NO MONSTERS HERE!

NO MONSTERS HERE!
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

December 1, 2010, New York City:

Last night we came across on advertisement on the capitalone.com bank site. Lo and behold, to my great surprise, it had a photo of my oldest son Enzo, which I sell via Getty Images.

This is a screenshot of the ad. Click here to see the original photo, taken almost exactly 7 years ago on November 29, 2003.

I thought it was cool and very funny, and so I wanted to share it with my friends and readers.

Happy Holidays,
Lorenzo

Bored Games

"I've Got A Monopoly!"
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.“
—Ralph Waldo Emerson—

I don’t like board games, or “bored games” as I like to spell them.

I just don’t. Never really have, never really will.

Give me a deck of cards, and I’ll play poker with you for hours on end. But ask me to play Risk or Clue or Monopoly, and well, I’d just have to pass.

However, I learned to like them in a different way today, when I sat and watched my two boys play Monopoly with my mother, their grandmother, for a couple of hours this morning.

I was intrigued, impressed and inspired by their genuine enthusiasm for the game. Watching the boys smile and get excited whenever they passed Go, or better yet, whenever one of their opponents had to pay them, made me realize how fun the game can actually be, if you know how to play it right.

The first cardinal rule of play being: you must play for fun, you cannot take it at all too seriously, in other words, you must play when you play, not work. It’s not about whether you win or lose, its about how you play the game, at least…until you lose, then it’s all about winning.

Nicky, the six-year-old, was the best sport of them all, because whereas Mom and Enzo, his older and rather intellectually astute brother, were buying property left and right, he decidedly to wait and wait and wait before moving to trump over his opponents by belatedly jumping into the real estate mogul game, and somehow pulling out in front within a matter of an hour.

The entire time he was joking and having everyone pay him with the smallest denominations possible, because he felt that having ten dollar bills was far better than simply having one ten dollar bill. In turn, this frustrated his opponents, as it always took them ten times as long to count the money.

As we get older, we learn efficiency—e.g. paying a $40 rent with four ten dollar bills is better than paying with 20 one dollar and 4 five dollar bills; and i.e. buying property at the first opportunity possible, is the best strategy.

Oh, but apparently not for Nicky—because he just focused on having fun, and regardless of whether or not he won, I found that somehow he was slated to come out on top, if only, because he had a genuinely good time playing.

And despite a slightly more earnest demeanor, Enzo also exhibited great exuberance for the game. In fact, and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this, he connected the mental dots for me with one such display of excitement.

He had just bought the third hotel to complete ownership of all purple-colored properties, when he suddenly sprang to his feet and began dancing, simultaneously singing, “I’ve got a monopoly! I’ve got a monopoly!”

It was only there and then that I truly made the connection between the name of the game and the ultimate objective. Until now, after almost 40 years, the primary means of trumping your opponents and the 8-letter word hadn’t crossed in my mind. Duh.

Nonetheless and allthemore, observing this dynamic made me happy, and moved me to realize that perhaps the reason board games have always bored me was that I played them with the wrong attitude, for I’ve long found them frivolous, a matter of time that could be better spent in earnest reading or writing or doing something that endowed me with greater knowledge or insight. Not realizing that sometimes there is no greater insight or knowledge than knowing what it is that makes your kids smile, excited, and ultimately, happy.

Moreover, as I will be celebrating my 40th birthday in a few days, I am wholly appreciative of these gifts that my children have given me. For there is no greater gift than when someone teaches you something, especially when that someone is your child.


To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson—

*

Originally posted as part of the lost man chronicles, a long-long time ago.

Dead at the Table

Watch Out Men!
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

Dead at the Table

So, these two outlaws here were playing a game of cards you see.

And they got in a mean old scuffle. They’re a yelling and shouting and a screaming at each other one minute. And then suddenly, when it starts to get real hot in here, I mean broiling, the cowboy with the black kerchief (they called him the black bandit I heard!) pulls out his pistol; then the other one does the same, but lightening-quick; and then, Bang! Bang! one shot right after the after.

So, mister, what you see here is what you got, two shots and both were left dead at the table.

Word is that they were brothers, and they got in a dispute over some lady or uther.

Can never be too careful when it come to them women-folk you know, they’ll distract ya! And before you know it you’ll be fighting over them, even if it is yer own bruther! Dag nab it!

They women-folk ain’t no good I tell ya! Devil’s brew, witching ya all the time with their luuuv-spells and magic batting eyelashes, lookin’ at you like you was Ulysses, hero of the Seven Seas!!

And they make you believe it too! “Ohhh, you’re so strong, and ooooo, yer so this and yer so that…”– meanwhile they’re emptying out yer pockets, and then its your bank account! “Buy me this and buy me that….”

The other night I dropped a whole lot of silver for one of them dames. She kept kissing me and telling me, “Come on now darling, just buy me one more drink! Just one more…?”

I tell her, “Look darling you’re depleting me of my life savings."

Quick as silver, she bats them long and lovely lashes, puts her hands on her hips and with a wicked smile wiggles me a little witchy dance, “Well, I’m an expensive date you know!”

“Yeah, I know, but are you worth it?” I countered, “Am I gonna be able to take you home tonight?”

She just smiled, wicked and all, bewitching me, and she replies with a wile that was a mile long, “Just buy me another drink cowboy, and put you’re pistols back in your pockets! I just need one more drink…”

Smiling all innocent and all..Jeessh.

So, of course, what did I do? Well, I bought her another drink of course. I felt like I was back at the gold rush again. All excited and all, panning in the stream, looking for that magic gleam in her eyes, but this time it wasn’t the stream I was dreaming about, it was this little sass of a lass called Lydia. Ol’ Lydia! What you do to me! Oooo, eeeee!

Anyway, they’re man-eating sirens I tell ya, every one of them! At least, all the pretty ones are…I know cause Lydia ate me alive, swallowed me right up!

But no, we don’t learn do we? Even after being swooned and tormented over and over again, we just continue looking, standing on the corner watching all the girls by…waving our fishing poles, hoping one of them is hungry enough to take a bite.

So, then when we got them - and they really got us - and were listening to them (or at least pretendin’ to, you know what I mean men? Snicker, snicker) we get sucked in anyway! Pulled in like a sucker!

Dag nab it!

Evil, just plain evil.

So, careful out there fellas, because they’re all out to get ya; and if one of them don’t do you in, you’ll probably end up like these two men, killin’ each other over a little ol’ lady friend. Shame, shame I tell ya, what a shame….



You’ve to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.

You never count yer money
when you’re sittin at the table
They’re be time enough for counting
When the dealin’s done!

- The Gambler, Kenny Rogers -

First Grade Education

First Grade Education 2
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

Last Sunday, my six-year old and I sat down to play an innocent game of Scrabble.

Thinking I had the upper hand as an adult with years of experience and a more extensive vocabulary, I gave him home court advantage and told him to go first.

Smiling, he throws me a curve ball and puts down S - E - X.

Shocked, I laugh and ask, "Where did you learn that word?"

Smiling bigger then ever he blurts out, "Skateboard Camp!"

I roll my eyes in response, not sure what I should think and then place my word extending left from the e: D - A - T - E.

Enzo once again proceeded to surprise me with his next word, S - I - N.

The congruency of the words and their meanings was all-too uncanny and laden with significance, especially considering that a six-year old still had another good ten years or so before he would truly understand the weight of these words and their overlapping inferences.

More importantly though, I thought about how at this sprite age he was safe from having to deal with the guilt associated with the social phenomena that was being played out upon the board.

Or was he? At what age should this sort of education begin? Intuitively and based on my own personal coming-of-age experience I feel that it is not until mid-adolescence that I will need to teach my boys about the birds and the bees. God knows that I was kept in the dark until high school and it seemed to keep me out of trouble, for the most part.

Alas, knowing as I do know, knowing that perhaps there is no God, knowing that religion was merely an easy and good way to bat down the primal urges and keep my libido in check, what moral course do I take with my own children?

This question is especially pertinent since our oldest is already a budding scientist. He just finished an anatomy class at Montclair State University for gifted children and has taken other likewise designed science courses there for the last couple of years including rocket science, engineering (invention convention) and basic chemistry.

Hence, therein lies my dilemma, for how can I encourage his scientific curiosity when I also feel that I must still hide some of the basic information about how we function, what motivates us, and how we come and came into being, in order to protect him from our innate proclivity to err.

It is a delicate balance to say the least, and it is not always easy to straddle between playing the fool who sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil; and the all-knowing father who wants his little boy to be fully aware and endowed with the knowledge that will enable his fullest intellectual potential.

That said, upon pondering the issue of timeliness and our little lad’s education, I realized that albeit I was not hitting home runs until I was sixteen, I did begin to pique at a relatively early age, as one particular piece of confessional verse attests: My First Pique.

Thus, at the same age as Enzo, I was already motivated to leer and stare and wonder, as little boys do when the ballyhoo begins down under. So, even though at this innocent age I may not have had all the right words with which to reference my first intimate experiences—something was indeed happening. And even though ultimately my parents did not sit me down to explain things, I discern that I was still quite fortunate to not have made any critical missteps along the way due to my ignorance.

That said, our precocious little boy apparently enjoys looking at my big Taschen picture book—The Great American Pin-Up. His mother said she found him one afternoon about a year ago carrying it around with him wherever he went.

We decided to put it on the top shelf—high and out-of-reach, much like modern-day morals.

Enzo en Bleu

Enzo en Bleu

These are the first photos I’ve taken after four whole days of not taking any. I feel much-much better now.

For the fact was that I was rather perturbed yesterday for no good reason really.

And yet, my irk was wholly justified for all the right reasons as well.

I had left my camera at home, so that I could concentrate on catching up. Currently, I have about 1,000 photos which I would like to edit before publishing them.

Alas, being that I regularly take 50-75 “good” photos (that is, those I feel might be worth keeping) on my trek to work in the morning and on my traversal back at the end of the day, I can’t keep up with myself. For the quantity I keep on the back burner continues to grow almost exponentially, as I can only edit about fifty a day.

Hence, I had to quit. If only for a week, I forced myself not to take any photos. And it was killing me.

My frustration reached its apex yesterday afternoon when I witnessed a dozen or so great, and I sincerely mean wonderful, photos manifest before me.

These included the disheveled, dazed and confused transient who stood in a stupor as tourists poured out around her as they disembarked from a tour bus which was adjacent to the spew of garbage emanating from the trunk of one of the many tattered suitcases she was towing about; the three young and jumpy black children dressed in black t-shirts that were huddled together, hanging out of the passenger side window of a black mini van; the long-legged and pretty girl who sat quietly upon a concrete step with a stream of pale light leading up to her along the long strip of pedestrian empty dull-grey pavement; the exquisitely framed tall young lady dressed in blood red orange, standing at the corner slightly underneath a rare red scaffolding (most steel frames in NYC are green, gray or blue); the young turk dressed in well-worn blue jeans, bright flip-flops and an apparently old favorite shirt of his which advertised some dive bar in jersey.

He was porting about his Minolta as if he were on a mission. And so I followed him for a few blocks hoping to catch a glimpse of what he saw, hoping to allay my anxiety as I lived for a moment vicariously through him. Alas, he took a mere two photos on a path where I would have taken twenty, thirty, forty! pictures; The pair of sprite and giggling jeune et jolie filles who I almost ran into as we both turned about a corner from opposite ends; The table of exquisite and exotic beaded Indian slippers, each colored as differently as the arcoiris of hijabs one might find huddled in the centerfold of an old issue of national geographic. These, and far too many other beautiful images, eluded my grasp during my brief but resplendent walk home.

Hence, I am here and now compelled to write about what once was, what is now gone and forever but a fading memory, if only in reverence, if only to smooth out a ruffled demeanor, and sooth this rough and rankled disposition.

I feel much better now. Now, that my finger is back on the trigger.