Thar She Blows…Ewww!

Posted on August 20, 2013 by captaincliff


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My dedicated readers have wondered what I would blog about next. Well, here’s the unlikely answer:  whale poop.

Dont scoff, dont laugh, and dont call me crazy. When it comes to crazy, my family and I hold the presumed badge of authority, kind of like Doc Holliday and the trigger-happy Earp brothers in Tombstone Arizona.  Slightly scary thought, right? So just listen up and learn. This info could make you filthy rich someday, either on TV shows like Jeopardy or in the French perfumery business. Allow me to explain.
First let’s get the coincidental yet peripheral facts out of the way. There is a lovely island in the Caribbean right off Belize named Ambergris Caye. The genius-lunatic John McAfee, the drug-crazed hacker who developed the first anti-virus software (until he was recently chased across South America for possibly shooting his cranky next door neighbor) lived there. Having a penchant for young girls, firearms and inventing new strains of chemical bath salts (with Viagra-like side-effects) eventually made him unpopular with the Belizean government. His life story is definitely a future Hollywood blockbuster starring Johnny Depp in a desperate attempt to resurrect his Captain Jack Sparrow channeling Hunter Thompson  role and hopefully blot out the cinematic eyesore and financial ruin resulting from his Jack Sparrow doing Tonto performance in The Lone Ranger.

 Apparently “ambergris”, when translated correctly means “whale shit”, even tho I’m not sure of the Latin or Greek root-word or it’s actual linguistic origin. For some reason, I never even considered the fact that whales, like most other living things, need to “drop trough” and pinch a loaf of whatever foul excrement results from that-which-whales ingest. I guess I was too involved with myself, as usual, and my own bowel behavior.  Anybody with Germanic genes, regardless of their ethnicity or religious upbringing can attest to the tendency. Not only do Jewish people and those of German descent have a predilection for counting, ordering and sorting everything obsessively but they also initialize, weigh, number, type, stamp and write it all down in great detail. Sadly, tragically, almost inconceivably, the Nazi regime during WWII actually kept meticulous records and triplicate copies of the many millions of people they were exterminating like rats. It should therefore come as no surprise that the German people as well as those they once attempted to liquidate might lean toward keeping a mental record of their own bowel movements including noting any lack of “regularity” or sufficient “production” (see my earlier blog entitled “Hitler’s Farts”).

Luckily other mammals, including whales are less obsessive-compulsive and, as a result, they tend to just live, eat, shit, and eventually die of natural causes, especially if we the Nazi-like species of our time and place dont kill them off in droves as is our predilection. Whales keep no notes and could care less if their poo sinks or floats. However, we humans apparently do care, and, as a result, there are some very excited marine biologists, whale experts and assorted archeologists who are at present high-fiving each other like NASA engineers after a successful space launch. The article referenced below goes into extreme and unnecessary detail about someone apparently finding the “Holy Grail of Whale Shit”, some kind of 2 million year old hunk of calcified whale crap with prehistoric squid beaks sticking out of it. More amazing this hunk of incredibly old shit was discovered in the badlands of Umbria in central Italy, a lovely place I’ve been told by my brother.  If this becomes another major eco-tourist attraction after seeing the Colliseum and touring Pompeii, I will eat my therapy hat…and sometime later shit it out intact.

Ok, I do honestly get it. It’s nearly 2 million years old and the only whale shit fossil of it’s kind ever to be discovered on planet Earth. But to be honest, if I ever found it I would have probably stupidly spray painted the thing (like I do everything), used it as a bedroom door stop or attached one of my weird CaptCliff peace pipes to it with super-glue and velcro (see photo above). I guess it’s lucky I didn’t find it. On the other hand, I respect it’s rarity, like a unusual meteorite or a nail clipping from a Neanderthal. The only difference is the revolting visual imagery this ancient ambergris evokes. I DARE authorities to put “it” in an Italian museum and bring a busload of schoolchildren, regardless of their country of origin to see it and then be told exactly where it came from. If those kids dont erupt in innocent laughter and gesticulate using the international childhood sign for, “Ewww…gross!”, I will eat my……you-know-what. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, apparently “regular” whale poop has an enticing “musky scent” that makes it extremely valuable and highly sought after by people in the perfume business. Dont worry, you wont find me trying to sneak a quarter-ounce plastic bag of the stuff back through Customs on my next trip to Italy or Belize. European Viagra or aromatic white truffles from Umbria maybe, but whale poop…not a frickin’ chance. Lastly, I just learned from my Antarctica shlepping brother Neal that there might be something even worse smelling than whale shit. It’s whale breath and it’s called “sparg”.

When I say dont scoff I really mean it. Some punk kid in the U.K. just found a hunk of this whale scat on the beach and its estimated worth is 63K!
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Blurred Lines and Sexual Groping: A Jewish Perspective

Posted on August 14, 2013 by captaincliff
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Around this time of year, the High Holy Days, we are instructed to take even more time then usual to reflect and consider what it takes to heal ourselves, our community, and the world at large. Many shared issues are food for thought and ripe for our efforts at self-improvement. Others tend to remain hidden, undisclosed and generally not considered to be big “Jewish problems” like alcoholism, drug abuse, or sex addiction. As a psychotherapist and sex therapist for over 30 years I can confirm that that kind of thinking is somewhere between dead wrong and ostrich head in-the-sand-in-complete-denial. Jews suffer from the same mental, behavioral, and sexual problems everybody else does. It’s possible we just feel somewhat worse and more guilty about it….

Groping is the main topic today. That’s right…unwanted sexual advances using the hands (or anything else) by people who are often falsely assumed to be “those grotesque creepy guys”. Why falsely? Because it happens alot, and often by people who may be “creeps” but dont always appear creepy, ie. Mayor Filner of San Diego, the former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and possibly the entire male population of Japan on their bullet trains, buses, and subway cars. Groping occurs in private offices, Hollywood movie studio “casting” couches and surprisingly public places like commercial airplanes in flight and to young women who choose to crowd surf at noisy rock concerts, etc. Some of these grabby guys slobber while they grope which I admit makes it twice as gross (see Mayor Filner article link below). Others, like Anthony Weiner-Carlos Danger use social media to electronically cross personal boundaries and then “self-grope” to achieve some kind of twisted egotistical as well as sexual satisfaction.

As a reform Jewish man and minus my professional credentials, I’ve often wondered the same thing that many other relatively law-abiding citizens do such as, “What the heck is up with these crazy shmucks!!? Dont they know its socially weird, troll-like, and just plain creepy-wrong?” Even certified sex therapists, psychologists and pill-dispensing psychiatrists dont know all that much about groping as a distinct clinical problem or social issue and offer few definitive insights. For example, why do gropers grope? The obvious answer is “because they can”, but that tells us nothing, really. Sure it’s a sex crime in the United States and until recently a fairly common form of male patterned sign language in certain parts of Italy and India, but even such obvious cultural differences sheds no light on groping’s origins or fundamental purpose. With or without a therapist, a police officer, a Bible, a Torah, or a Koran to consult, most of us know its wrong to physically grope or take advantage of another human being in that way and yet it still happens at an alarming rate at school, at college, in the workplace, and even in Jewish households and neighborhoods.

Even scarier, from the Jewish perspective, is the fact that all of the individuals singled out in the opening paragraph are Jewish… with the obvious exception of the Terminator. Didn’t our parents and our Jewish upbringing teach us to respect women and to not violate their personal space and physical bodies in such blatant and demeaning ways? To even speak of it as a sex “crime” and unseemly behavior engaged in by someone who is Jewish is to invoke the unwritten Philip Roth rule that whispers, “Oy, it’s a shanda, dont talk about it. It will give all of us Jews a bad name, like Portnoy’s Complaint did…”. Unfortunately it does happen and NOT talking about it or confronting it’s existence in our lives (or childhoods) only serves to keep “it” hidden in the shadows of our Yiddishe psyche, with or without the presence of the Kinnehora (evil eye) and the ritualistic spitting, ie., “Tut,tut,tut!” to make it all “go away”.

Let’s start with the old 60’s or 70’s slang phrase, “to cop a feel”. What does that suggest? It almost sounds like a masculine accomplishment of sorts, like hitting a single in baseball or making it safely to second base by stealing. In fact when I was a teenager, baseball terms were interchangeable for sexual achievement, like “going all the way, balling, getting to third base”, etc. To be honest the implication was somewhat of a sportsman’s challenge and question, as in how far or how much can you “get” off of a woman, could you get her in the “sack”, or bag the “chick” or “fox”, etc. If you were sexually turned down by a girl on a date you had been “shot down” or failed to “score”, as if it was a board game or aerial combat. It wasn’t a question of religion, ethics, proper etiquette or Torah instruction at Sunday school. It was the existing cultural norm and I’m not so sure it’s really changed that much since then.

I dont feel, for the purpose of this essay, that I need to research or look up contemporary slang terms for groping in the New Urban Dictionary. I’m sure there are at least one or two phrases for that kind of disrespectful, sexist and uncalled for behavior when engaged in by adults in skinny jeans, saggy pants or Mad Men wannabe suits. Historically I know there are probably equally suitable Medieval terms for sexual groping, most likely in Olde English to mean “using ones plague-infected man-hands to touch another person in and around their private Medieval parts without permission”. In high school and later in college I remember reading about alot of uninvited grabbing and groping in the dark in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” that ended up with the Baker sleeping with the Miller’s wife…. or maybe it was the other way around. Apparently, the lack of electricity or ambient light at night in those truly Dark Ages was a convenient excuse for many men to be sloppy drunks as well as nocturnal creepers. More important, I remember that when I grew up it was considered fairly normal to “see what you could get” as far as sex and groping ones high school girlfriends and college dinner dates were concerned. Of course if they (women) said “no” back then, that probably meant no, much to our chagrin and low adolescent frustration tolerance. Some guys, however, were known to “not take no for an answer” and seemed oddly comfortable sharing their techniques for overcoming “resistence”. It usually involved drugs, alcohol, or guile in a thousand different forms.

The point is there is a long and well documented history (including classical literature) to suggest that some men both now and then don’t/didnt ever perceive it to be wrong or bad to assert themselves physically or touch women inappropriately. I admit to lacking knowledge of older manuscripts or ancient texts (like carved stone tablets or papyrus scrolls) that may have given men license or biblical authority to be gropey pervs.  However, we all KNOW there is alot of well, hard to swallow,  on-the-edge of being creepy stuff in the Old Testament, and it doesn’t feel any better to know that Lot’s daughters returned the favor after the whole Sodom and Gomorrah angry God beatdown incident. It even makes you wonder if God, his angels (or his early publishers-writers) weren’t abit confused, conflicted or sexist from the very “beginning”, so to speak. Mind you, I am NOT saying that God himself is a groper or that he/she/it ever condoned such rude and crude behavior. I am merely saying if Yahweh thought it was clearly wrong to touch and drool all over another person, male or female, just for kicks, he could have maybe added it to the “Do Not” list, like an 11th commandment or even a minor addendum to one of the other related ones, like….

” In addition, Thou shalt NOT reach out and grab the busom of Abraham, Abraham’s wife, daughter, niece, slave OR ANYONE ELSE without prior consent”, or even,  P.S. ”Btw, while staying busy NOT worshipping the Golden Calf, lying, stealing, killing, or committing adultery, please also keep your nomadic-semitic hands to yourself…. or else there will be a “pillar of salt” and/or lightning bolt waiting for you.”  Love, Your God (The One Who Smotes)  P.S. In retrospect, I realize that “not laying” with someone this way or that was rather vague.

When I think about the whole thing, sexual groping remains a confusing cultural conundrum, regardless of its religious prescriptions or relative lack of. Ok, I really just wanted to use that word conundrum, but it does in fact apply. We live in a society now where supposedly egalitarian standards for men and women have been established. At the same time, narcissism, physical attributes like big synthetic boobs, wardrobe malfunctions, dressing up like unicorns at Furry conventions (or whatever Miley Cyrus did at the VMAs)and sexual aggressiveness by both genders is reinforced by social media and commonly depicted. Casual sexual behavior and “hooking up” is widely accepted among teenagers as normative rather than non-sexual relationship-building (like talking or chatting for a few minutes before jumping in bed and engaging in 50 Shades of the Kama Sutra). It’s “fast food” sex that rules the Western world right now rather than Bubbe’s slow-cooking in the kitchen as well as in the bedroom. Gropers by nature and by predilection are fast food sexual predators. They bump and run, or they grope and leave, depending on the setting and their available mode of transportation.

It would be easy to either minimize the whole groping thing as a less serious or inconsequential kind of crime compared to being hung upside down in some sexual psychopath-serial killer’s basement in Ohio for ten years, or conversely overanalyzing its necessary connection to the patriarchial power structures in developing nations. Still, there does appear to be a correlation between personal narcissism and the kind of power-fueled CEO psychopathy that leads certain people (and politicians) to reach for their penises, cell phones or other peoples private parts rather than just shake hands and hug like the rest of us. I’m just saying we’ve got to “own” the fact that there are alot of mixed sexual messages and unclear signals existing nowadays. Maybe the gropers, troll-like as they are, are also in a certain way the “cultural canaries in the sex related coal mine”. They might just be the more impulsive, compulsive, self-centered expressions of our own confused sexual psyches. Or perhaps they are just the more emotionally disturbed, ignorant or clueless among us who watch some kind of  porn video (out of the 47829274927 varieties easily obtained online) and stupidly assume, “Hey, I could do that in the real world”!

As controversial as that notion might be,  it’s not completely different from the Aspergers kid with dozens of violent videogames and a family gun collection (that his mom bought) who decided to go out and shoot innocent kids at their elementary school ….as well as his well-meaning mother. Certainly that kid had a number of serious social problems and developmental issues. But, what was the Orthodox Rabbi’s excuse on the Delta flight? (see link below) Obviously one crime does not equal the other but, hey, how about we first clean up the contradictory societal messages about sex, our “blurred lines” regarding personal boundaries and especially people who think for whatever reason that it’s ok to touch the non-consensual male or female merchandise? In addition, we might want to decide what needs to be said to grabby former Governors and current mayors who fondle and kiss constituents like a drunken camel on a World ORT/ Federation mission to Israel. Whatever we decide, the same clear  and consistent message needs to be sent to all the other gropers and boob-bandits we may know (but tend to silently put up with) whether they may be at work, at synagogue, or even at family gatherings and lovely candle-lit shabbat dinners. How could we ever hope to truly repair ourselves or the world without finding the psychological, spiritual, and moral strength to do so?

Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist  in Atlanta, Georgia. Contact: 404-932-7193
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Gropers: Creepy Guys on Planes, Trains and in Politics

Posted on August 2, 2013 by captaincliff
I just read an article in the New York Times “Anxiety” series about a woman getting groped in the subway. I’m pretty sure nobody is all that surprised. Why? Because it happens alot, ie. the Mayor of San Diego, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and the entire male population of Japan have been implicated in having a certain proclivity toward “manhandling” women. ,  Groping has been reported as occuring on trains, buses, planes and even to young women who somewhat naively choose to crowd surf at rock concerts, etc. Some of these grabby guys slobber while they grope which makes it twice as gross (see Mayor Filner article link below and recent Blurred Lines parody video). Others, like Anthony Weiner use social media to electronically cross personal boundaries and then “self-grope” to achieve some kind of twisted egotistical as well as sexual satisfaction. Nowadays you can even cross personal boundaries and cause great pain to other people using a cellphone text, sext, or digital image. Why is the phenomena so common and why are we so habituated to it that we assume it’s a yuckky yet unavoidable part of life, like cockroaches and those tiny ants that find their way into the sugar bowl no matter how well you try to hide it?

Even professional sex therapists and psychologists dont know that much about groping as a distinct clinical issue or social problem and offer no definitive insights on the subject. For example, why do gropers grope? The obvious answer is “because they can”, but that tells us nothing. Sure it’s a sex crime in the United States and too common a form of male initiated communication/sign language in Italy and India, but even such obvious cultural differences sheds no light on groping’s origins or fundamental purpose.

Let’s start with the old slang phrase, “to cop a feel”. What does that suggest? It almost sounds like a masculine accomplishment of sorts, like hitting a single in baseball or making it safely to second base by stealing. In fact when I was a teenager, baseball terms were interchangeable for sexual achievement, like “going all the way, balling, getting to third base”, etc. To be honest the implication was somewhat of a sportsman’s challenge back in the day. The main male questions were: How far or how much sex could you “get” from women on dates, and could you get her in the “sack”, or bag the “chick” or “fox”,etc. If you were turned down by a girl on a date you had been “shot down”, as if it was a interactive board game or aerial combat. In listening to the popular song, Blurred Lines, I’m not sure things have changed that much, unfortunately.

I dont feel like looking up a contemporary slang term for grabbing and groping in the Urban Dictionary right now. I’m sure there are at least one or two phrases for that kind of uncalled for behavior when engaged in by guys in skinny jeans, saggy pants or Mad Men wannabe suits and ties.  Similarly I know there are probably equally suitable Medieval terms for sexual groping, likely in Olde English for using ones plague-infected hands to touch another person somewhere in and around their private Medieval parts without permission. I vaguely remember reading about alot of uninvited grabbing going on in the pitch dark in “Chaucer’s Tales” that ended up with the Baker sleeping with the Miller’s wife or maybe it was the other way around. Apparently, the lack of electricity or ambient lighting at night in those times was a convenient excuse for men to become sloppy drunks and nocturnal creepers. The point is there is a long and well documented history (including classical literature) to suggest that some men don’t/didnt ever perceive it to be wrong or very bad to touch women inappropriately or recognize their “personal boundaries”. I admit to lacking detailed knowledge of older manuscripts or ancient texts (like carved stone tablets or papyrus scrolls) that may have knowingly or unknowingly given men free license (or even biblical authority) to be groping pervs.  However, we all KNOW there is alot of  pretty kinky stuff in the Bible that is difficult to ignore even taking into account changing standards of acceptable social behavior. It kinda makes you wonder if God, his angels (or his early publishers) weren’t abit confused, insensitive and sexist from the very “beginning”, so to speak.

When I think about the whole thing, groping remains a cultural conundrum. I really just wanted to use that word conundrum, but it does apply. We now live in a society where physical attributes like big synthetic boobs, wardrobe malfunctions, dressing up like unicorns at Furry conventions and sexual aggressiveness by both genders is reinforced and casually depicted, just as “hooking up” is now widely accepted among teenagers as normative versus alternatives like talking or having coffee before jumping in bed and engaging in 50 Shades of the Kama Sutra. It’s fast food sex that rules the world right now rather than slow-cooking in ones kitchen or love life. Gropers by nature and predilection are fast food sexual predators. They bump and run, or they grope and leave, depending on the setting and their mode of transportation.

I realize it’s easy to either minimize the whole groping thing as an inconsequential kind of crime compared to being hung upside down in some serial killer’s basement in Ohio for ten years, or conversely overanalyzing its connection to the patriarchial power structures in developing nations. Still, there does appear to be a correlation between psychological narcissism and the kind of power-fueled CEO psychopathy that leads certain people (and politicians) to reach for their penises, cellphone cams or other peoples private parts rather than just shake hands and hug like the rest of us. I’m just saying we’ve got to own the fact there are alot of “blurred lines”, mixed messages and unclear sex signals today and maybe the gropers, troll-like as they are, are also in a way the “cultural canaries in the sex related coal mine”. They might just be the more impulsive, compulsive, ignorant expressions of our own confused sexual psyches. Or perhaps they are the ignorant fools who see some kind of twisted porn video (out of the 47829274927 varieties easily obtained online) and stupidly assume, “Hey, I could do that in the real world”!  That’s not totally or completely different from the Asperger kid with dozens of violent videogames and a gun collection (that his mom bought him) who decided to go out and shoot innocent kids at their elementary school ….as well as his well-meaning mother. Obviously one crime does not equal the other but, hey, how about we first clean up the confusing societal messages about sex, personal boundaries and touching the merchandise without permission? In addition, we might want to decide what to say to grabby former Governors, the current mayor of San Diego (who appears like and behaves like a drunken camel on a Federation trip to Israel) and all the other assorted tushie-boob bandits out there. While the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights may affirm our right to pursue happiness and to “bear arms”, it doesn’t say we are allowed to get all gropey and inappropriate with those arms any damn time we please. Ultimately we need to get more personal, assertive, clear and consistent, not more blurry with our boundaries, inconsistent or clinical.

Filner parody: http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/08/15/blurred-lines-oh-yeah-check-out-filner-creeper-parody-video-a-viral-hit/

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/02/us/california-san-diego-mayor/index.html

http://regator.com/p/249809175/fbi_busts_rabbi_for_in-flight_groping/

An example of how “correlation does not equal causation”: Statistically, groping is most common in Japan, Italy, and India and is considered to be a serious social problem in all three countries. I love Japanese, Italian, and Indian food. Good food does not cause sexual groping.

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Balance and the Bongo Board

Posted on August 2, 2013 by captaincliff

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There’s something to be said for an all too unknown “extreme sport” called Bongo Boarding. Actually, it’s only “extreme” for old farts like myself who are more likely to break a hip trying to do it at my age than bring home the Bongo Board Olympic gold medal. Titanium rods and screws is more like it. My childhood friend Joel (who is still my friend after all these years) and I would spend endless hours and summer days as kids trying to perfect the art, science, and metaphysics of the bongo board, which is really nothing more than a rounded wooden board that (theoretically) balances on a short rolling wooden log,  somewhat like a giant cut-off Lincoln log. Rumor has it that Bozo from Bozo’s circus was a fairly adept bongo boarder. I also suspect by using those last two Baby Boomer references I just lost any potential readers under the age of 50. Anyway, it’s sort of like a modified circus act that bored young people who are yet to discover sex, masturbation or marijuana can engage in legally and impress their less-coordinated friends.

Balancing on a moving, see-sawing piece of maple wood is not as easy as it looks. Joel and I would devise all kinds of bongo board “routines” that involved acts of “daring” that required complete and total concentration on our parts and worried silence on the part of our audience, which usually only included our parents, our equally bored siblings, and an occasional friend. To be fair, Joel, unlike myself, was a multi-sport athlete who also specialized in shooting basketball free throws in his driveway. That guy could stand there for hours successfully shooting free throws time after time after time. Eventually I would get bored watching him and just leave him in his Zen-like free-throw “zone” and go inside his house to get a handful of large pretzel sticks that his mother kept perpetually stocked in their kitchen. Of course, Joel, like myself, wasn’t tall enough to actually play competitive basketball or anything else not counting Risk and Monopoly, but if they ever had a designated free-throw player position in basketball, I would have bet all my money on him. Also he was pretty damn good at “HORSE” too, which demonstrates how one semi-useless skill can carry over into another equally useless game.

Ok, maybe I exaggerated a bit about the bongo board and the need for total concentration and silence. That really was more for dramatic effect. Given both of our predilections for theatrics (Joel was and is a good actor and I watched TV constantly) we, somewhat like Harry Houdini the famous escape artist, had already mastered the so-called difficult tricks like “hanging ten”, balancing while turning in a circle, and jumping off the bongo board in mid-air only to land 180 degrees facing the other way….all without killing ourselves.  The key to a good bongo board routine,  like trapeze artists and body builders doing their absurd “pose-offs” during muscle competitions, is to project an air of supreme confidence while also grimacing and grunting a bit like you’re doing something near impossible and might possibly break a leg at any moment. The other secret, which is something one learns by doing magic tricks, another popular pre-pubescent hobby that is dropped like a hot rock once a boy discovers his penis, is to offer other people the chance to try balancing on the bongo board themselves. It’s something that really just takes a lot of practice, so inevitably everyone falls off and thinks it’s “impossible” except maybe a pre-pubescent Ukranian gymnast named Nadia or maybe Olga. Even they have a little trouble at first.

Ok, so why a whole blog about bongo boards? Because, my lovely readers, bongo boards and bongo boarding are the perfect metaphors for how to best approach life. “What??”, you say? “how can that be? It’s simple.  The best way to proceed in life is in a balanced and alert manner. So many things in life try to knock us off course, threaten to cause us to lose our mental or psychological “footing”, or plain and simple just throw us for a big loop and land us on our butt. I dont need to enumerate all the many different ways life teaches us difficult lessons and tests our patience, our resolve, and our resilience, which is a fancy psychological word for getting back up on the bongo board. It takes a certain amount of crazy determination, practice, guts and a desire to keep on trying…..all the while maintaining a balanced, centered, upright and noble posture that says, “I can do this. I can get better at this. I can fall and get back up. I can do things that others who are taller, thinner, more muscular, smarter or generally more athletically inclined cannot do. I occupy a special niche in my bored childhood while I wait for real life to start. I am a bongo board champion!”

Bongo Board video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcKRUjhjXiw

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My Father’s Shoe Trees

Posted on July 30, 2013 by captaincliff

As a young kid growing up in Highland Park, Illinois, my mother wore the pants of the family but my father as sole breadwinner and figurehead ran a pretty tight ship. God willing he will be 90 years old on August 11th of this year. That’s a pretty long voyage to take in a human body/physical vessel that has seen so many ports and played so many sports. For example, I know my father grew up in Milwaukee and was in the Navy during World War II but I’m not sure if he really logged much time on an actual boat. Family legend and local folklore suggest he may have spent more time playing baseball and football in the service than shipping out on naval warships or swabbing decks in stormy seas. My guess is that he was a  valuable third baseman (and maybe back-up quarterback) for the Navy intramural team, but not much of a competitive swimmer. Or perhaps like me, CaptCliff, he could have been  prone to seasickness, only made worse by the smell of diesel fuel and dead fish not already grilled in olive oil and lightly sauteed with garlic at a good seafood restaurant in Chicago. However, one old photo of my father in his Navy uniform at Great Lakes Naval Station does confirm that he looked pretty damn sharp in his seaman duds ala Frank Sinatra or Gene Kelly in the movies Anchors Aweigh (1945) and On the Town (1949). Even without singing or dancing like Sinatra or Kelly my dad looked amazingly young, thin, and handsome back then and even wore his starched white Navy cap in the same cool-cocksure way they did.

Most similarities to my father end there, however.  In fact, some of the contrasts in our respective personalities are rather striking. If I was a rambunctious hyperactive kid and wannabe pirate, he was the highly disciplined and steady sea captain. While I couldn’t sit still for any length of the time, aka constant “shpilkas”, he could sit for untold hours at his desk in the upstairs study paying bills and carefully mapping out his plans for a productive and highly successful life. I was a creative but consistently procrastinating student of life with a TV/movie/book-fed fascination with irascible pirates, tropical islands and buried treasure (minus any associated seasickness).  Frankly, in my case, the term “highly impulsive” comes to mind much more easily than does highly disciplined or well-organized. Indeed, my father was and still is a tried and true “Captain of Industry”, a man who patiently went over the “numbers”, balanced every checkbook and took calculated risks to grow both his bank accounts and his chemical business (Mazer Chemicals).  He did so while also advancing his personal knowledge and involvement in various conservative causes and political organizations.  At the same time that my father steered the family ship through various economic storms and squalls of stress, I was often more interested in blowing up plastic army men in the backyard, imagining myself as the Lone Ranger or Superman and intermittently starting small fires in the basement.

As a single father myself, I now ask myself, “how did he do it?” To my ever observant young CaptCliff eyes, my father kept his private quarters exceedingly ship-shape and spit-polished. His bedroom closet was a mariner’s wet dream of efficiency and organization. His pants, shoes, and shirts were always lined up and  standing at attention. He used only high quality wood hangers, like the ones you would see hanging in the expensive menswear stores but could only acquire if you bought a suit or sports jacket. In contrast, due to an undiagnosed attention deficit disorder (ADHD) and a pretty obvious case of absentminded professor-itis,  my possessions disappeared on a regular basis, only to reappear immediately after my mother finished yelling at me for losing “everything” and keeping my room like a “shit house rat” (whatever pitiful species of rodent that was). I really thought that God or my “stuff” did that to me on purpose just to get me in trouble, like the Beaver in the TV show “Leave it to Beaver” or “Dennis the Menace”. Today both of those kids would be diagnosed as having ADHD and in desperate need of stimulant medication and a possible spanking. They just didn’t know about such things back then, except maybe for the spankings part.

Oddly,  the most conspicuous example of my father’s shipboard sense of order were his “shoe trees” which looked nothing like any trees I was familiar with in nature. While I was out looking for buried treasure, my dad was making sure his shoes were polished and stowed  properly with their shoe trees in place. I never completely understood the darn things but even way back then, more then 50 years ago , I sensed that they were potent symbols of my father’s core qualities of strength, order, consistency, and structure.  Being born in August, my father is a true son of Leo the Lion, both astrologically and psychologically speaking. In fact, his shoe trees could have served as his personal insignia on his Crusader coat of arms. Those clog-like wooden devices with articulating plastic handles spoke volumes about his conscientiousness, his stubborn yet strong sense of purpose-direction, and his uber-masculine identity. Of course as a child of Libra myself, and a very distractible one at that, the transcendent meaning and florid symbolism of my father’s shoe trees were utterly lost on me. To the curious , always exploring cabin boy Cliff they spoke to me only through their cedarwood scent mixed with a hint of Old Spice aftershave, a smell I still associate with my father today. Visually, the shoe trees lined up perfectly on their shelf reminded me of Pinnochio’s puppet feet and Gepetto’s skillful handiwork. Well engineered yet functional, those shoe-tree gizmos seemed like they could have been studio props from a Disney movie or something from a Grimms fairy tale. Such were the subconscious musings of a young boy who loved his father dearly but no doubt saw him or spoke with him not enough growing up for his own good.

In the end, those sculpted shoe trees that describe my Dad so well just represented five extra steps to skip in my rebellious adolescence before throwing my shoes in a haphazard pile at the foot of my bed, even as my custom closet in the suburbs beckoned me to use her for her designated purposes (which of course included a shoe rack).  Either way, I know my father, both as a man and as an unusually well organized sea captain in my  metaphor-laden life story will leave very large shoes to fill when he is gone.  Of course I still prefer to fill them with my own two feet with unusually high arches, my ADHD-infused creative nature and my chosen career path as an “out of the (shoe) box” Clinical Psychologist and part-time Pirate.Image

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Subconscious Spirituality

Posted on July 17, 2013 by captaincliff
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What if we could remove all our daily mental distractions and allow our subconscious spirituality to guide us? What if we opened our mind and did what the lyrics suggest in the song “Hidden Treasure” by Traffic:

Message in the deep from a strange eternal sleep
That is waiting there, that is waiting there for you
Like hidden treasure

I was piddling around recently, lost in thought and feeling kind of anxious/nervous about my father who is pretty ill. He will be 90 on August 11th and, well, it’s a real question as to whether he will attend his own birthday party. I certainly hope he does.  Mortality and surrender for “tough cookies” and manly men like my Dad is something that is difficult to even imagine. When I think of my father I think of old world masculinity, physical strength, leadership, and a kind of masculine pride in oneself, ones duties and achievements and in ones physical appearance, all concepts that probably have been gradually going out of style with the advent of Nehru jackets and Hai Karate cologne TV commercials. My father also epitomizes natural innate athleticism, masculinity, MLB and old school cultural values. He doesn’t use a computer and he doesn’t have much interest or use for abstract art, cinema or avant-garde theater unless it is stage performance-based like classical ballet, opera or Broadway shows like Oklahoma and West Side Story. His clarity of mind and basic beliefs are rooted in traditional gender roles and tastes which makes me sometimes question my seemingly more complex and highly contradictory persona and self-identity.

As I was “pondering” and piddling around, my eyes became drawn to one of the many shelves and rounded “niches” in my home. I got that part from my mother and all her white-washed Southwest style design preferences. One big difference between us, however, is that she has all her shelves, wall niches and Native American “chatzkas” (objects) cleaned and dusted on a regular basis while mine gather dust until they form dust and dog dander tumbleweeds. I’m not kidding. It’s like the Old West in my livingroom. Sometimes I’ll be sitting there talking to a guest or friend and suddenly a large dust/dog hair tumbleweed will roll through unannounced. It sounds kinda gross but certainly gives the place special “character” and serves as a kind of theatrical prop confirming my self styled home’s Southwest aesthetic and Oklahoma “wind-come-sweepin-down-the-plains” theme …even tho I live in a suburb of Atlanta…….and even tho I personally designed and decorated the entire basement level of my house as a Pirate ship. I guess that makes me truly eclectic, right?

Anyway, back to my pondering.  I thought of my Dad and his possibly/probably fast approaching fate. I guess people refer to it as his impending death and my eyes immediately then caught on a certain shelf that displays the painted glass jars and glasswork that my ex-wife Rona decorated before she passed away in 1999.  She was half my father’s age, only 45, which is relatively young. Rona, like myself, was into art and personal creative expression. Maybe I even learned from her how to initially recognize and respect my unique artistic “voice” and creative potential. We would go into the basement of our first house in Atlanta which I had built out into about 89,000 different extra “bonus” rooms for no good reason (think Winchester Mansion) and she would paint glass jars, colorful floor mats and jewelry while I would spray paint everything else in the known universe including Ming Vases and priceless antiques making them absolutely and forever worthless.  Did you know that valuable antiques are supposed to remain unpainted and left to their own natural “patina” even if they looks kind of shabby and tarnished? I learned that on Antique Roadshow and Pawn Stars.  

Back then I didn’t know dookie about depth, foreground, perspective, patinas, “negative space” or shadows. I also didn’t know much about my own unconscious Jungian shadow and why opposites tend to attract in art, poetry, science and often in marital relationships too. That all takes a lot of time, experience, self-awareness, introspection, pondering, and some type of inner or individual “spirituality”, which I wont bother to try to define. I think my Dad skipped over most of the above introspection and just chose to work hard and love my mother unconditionally. All in all I think that kind of simple yet consistent approach to life worked reasonably well for him.

All I really mean to say here is that art, intuition and self-expression has much to my surprise turned out to be a reliable way to get in touch with and explore the deeper hidden parts of myself somewhat like the way certain vivid or unusual dreams do…especially if you’re not taking 25 mind-altering prescription medications. When I look at Rona’s painted vases now I see her clearly and admire her courageous attempt to come to grips with her own complicated life and contradictory psyche, her lung cancer diagnosis, and her personal journey to the “after-life”, depending on what you may choose to believe.  I choose to believe that her soul-spirit (nashama) and creative energy is still around and can be used to support my faith, core beliefs and confidence that we’re here for a specific reason and purpose. I feel the same way about my Dad and his tough, no nonsense non-artsy personality as well as his sweet chocolate loving candy coated soul. It is with that toughness and that sweetness that he touched so many people’s lives and inspired them to be productive, successful and creative in many ways. Light, dark, depth, patinas, negative space, shadows…we are all here for some purpose and none of us are ever really lost or forgotten in the collective unconscious or in the subconscious spirituality of  human beings seeking to evolve, understand, love, learn, and eventually accept both the extreme complexity of life as well as the relative simplicity of death. I know I’m still workin’ on it.

Try to listen to this. Maybe it will say it better than all my words:  

Hidden Treasure:

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My Dad’s Chrome Dome, Dostoevsky and Me

Posted on July 15, 2013 by captaincliff

yul2

Thank God for Yul Brynner.  He and his handsome bald head may have saved my life. For many years I was enslaved by my Platinum membership in “The Hair Club”.  I wore a stupid looking hairpiece for well over a decade like a baffoon. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a “really good head” for a bald guy or that I might be lucky enough to have such a ‘noggin.  I didnt listen to anyone because I only perceived my own shame and hid my advancing chrome dome condition like it was leprosy or the sign of the Anti-christ (666) emerging on my upper forehead between the rapidly retreating Maginot line of my hairline and prior hair transplants. Still, Yul Brynner’s chiseled good looks, piercing eyes and excellent ears always haunted me, and not in a bad way. Even tho he sounded and acted the same basic way in every movie he was in, ie.  The Ten Commandments, The King and I, Brothers Karamazovs, Magnificent Seven, Solomon and Sheba, etc., (thus was no Marlin Brando) the guy was a real “man’s man” who always got the hot chicks, even if he had to die a thousand deaths each and every time. Regardless, like in the movie “Westworld” (the original) he would just re-emerge in another film to struggle with his deeply dialectical nature and unquenchable thirst for life. Trivia Sidebar: Speaking of male role models, it was a not yet over-acting Captain Kirk (William Shatner) who played Yul Brynner’s younger and nicer brother in “Brothers Karamazovs”, his big screen debut.

 

Coincidentally, my father, Robert Mazer also wore a hairpiece for many years. He kept it on a styrofoam head mannequin in his bedroom closet, carefully pinned in place like some enormous silver Amazonian butterfly on display. Back then, when I saw my Dad without his toupee he always looked much older and somewhat “out of uniform” yet seemed far more relaxed, even if he was still wearing his boxer shorts with knee high black dress socks, polished black dress shoes and those weird garter-strap things.

So, is this essay about my father, Yul Brynner, Russian (or Shakespearean) families fighting over their inheritance, or is it about personal redemption, healing, and Dmitri’s  bittersweet realization that “love, honor and truth cannot be bought just as an insult cannot be bought back”? In the case of my father Bob, I believe it is about healing…mostly mine.

My dad, who really is my stepdad who adopted me when I was 3 years old chose to give up his expensive toupee many moons ago and without much fanfare accepted his heady yet hairless fate. When I did the same years ago it was nothing less than a liberation of my body and soul, like experiencing a heavy jail door swing open. Behaviors like swimming, scratching my head, leaving the house without checking the median wind velocity (MDV) or riding in a convertible became not just “do-able” but actually “enjoy-able”. As usual for eccentric individuals such as myself, the material objects that once served to imprison me in my life (like my Milwaukee Brace for scoliosis at age 14) later became central themes for my creative writing and ironic sculptural artwork. Of course I also keep one or two of my old hairpieces in a closet dresser drawer just to freak out cleaning ladies.

I know that few people care to plumb the psychological depths of Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazovs” and it’s bald-is-beautiful protagonist Dmitri, a personality full of contradictions, human shortcomings and carnal desires. However, that wasn’t my father. My father was and is a very controlled and predictable individual. He doesn’t ponder long about himself or the human “condition”, nor even about his own bald head. He just behaves responsibly, follows a set routine and acts accordingly (consistent with his own moral compass), ie., sitting at his big desk paying bills and calculating numbers that he truly believes should “add up” in the end. Even at his advanced age (almost 90) he still likes to wear his socks and dress shoes at home, often along with his fluffy terry cloth robe and oxygen tube.  I on the other hand, need Yul Brynner’s moral support and spiritual guidance. To me he is my Yorick and I am his Hamlet, holding his beautiful bald head aloft. “To be or not to be?” That IS the eternal question for someone like me.

I’m pretty sure it’s better to “be” as in to live life fully while still suffering the many “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. In so doing, we help ourselves to appreciate the precious gifts of life while continuing to accept the shrinking of our over-inflated personal egos. If we don’t consciously work on down-sizing our “selves”(egos) life usually does it for us anyway. Maybe that’s where the notion of becoming a “head shrinker” comes from or possibly even the term “shrunken head”.  Consider this: One second you’re a world famous big game hunter or brash explorer in Africa and the next minute your head (and formerly attached ego) are hanging like plastic dice from some chieftain’s ceremonial spear. Very humbling indeed.

 

My dad was/is a very successful businessman, philanthropist and mentor of manly men. On the other hand (so to speak) poor Yorick was a mere court jester. He was a “trickster” and a comedian who later became someones philosophical-skeletal muse. Some would think of that as a rather gruesome image but to me it’s more like my dad’s high-class hairpiece, a bygone testament to every man’s early ego and eventual opportunity to grow into a mature wisdom (rather than vanity) and life lesson about “going with the flow”.

 

Bottomline:  I want to try to remember to fully engage with life and also to “row, row, row my CaptCliff  boat gently down the stream…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily” because LIFE IS BUT A DREAM. I know my father lived his life pretty much like that and without a doubt that’s something to emulate and be proud of.  He certainly was the Captain of his own ship and he definitely knew which direction he wanted his ship to sail.  For myself tho, things are more complicated. At times I catch myself rowing my “life boat” in large concentric circles and end up returning to the very same place or places from where I began. That may be because of my rampant ADHD, my penchant for thinking too much or my relentless habit of “reviewing the situation” as the song in “Oliver” goes.  Of course I also could just listen to Pinkie, the angelic black woman who helped raise me. She told me many times and in many different ways about my receding hairline, “Clifford, grass dont grow on busy streets”. Then she would say it again out loud for dramatic effect as she walked slowly away…..”Yessir, grass dont grow on busy streets”.

 

The right kind of music to listen to to understand anything I just said:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY-_Y_7p55

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I Admit It….I’m a Transgressive Transcurean

Posted on July 15, 2013 by captaincliff

euphemia desserts

Euphemia Haye Dessert Bar, Longboat Key

If there is such a thing as transgressive art and transgressive fiction like “splatterpunk”, what would you call someone who obsessively watches food shows like Iron Chef, Chopped and Man Versus Food and zooms in on FB friends meal posts and culinary photos late at night when he should probably be sleeping?

Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. The genre of “transgressive fiction”  graphically explores such taboo topics as aberrant sexual practices, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, but is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge.

Ok, I also like to write about toilets, poop, and weird sex stories but personally I’m about as boring as vanilla. In fact I absolutely love a good vanilla bean ice cream or frozen yogurt. My “edge” of experience is usually my nose and my taste buds. In fact, a recent TV show about taste and food on Nova suggests that because of my weird looking tongue and highly clustered taste buds that I may be a “super-taster”. I know that’s not as good as having the world’s biggest shlong, but it’s something. The transgressive wiki article goes on to say this:

“Transgressive fiction shares similarities with splatterpunk, noir, and erotic fiction in its willingness to portray forbidden behaviors and shock readers. But it differs in that protagonists often pursue means to better themselves and their surroundings—albeit unusual and extreme ones. Much transgressional fiction deals with searches for self-identity,inner peace, or personal freedom. Unbound by usual restrictions of taste and literary convention, its proponents claim that transgressive fiction is capable of pungent social commentary.”

 

This business about “pungent” social commentary makes me hungry. In fact I just went downstairs and made a piece of challah toast (see my last food porn FB photo) because I knew my time was running out.  I dont mean I plan to keel over from a heart attack or stroke or anything that serious.  I mean I am scheduled for a “fasting blood test” at my internist’s office tomorrow at 9AM and I’m not supposed to eat or drink anything after midnite.  I have 40 minutes left and the clock is ticking…In fact it seems like time is speeding up in quantum fashion… just to make it harder on me.

I also know my internist is going to be PISSED because after noodging and hocking me for years I finally lost some weight and started working out. I reinjured my neck about two months ago hanging a light fixture and since then there’s been alot of challah under the bridge, with the bridge representing my gut and expanded abdomen and the challah representing really really good challah. Is there something at the smoke shops to help me pass a cholesterol exam like the stuff teenagers take to pass their urine tests which somehow magically removes the marijuana from their smoke and THC-addled fat cells and brains?

Ok, I’ve got 14 minutes left until midnight and I know my search for carbohydrate heaven as well as inner peace and personal freedom are coming to a close. The large spoonful of whitefish salad I just had was notably salty but fresh. I’m sure that and the sodium encrusted bagel chip I had it on will do wonders for my blood test too. They might as well just lock me up now because I KNOW I’m about to fail the whole thing. I would rather take the new SATs or the updated Psychology licensing exam right now than give them a blood sample and a plastic cup full of my gout-stricken urine. I think I’m going to pee Kosher salt crystals.

It’s midnite and I suddenly feel (and look) like Charles Laughton in the original “Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Sanctuary!!  Ok, I admit it. I’m a Transgressive Transcurean (TT).  I just hope the bad patient prison or med-fast hospital ward they put me on has Wi-Fi and the Food Channel.

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Mock Sandy Springs Patch News Item

Posted on July 13, 2013 by captaincliff
Sandy Springs Psychologist recognized locally as “Another Semi-Retired Guy Who Thinks He’s Sort of Like David Sedaris”. 
 
Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. was noted (mostly on his own rather obscure website) to have written hundreds of very clever blogs, out-of date scholarly contributions, weird news posts, and semi-narcissistic Facebook references to support his rapidly collapsing executive ego, self-esteem, physical appearance, and C4-7 cervical vertebrae. Convinced he must obtain external validation and social approval from his peers, hipsters and random Millennial generation web users (many of whom no longer read complete sentences) he has consistently made an ass of himself on countless social media/digital news websites including impulsive reader response postings on HuffPost and TMZ and throughout his CaptCliff WordPress blog. Fortunately, all fall short of the abject embarrassment of Corey Feldman’s incredibly shameful “Ascension Millennium” video. Mazer ponders many disparate subjects when he is not neurotically pondering death, and has at times caught himself bolstering his shrinking self-importance in the vast Cosmos by thinking of himself as a  “Renaissance Man”, “so smart that others dont appreciate my kind of brain”, and “a kind of idiot-savant…heavy on the savant”. Deep down he knows he is not alone in his deluded fantasies of being a half-decent writer and a humanist-humorist. In addition, he has read numerous blogs by other intelligent older men with crappy computers and permanent AOL memberships who scare the crap out of him because it’s like he’s looking into some freaky 60-something Twilight Zone Baby Boomer mirror.
 
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Delaware News…..Double Ewww.

Posted on July 13, 2013 by captaincliff
Typical of major news from Delaware: A 20 year old man without much of a visible neck has been arrested at a Walmart for flinging gobs of his semen at women shoppers he believed to be “hot”. Frank Short, height and IQ unknown was arrested after following a woman and tossing his man-fluid onto her thigh and completely clothed buttock. His parents were immediately contacted and warned they should either 1) hire a good lawyer or 2) go ahead and get it over with and die out of retched shame and embarrassment. Facebook photos of doing gravity bongs and keg stands in Florida do not compare with felony charges for sperm throwing in a Delaware Walmart, especially if you are thinking of applying to medical school or a career in law enforcement. The attorney fees will apparently not be used to help make bail for Mr. Short but instead utilized to find an expert witness in cultural anthropology familiar with peaceful and well adapted “shit and semen” throwing tribes or nation-states where such behavior is more commonly taken to mean, “Hey, what’s up?”
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