town finally had the bright idea to put a sign up (as in “Stay off our ostrich”). I am forever amazed at living in a town that feels the need to build attractions each year. After all, 1/4 mile away is this ginormous, fresh water body and miles of beach to go with it. Naw. Fiberglass ostriches. That’s where it’s at. Who am I kidding? I’ll be downtown this weekend, celebrating liberty and riding the circus animals. Pudgy, heartless blogger.

Monday is brought to you by the letters w, t and f.  What a long strange week it’s been. One of my earliest posts was a snotty rant about Perez Hilton (5-18). I needn’t have said anything. Perez is doing a fine job of flaming out. I could talk about his smack down last week, or the humiliation of being turned down as a donor to The Matthew Shepard Foundation. Nah, it’s his website that is going to torch him. I may be a hack, but I’ve never taken stories from the News of The World. His Michael Jackson coverage was priceless, but also familiar. Probably because I read it at the supermarket last week.

      Billy Mays was found dead at home Sunday morning and I am just at a loss over this. Like a Head-On commercial, Billy was an inescapable part of the television watching experience over the last decade. You could argue that Mays was hopelessly behind the times with his ill-fitting chambray shirts and Richard Karn beard. That could be exactly why he was so successful. This loud mouth schlub looked so out of place in the world that we paid attention to him. I remember that the original Oxy-Whatever ads featured Mays at a wedding doing spot laundry. The idea was absurd, but it allowed Billy to barrel his way into pop culture. Even I, lifelong skeptic and cranky critic, got sucked by the Mighty Putty crap Mays hawked. It was foul smelling plumber’s putty that no self respecting hardware store would sell. Bill, we hardly knew thee (and even in death you’ll be a better pitch guy than that wanker who sells the super lady purses).

    One last thing. Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman (R) is rolling on with her campaign of wing-nut conspiracy theories. This past week’s was her idea that filling out next year’s U.S. Census form was a free pass for the government to send us to internment camps. Did this woman not give a heartfelt, teary eyed plea to her constituents on television last fall to allow her another term (as she fell in the polls)? I guess the thing to do after all that honesty is to spend seven months in a cathartic purging of reason and good sense. The ongoing chronicle of lunacy appears at http://dumpbachman.blogspot.com. Some of her recent rantings besides the census have included likening the climate change bill to government tyranny and she is on the verge of coming out as a full blown 9/11 denier.  I see it all clearly now. There is a presidential run in the Bachman future and I bet there will be supporters willing to pony up the cash for this screeching public debacle. Onward and upward.

For children of the 70′s and early 80′s Friday is a mixed emotion morning. The deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are vivid reminders that we are going forward into middle age and that the march of history will sweep us up, too. To be sure, Michael and Farrah (for these were first name stars) were baby boomers, the generation ahead of us, but they were our stars, our childhood icons. In my mind there is a list of stars from childhood that I cherish memories of. Some have started to pass away, most I hope never do.

     Michael was the last real soul superstar. This may seem unlikely at first thought, knowing that so many have come after him, including Usher, Beyonce and dozens of others. Michael was dubbed the King of Pop just as hip hop was in it’s first blush. He represents the last genuine r&b powerhouse performer before the music of black America took on a nearly completely adversarial edge. As Chuck D once pointed out, Rap music became young black America’s CNN. Pedestrian songs like “Man in the Mirror” weren’t doing that for anybody. Michael benefited from a miraculous combination of raw, soulful talent and timing (just like Sinatra, the Beatles and Elvis. The opening of the long outdated documentary The Complete Beatles put it best. “They were, above all, very very good, crafting on a singular skill.”). When Motown 25 aired on May 16, 1983, Marvin Gaye was within a year of his death and the time was right for a young pop star to emerge out of what was left of the label’s aging roster (Gaye was at CBS already). Michael was raw and polished all at the same time. He had the songs, the Quincy Jones production, good looks. The world was his. Never mind what came in his later years. 1984 was Michael’s. He was generation X’s first experience with record buying in masses, in having a choice in how we dressed (i.e., those doctored up, vinyl members only jackets every kid begged for). I remember having the rare choice on a road trip of B.K. or McD. and I chose B.K. because they were selling Victory Tour posters for a buck. I coughed up my allowance and that poster hung in my room for a year.

     Farrah was trickier. She suffered from the Mclean Stevenson syndrome in which a star leaves a hit show and can’t catch fire (although she had Burning Bed). She was beyond hot during that one glorious year of Charlie’s Angels and that counts for a lifetime of achievement. Each of the cast members of the original Angels had a unique appeal. Jacqueline Smith had (has) a smolderingly mysterious quality, Kate Jackson had an odd kind of athleticism, but Farrah was like staring at the sun. Like watching Michael, I  watched her descent into the uneasy, post stardom life of weird career choices. The late career nudity seemed more humiliating than something that would build a positive legacy for her. The fountain scene in Robert Altman’s Dr. T. and the Women seemed autobiographical and sad. As for the Playboy layouts Farrah did in her late forties…nothing should be said. She was a long way from the iconic 70′s star with her own shampoo line and dolls made in her image. Michael and Farrah were both a long way from how we remember them. That’s the point. The world moves on and creates memory imprints of the good years. I sincerely hope both have found the peace they were denied in life.

I had chosen to ignore the whole strange saga of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. At least for the first three days. Who am I to criticize a “rising star” Republican governor for wanting to turn off the cell phone and go hike the Appalachian Trail? Sure, He’s got a state to run, but if Sanford wants to go all Bear Grylls and live on bird eggs and snakes, that is his  prerogative. He went crazy out of touch and kept the insanity to himself. Then the story became Argentina with a girlfriend. Holy way to flame out! Honestly? If I flame out I totally want it to be South America with a mysterious woman named Maria. Sanford’s press conference explaining the whole affair just made the situation worse. He wove a halting, twisted story of the progress of the affair. As I watched I wondered if (and when) we’ll see one of these press conferences in which the busted politician just says “yeah it was about the nookie.” Then there is the issue of the wives in all of these situations. Why is that Spitzer, Sanford, McGreevy and so many other politicians get caught cheating on hotties? Yes, I’m a jerk for saying it, but the recent history of jilted first ladies has been cougar laden. Anyway…onward and upward. This really is a strange time for the Republican party. Every time they get the podium ready for the next President of these United States the front runners screw up. There was Bobby Jindal’s fireside chat after the State of the Union Address. We haven’t heard from him since. May be hiking the Appalachian Trail. If Mitt, and Newt and Sarah Palin find a fourth conservative star they can morph into a Republican Voltron and form one winning candidate for 2012. Right, I have issues.

     Speaking of issues, today is my two year anniversary of flipping burgers at the hospital. I quit my restaurant gig and thought I’d help out the family by going to work in health care. Two years of long days wishing I’d gone to hike the Appalachian Trail. Alas, the days are never as long as those working the line in a busy restaurant. I don’t miss the burns, the tired legs (I was at my best when I did cardio), the endless nights which started early in the morning. What I miss is the speed, the rhythm, the constant prep and organization. I miss the line rush and even more the feeling when it ended. I have it good, though. Thank heavens for work that only relies on people getting sick. Every time I see an ambulance I know that I have a steady job. Life is good.

Over the past weekend I re-jiggered my definition of “reality TV.” I spent a quiet  Father’s day morning with my six year old daughter, watching coverage of bloody street battles in Tehran. With care and trepidation I explained (as best as I knew) the nature of a repressive theocracy and why people won’t honor the united voices of their countrymen. This is the new reality. The reality of barges full of North Korean nukes cruising into Singapore. The reality of Michigan’s 14% unemployment rate.  So, the summer of star studded reality programming is just sort of a shrug. The great reality TV revelatory moment was to occur tonight and I wonder if America’s collective yawns were heard. The big TV news (which the world knew a long time ago) was that TVs Jon and Kate Gosselin were to separate starting after this episode. I turned off the news of the world for an hour and sat watching the uncomfortably self conscious program until I could stand no more. First of all, Jon acted like Clint Eastwood’s neighbor kid in Grand Torino and I was waiting for old Kowalsky to come out and knock some sense into the man. Jon’s range of emotions went from a withering indifference to a petulance that made his kids look mature. The children were actually fairly well behaved and entertaining. Kate was her Kate-iest. I cringed every time she scolded the kids as some passive punishment for how she felt about Jon. Alas, none of this is important. I tuned in expecting some television moment ala the Loud family of the 1970′s. Instead, we were all treated to more engineered, mass media attention hound whining. I was appreciative of the thoughtful way Kate read the cue cards as her marriage fell apart. Jon, the more astute of the two, complained about the paparazzi and the fact that soldiers are dying overseas while he gets into the tabloids. While I give him credit for noting the problem, he isn’t exactly keeping the photogs off the lawn. God bless the kids and their Crooked Houses. Otherwise the show would have been unwatchable.

Yesterday I heard a sermon given in my local church in which the example of George McCauslin was used to illustrate the point of giving up worry and letting God take over one’s life. The McCauslin story has become an urban/internet legend and can easily be found with a quick google search. It goes like this. George McCauslin was the director of a troubled YMCA in Pittsburgh. After working 85 hour weeks for a long period of time, Mr. McCauslin became physically and mentally worn out. He began to not sleep or eat well and was on the verge of a nervous collapse. A therapist told George he needed to release the stress before it killed him. McCauslin took an uncharacteristic day off from work and went for a stroll in the woods of western Pennsylvania. Feeling his body unclench and his mind unbind itself, McCauslin sat down under a tree and composed a letter to God. It went like this: “Dear God, today I hereby resign as general manager of the Universe. Love, George.” He later remarked to a friend “Wonder of wonders, he accepted my resignation.”
(Haffner, Karl. Soul Matters, 2006, Pacific Press).
I marvelled at the concept when I heard it and then inwardly cheered. Could it be? I’ve always heard that it’s essential to “let go and let God,” to give God our burdens and focus only on loving Him, but I hadn’t thought of it in such simple terms. Could I one day just say “Thank you Lord, but I am not capable of running my own life, let alone the entire universe.” He knows I can’t, but I don’t think that I’ve ever realized it. I awoke this morning feeling less burdened and more alive than I had in a long time. I can enjoy my work, family and world without trying to micro-manage the minutae of each operation. Now for the next step. No running traffic lights this morning (yes, even in lake shore resort Podunk town we have traffic lights), because I’ll get to work whether I worry about it, or not. This is either the first, or last day of the rest of my life and I intend to enjoy it, rather than try to manipulate the data.

Sunday marks another Father’s Day, the great American ritual of telling dad “thanks for badgering Mom one Sunday afternoon years ago, please accept this Walmart golf shirt with a picture of Dale Earnhardt Jr. (grinning idiotically because he hasn’t won anything) as a token of your children’s affection.” Fatherhood has been the most amazing and enlightening experience of my life, but having a nationalized day to honor it defeats the purpose of being a dad. I want nothing but to raise my child in the way that she should go and hope that she doesn’t do anything disgusting, disturbing or illegal to pay for college. Having a whole day to remember fatherhood is just overkill. For the last calender year I’ve cheered and encouraged my daughter, watched way too much High School Musical (it is, after all, a singing and dancing extravaganza) and gone to off to fight the battle to feed and clothe the family. No need for a holiday, because this is what I wanted to do with my life. I am using the day to do a little manning up, though.

     Last night I watched Clint Eastwood’s recent directorial effort Grand Torino. This was really an underrated film and very moving. I was especially moved by the fatherhood aspect of it. I’m not going to give away the salient plot points, but when Eastwood’s crotchety old s.o.b Walt Kowalsky tosses his insensitive family out onto the curb I cheered. The character regrets not being more “fatherly” with his two sons, but realizes that the world needs more fathers and less daddies. As I watched the film, I thought of  my own parenting style. The other day I was sitting in the front seat of the car waiting for my wife to come out of Walgreens. I had two bouncing six year old girls in the back (one was mine), HSM3 was blasting from the speakers and I was sitting reading a cookbook while wearing a pink polo shirt. Good freakin’ lord. As I watched the flick last night, I began thinking in terms of “what would Clint do?” There must be a balance between modern dad and old school bad mother flipper. So, my Father’s Day resolution is to ditch the pink polo and strike a balance between the man I know I am and good father I strive to be. Even if I drive a Fiat mini-van and read cookbooks.

Several weeks ago I read Vogue Editor Anna Wintour’s comment that on a recent trip to the Minnesota she found many of the citizens to resemble “little houses.”  It was if the grande dame became like Nikita Kruschev, touring middle America and poking the bellies of the jolly farm folk. Rather than become overly offended by her reactionary statements to 60 Minutes journalist Morley Safer, I marvelled at her use of fourth grade literature to describe the physical state of a swath of the country. I let the “little houses” comment roll around in my addled brain for days and weeks without troubling myself too much. This week, though, I started to consider the plight of the “little houses” as it was reported that the American Medical Association debated policy on obesity at it’s annual meetings in Chicago. The AMA is weighing the push by advocacy groups to label obesity a disability. Once labelled a disability, doctors no longer have the same rights to speak freely to patients about obesity because it could constitute discrimination. The debate is a reminder that we are no longer a country worried about weight for the sake of weight. Obesity is quickly becoming the greatest public health threat of the new century. Anna Wintour, bless her East Coast elitist heart, is wired into the pulse of something that is at the center of American life. As a food service professional, I should be too. Diabetes, rising insurance costs, lost work time, increasing airline fuel costs, public accommodation changes all stem from the simple concept that we are a nation of food abusers. I am a “little house” and am on the move toward change. Yeah, I know, I wrote Tuesday about Hamburgers, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think about the impact I’ve made on thousands of people as professional cook. In the past fifty years, nearly every issue threatening our social fabric has been addressed-smoking cessation, climate change, gun control, drunk driving and highway fatalities. So why is it we can’t pull ourselves away from the buffet? Here are some things that I’m engaged in to make the world a tad healthier:

1.) Ban the Can-Some physicians liken our soda consumption to downing straight sugar water. Sugar has value, but the subsidized corn filler in most commericial soda pop does not. The movement toward becoming a nation of pop addicts began as early as 1939 when Pepsi waged war against it’s rival by offering twice as much content per bottle than competitors, when the serving size was 8 ounces. This has been the shift for 70 years. More, More, More. Elizabeth Royte notes in her book Bottlemania about the water industry that we are a generation with an oral fixation. We are a people who have a psychological need to carry around a bottle all the time.

2.) View unhealthy eating habits in the same way as smoking. Smoking is a pretty obvious killer. If you take noxious weeds and blend them with industrial cleaning chemicals, roll them into a wrapper, put the whole mess in your mouth and set fire to it, that’s a killer. Poor eating is more subtle, but the effect is similar. Read the labels. If your food product has an ingredient list like a chemistry set, choose a food closer to it’s natural state. Less ingredients, less processes. Eat smaller amounts of better foods. I often have to sell a margarine product called “Smart Balance.” When opened, it reminds me of Robin Williams diaper changing line from Live at the Met-”This shit is green!” The reality is that if we eat reasonable amounts of natural foods along with moderate exercise, we’re better off than eating a diet rich in compounds created in a lab. I’ve said too much, but I think I may have found something that I care about.

I have written about at least two thirds of the sub-header on my blog at some point (the love, faith and hamburgers bit). Not many words have been devoted to the burger side of my life. Most days my job takes me to different work areas, but at least once a week I’m required to make hamburgers. Yeah, I know, it’s like some sort of mid-life, Kevin Spacey in American Beauty thing. I have gone backwards career wise until I’m back at the job I had at 17. The Spatula entered the wilderness 19 years ago with…a spatula. My first real cooking gig was the same one thousands of American teenagers are blessed to start with. I was a burger slave at McDonalds in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The beginning was inauspicious, to be sure. My first day on the job there was no McD’s swag available to wear. My trainer Gerald was asked to give up one of his snazzy visor caps from his locker. He had tons and they were all covered in curl activator. This was my first lesson in kitchen politics. Don’t be magnanimous and settle for something that doesn’t work. Within a half hour I found out why, because my forehead was burning from the goop on the visor. My first days at McD’s pre-dated the clamshell grill, that wonderful automated burger press that cooked burgers in 39 seconds. We did it ourselves. The goal for a trainee was to be able to cook 18 regular patties-”regs” -at a time without fail. I sucked. Gerald gave up on me and sent me off to stand by the bun caramelizer. I still have a scar from caramelizing my hand one afternoon.  I worked for McD’s for a year and I am guessing that they wanted to fire me daily. Some of the highlights included deep frying happy meal toys, fouling up their brand new clamshell by trying to saute onions on it and under cooking bacon (because I liked the texture). My nickname was Rain Man, because I could tell how many Mcnuggets were in the warmer at any given time without bothering to look. The point of all this Mcnostalgia, however, is that I learned burgerology. The wonderful art and science of grilling ground beef on a flat top griddle was imparted to me.

     The key to a decent burger is to cook it hot, flat and fast (no offense to Thomas Friedman for usurping his book title here). The pan, grill or griddle has to already have reached a point at which the outside of the burger is seared and carmelized (the breakdown and cooking of surface sugars, which is why the browned part of meat tastes slightly sweet). The temptation is to throw food into a pan as soon as we turn on the burner, but patience is key. Hot, but not high heat. Don’t crank the knob up and rip it off. Good cooking requires patience. Secondly, there’s the flat issue. I used to mess with the fat burger concept, but unless you’re cooking a mini meat loaf and planning to finish your burgers in the oven, keep ‘em flat. Even in the advertised restaurant thick burgers, you’ll never see one more than a 1/4 inch. This is why the Lord gave us the double, triple and quadruple stack burgers. Easier to stack ‘em than to try to cook a giant one. Finally, there’s the fast idea. Thin things cook faster at higher heat, big food items need more time and lower heat (or you get burnt on the outside, underdone on the inside). For your specific doneness, learn to temp burgers by feel rather than a thermometer. Curl your index finger inward to the pad of your palm. The top part (nearest your thumb) feels like what well done meat “should” feel like. As you feel lower with your fingers along the outside of your palm the feeling is of less done meat. Ask a cook to demonstrate this and after a while you’ll know by instinct and spatula feel. Now that I’ve bored you completely to death, go get a sack of burgers (although I am still an afficianado of Max and Erma’s Garbage Burger).

I wanted to start by saying how cool I think the SocialVibe widget is. For years I’ve avoided putting ad content on any web endeavor that has my name attached. With this, at least I get to use my little post for some good and to be a more pro-active human citizen-as God created me to be.

After writing yesterday’s fountain of crass humor and poor grammar, I got a little spam from some sort of gestation calculation website. Let me just say that I realize the obvious. Michelle Duggar has not been pregnant for 162 months (13 1/2 years-or one month for every game of the regular baseball season) of her life. I purposely exaggerated 18 separate kids at 9 months apiece. Certainly, she’s had multiple births, pre-term labor and alien abductions which would shorten her gestation ordeal. I also noticed in my “research” that J.B. Duggar has published an autobiography, which is sold in Christian bookstores. No wonder Christians get a bad rap. Nothing terribly charitable about knocking someone up 18 times. Hey, who am I to judge.

Speaking of knocking up, last Wednesday I wrote about Sarah Palin calling Dave Letterman pathetic publicly and enlisting John Ziegler to fight for her cause. The joke about A-Rod and using the seventh inning stretch to assault one of the Palin daughters was completely disgusting and should not have been uttered. Of course, the Palins and Ziegler have turned the situation into cash-for-gold. Ziegler is now leading the “fire Dave” movement and Dave is uttering yet another round of apologies (during what was one his best ratings weeks in nearly 15 years). The reality is that the Palin machine, the one that is digging for the next Republican nomination (shouldn’t take much), just keeps hammering this. I may hate the joke, but I still believe that the pathetic one in this situation is Sarah Palin. If I ever dragged my child through such a situation, I’d hope some sensible handler would say “enough.” She doesn’t have handlers, but acolytes and cronies, who just perpetuate the machine. May none of us ever be mowed down by Sarah Palin and her snowmobile of justice.