Rooney Speak

There is something very pleasant about falling asleep on an airplane. On those rare moments where I get an aisle seat and nobody sits in the middle, if the air is just chilly enough and I can find that notch just between the seats, I can clunk out. The vibrations on a plane are soothing and providing my elbow doesn’t get hit too hard from a flight attendant, plane sleep can be the best. It does seem like an expensive way to take a nap.

Do mailers from companies make a lick of difference in your life? As somebody who loves postal mail and owns a lackadaisical schedule, I enjoy waiting by the mailbox for whatever piece of parcel that gets delivered to my home. Yet, with increased regularity, I am not opening packages from Amazon or letters from Mom but Penny Savers and coupons for Little Caesar. How effective are mailers?

Even during the election cycles, I am very quick to put any and all campaign material right in the recycling bin with nary a looksee. I wonder how much people spend on these things. I can’t imagine it being cheap or that effective. As print journalism is being swallowed by the interweb, isn’t direct marketing going the way of the dodo?

Fugazi is a great band. Everyone should own their album, Repeater.

For anybody who has wanted to kick me in the butt, don’t worry. Gravity and an ice patch behind the bar did me in last night. I was walking to the truck with a boxful of wine left over from a private party. As Brandon was walking Jennifer to her vehicle, I slipped on an ice sheet and fell flat on my back. Car keys flew out of my hands and the box of wine goes skidding across the rink. Onomatopoeia was created by the thump of my back, spine and butt hitting the ice at a million miles an hour. Brandon thought I was dead by the sound that I made.

In moments like this, the only two options are crying or laughing. I decided to error on the side of caution and do both. While I have an amble belly and chubby face, I have absolutely no butt. There is no break where my thighs meet my back. The bony beast that I sit on was bruised to perfection with the fall. In looking at the bruise in the mirror, I instinctly started do a Rorschach test. If there was an upside to this fall, Jennifer called it when we discovered not a single bottle of wine was broken.

That’s lemonade out of lemons.

We spent the weekend in Las Vegas visiting my brother and his wife’s new baby boy. His name is John Fredrick Raskin. He is Patrick and Annie’s first and my third nephew. I have been avuncular my entire adult life but it is nice to have nephews to remember what being an uncle is. It’s funny to think that the brother who vomited all over my Moses costume is now in charge of a human life. It was pleasant to see the change in Pat with his son—changing diapers, feeding and simply holding him. His transformation hasn’t been extreme (he is still very loud) but it is a fantastic gradual one. We don’t call our father Dad. He’s nickname is Papa, Pop or Pa. It just works for us. I like that Pat is now a Pa.

Speaking of Pa, my father was down in Las Vegas too. He bankrolled our vacation and I hope he won most of it back. I was sitting next to him when he hit a royal flush that paid out $2,000. He was unstoppable at the video poker machines. If you ever get the chance to sit next to my old man with a Miller Lite and play some slots, you should do it. Some of our best talks have happened in a casino.

When my microwave finishes cooking a snack the display reads, “Enjoy Your Meal.” This is a thoughtful note and something to think about while I am pulling out a plate of microwavable taquitos. It is also a precautionary tale that maybe I should try and cook meals as oppose to high calorie snacks. Even though our house is really clean, the microwave looks like it belongs at a truck stop. They are impossible to clean and I feel like they are the Ghost of Christmas Past every time I put another bowl of chili into them.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Podcast, ugh! He has a new respect for Andy Rooney after writing this one.