My News Year's Wish with quotes from Adam Duritz, a total stranger and Neil Cassidy

“A long December and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.” Adam Duritz


About ten years ago I was golfing with a guy who was getting ready to retire, and I asked him where he planned on moving. He thought for a minute while he picked up his wedge from the edge of the green and said, “I am going to put a snow shovel in my car and drive south until I find someone who doesn’t know what it is.”

As much as I hate to cry foul in my blessed life, 2009 has had its share of challenges. I’ve been too close to death (my mother-in-law, my neighbor), have had a family member contract cancer and several other personal and professional challenges. I turned forty and found my cholesterol is a little too high and when I complained to my wife that the print in the magazine was really small…she said maybe it was just my eyes. (And, I had my first prostate exam!)

But you know what? Life didn’t end. Strangely, as I look back at the last twelve months and ahead to 2010, I realized that through adversity you can find peace. You take stock in your blessings. The process can be arduous and trying for sure. But when you are faced with challenges, the essence of what lies most importantly in your heart will provide the strength and resolve to clarify even the foggiest of life’s issues.

I know I risk sounding preachy, so I will stop. Take your snow shovel; whether it is loss, grief, anger, sadness, and find that place where you never need it again. But remember, if it wasn’t for shoveling out your driveway, you’d never know how much you would enjoy not needing to.

“Just when you think you’ve learned your lesson, and swear to watch your step, a single moment off guard will pop up and hope springs high as ever.” Neil Cassidy, letter to Jack Kerouac December 17, 1950.

On Society and Survivor (with a quote from A Few Good Men)

Not long ago, a trusted friend said “Remember when we used to watch TV to escape reality?” True dat. Now, it seems we watch TV to assume an alternate reality…if it is reality at all.


I need to make a confession. I became hooked on this season’s Survivor. Beyond the normal deluge of fake boobs and outrageous self-aggrandizing behavior emerged Russell, an oil company owner. Russell led his fellow contestants like lambs before a feral dog on the Navajo reservation. He managed to manipulate each and every one along the way, casting them aside when needed like old oyster shells. However, his ability to game plan back-fired when it was time to face the same people he earlier tossed off. In their desultory tone, the contestants one by one dismissed Russell for basically being an overbearing bully and snake. Russell countered that he played the game “strategically better than anybody, maybe in history.” And he was right.

But here is where things got interesting from a social angle. There were two other folks vying for the million bucks…a feckless doctor and a goofy blonde. They seized upon the fallout from the “jury” and continued the bandwagon jumping…pointing to Russell’s brand of manipulation as to why he was not deserving of a million bucks. Russell immediately pounced, stating emphatically that the two were more than happy to ride along on his coattails, all the way to the point of putting themselves at a one in three chance of winning the money, and never complained once while he was taking bullets.

So I ask…who is the opportunist here? The scenario reminds me of the line from A Few Good Men. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it.” Well said Colonel. Russell went on to lose to dippy blonde. Was it sour grapes that cost oil-man his money? Was it jealousy? Was it Russell’s heavy-handedness or Predator Drone-like stealthiness?

The lesson here is this. This was not about right or wrong. No laws were broken in Russell’s ascent…he was just better. This is about perception and envy. When people are outsmarted, even on a goofy reality TV show, they want revenge for being made the victim. Even if they became the victim not because of a wrong done to them but because they feel that they are deserving of their pound of flesh. Hunter Thompson said “He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”

Hamsters and Hazards - A PSA from Dave Meyer

Recently, the Zhu Zhu Hamster nearly found itself added to the list of endangered animals. Seems as though the toy was thought to have had high amounts of antimony, and a consumer group thought that if a child accidentally started eating these toys like hamster McNuggets, we were on our way to a fate not unlike H1N1. After additional testing, the Zhu Zhu Hamster was spared.

However, the whole episode got me thinking about home safety. It also made me realize that our homes are patently unsafe, and yet there seems to be no scrambling to protect us from these glaring catastrophes that are lying in wait like lions in tall grass. As a public service this holiday (or for you old-schoolers, Christmas) season, I’d like to submit my own list of recalls.

1) Knives. We all have them in our home. They can kill and maim and yet not one official has found fault with their presence. Get rid of all knives in your house. (The TSA has deemed plastic knives safe, of course these are the same people who let me on a flight in New Orleans without a driver’s license or credit card and even extended me the courtesy of not having me go through the gate and had me use the side door. True story.)

2) Electricity. Our walls are coursing with it like blood. It is dangerous to anyone, especially given the fact that homes have upwards of 300 different AC adaptors for all of our electronic gadgets. Get off the grid and be safe.

3) Stairs. Any parent worth their salt has yelled more than once, “Stop playing on the stairs!” I want to take this one step further…stop using the stairs. Just stay the fuck off them, they are death traps.

4) Doors. If you haven’t had your finger slammed in one you are missing a real treat in watching your nail turn black. If you have kids you have no privacy anyway. Curtains make a fine substitute…of course they can be a choking/hanging hazard. On second thought…no curtains or doors.

Stoves (burns), sinks (scalds), bathtubs (drowning), refrigerators (not sure, but that was a popular hazard for a while), bed posts (toes), glassware (cuts)…and of course, flag poles (Christmas Story).

Get rid of it all and stay safe my friends!

Turbulence and the Toll Booth

By all accounts, turbulence doesn’t cause airplanes to crash. You keep telling yourself the rattling is just the beverage cart. You know it is not the peanuts…there are no peanuts on airplanes anymore. There are, however, applications for credit cards, but they don’t make much noise. This is what I was thinking about at 35,000 feet last night.


Then of all things, this happens. The guy sitting next to me ordered a coffee with a lot of cream and sugar and says, “Otherwise it tastes like coffee,” and cues his chuckle. I of course want to cry and scream at him, “Don’t you read my blog! Maybe coffee isn’t your drink!” I decide to let him live although I am dying to ask him “Then why in the hell are you getting coffee?” I consider that the answer to that question may hold some profound philosophical statement.

For instance, what if his answer was “it’s not the taste, but it’s not NOT the taste.” That answer would stupefy me. In fact, It might cause me to reconsider my whole philosophy on life…whatever that may be. But I would think that if I was outsmarted on the coffee issue, I may have tacked wrong coming out of the Marquesas Islands en route to Enlightenment Through Latte Bay.

Then I thought…maybe he did that to specifically irritate me. Maybe he does know me. Maybe he does read my blog. Maybe that stupid little hit counter is actually in hundred millions and I am close to a billion hits. Maybe when he gets home he is going tell his wife, “Honey, you will never believe this. I sat next to that asshole Dave Meyer on the plane, you know the one who whines and bitches on his blog. I told the flight attendant I needed lots of cream and sugar because I didn’t want my coffee to taste like coffee. You should have seen the look in his eyes…it was pure fear! I loved it!”

(One more minor airline observation. I think landing surprises some people. I say this because when it comes time to disembark, many seem completely baffled that they must now get all their shit and get off the plane. It’s sort of like when people pull up to toll booths and seem to say, “Oh, I have to pay? How much? Let me look around for some loose change.”)

This Punk Took My Soul!

I was the victim of an illegal act of identity theft. OK, it probably wasn’t illegal at all…but it still has me pissed off like when Sid Bream scored that run against the Bucs to advance the Braves to the World Series…that pissed off, deflated then depressed feeling. Granted, my name and SSN seem secure. Other than a few charges on my credit card from that Myrtle Beach trip that I am a little foggy on, all assets seem in order. This theft went to the core…down to the seeds that when you were little you actually believed that if you swallowed an apple tree would grow in your gizzard.


When I was a freshman in college (and good God if that doesn’t sound like the start of a Penthouse Forum letter, “I was a freshman at a small mid-western college and I never thought this would happen to me.”) a guy Pete on my floor started calling me Hotfire Meyer. The nickname was pretty cool sounding but alas its origins were less than nefarious. Apparently there was a boat in Cleveland where Pete was from that had “Hotfire” stenciled across its stern. Well, all these years later, it has stuck. I have friends who use the name, or even a nickname for the nickname, HF, a preponderance of the time.

But, onto the pillaging. Tooling around the internet one day (ever hear that joke…if they took porn off the internet the only website would be bringbackporn.com) I typed in http://www.hotfire.com/. I have to tell you that if was available, I was going to snag it. Behold, up pops the website of one Dino Antoniou. Can someone tell me what the fuck he is doing with the website hotfire.com? After a little investigation, it appears well-coiffed Dino is quite the thespian…actor, model, voice-over dude, musician; and all around jack of all things that usually lead to a career in waiter-ing. To top it all off, Dino doesn’t have an email address! To get in touch I have to write, on paper, a letter to one of his two agents, one in the US and one in Canada.

I plan on keeping it short and sweet…and definitely sending it to Canada. “Dear Jagoff, unbeknownst to you, I am Hotfire. Cease and desist the use of my name on your girly looking website so I can use it to post links to cool things like hockey fights and Coldplay bashing. Ignore this warning I will curse you with a week without a brush and hair gel. Sincerely, Hotfire Dave Meyer.”

From The Random Thought Generator And One Important Tip

• If you were playing a drinking game whereby you had to drink every time you heard the name Tim Tebow in yesterday’s Florida game, you would have been stone cold drunk in two minutes. I did hear that Tebow will forgo the NFL draft in order to solve the financial crisis, kill Osama Bin Laden and make the world carbon neutral.

• Geoff Tabin has done more than you. He isn’t happy being an ophthalmologist. Oh no. He is on a mission to cure preventable blindness…in the entire world. Read his incredible story here.

• If you wake up in the middle of the night in a crypt like hotel room and grab your Blackberry to find out what time it is…do not, I repeat, DO NOT have it pointed at your face when you turn it on. It has the brightness of 80 suns.

• Also in that same hotel room, if you have to get up at night to go to the bathroom, just smash your toes immediately into the bed leg…at least you will know it is coming, then wait several agonizing seconds for the pain to seep into you and wish you only suffered the fate of having an anvil dropped on your foot.

• You haven’t seen a master craftsman until you watch an ER doctor install two internal and nine external sutures into your son’s forehead in such a tidy manner that it leaves you feeling really inadequate that you have a hard time with a fishing knot.

• Let’s face it, there are only two things that caused Tiger’s crash…he was drunk or fighting with Mrs. Tiger. In the words of Chris Rock, “If you haven’t thought of murder, you’ve never been in love.”

• Would you want the power to know every time someone had a dream that you were in? What if it meant your spouse would also find out? I was thinking of that after i wrenched my toe in that hotel room on my way to the bathroom. I woke from one of those weird “in a school bus that was also a fancy restaurant that was both parked and driving to Kabul while out the back door I was on a beach chair surrounded on one side by the ocean and the other a junk yard all while sharing coffee and deer steaks with people I haven’t thought of in twenty years” dreams.

• The people you care about aren’t going to be around forever…don’t miss a chance to tell them how you feel. Really, don’t miss a chance.

My Woman Of The Year And Advice On How Not To Getting Arrested.

MY WOMAN OF THE YEAR 2009

Carrie Prejean is brilliant and is living proof that salacious sex tapes are sometimes the most advantageous way of self-promotion. Not since Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America in 1983 (and subsequently dethroned thanks to her lusty photos) has anyone been able to turn a worthless title into serious bank. Really, can you name even one Miss USA or Miss America? The title carries with it little more than being crowned Miss Artisanal Cheese…maybe a better sash. However, speak out against same-sex marriage, get a sex tape leaked, file a lawsuit or two and try to walk off Larry King (I say try because she literally couldn’t seem to get away from the chair…she stood up and got, well, stuck) and KA-CHING! Granted, this cash cow may be short lived, but kudos to my woman of the year, 2009, for proving conclusively that the only way to parlay a Miss USA crown into real cash is to invest early in life in a camcorder. Lesson learned.

A TIP ON NOT GETTING ARRESTED

Bonnie and I were watching the Fox hit COPS, last night, which has been on since 1989. (Inner Circle performs the theme song, Bad Boys, wonder what the residuals are for that?) Anyway, I was always aware that drinking seemed to increase your odds of getting arrested and that seems to hold true. Almost every scene involves alcohol…almost, but not all. What seems to really increase your odds of getting arrested is the decision to not wear a standard article of clothing, and by standard I mean shirt, pants and shoes. Fully 2/3 of the people arrested in last night’s two episodes were without at least one of these items. Now, not wearing pants is a crime in and of itself, so that is sort of a no brainer. And going topless in conjunction with drinking seems to really increase the odds of getting a call from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. However, two of the six people arrested last night were shoeless…who would’ve thought? One guy stole (or stole back if you believe him) a car, and when he ditched it and ran he didn’t have shoes on. A girl got arrested for being drunk (but parked) in a church parking lot. Now, although she was barely wearing a shirt (or a “top” as my wife would say…and who would also say “who the hell would go out dressed like that?!”) she definitely was not wearing shoes.

Where does all this leave us? Well…how about “Nudity…it’s all in the timing.”