Friday, December 7, 2007

Air Supply, Crackers, Fish Nets, and Cat Fights

Sometimes you learn something about somebody and you say, “Huh…I never would have guessed that.” (Hopefully, you say that internally as opposed to flaunting it in their face that you had them pegged as a different type of person.)

This happened to me recently when I learned that the two Russells from Air Supply (Graham Russell & Russell Hitchcock) were each married and each has two children. Something in me just went, “Huh…I never would have guessed that.”

Quick Aside: I was telling this bit of info to a guy at work when I referred to the great song writer of the pair of Air Supply Russells as “the Graham Cracker.” My friend was offended at my choice of language which led to my long explanation that I (as a white guy) can refer to other white guys as “Crackers.” Also, there are a very small number of black guys who understand the white guy culture and have been accepted into the fraternity who can get away with saying “Cracker.” I finalized my explanation by saying that when we white guys use it as a term of endearment (like I did with Graham Russell) it is pronounced with a very soft ending, like “Crack-ah,” but when it is used with the harsh “-er” ending it becomes quite derogatory. I apologize for this aside. It is not my intention to turn my blog into an online guide to white guy culture. I just tend to get easily distracted.

So where was I…right...sometimes you just go “Wow. I never would have guessed.”

That’s exactly what happened to me today. I popped into my local Woodcraft Store (the West Michigan Woodcraft store on 28th St in Grand Rapids, Michigan) and while I was busy talking about moisture meters with store owner Gary Foote, Dr. Sam Lacina (a fellow member of the West Michigan Woodworking Guild) came into the store carrying a tennis racquet badly in need of re-stringing. Gary called Sam over and then asked me if I was aware of how Sam kept busy when he wasn’t doing his day job of being a pediatric cardiologist. That is when I was given the low-down on the fishing nets that Dr. Sam produces. What appeared from 20 feet away to be an old school tennis racquet with slacking catgut was actually a beautiful fly fishing net. Apparently Sam makes the finest fishing nets in the history of mankind. www.flyfishingnets.net

Sam was incredibly modest, but Gary let me know all about how Sam’s nets are so prized they are sold as Limited Editions through Orvis. So I just thought, “Huh, so Sam here not only can answer Barry Gibb’s question of how one mends a broken heart, but he makes the best fish scoopers on the planet….who knew?”

One last thought about Air Supply…how do I convince my lovely wife Gail that she is “Every Woman in the World to Me” when I just spent 13 minutes in the DVD department of Sam’s Club last night holding a box with all three seasons of Wonder Woman going into great detail as I explained that when Julie Newmar dropped the mantle Lynda Carter came along and picked it up and made me the man I am today…complete with unrealistic expectations of curvaceous comic book hotties in human form. Then again look how well Wonder Woman aged. In season one she was fighting Nazis and the next season she is in post Bicentennial America looking exactly the same as she did 35 years before.

In closing, let’s all join our cosmic energy together in visualizing a nice cat fight between Julie Newmar’s Catwoman and Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman. Have you got the image? Focus. Visualize. Make it happen. I can honestly say I don’t care who comes out on top. In this catfight match up, we’re all winners.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This has to be one of the most bizarre posts I've ever read. And not necessarily in a good way.....

Weird...

Jeff Skiver said...

I know what you mean. I've never understood fishing either so the thought of someone paying hundreds of dollars for a net to land trout in is pretty bizarre.

However, Dr. Sam's work is incredible.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the great band Hall & Oates. As just a kid in the mid '80s, I always assumed their name was Haullin' Oats. Made sense that they had second jobs running an agricultural trucking business. I mean, you can't just make a living on MTV. Why not kill two birds with one stone. It's hard enough to come up with one good name, let alone two.

Jeff Skiver said...

I was talking about Hall & Oates just yesterday. Somehow it came up in conversation with my lovely wife Gail that Hall & Oates Greatest Hits was the first album that I ever hit the Trifecta with...the first album I had in all 3 major forms (vinyl, cassette, and CD). (Sorry...reel to reel and 8 track are not major forms to me).

The better part of that conversation with my wife was when I told her I spent the whole weekend looking for replies to this posting. I was hoping that somehow Lynda Carter had stumbled upon it and wanted to invite me out to California to see just what manner of man she had helped me become. Gail responded that the anonymous reply above that used the words "bizarre" and "weird" was probably her, and if that really was Lynda, then (in Gail's opinion) she had a fairly accurate vision of what she had done to me.

rookster said...

Thanks for another laugh, Jeff. Linda Carter has it right: this is a bizarre post. What must it mean that I think it's funny and might even make sense?