Ad Hudler's Blog, page 5

Wo(men): The line is blurring. Report from the Men's Room

In so many ways, the American male has become more womanized in recent years. For starters, men are sharing more than they ever have, usually via social media. Who would have thought twenty years ago that so many guys would gush about their families or their daily lives in a public forum?

Men are paying more attention to grooming. (And I think it's really weird how so many of the younger guys are actually shaving their chests and legs and arms.)

Here's another way men have become more like women: their modesty.

In the old days, when I was a kid, this was the scenario in a public men's bathroom: There was one urinal for everyone, a single, long trough that we all stepped up to to do our business. (Think of a horse's drinking trough -- that's what it looked like) Occasionally, these were even round, so that we (and our junk) actually faced each other. It was no big deal. We peed. Sometimes we actually talked and joked with each other. No more. The social side of a man's bathroom is now gone.

Compare that to today: Nearly all bathrooms now have urinals separated by 18-inch partitions that jut out of the wall, PROTECTING us from each other. And it's as if we take a cue from these blockades: men just don't say hey in bathrooms anymore -- and it was not like that when I was a kid.

Gentlemen ... what are you afraid of? Why this growing modesty?

Let's bring down the walls and return camaraderie to the men's room!

Is Zip-lining safe? Do alligators eat poodles?

Here's my AdVentures column from this month's Nashville Lifestyles magazine:

There was an eccentric old man in my Colorado hometown who built what he called a trolley in his yard for his grandkids. It was a crude contraption, and downright dangerous by today's standards. You would climb to a tree house (no railings) and take hold of a homemade wooden pulley, which you held onto for dear life as you jumped from the tree (no nets, no harness) and zipped your way down a wire. If you accidentally let go, as Dennie Wheeler did one time, you fell upon the concrete driveway. The ambulance would be called.
So when my visiting niece, who recently came to Nashville for her spring break, asked me if I'd zip-lined before, I told her that, yes, I had.  But I was wrong. I had done something much more dangerous than zipping, as I would soon discover.  Middle Tennessee's zipping adventure in the hills west of Nashville, called Adventureworks, belies its name; it is safe and staid enough for the most cautious of grandmothers.
First, we had to don our safety harness, which is similar to the ones used for rock-climbing, a series of tight straps mimicking the outline of a Speedo. Our guide gave the male members of our group an additional word of warning: "Gentlemen, make sure all of your furniture is in the same room, if you know what I mean.
"Now, who would like to read the safety instructions out loud," he asked, and over the next five minutes we listened to a precocious eight-year-old struggle with the polysyllabic words.
The 90-minute zip tour, which takes place on a 40-acre patch of old-growth forest on a bend of the scenic Harpeth River, is designed to start easy and grow more difficult with each of the nine zip lines. The incline of the first run was so slight that the larger of us didn't even make it all the way to the tree at the other end.
Yet each zip-station platform grew higher and required more climbing, and there some were so high that even the most macho among us was relieved when the guide clipped onto us a secondary line to keep us from plummeting all the way to the ground should we lose our balance before zipping away. The highest line is 85 feet from the ground, and the longest is close to 500 feet long. One of them had two parallel lines so people could race, side by side.
Even on these longer, steeper zips, stopping is a breeze. Each line ends at a soft landing mound of soil and mulch. The worst possible result: a pair of dirty jeans and some wood chips down your underwear.
All in all, a good experience. The woods and vistas were lovely and worthy of my time. Yet something important was missing: exhilaration. At no time did I feel frightened or on edge, and isn't that why we choose to do these things? Alas, my adrenal glands slumbered through the afternoon.

Mr. EarthSaver says: Leave the gift bags at home, please.

Common scenario in adult life:

You say to the dinner-party hostess,"What can I bring?"
And they say, "Only yourselves and a smile." Or something just as stupid.
So you pull a bottle of wine out of the cabinet...one that someone brought to your dinner party, and you put it in one of these:


This one is really nice. It's made of a high-cotton-count paper with sparklies on the peacock feathers. Think of how many of these are given out in the average evening throughout America. They add nothing to the sentiments behind the gift. They clutter one's house. They suck up resources. Most of them are ugly (although this one's kinda pretty).

I'm guessing the host would rather you put the 4$-10$ you spent on the bag toward the wine; you could buy a better bottle of vino. And then, maybe, they would actually drink and enjoy the wine instead of re-gifting it.

Postcard from Blue Ridge, Georgia

We spotted this in the outdoor section of an antique emporium:


I should have had my wife pose with it to show the size -- the head is two feet across! The entire bust is about five feet tall.

We all scrutinized for the longest time, pretending we knew who it was: Wordsworth? ... Whitman? ... A Norwegian King?

"It's my husband," explained the owner of the store. She said that they'd commissioned a piece to use for a settee of sorts for their favorite cowboy hat ... but the size of that cranium would obviously make a ten-gallon hat appear a more appropriate fit for an American Girl doll.

 I really wanted to buy it. Wife said no, not even for Father's Day.

Please: Help me celebrate Best of the Best

A good friend of mine long ago called me a "self-appointed-critic-at-large." Supposedly, I am critical. I like to say I simply have a Passion for Excellence.

I just had a good experience with my bank, SunTrust, and it got me thinking of how few service providers or retailers truly excel at what they do. Here's my partial list of The Best. Please add to it so you can contribute to the overall quality of my life.

1. SunTrust. We've been with them for three states, and I've never been in a branch that was less than perfectly run. Also, I like the free candies at the counter, and they seem to hire very attractive women.

2. Chick-fil-A. So maybe you don't like their politics, but most of them have a little-old-lady hostess who goes around the restaurant, asking if there's anything you need. And there's always fresh flowers on the table. And if you wait more than 5 minutes for your food you generally get a coupon for a free sandwich. And they have the best side salad in Fast Food Land, which includes broccoli! And they have mouthwash in the bathrooms. And, and, and, and, and...........

3. Publix: There are markets with better groceries but no one trains their people like Publix. Their bakeries are the best, their fried chicken is Southern-good, they have the best deli sandwiches in town. You can actually find something in the store that you want on your sandwich and take it to the deli and they'll use it without charging you extra. People love working there (I contrast this to Kroger, where everyone mopes and slurs their sentences and says "I dunno...but I'm fixin' to get off work in fifteen minutes and I can't wait.")

Have I missed any?

Thumbs up to Barbara Mandrell's Fontanel Mansion Tour

Usually I pick my own topics for my AdVentures column in Nashville Lifestyles magazine, but now and then my editors nudge me to go outside my interest zone. I would never have visited this place ... and I'm so glad I did:
“This is the largest log home in the world, “ says Amy, our tour guide at Fontanel Mansion, Barbara Mandrell’s former residence. “And if anyone has to use the bathroom, we’ve got 13 of ‘em in this house so just find one and use it if you need to.”
The 12 in our group then walk into the 2,500-square-foot great room with cathedral ceiling. On the walls hang famous guitars from Barbara’s friends: The Eagles, Miranda Lambert, and the famous red-and-blue one played by Buck Owens on Hee Haw. Amy encourages us to pull any of them down and pose with them -- or, if we’re able, play them. “Take pictures if you want,” she says. “Y’all can take video, too.”
In Barbara’s bedroom I inquire about an open sleeve of saltine crackers on the bedstand. Amy reminds me of Barbara’s song You Can Eat Crackers in My Bed. ”Why don’t you lie down on Barbara’s bed and pretend to eat a cracker and I’ll take your picture?” Amy suggests -- and I do.
The tour of Fontanel, the 27,000-square-foot home to the iconic star and her family for 14 years -- Barbara relocated to smaller digs after her kids were grown and gone -- exemplifies all that is Nashville: friendly and informal, with no fuss or pretense. And, if Amy is your guide, you’ll even get some music thrown in; the singer-songwriter belted out for us a few bars of a song she’d written about butterflies.
Tired? Rest a spell on any piece of furniture you desire. “Jaime says ‘it’s all just stuff,’” says Amy, quoting her boss and one of the three Mandrell children. (The home is now owned by Dale Morris and Marc Oswald, well-known managers in the music business.)
The other tour highlight is the gossip Amy dishes:
… Like the time Kenny Chesney got drunk and jumped off a balcony overlooking the pool, only he missed and broke his leg. “He left his tour jacket here -- look,” Amy says. “Does anyone want to try it on?”
… and there was the time that Kid Rock and Hank Williams, Junior got drunk with an AK-47, rendering the walls of the indoor shooting range into swiss cheese.
… and those mirrors on the ceiling of the canopy bed where Barbara and her husband, Ken Dudney slept? Amy says they both liked to read in bed and they installed the mirrors so they could look up and see each other when talking, rather than having to turn their heads. “That’s their story, and they’re stickin’ with it,” she says.
The tour over, we all pile into the bus to head back down the mountain. A green tennis ball, pierced with a hole, has been stuck onto a part of the van door’s hinge that sticks out. “That’s our redneck bumper,” says the driver. “Some lady dinged her head on that one time and passed right out.”
Perfect lyrics for a Mandrell song, I say to myself.

Questions of the Universe: #445T3

Two men, identically matched in strength, are fighting to the death. The aggressor fights out of anger, the other fights out of fear.  Which guy will win?

Which is the stronger emotion?

Does survival instinct trump raw rage?

Curious minds want to know.

Not Your Father's Ramen

As a writer who works at home I find myself foraging in the 'fridge for lunch -- and on a cold day cheese and crackers and carrot sticks just won't cut it.  This is why I have invented what I call the Souper Bowl, which involves packaged ramen noodles .... WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, don't leave me yet. It's better than it sounds.

First of all, try to buy your ramen noodles at an Asian grocery -- they're infinitely superior, sometimes with two to three flavoring packets apiece, with much more flavor than the chicken-soupy ramen from the Boring White Man's Grocery Store.

1. Chop up last night's protein: cold chicken, a pork chop, piece of steak. You can also use cubed tofu (sometimes I use two protein ingredients.) Also, chop up a tomato and, if you like things spicy, a jalapeno or other pepper. Put these in the bowl from which you will eat.

2. When you boil the noodles also add any veggies you can find in the crisper: cabbage, carrots, whatever. If you're using last night's already-cooked veggies, add them to the bowl without cooking them.

3. Dump the hot-and-cooked noodles and veggies over the bowl of cold ingredients. The hot water will warm everything up instantly, and the soup will cool down, which means you can eat immediately without scalding your tongue.

4. Add extra flavor. I like sriracha (rooster bottle sauce), sesame oil, red pepper flakes, soy sauce.

Looks pretty good, right?

A Nashville Mystery

I've lived in seven states and even more cities, and despite what many folks say this is not a homogeneous, boring country -- there are plenty of local eccentricities out there.

One I can't figure out in Nashville is what I've named the Music City Six-Foot Rule: In any queue at a retail outlet or restaurant ... basically any place where people are standing in line to pay a bill ... the person who is next in line rarely stands closer than six feet from the person who is conducting their transaction before them. There's this huge gap, big enough to drive a car through. And I am so, so tempted to just fill that gap ... to budge.

I can understand this in some venues, like a doctor's office or adult video store, but this six-foot rule is true even in grocery stores. And it's not a Southern thing. I don't see it in Macon or Ashville or even Memphis.

Color me curious.

Pee-wee Wanna-be

I've always appreciated Paul Reubens and his persona of Pee-wee Herman. I own the complete set of his brilliant Saturday-morning cartoon, Pee-wee's Playhouse (I WANT a flying bicycle and my own personal genie, damn it!), and for my birthday one year my daughter and wife bought for me a trip to New York to see Pee-wee on Broadway.

I feel bad about his downfall, I really do. I don't care that he was pleasuring himself inside an adult movie theater -- that's his business, not ours ... 
  
Pee-wee, you pervert! ...
...  I know you are, but what am I?

Pee-wee loves everything larger than life. Remember his banjo-size toothbrush?

So it is with great pleasure that I share with you this photo of me and my wife in our recent trip to Apalachicola, down in the Florida panhandle.



I loved this chair so much ... I married it!