That’s my son getting a haircut to start the new year. I told the stylist to make him look like the boy in the photo. He doesn’t know it yet. Shhhhhhh! Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
My son sees a book I’m reading lying on a table . . . “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” he says. “What kind of a title is that?” I say, “It’s hard to explain.” “Life,” he says in a mystical voice, “is like a motorcycle. You must maintain your motorcyle.” He makes a gong sound . . . I am in an enormous vault, dead, and they are paying their last respects. It’s kind of them to come and do this. They didn’t have to do this. I feel grateful. Now [my son] motions for me to open the glass door of the vault. I see he wants to talk to me. He wants me to tell him, perhaps, what death is like. I feel a desire to do this, to tell him. It was so good of him to come and wave I will tell him… Read more →
These Are My Kids
We’re getting snacks and sodas at AM/PM — me, my son and two of his friends. I know the girl at the register because I stop here for a soda most days on my way to work and she’s always here. “Hi,” I say to her. “These are my kids.” She looks at the kids, who are all the same age and look nothing like each other — a tall Wasian kid, a stocky Asian and an Indian boy. “Different moms,” I explain. Afterward, the group was evenly divided on whether or not she believed me . . . Read more →
One Mint Julep
After we struck out at Black Angus, we wound up at Lucille’s Smokehouse Bar-B-Que on my son’s recommendation. Not only does it turn out to be better than Black Angus, they’ve got — mint juleps! Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have an alcoholic beverage at a family lunch, but I love mint juleps and it’s rare to find a place that advertises their ability to make one. “What kind would you like?” the waiter asks. “There are kinds of mint juleps?” I ask. “We have seven different brands of bourbon.” “Oh. Let’s go with the Wild Turkey.” Ahhh, I’m in heaven . . . [audio:one-mint-julep] Read more →
The Lunch Coupon
We’re on our way to Black Angus for a family lunch. My wife is driving . . . she pulls a huge stack of coupons out of the glove compartment and hands them to our son in the back seat. “Find the Black Angus coupon in there,” she says. After a while, he says, “Why do we have ten 20% off coupons for Bed, Bath and Beyond?” “Your job is to find the Black Angus coupon,” she says, “not to criticize people.” I say, “If you combine all those coupons, they actually wind up paying you to take the merchandise out of the store.” A while later, he says, “I can’t find a Black Angus coupon.” I say, “Let me take a look.” He hands me the coupon stack, which I look through and find it. “Pwned,” I say. “Why couldn’t you find it?” “It looks just like the Bed,… Read more →
Owen 16
You can go to the NFL Shop and buy a custom Detroit Lions jersey like the one shown here for $99.99. Well, not exactly like the one shown here, which I Photoshopped, because the NFL anticipated the joke. If you try to order an Owen 16 jersey, you get this message: Your current entry cannot be processed. Some entries are prohibited due to guidelines for past and present player names. Please create a new entry. Read more →
A Box of Pears
We’re having an extended family holiday get-together today, including a gift exchange. My wife did the gift shopping. She’s passive-aggressive about it because she really believes that other family members, especially my mom, use the holidays to clean unwanted items out of their closets, wrap them up and give them to us as Christmas presents. I’ve explained to her that these people simply don’t have any style or taste, so even those these are items that you would stuff in the back of a closet, they actually see them as pretty nice gifts. Here’s a rundown on what she bought this year: My ex-sister-in-law is getting a box of Harry & David pears, normally $40 but obtained at a deep discount. My great uncle is getting a box of pears. My parents and my sister’s family — a box of pears. “And the best thing,” she says, “is it says… Read more →
Happy New Year
And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been. — Rainer Maria Rilke Best wishes to everyone who’s taken the time to read this site over the past year. Read more →
Free Samples
I’ve got my son and one of his friends with me at Trader Joe’s. They start off by grabbing some roast beef and panini at the free sample stand. Later, when I’m in the checkout line, they wander off, I assume to go outside, but it turns out they went back for seconds on the free samples. “You guys are an embarrassment!” I say. “The free samples are supposed to be one to a customer, not all you can eat!” “I don’t think she saw us the first time,” my son says. “So it’s okay.” “Jesus, I can’t take you guys anywhere.” Read more →
NFL Week 17 Recap: You Can’t Win With Knuckleheads
My son is 15, he’s played competitive roller hockey for a number of years — including winning a 12-and-under national championship — and the main thing I’ve learned in that time is that a player’s individual skills are not nearly as important as his ability to play as part of a team. We know lots of kids with terrific skills but if they just want to do their own thing out there, you put them on a team and they actually make the team worse. Or to put it in a nutshell: You can’t win with knuckleheads. I was reminded of that last weekend as I watched Dallas, with talented knuckleheads like Terrell Owens and Pacman Jones, get knocked out of the playoffs with a 44-6 loss to the Eagles, who cut Owens in 2005, and the Jets, who cut Chad Pennington to make room for drama queen Brett Favre,… Read more →
A Consulting Axiom
I’ve been downgraded from an ear infection to a “full-blown” ear infection. Last week, the doctor at walk-in urgent care gave me an Amoxicillin prescription and told me to come back if the symptoms didn’t improve in four or five days. They didn’t, but I went to a different walk-in clinic this afternoon to work a second opinion into the process. The doctor gave me a prescription for Levaquin to replace the Amoxicillin. I know, nobody cares about this. I only mention it because it reminded me of something important. I was a consultant for many years and I’m going to share with you now one of the axioms of consulting: Whatever the client is doing, advise them to do something else. If whatever they’ve been doing was working, they wouldn’t need a consultant, right? Is Levaquin “better” than Amoxicillin for ear infections? No, but you see what I’m getting… Read more →
The Renaissance Man
I’m looking at these last few posts where I’ve strung together W.H. Auden, John Dewey, Meat Loaf and Franz Kafka, not with any sense of purpose, just things I’ve read or listened to on my winter break. What a renaissance man I am! Why, if you were here, we could talk about poetry, education, philosophy, sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, existentialism . . . and we’d have a good time too, considering we’re all going to die . . . Read more →
Lullaby
Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. — W.H. Auden, “Lullaby” Read more →
Experience and Education
How many students, for example, were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them? How many acquired special skills by means of automatic drill so that their power of judgment and capacity to act intelligently in new situations was limited? How many came to associate the learning process with ennui and boredom? How many found what they did learn so foreign to the situations of life outside the school as to give them no power of control over the latter? How many came to associate books with dull drudgery, so that they were “conditioned” to all but flashy reading matter? — John Dewey, Experience and Education Read more →
Bat Out of Hell
And I ran up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom Mommy and Daddy was sleeping in the moonlight Slowly I opened the door, creeping in the shadows Right up to the foot of their bed I raised the guitar high above my head And just as I was about to bring the guitar Crashing down upon the center of the bed, My father woke up, screaming “Stop! Wait a minute! Stop it boy! What do ya think you’re doin’? That’s no way to treat an expensive musical instrument!” “God Dammit Daddy! You know I love you, But you got a hell of a lot to learn about Rock ‘n Roll” — Meat Loaf, “Wasted Youth” Read more →
Couriers
They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other — since there are no kings — messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service. — Franz Kafka Read more →
Another Way Computers Are Making Life Better for Everyone
His mom took the boy’s laptop computer away because she didn’t like his attitude about something or other, and now he’s trying to involve me in a secret plan to get it back. I ask him, “Why don’t you forget about the computer and do something else tonight? Read a book or something?” He says, “I need the computer so my friends and I can talk to each other.” “Use text messages. Or a phone. There’s an idea.” “We need video.” “Video? What do you need video for?” “Don’t worry about it.” “Exactly. So you don’t really need the computer.” “‘Don’t worry about it’ doesn’t mean I don’t need it. It means don’t worry about it.” “What are you going to do? Have a biggest dick contest?” “Is that what you used to do?” “We didn’t have webcams when I was your age. We had to take ’em out and… Read more →
EppsNet Movie Reviews: Gran Torino
It’s sad to see Clint Eastwood get old but somebody’s got to do it. It seemed to me as far back as Unforgiven and In the Line of Fire that while other actors were trying to stay artificially young forever, no one else was putting on screen an honest portrayal of what it’s like to be an old man, what it’s like to feel yourself diminished. And that was 15 years ago, when Eastwood was in his early 60s. He’s now 78 and looks it. I was trying to think of another leading actor who’s doing roles where the central fact about the character is that he’s gotten old and tired and scared . . . Robert De Niro? No, he’s still doing the same cops and mobsters roles he’s been doing for decades. Al Pacino? Dustin Hoffman? No. Same roles, plus they’re both around 70 years old with absurd… Read more →
Good in a Crisis
A family member was explaining to me that she is “good in a crisis.” I have to say that’s true, that this person is in fact at her best in a crisis, which explains why, in times of tranquility, she’s always looking for some way to escalate things into a crisis. Read more →
Footsteps
He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant. — Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Read more →