From the Archives: Loop Photo Album (1986-1993)

I have a ton of pictures from this era, so I'll do another post at a later date. For the majority of my Loop years, I was the producer of the Steve Dahl & Garry Meier Show, but I also hosted my own weekend show on the Loop-FM, and I was the co-host of a show called "Ebony & Ivory" on the Loop-AM. Here are a few pictures and mementos from that era...




The Steve & Garry Logo--Late '80s









On stage with Steve at a sold out Chicago Theatre concert--1989. Yes, show biz is very glamorous.












Some of my Loop favorites: (From Left) John "Swany" Swanson, Jim Wiser, Anne-Marie Kennedy, and Dina Sanchez. Swany and Wiser worked for Brandmeier at the time. Swany is now producer of Eric & Kathy's show at WTMX and Wiser is producer of Spike O'Dell's show on WGN. (Swany also later co-authored "The Radio Producer's Handbook" with me). Anne-Marie and Dina were part of the best promotion department of all time. Anne Marie is now working in a similar position in Boston and Dina does charity work and is raising twin girls.







This is an invitation to the party at Garry Meier's restaurant from the late 80's, "Sabrina". A few very memorable Loop Christmas parties took place there, and so did one of my first dates with my future wife Bridget.

















This is Ebony & Ivory. Stan Lawrence (now the co-host of Stan & Terry middays on WCKG) and some white guy who now runs a blog. Our show was on the air on AM 1000 in 1991-1992. In the background behind us is former Loop salesman Bob Kruchten.

























On Stage at the Chicago Theatre with Garry Meier (as Cliff). I was one of the Cliff Dancers, and we did a dance number choreographed by future Tony Award winning stage director Robert Falls (I'm not kidding). The Cliff dancers are:(clockwise starting from kneeling left) Mike Bramel, Me, The Bald Handbook co-author Dave Stern (obscured behind Cliff), cabin boy Jim, Shemp, and Mike Davis (back to audience).




Bridget Kaempfer (when she was still Bridget Hyde), Me, Engineer Mike Rugen, and Wendy Snyder. Mike passed away last month--and we all miss him very much. Wendy is now part of the Steve Dahl Show on WCKG.







If you missed any previous "From The Archives" click here: http://rickkaempferarchives.blogspot.com

Suburban Man: A Dad's Guide to Comedy for Boys

By Rick Kaempfer





Comedy is really my only parenting tool. Over my ten years as a father, I’ve used it to great effect to diffuse tense situations, to foster strong relationships, and to teach my boys one of the most necessary life skills. If you’re laughing, life is going to be just fine.

Unfortunately, a Daddy comedian needs to be adaptable. Different comedy works for different ages. Jokes that absolutely kill with three year olds are often despised by ten year olds. I still haven’t figured out how to deliver a belly laugh to the youngster while avoiding the simultaneous heckles of the eight or ten year old, but I will never, ever, give up trying.

Comedy for Ages 0-2

Honestly, this age group isn’t exactly my forte. My wife is the baby entertainer. Bridget can make any baby laugh, anytime, anyplace. She has a rubber face, an unlimited supply of funny noises, and a complete inability to be embarrassed by her actions. I’ve seen her making a screaming infant smile in mid cry.

My only trick for this age group is the napkin blown into the air bit. Simply unfold the napkin, placing it on your nose so that it covers your entire face, and then count down...three, two, one, BLOW! A forcefully applied blow sends the napkin sailing nearly all the way to the ceiling. Huge laughs are guaranteed and you can’t repeat it too often. It gets the same belly laugh on the four hundredth try as it does on the first.

Comedy for Ages 2-4

Now we’re in my wheelhouse. I’ve had at least one son in this age bracket for the past eight years, and this is where my collection of cartoon and puppet voices comes into play. When Johnny was three, he and I went almost a whole year without speaking to each other Dad-to-son. Grover drove him to pre-school, Kermit put him down for a nap, Eeyore talked to him when he was sad, and Ernie sang to him in the bath. (Johnny even did a movie review on the radio as Grover when he was 3...a classic for the ages.)

This is the age where the pratfall (someone else's pain) becomes the king of boy comedy. When I show them how much I love them, I do it with my hands--increasing the love more and more until I smash my hand into the wall. Huge laughs.


Comedy for Ages 4-7

This is the age for subtlety and nuance. If you can’t or won’t employ the use of bodily functions, pick up your ball and go home. There’s no place for you here. If you have a problem with the words “butt”, “poop”, “fart”, “burp”, or “booger”, more power to you, but you will never, ever get a laugh out of a 4-7 year old boy.

Although, I must say, pratfalls still work.

Boys this age absolutely love the Three Stooges. I had to stop letting Tommy watch the Stooges because he laughed so hard during their routines that he began to hyperventilate. I wonder if the Stooges have ever killed a 4-7 year old boy. I wouldn’t be surprised.

(Father’s note: I noticed that I started performing much better for this age group when their mother wasn’t around. I’m not sure why.)

Comedy for Ages 7-10

Ah, the age of word play. Knock Knock jokes. Orange you glad I didn’t say banana? Whoo boy. That’s a good one. These jokes have not changed in fifty years.

Tommy and Johnny were also obsessed with words that have double meanings. Tommy’s favorite planet became Uranus. Johnny told me to close the refrigerator because it wasn’t polite to watch the salad dressing. They don’t know what Prince Albert in a Can is, but rest assured they would have loved that joke if they did.

As for parody songs, they are still a huge hit with this age bracket. Kids still sing that version of Jingle Bells with “Batmobile lost his wheel and the Joker got away.” As for me, I constantly found myself changing the words of songs. They were amazed at my nearly Wayne Brady-esque ability to rhyme on demand to fit the situation—although I must say this might be the one skill that now annoys my oldest son Tommy the most.

Which brings me to the comedy of the next age group...

Comedy for Ages 10+

You’re not funny, Dad.

That’s a tough nut to crack, but I’m working on it. When he told me the other day that my jokes were twice as old as I am, I spent the next two days telling him Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge jokes to prove a point.

”I don’t get it, Dad,” he would say.

”Exactly!” I said. “Those jokes are twice as old as me. See? My jokes are no more than one and a half times older than me.”

“You’re not funny, Dad.”

That’s when I walked into the wall.

Huge laugh.

I’ve still got it.



If you've missed any previous Suburban Man columns, click here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com

4 Sure-Fire Ways to Hose Down Your Man

By Rick Kaempfer



Next time you go to the supermarket, look at the covers of women’s magazines. Every one of them....and this is no exaggeration...every single one of them, has an article with some sort of variation of this headline: “How to drive your man crazy in bed.” If you can’t find at least one women’s magazine with a headline like “10 Secrets to Satisfying Your Man,” or “6 Tips That Will Make Him Squirm with Pleasure,” or “His 5 Secret Erogenous Zones,” you aren’t looking very hard.

Every time I see these headlines, a question immediately pops into my brain. The target audience for these magazines is predominantly women 18-34 years old, right? That means their men are presumably the same age, right? Then my question is this: Is there really a big problem getting 18-34 year old men interested in bedroom activities? I’m guessing that none of the readers of these magazines have experienced this a single time. Never. Not once.

Why? Because 18-34 year old men need only one thing to get excited in bed: a willing woman. Once he gets that, his odds of being satisfied are nearly 100%. None of the bells and whistles are necessary. Trust me on this.

In fact, introducing bells and whistles (or God forbid ten of them) could bring disastrous results. Remember, in the desire department, even the hungriest young woman is no match for the most lackluster man. The time needed to rev up an 18-34 year old man is approximately one second, give or take one second. Among the things that could do it?
=Air
=Water
=Food
=Hunger
=Day
=Night

What are these magazines doing? The equivalent magazine piece for men would be titled “How to Get Your Women to Buy More Shoes.” It’s simply not necessary. What younger women really need is a way to hose down their hormonal stallions. That’s the real advice these magazines should be offering.

Of course, the common misconception is that women don’t need any help in this department. They’re born with the ability to discourage, right? Nonsense. They only think they have this ability. They’ve taken it for granted for too long. The eye-rolling, the old excuses, and the old techniques no longer work. Men these days are way too savvy.

Rookie Mistakes

One common mistake women make is thinking a standard excuse will slow him down. A hastily delivered “I have a headache” isn’t even a speed bump. Men take that as a given. Any man worth his salt carries Tylenol with him wherever he goes. The other most common technique, excessive yawning combined with constant reminders of how tired you are, can actually work against you. Where do you go when it’s time to sleep? That’s right, and his mind is already there.

So what can you do? Many young women think they can dampen the desire of their man by making themselves as unattractive as possible. They don’t wear makeup, put on a ratty sweatshirt and sweatpants, and avoid a shower for a few days. That should scare him off, right?

Wrong. That won’t even slow him down. Once a man has sampled the goods, no amount of smudging can erase his crystal clear memories. Plus, he can always turn off the lights or close his eyes and retrieve those memories. If you’ve been using some of the techniques described in those magazines, you really have no chance of getting those memories out of his head. You’re going to have to take drastic steps.

Granted, hosing him down without scaring him off is a high-wire act, but if you keep the following four phrases in your purse, and use them only for emergency hose-downs, I guarantee success.

1. Look, honey, I got this picture of your mother framed.

This is a verbal and visual kick to the groin. You have effectively ended any and all overtures for the night...immediately. Gone. Done. He’s going to the refrigerator right now.

If you can’t or won’t get a picture of his mother, it may be good enough to simply talk about his mother just as his engine starts revving. Try one of these alternative phrases...
“I wonder what your mother is up to tonight.”
“Your mother must have been a beautiful woman when she was younger, don’t you think?”
“Do you think your parents are still...you know... active?”

All will kill his desire instantly. Sigmund Freud didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about.


2. Make some popcorn honey, there’s a Merchant Ivory Film Festival on Lifetime tonight.

Don’t freelance on this one. One misplaced word and it might not work. Don’t substitute another movie. Don’t substitute the number of movies. Don’t substitute the channel (unless it’s Oxygen). This is very important.

Every guy is programmed to sit through at least one “chick flick,” so simply urging him to watch one movie (like “Beaches” or “Steel Magnolias”) won’t do it. It’s worth a roll of the dice for any man. He knows he’ll get bonus points for sitting through it. But no bonus points are worth sitting through more than one. And Merchant Ivory movies? Oh boy, does he hate those. The characters are too buttoned-up, too uptight, and too British. No man has any interest in Victorian England—it’s our all-time least favorite historical era. Plus, those movies average about sixteen hours in length. If you say there will be more than one, he can do the math in his head. If you throw in the Lifetime network, his head will explode because he knows this is a gal’s network, which means tons of commercials, and this will make these already endless movies even longer. There isn’t a straight man alive that won’t run for the hills.

3. Have you ever noticed how good looking gay guys are?

Even insecure guys won’t get jealous if you think gay guys are good looking. In fact, he’ll probably say it himself every time a better looking guy is around. However, the one time he will definitely NEVER say it is when his engines are getting revved up.

If you say it at precisely the right time, he will do just about anything to get away from you as quickly as possible. Otherwise he’ll have to explain why his engine is revved up at the same time you’re talking about gay guys. That’s a conversation that will kill his desire instantaneously. Just thinking about explaining it, will help turn off his engine.

But what if it doesn’t? Does that mean he’s gay? No. It just means you’ve waited too long to say it. He’s going to need a glass of verbal cold water thrown in his face and pronto. Keep in mind that I don’t recommend using this last one unless you want him to stay away for several days. Keep it under glass and break the glass only in case of emergency.

4. Oh Boy. I better get some cranberry juice right away.

We know what that means. It means no matter what we say or do, nothings going to be happening for several days...if we’re lucky. As soon as the word cranberry comes out of your mouth, he’ll be turning on the ball game.

If you are dealing with a naïve or inexperienced man who doesn’t know the code meaning of “cranberry juice”, I recommend this alternative: “Have you ever had a really painful canker sore?”

If you’re a young mother, a simple “Next time you’re at the store can you pick up another tube of Preparation H?” or an “Oooh. I can feel my milk coming in,” will suffice.

You’re free.

Now please, for your own sanity and rest, stop reading those women’s magazines. Don’t go looking for any secret erogenous zones or secret ways to satisfy him or secret ways to make him squirm in bed. He’s like the Terminator. It already takes a lot of effort to get rid of him.

And he’ll be back.

Guest Blogger: Jay Shatz

Jay Shatz was born and raised in Rogers Park...which means he's a Northsider and lifelong Cubs fan. He and his partner Stan own "JayTV", a television production company which produces (he wanted me to say "executive produces") several shows for the DIY network (about 200 hours of home and garden programming a year), including "The Garden Sense." This summer they'll start shooting a new show called "Desperate Landscapes."


Before founding JayTV six years ago, Jay was a television news reporter for seventeen years in Peoria and Cincinnati, as well as the General Manager of WPGU radio in Champaign. I was his program director and afternoon host there. We were both young and stupid (21). This picture was taken in 1984 at a radio convention in Los Angeles that Jay somehow convinced the radio station we should attend. It's the only time I've ever been to L.A.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "What a good idea to ask a man who executive produces garden shows to guest blog on Earth Day." Yes, that's true. Unfortunately, Jay wanted to guest blog about me...which he noted none of the other guest bloggers had yet done. (P.S. Despite what he says below, I've never contracted any sort of sexually transmitted disease)



Take Me Out to the Ballgame

By Jay Shatz


Like most men in their forties, I’ve discovered time has a way of thinning your hair and your circle of friends. The trick in mid-life is to hold onto both.

In the grand scheme of things, my friendship with Rick Kaempfer has been relatively easy to sustain. We see each other once every 8 years. It’s seems like a nice pace. As college buddies the odds are against us keeping in touch. By now, one of us should have died in a tragic boating accident, or worse, voted Republican.

We met and bonded 25 years ago in the basement studios of WPGU-FM. It was a time of innocence and nicknames. Rick called me “Dr. J” and I called him “A Nasty, Angry Midget of a Nazi”. As General Manager of Rock 107, I wisely selected Rick to be my program director. That meant he got laid while I got my hands on petty cash. For much of our senior year, Rick battled Chlamydia as I paid off my student loans.

My favorite photo from those days shows both of us smiling and drunk, trolling for jobs at a media convention in Los Angeles. Rick has the sly, mischievous grin that would open doors to big radio producing gigs while I’m wearing a tight pair of black parachute pants that would eventually get me into every bar on Halstead without paying a cover.

Our paths after college veered in very different directions. Rick struggled to gain his footing , blinded perhaps by the glare off the 9 Emmys I collected in a meteoric rise as a television reporter. I rarely saw Rick, but delighted in hearing his voice on my answering machine begging for career advice or at the very least, a return phone call.

Loyal readers of this blog pretty much know how things ended up. Rick shook off the sexually transmitted diseases and settled down to a great career and even better family life.. With a wonderful wife and 3 cute kids, he’s now a poster child for fatherhood and anti-biotics.

Through it all, our friendship has stayed on schedule. We met last September for a Cubs game joined by college buddies and fellow bloggers Dane Placko and Dave Stern. At first, I was deeply touched they shared their valuable 6th row box seats at Wrigley Field. But I quickly remembered how cheap the trio is and not prone to idol acts of kindness. My guess is the Cubs offer season ticket holders a discount for bringing a minority to a game. Because I’m a Gay Jew, they hit the jackpot and I probably saved them a fortune.

Before leaving, my three old friends spoke of breaking the 8 year wait by returning to Wrigley Field this season. Rick suggested I join them for what he promises will be “Ricky Martin Bobblehead Day”. I’m not sure if that’s an invitation or insult. But trust me, I’ll be there, wearing my parachute pants and a smile.




If you missed any of the other guest bloggers (who were much nicer to me), click here: http://rickkaempferguestbloggers.blogspot.com

From the Archives: Applying for Commissioner of Baseball

In 1997, after Commissioner Faye Vincent had been forced to resign as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, and Bud Selig had taken over on an interim basis, Selig announced that baseball was looking for a full-time commissioner.

The Bald Handbook co-author Dave Stern thought it would be funny to send in a letter applying for the job. This is the letter he sent:

To Whom it May Concern:

It has come to my attention that you and your colleagues are currently in search of a new commissioner of baseball. You have stated the ideal candidate should be an expert in marketing, television, and labor and have the strong presence to preside over all ceremonial functions. Allow me to address each of your concerns point by point.

*As you see from my enclosed resume, I was the marketing manager of a Kinkos in Champaign.

*My experience is television is vast. Among my (viewing) credits, M*A*S*H, The Donna Reed Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show. I particularly enjoyed the episode where Danny Thomas played Kolak from the planet Twilow.

*My experience in labor is equally extensive. I have rented (and even watched it once) Norma Rae several times. I also worked in a rubber stamp factory in high school, which involved a great deal of manual labor.

*As far as a strong presence during ceremonial events, my excellent performance opening the Ark at my niece's Bat Mitzvah and breaking the glass at my wedding are among my all-time highlights. Videos available upon request.

Finally, I feel my greatest asset is my name. Imagine if both the NBA and MLB had commissioners named "David Stern"! That's the kind of free publicity you couldn't buy.

Sincerely,

David Stern

P.S. My baseball knowledge is also superb. My 120-42 record in Sega Genesis speaks for itself.

The funniest part of this story, is that he actually got a few responses. First from Bud Selig himself.

Dear Mr. Stern:

Thank you for your recent letter.

I appreciate your interest in the Commissioner's job and I will certainly share your letter with members of the Commissioner Serach Committee which has just been convened.

Thank you for taking time to write to me and for your interest in Major League Baseball.

Sincerely,


Allan H. Selig, Chairman
Major League Executive Council


He also got a letter from the office of Peter O'Malley, the President of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Dear Mr. Stern:

Peter O'Malley is currently out of town, but I know he will appreciate your thoughtful letter which arrived this morning. We are grateful to you for taking the time to write and we believe that baseball will soon identify a full-time, outside, independent commissioner and restore the public's confidence in the game.

Best Wishes.

Tasha Duncan
Administrative Assistant to Peter O'Malley



We followed Dave's quest on the John Landecker show, and thought it was quite humorous, but to me, the funniest response came a month later from Heidrick and Struggles, Executive Search Consultants. Obviously Dave's name had been passed along to them by Peter O'Malley and Bud Selig.

Dear Mr. Stern:

Thank you very much for your interest in the postiion of Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

At this stage, many candidates are under consideration for this poition. We will share your credentials with the appropriate individuals and will contact you should we need further information.

Again, thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

Theodore Jadick
Managing Partner

Needless to say, Dave didn't get the job.

It is a little easier to see, however, why Bud Selig took the job himself.




UPDATE: Earlier today Dave applied for the job of White House Spokesperson. We'll let you know what they say.




If you missed any previous From the Archives, click here: http://rickkaempferarchives.blogspot.com

Suburban Man: Road Trip

By Rick Kaempfer







When you know you’re going to be driving for twenty four hours with three children under ten years old, you take precautions. We brought along everything we could think of to keep them occupied. Among the things packed into the minivan:

*A VCR with ten movies
*Three handheld video games
*Three sets of headphones so Dad doesn’t have to hear anything
*A cooler full of drinks and food
*A backpack full of toys, books, and games for each boy
*My sister

We had three boys and three adults. We had entertainment and food. We left at 3:00 in the morning so that they could sleep for the first three hours. Everything went like clockwork, right?

Um, not exactly.

But just to give you an idea of how low my expectations were, even though we had one #2 emergency at the worst possible time, and one carsickness barfing in the middle of nowhere, I still consider this trip a complete success.



Let’s start with the success stories.



1. Headphones

I strongly recommend them. The boys watched two Pokemon movies (which normally would have made my skin crawl), but I didn’t have to hear a thing except for an occasional Johnny laugh accompanied by a euphoric “OH MEOWTH! YOU CRACK ME UP!”

2. Word Games

We played word games through most of Indiana on the way home. The biggest hit was the game in which you have to start the next word by the last letter of the preceding word. I was very impressed by Tommy and Johnny’s vocabulary. In fact, Tommy knocked me out of the game by giving me something like fifty consecutive words ending in “K.” A fourth grader shouldn’t be able to outwit his father.




Other things didn’t go quite as well...


1. The 3:00 in the morning departure time

This sounded like such a good idea, but two things didn’t go as planned. One: the boys were so excited about vacation they didn’t go to sleep. Sean’s eyes were wide open the whole time. Two: Even though I got up at this time every day for ten years, I hadn’t done it in almost three years. By 9:00 A.M. I was the only one who wanted to sleep. Bridget had to drive a few hours while I took a nap.

2. All of our toys/games/activities/books can cause carsickness

Somewhere in the middle of rural Georgia, I looked in the rearview mirror at Johnny and he was unbelievably pale. “Do you feel OK?” I asked. “No,” he told me. Bridget sprinted into the backseat with a plastic baggie—but she was moments too late for the first gush. The rest of his breakfast, however, was thankfully captured. We pulled off at the next exit and added thirty minutes to our trip by cleaning off the seat and his pants, and finding something else for him to wear.

Interesting sidenote: Even in rural Georgia, the convenience stores are run by people who sound like Apu in The Simpsons.

3. Even potty-trained 3 year olds won’t “go” at public bathrooms

We had to stop for gas in rural Indiana and all three boys were ordered to take care of business at the gas station. The two older boys did as they were told, but the youngster took one look at the bathroom and declared that he didn’t need to. “Are you absolutely sure?” I asked. “I’m sure, Dad,” he said. I knew we only had about three hours to go before we made it home, so I decided to avoid a confrontation. I gambled.

I lost the gamble. We had just started driving on the soon-to-be torn up Dan Ryan Expressway, when Sean’s stomach pains made him start crying out.

“I have to poop!” he said.

We were still an hour away from home. His painful cries let us know there was no way he could make it all the way home, so I pulled off the highway in a very scary neighborhood looking for a safe place for him to unblock the blockage. The only appropriate place near the exit was a Walgreen’s Pharmacy.

Bridget went inside with Sean, and they were in there for quite awhile. I was starting to get worried that something had happened to them, and had just made the decision to go in to investigate, when the two of them came back out. Bridget’s annoyed expression told me the whole story. Sean had refused to go in the public bathroom again.

“He promises he can make it home,” she said through gritted teeth.

”No he can’t,” I said.

“I know,” she said. She held up a pull-up diaper. “What do you think?”

It was our only choice. For the next thirty minutes we tried to tune out the grunting, groaning, whining, moaning child determined to prove he could make it home. When his natural cheerfulness suddenly returned, we knew the problem had passed.

Twenty minutes later we were home.

And it could have been much, much worse.



If you missed any previous Suburban Man columns, click here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com

Why do I write?

By Rick Kaempfer


















Rick's Dad: Eckhard Kaempfer (1935-1989)




Losing a parent has a tendency to change your outlook on life. I know it happened to me. When my father died seventeen years ago, I was 25. That’s a pretty young age to become fatalistic, but I’ve chosen to look on the bright side of being fatalistic. For one thing, I no longer take things for granted because I know that my time on this earth is limited.

I know this is going to sound bad, but I wish my father had been a little more fatalistic. Of course, it’s totally unfair to say that about a man who walked into a hospital emergency room one day at the age of 54, and never came out again. His mindset was understandable. Both of his parents were still alive when he died. He had no reason to ever think about death. And even if he had, all three of his children were already adults (25, 24, and 19), and he had done a pretty good job of raising relatively normal functional members of society. Why would he bother thinking about what life would be like without him?

I know I’m being greedy here. I realize that. He gave me all he could give...and then some. But now that I’m a father myself, I find myself wanting something I never wanted before. His advice. I always considered Dad to be a source of wisdom, even when I strongly fought against it. He was a reasonable man, a thinker, someone who gave quite a bit of thought to his words before they came out. He wasn’t always right, but he was never rash or emotional. In short, he was the perfect kind of person to ask for advice.

And I never did.

And now that I’m a father myself, I have a million questions.

That’s probably one of the reasons I have so overcompensated with my own boys. I’ve tried to use my father as a model—his steady temperament and his guiding hand, while trying to give them what he couldn’t give me. It’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to stay home and raise them. I’m part of virtually every phase of their lives, and I’m constantly giving them unsolicited advice about every subject under the sun just in case they ever need it someday.

Unfortunately, I don’t quite have the fountain of wisdom my father had. He had knowledge that came from a difficult childhood of emigration and language barriers and hardship that I couldn’t even imagine. You learn things when you experience difficulty—and he must have learned so much. Most of those lessons learned, however, died with him. I didn’t have the foresight to ask about them, and he didn’t have the foresight to commit them to paper.

So I write.

That way, what I know will not go away when I go away. Even if my boys choose to ignore it for most of their lives, I’m fairly confident there will come a time when curiosity will get the best of them, and they will seek out wisdom from their father. When that time comes, there’s a possibility I won’t be around to deliver it in person.

The son spends his life trying to distance himself from his father, trying to make his own way in the world, trying to become a man. There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s part of growing up. I certainly don’t take it personally when my boys ignore my advice and insist on making the same mistakes I made. Some kids just learn better that way. I know I did. But there will come a day when they need me. And I just can’t bear to think that I won’t be there when they do.

So I write.

When they do seek me out, even if I’m not around, my words will still be here, to bring me back to life. They won’t have to wonder what was going through my mind when I was in their shoes--because they can read it. And if they end up having boys just like themselves—and my experience tells me they just might—they can see how and why I did what I did.

Why do I write? I know that part of the audience for every word I write includes three grown men I’ve never met. Three men who may one day want to ask Dad for advice. I only have my time, my love, and my words. I give those with all of my heart.

That’s why I write.

Guest Blogger: Peter Kaempfer

The Kaempfer Family (minus deceased Dad). That's Peter on the right--the baby of the family. The two women in the picture are my sister Cindy and my mother Hildegard. Peter lives in the Detroit area with his wife Julie and their two sons Andrew and Bryan (my Godson). I resisted the urge, by the way, to post an embarrassing picture of Peter. At some point, big brothers need to stop tormenting little brothers. I also resisted the urge to point out that my mom still calls him "Butzie"...oh crap. Sorry, Peter.

I asked Peter to guest blog on this traditional tax day because he is a CPA...and he doesn't know anything about taxes. But I'll let him explain further...


Just Because I'm a CPA, doesn't mean I know taxes


It usually goes something like this…

“Hi. Nice to meet you. So what do you do for a living?” Innocent enough question.

“I am an accountant.” Oops! Why did I admit it so quickly?

“Oh, you must be really busy this time of year with taxes and all.”

Rolling my eyes, “Well, actually I have been very busy at work, but I don’t have anything to do with taxes.”

Then the dance begins, trying to explain what I do in my corporate accounting job. I have had to do this countless times in the past 14 years. Don’t worry – I won’t try to explain it here. Some people get it, most people don’t, others just get bored to tears (and rightfully so.) There are some family members and really good friends of mine that still don’t understand that I have nothing to do with taxes, that I have a hard time preparing my own tax return every year (and TurboTax makes it pretty easy.) In fact, I actually end up doing some of their returns for them just so I don’t have to go through the dance.

All they know is that I am a CPA, so they assume I am a tax accountant. I guess that’s really not too bad of an assumption. Why should anyone be able to distinguish among the various specialties and disciplines in accounting unless they are an accountant? This stuff just isn’t common knowledge - it’s not like accounting gets a very glamorous portrayal in movies or on TV. Face it, unless you are a cop, lawyer, doctor, politician or bad lounge singer, chances are you won’t be seeing too many shows featuring your profession, let alone accounting.

I’m OK with that. Accounting really isn’t that fascinating. It just happens to be something that I can do fairly well and it happens to pay the bills just fine. Yes, I am an accountant; a CPA. I admit it. More accurately, though accounting is what I do for a living.

I don’t get excited about tax deductions. I never played Dungeons & Dragons. I wasn’t part of the Audio-Visual club in high school. I don’t wear glasses (all the time.) I don’t even watch Star Trek re-runs. I like to think I’m a pretty regular guy who just happens to have a dull job.

So next time you meet an accountant, don’t ask him about taxes. Try asking about his family, what he thinks of the White Sox’ chances of repeating as World Champions (had to get that in there Rick), his thoughts on who will fill the void as boss of the Soprano family until Tony recovers. You might be surprised to find he actually has a life outside of work.

On the other hand, you could end up being stuck talking to one of the accounting majority, the really geeky, boring guy that you just can’t get rid of.

Good luck out there and best of luck with your taxes.




If you missed any of our previous guest bloggers, click here: http://rickkaempferguestbloggers.blogspot.com

From the Archives: The Radio Producer's Handbook (an excerpt)

About this time of year college students are starting to get internships lined up for the summer. I've probably had close to a hundred interns during my radio career and maybe a handful of them (5 or 6) took the job seriously. Of those, all of them eventually got jobs in the highly competive radio business. The rest did not.

This excerpt from my book (co-written with John Swanson) "The Radio Producer's Handbook" is my best explanation for what to do if you manage to get an internship. It sounds like I'm joking here. I'm not at all.

The Unwritten Intern Commandments: Dealing with the Host

We both began our major market radio careers as interns. We didn’t know these rules when we walked through the door. However, we didn’t break them. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, it’s really not that hard to follow these rules. There is nothing unseemly about them. Secondly, we naturally treated the hosts with respect because we naturally respected them, and we treated the hosts as stars because we really thought of them stars. If you do the same thing, you won’t have any problems.

The unwritten Intern Commandments are as follows:
*Thou shalt not “sass” a host, even jokingly, even if the host is jokingly “sassing” you.
*Thou shalt not speak to a celebrity guest, unless spoken to.
*Thou shalt never repeat a story you hear the host or celebrity tell “off the air.”
*Thou shalt not make any references at any times to the host’s physical imperfections.
*Thou shalt not bug the host to pay for something just because he “makes a lot of money.”
*Thou shalt never bug the host to put you on the air.
*Thou shalt not bring your friends in to see the show.
*Thou shalt not eat the free food before the host gets a crack at it.

We’ve seen some very smart interns fall victim to the unwritten intern commandments. We’ve seen interns accidentally break them even after having been warned repeatedly. It happens most often after an intern begins to feel a little comfortable. He starts joking with the host, who initially appears to be enjoying it. The intern forgets that he is not the host’s peer, and begins joking with him like he would joke with his buddies. The host doesn’t take kindly to being ribbed by someone who hasn’t “paid his dues.” That’s usually when the hammer falls.

Here is a tip to make sure you never accidentally break the unwritten intern commandments. Imagine the host as Tony Soprano or any Joe Pesci character. You are allowed to get comfortable with him, but anything you say or do can still get you whacked without warning if you don’t show the proper respect. It really isn’t that hard to do.

The Unwritten Intern Commandments: Dealing with Everyone Else

Now that we’ve gotten the etiquette of treating a star out of the way, let’s address the etiquette in dealing with everyone else at the radio station. If you have any common sense at all you’ll follow these rules naturally. Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to spell them out. These are rules any intern in any business should follow. Let’s not forget that radio is a business too. And if you don’t treat this internship the same way you would treat a job, no one will ever consider hiring you for a real job.

The other unwritten Intern Commandments are as follows…

*Thou shalt not complain about gofer tasks.
*Thou shalt not complain about (lack of) pay.
*Thou shalt not show up late or completely blow off work.
*Thou shalt not complain about the hours.
*Thou shalt not ignore basic human hygiene.
*Thou shalt not work on a personal project without permission.

Every paid employee at the radio station will expect you to live by those rules. You have to always keep in mind why you are doing this. Yes, you’d rather be doing something more rewarding than getting someone coffee at 4:30am for zero dollars, but think of the big picture. You can’t complain about the pay, or the hours, or the gofer tasks because you knew what you were getting into when you took the internship.

If you didn’t, let us spell it out. You are at the bottom of the totem poll. The bottom. There’s no one underneath you. Just do what you’re asked to do and do it with a smile. Even if you get frustrated occasionally, you’re going to have a great time more often than not. Radio is fun. It’s not like people will try to torture you or take advantage of you. Most people at most radio stations are very nice. And if you go in with a positive attitude, those people will notice. When the time comes, they will do whatever they can to help you get a paying job.

I know this sounds a little harsh, but that's my best and most honest advice. In a future post I'll share some true interns stories that you won't believe. How do I know this? My editor didn't believe them either and asked me to take them out of the book, which I did.

The Radio Producer's Handbook, by the way, is still available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and also through my publisher Allworth Press. There are several easy links to get directly to the book on the right hand side near the top of the blog.


If you missed a previous "From the Archives", click here: http://rickkaempferarchives.blogspot.com

Suburban Man: V-S Day

By Rick Kaempfer






Last fall I went to the florist with my three year old son Sean. I’ve always wanted some tulips in my flower garden, so I let Sean pick out a half-dozen colors, and we went to the register to pay.

“Be careful with these,” the woman at the register said.

“Why?

“Squirrels love them,” she said. “You can’t even leave the slightest tulip bulb residue in your garden because they’ll dig up the whole garden until they find the bulbs.”

I eyed her suspiciously. It sounded a bit extreme. “What do you mean by tulip bulb residue?” I asked.

A tulip bulb looks a little bit like an onion, complete with a paper-like peeling. She pulled off a tiny piece of the peeling, and crumbled it into even tinier pieces, then held out a microscopic piece of that crumble at the end of her finger.

“C’mon!” I said.

“I’m serious,” she said.

That advice just sounded so ridiculous, I didn’t give it a second thought. Sean and I went home, and after giving great thought to the color scheme, we inserted the bulbs into freshly dug holes and covered them with dirt. We went inside and sat by the front window trying to imagine how great those tulips were going to look. I couldn’t wait until spring. It would be a moment that Sean and I could enjoy together, a beautiful merging of nature and nurture, two men and their flower garden; a Norman Rockwell painting.

My bliss was disturbed only moments later by a little rat with a cute fluffy tail. Disregarding my feelings entirely, he hopped right into the garden and started digging. I pounded on the window. He didn’t scare easily, but I finally got him away. When Fluffy was safely gone, I went outside to see what had attracted him to the garden in the first place. Sure enough, just like the florist had warned me, a tiny tulip bulb peeling rested at the edge of the garden like a flashing neon welcome sign.

I had to get to Fluffy before he put the word out. All witnesses had to be eliminated. I saw him in the nearby bush and charged at him like a wild boar. I was screaming at the top of my lungs like a Yoko Ono record, trying to be so menacing and intimidating that he would let squirrels know far and wide that this garden was strictly off-limits. Only a crazed fool would dare try to eat one of those delectable bulbs. Not with Yoko the charging boar ready to attack at any given moment.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite pull it off. Fluffy just stared at me for a few moments before calmly running about ten feet away. I didn’t stop charging until he ran another twenty feet or so. He wasn’t scared of me (or Yoko) in the slightest. He ran onto my neighbor’s driveway and held his ground.

I realized that this technique wouldn’t suffice. I had to take further action. If I couldn’t kill the squirrel or scare it away, I had to make my yard so unpleasant that he wouldn’t come back. I researched on the internet about the best ways to do this, and the first suggestion sounded like genius to me. Squirrels mark their territory like many other animals. If they smell the...um...markings of another, they will stay away. I could do that. I could produce markings. I did it successfully in the backyard to keep the skunks away a few years earlier.

But this time marking my territory was a little more difficult. Did I mention this garden is in my front yard? The direct approach was out of the question. (I didn’t feel like going to jail.) So I re-created a typical doctor’s office visit and “produced” a sample into a plastic cup. I then went outside and nonchalantly spread the sample around the garden.

About ten minutes later the squirrel returned. This time, instead of hopping right into the garden, he walked back and forth a few times. He seemed genuinely repulsed. Sean and I were elated and started celebrating, but Fluffy killed the self congratulatory celebration mid-high-five when he hopped right back into the garden and starting digging again. I had to run outside and do the wild boar-Yoko routine until he ran away, but I knew I was just buying myself a few minutes.

Now down one perfectly good plastic cup, I went back on the internet. The same website gave me another idea. It said to sprinkle red cayenne pepper all over the bulbs. The squirrels will still dig them up, but they won’t eat them. It was worth a try. Sean really enjoyed the digging up process, and I even let him sprinkle the red pepper on the bulbs. We went back to our station at the front window and watched. It only took a few minutes for the relentless Fluffy to return to his prey. This time Sean and I let him dig. Fluffy got the bulb out of the ground and started carrying it away to his lair, when he suddenly dropped it on the sidewalk in front of my house, and ran away. Apparently the undamaged bulb was not to his liking.

For the next few days, we went through the same process. Squirrel digs up bulb, squirrel drops bulb, Rick and Sean re-bury bulb. One morning there were a dozen bulbs on the driveway. But we never faltered, never gave up. Each time we calmly reburied the pepper-laced tulip bulbs. We knew we could outlast him. We were more resilient than Fluffy. Our life expectancy was more than 20 times his life expectancy. We were bigger, stronger, and smarter. He was just a squirrel and we have opposable thumbs. He was no match for us.

But here’s the thing about tulips. Your gratification is delayed for months. It wasn’t until last week when I saw the green sprouts emerge from the ground that I realized we had officially won the battle.

“Victory!” I screamed. I looked around for the sneezing squirrel. “Take that Fluffy! In your little face!”

Next time I’ll listen to the florist.



If you missed any previous Suburban Man columns, click here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com

55%

By Rick Kaempfer & Dave Stern







It is said so often that it’s now considered a cliché: “I gave it 110%.”

We’re not here to argue the mathematical impossibility of that statement. We accept the fact that some people are so driven, so hard-working, and so intense, that to describe their full effort as merely 100% seems insufficient. And we tip our caps to them.


The Rest of Us

“If you don’t like your job, you don’t strike! You just go in there every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way!”
--Homer Simpson




Unfortunately, for those of you who like to do things a little ...ahem... half-hearted, that raises the bar for you too. It’s no longer good enough to simply give it 50% effort. You’re now expected to give it 55% just to remain half-assed. We know what you’re thinking. Where are you going to get that extra 5%?

This is where your good buddies Rick and Dave come in. We’ve done a careful analysis of some every day tasks in life, and have managed to identify a few tasks that can very easily be done with one-third effort, one-quarter effort, and one-fifth effort. By decreasing your effort on these tasks, you'll have just enough energy to increase your effort on the important tasks in your life. Who knows? You could even creep up past the 60%-overall-effort mark.

Don’t worry about having too much effort on your hands. It’s just a matter of time before someone takes it up to 120% effort. When they do, you’ll be able to wear your half-ass like a comfortable old shoe.



33% Effort Required



“A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.”
--George S. Patton, General (1885-1945)




What General Patton said may be true, but remember this: The blood banks give you a free snack for the blood you donate, and nobody gives you anything for your sweat. You might as well keep that precious moisture in your body. You’re going to need it, because let’s face it, the refrigerator is all the way on the other side of the room, and that beverage won’t come to you by itself.

So where can you cut back? Since you’re already giving it the full 50% at work (because they are paying you do to so), the first place to look for opportunities is at home. While your family does expect you to do certain things for them, they don’t expect you to do them well. After all, these people are your blood. Right, General Patton?

Here are a couple of examples in which the good ol’ 33% effort is more than enough.

*Giving Backrubs To Your Wife – Now, we’re not saying don’t give your wife a back massage. We’re just saying don’t get particularly good at it. Two reasons: 1) The better you are, the longer she’s going to want you to do it and quite frankly, it hurts. 2) If you get really good at it, she’s going to tell all her friends and that’s going to tick off your buddies. Go through the motions and make sure you can still see the TV.

*Reading to Toddlers—They can’t read, and there’s very little chance they will care or notice if you skip paragraphs or entire pages. They’re looking at the pictures. Point out the different things in the pictures. “Look, honey, the pig. Can you say ‘pig’? Good. Can you say ‘The End’? Good. Sleep tight, sweetheart.” We know you just read her a Duck on a Bike and went from the pig to the goat and totally blew off the chicken, mouse and cow and it made no sense, but remember this: It’s about poultry riding two-wheelers. How much sense could it ever make?



25% Effort Required






“If you cut every corner,
It is really not so bad.
Everybody does it,
Even Mom and Dad.
If nobody sees,
Then nobody gets mad.
It’s the American Way!”
--Mary Poppins (on the Simpsons)


While it’s important to start cutting corners wherever you can, you have to give it some thought and plan ahead. With a little forethought, your every day tasks can be done with little to no effort. It’s a crucial component for eventually reaching that magical 55% threshold.


*Selecting Fruit –We’ve all seen the way people pluck, smell, rattle, shake and listen to kiwi before they buy it. There is absolutely no proof that any of this helps. Here’s a tip, if you see any tire tracks or hypodermic needles in the fruit don’t buy it.


*Grilled Cheese Sandwiches – You could get out the frying pan, butter both sides of the bread, and make it the old fashioned way. Or, you could put two pieces of bread in the toaster, then put a piece of cheese between the toasted bread, and microwave it for twenty seconds. Your choice—it tastes pretty much the same.


*Shoveling Snow – There is no need to clean the entire sidewalk. When was the last time the Vienna Boys choir walked in front of your house? Oh and by the way, have you ever heard of the sun?


*Washing the Car – You’ll hear all sorts of doomsayers tell you that allowing the winter salt to remain on your car will cause it to rust. This is true. Ten years from now, when the car is worth squat, it will begin to rust. This may cost you a hundred bucks or so...ten years from now. Your time is worth much more than that. If the good Lord wanted you to wash the car, he wouldn’t have invented nature’s car wash: Rain.


*Balancing Your Check Book – In the history of the world there have been exactly three people who have found bank errors. Those three people got a total credit of $1.26. Have you gotten an overdraft notice? No? Then what’s the problem?


*Laundry – Wash everything in warm. Dry everything on medium. End of story.


20% Effort Required


“Why push when you go through a revolving door? Somebody else will show up sooner or later.”
--Milton Berle






There are some tasks that even the “110% effort people” don’t do with full gusto. (Those that do, quite frankly, should be put away before they harm someone.) Here are tasks that require no more than 20% effort. You owe it to yourself and your rest.


*Flossing – Most dentists feel you should count about ten up and down strokes on each tooth. Do the math. Most people have 28 teeth, that’s 280 strokes! Talk about overkill. Just get the big hunks of the Heath Bar in front and you’re fine. Our buddy Nick agrees and he’s a dentist. He also wanted us to mention that he takes all major medical and is open 6 days a week.


*Selecting Greeting Cards for Men – Just take the first card you see. He won’t care. Honestly, he doesn’t read them. If you don’t believe me, watch his eyes while he is “reading” your card. They don’t move. All of us have practiced that dopey smile and head nod.


*Making the Bed – Unless you live in a studio apartment, there’s an invention that can help you overcome the need to make your bed. It’s called a bedroom door. Close it. Let’s face it, you won’t be entertaining guests in the bedroom (if you do, we want to party with you), and you don’t care if your bed is made or not. Door closed: Case closed.



Doing the Math

Society is changing, and you have to change with it.

If you follow our simple suggestions, your effort reservoir will begin to fill up. A quarter effort here, a third effort here, a fifth effort there, and before you know it, you’ll be up past 55%--the new half-assed water mark.

No need to thank us for helping you get there. It’s not worth the effort.

Suburban Man: Your Kids Say The Darnest Things

By Rick Kaempfer





Four weeks ago I wrote a column about some of the ‘darndest things’ my kids have said to me over the years.

In response to that column, you sent me nearly a hundred examples from your own children. Some of these stories are really great, and thank you so much for sharing them with me. Today I want to share those stories with everyone else.

To encourage more participation in future editions, and to honor your request for anonymity, I’m not including anyone’s names (“Not even an initial!” as one person demanded). I think you’ll see why when you read them. I call this...

YOUR KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS

*”I heard my oldest son tell his little sister when he didn’t think I could hear him: ‘Never tell Mom that her diet isn’t working.”

*”My son told me that puppies still have bad breath even after they eat tic-tacs.’ He paused and then said ‘Even after they eat a lot of tic tacs.”

*”My eight year old son announced to the whole church one weekend that the Lord has twelve oppossums.”

*”My son was complaining that his brother hit him. I asked him where he got hit, and he pointed to his stomach and said ‘He got me right in the C-section.”

*”I was at a rehearsal for an improv show and I brought my infant daughter with me. In one scene one of my cast-mates gave a loud raspberry to another. My daughter looked up from the side of the stage, and loudly raspberried back....And scene.”

*”My daughter said to me: ‘Daddy, I know why they call them genitals...because you have to be gentle with them.”

*”My six year old daughter pointed to her chest and said ‘Daddy, when are these going to get bigger?”

*”My four year old daughter refers to the unfortunate arson of our church as ‘Someone fired it up’. When my mom died and was cremated, she said ‘Grandmom’s fired up and now she’s in a pretty box.”

*”My four year old son said this to me during a play date with a new friend: ‘I officially don’t feel comfortable around Anthony.”

*”When I was getting angry at my youngest daughter, my oldest daughter (8 yr. old) put her hand on my shoulder and said ‘Mom, I think you have anger management issues.”

*”We bought our oldest son an anatomy book to answer some questions when my wife got pregnant. One night at dinner he asked ‘Mom, how’s your vaginal canal?”

*”My daughter was explaining the ways of the world to her little sister. She said, ‘If Dad ever says ‘Do I look stupid?’ Don’t answer him.”

*”My daughter was showing off her knowledge of marine life to my father-in-law at the Aquarium. She pointed to the octypus and said, “Look, he’s got eight testicles.”

*”I teach third grade, and one day one of the boys raised his hand and asked ‘What do the Filipino tubes do?”

*”One day my daughter and son were playing house in the other room, but I could still hear them. My daughter said her to brother: “Never let Mom comb your hair when she’s mad at Dad.”

*”I took my daughter to the Daddy Daughter Dinner Dance, and when we got out of my 1995 Altima she said; ‘Dad, let’s pretend this is a really nice car.’”

*Calling home from Catholic School one day, my daughter said, “Mom, I know this is a bad word and I shouldn’t say it, but I really feel like sh*t!”

*"I was hugging my three year old daughter like I do all the time, and she held up her hand said; 'Back off, Dad. I need space."


Those are all good ones, and thanks so much for sending them in. Keep sending ‘em. I plan on bringing this back as a semi-regular feature. Just click on the word “comments” below, or e-mail them to me at your leisure. I read every e-mail.




If you missed any previous Suburban Man columns, click here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com

Guest Blogger: Myrtle Nasengruber

Myrle Nasengruber is 103 years old. She lives in a nursing home on the North Side of Chicago. This is a picture taken of her in 1908.







But They Promised!
By Myrtle Nasengruber



“I’ll take you next time, honey”

I was five years old when my father said that to me in 1908. The Cubs were playing Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. My father had tickets to Game 6 at West Side Park, but the Cubs won game 5 in Detroit, winning the series. I was so upset I didn't get to see it that I cried. My father was sure they would win it again soon, and he promised me we would be there for their next championship.

“Do you promise Daddy?” I asked.

“Yes, dear,” he said. “Next time they win it all, I’ll make sure that you and I will be there on the outfield grass of West Side Park cheering our boys.”

“What if they don’t win it again, Daddy?” I asked.

“Nonsense,” he said, “with Three Fingers Brown and that keen double play combination, by golly, they’ll win it again as sure as Teddy Roosevelt is President. Why, I’d bet my nicest spittoon that they’ll win it all again next year, sweetheart.”

He took me on the horse-drawn streetcar to the drug store to buy a piece of rock candy. After we got out of the streetcar, and while I was avoiding the ‘water’ being tossed out the second story windows from chamber pots, he asked me to recite his favorite poem for him one more time. I did it gladly.

“These are the saddest of possible words,
Tinker to Evers to Chance,
Trio of Bear Cubs fleeter than birds,
Tinker to Evers to Chance,
Thoughtlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double,
Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble,
Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

“That’s my girl,” he said. “Now cover your ankles or they’ll think you’re a working girl from the levee.”

The next year the Cubs finished in third place, and I started working sixteen hour days at the factory. They went back to World Series in 1910, the year the Model T rolled off the assembly line in Detroit, but they lost this time. I’m sure Ronald Reagan’s father told him all about it when he was born in nearby Dixon the following year. He was a Cubs fan too.

They didn’t build Wrigley Field, then known as Weegham Park, until eight years after they won it all. I was thirteen at the time. I’ll never forget it—that was also the year our neighborhood got indoor plumbing and Buffalo Bill Cody died. The Cubs made it the World Series again (and lost to Babe Ruth’s Boston Red Sox) in 1918. I heard Daddy use some real bad words that time. Two years later women got the right to vote, and I voted for the Cubs to win the damn (a word I heard Daddy say) series like my Daddy promised they would.

Daddy passed away the year the first talkie movie came out. (I couldn’t believe it—it was only twenty one years after the Cubs won it all—and look at this progress society was making. They were talking on the moving pictures!) The last thing he said to me was...”Myrtle, honey, I promise I’ll put in a word with God to get you that World Series victory.”

By then I was married to a nice Italian boy who worked in the “trucking business.” He and his boss Alphonse used to do a lot of work at night, trucking his “product,” but he also had some connections with the Cubs. My Frankie’s boss got us tickets through his pal Hack Wilson, and we watched them lose in ’29.

We watched them lose again in ’32, when Babe Ruth called his shot. As far as I’m concerned that fatso was no gentleman. Not like my Frankie, who got me tickets to see them lose again in the ’35, ’38, and ’45 series, even though he couldn’t go with me because he was sent up the river thanks to his terrible defense lawyer Clarence Darrow.

When I went to visit my Frankie in prison later that year, he told me that he would grant me any wish in the world when he got out. I said; “Frankie, honey, just take me to see the Cubs win it all. That’s all I want.”

He smiled and said “Myrtle, baby, you’re swell—and if that’s what you want, then it’s a promise, baby.”

Frankie died in prison the next year. He didn’t keep his promise. Neither did my dad.

Scientists have managed to split the atom. Astronauts have managed to walk on the moon. The Cubs have managed to stay out of the World Series.

My kids were born, lived full fruitful lives, and died without ever seeing the Cubs win the World Series. My grandchildren are in their fifties, and they haven’t seen the Cubs make it to the World Series. My grandson Billy had tickets for the World Series in 2003, and even though I was one hundred years old at the time, I said I would go. Steve Bartman decided I wouldn't.

Last year, after the Cubs were eliminated from the playoff hunt again, the attendant at the nursing home said; “Oh well, Myrtle, looks like ‘Wait til next year.”

I kicked the bastard in the groin.

I have one thing to say to the Chicago Cubs: If you don’t win it this year, I’m going to roll my wheelchair down there and bust some heads.

And that’s a promise I intend to keep.



*Myrtle Nasengruber doesn’t actually exist, but the anger she expresses in this “April Fools” guest blog is very real. She has been created by the author to point out how long 98 years really is. It’s a long damn time. Enough, already.

Suburban Man: Sick of Sick

By Rick Kaempfer






When a child gets sick, he or she wants Mom. It’s a genetic, biological fact.

This is even true in my house, despite the fact that I’m the one home with the boys. There are probably a dozen reasons why, but I think the most obvious reason is the caring/nurturing gene that most women possess, and most men do not.

Count me among those who do not have it...especially when it comes to illness. I probably have it less than most. I was brought up in a German household, and if I wasn’t coughing up blood or projectile vomiting, I wasn’t considered sick. I still hold myself to the same standard. If I have a fever or a cough or a cold, I simply pretend that I’m not sick, and go at full speed (granted—for me that’s still pretty slow) until I qualify as sick under my ridiculous code.

While this kind of self abuse isn’t healthy (in so many ways), at least I’m only doing it to myself. When my family gets sick, it’s completely different. The boys still need to be coddled and nurtured and cared for, and telling them to suck it up and rub some dirt in it isn’t the best approach. And though I’ve gotten much better at playing nursemaid, I’m still not their mom.

That’s why Bridget and I have an agreement. When the boys get sick, Bridget takes over. She still goes to work, but she's in command from a remote location, telling me what to do and when to do it. I follow orders without questioning her, and when she comes home, I'm usually told to go away. You can see the relief in the eyes of her boys as soon as she walks in the door. They start to feel better immediately under her care. When they're sick, they need their mom.

But what happens when Mom is sick too?

Unfortunately, I know the answer to this all too well. I’ve been living it for two months now. This horrible cycle started in mid-January when Bridget developed a terrible cough. She was nearly incapacitated by it, and missed almost a week of work. While she was at home, I did my best to help take care of her, but I’ll admit it, I basically let her work it out for herself while I feverishly tried to make sure the boys didn’t get it.

Boys are Petri dishes for disease. I think it’s safe to say that they don’t exactly consider hygiene a top priority, but during that week, I had the boys washing their hands about fifty times a day. I was also using disinfectant wipes on any and everything that is used by all of us (doorknobs, faucets, etc.). When they touched a glass that I had seen Bridget touch, I actually made them take showers.

I think you can see where this is going. I was completely and utterly unsuccessful.

First Johnny got it. Johnny is the toughest one to care for because he’s a big faker, and I never know when he’s really sick or when he’s faking. I always assume he’s faking. The few times I’ve buckled in the past, he made a remarkable recovery after Tommy left for school.

This time he didn’t. He was really sick. I took him to the doctor to make sure he didn't have strep throat, and he didn't, but he still wasn't recovering. One night his hacking cough was so bad that we took him to the emergency room. The doctors there also told us not to worry about it. Something nasty was going around.

Was it ever. Tommy got it next. Then Sean. Then Bridget again.

The entire month of February was one big sickie-fest. This time Bridget decided to be proactive, and went to the doctor to get an antibiotic. Wouldn’t you know it, the doctor tried a different antibiotic than usual, and Bridget had an allergic reaction. After two days of not being able to control her fever, she broke out with a rash from head to toe. This time she had to be taken to the emergency room. It took a full week to recover from that one, but she finally regained her health just as March began.

Then something amazing happened. The first week of March was glorious. The weather got nice, and everything was looking up. Everyone recovered. No hacking cough. No gigantic pile of Kleenexes left in every corner of the house. No frantic scrubbing and disinfecting of every doorknob and faucet. We even managed to have a birthday party for Johnny with most of the family present, and nobody was sick.

But Tommy was not himself at the party. He sort of went into a corner and wouldn’t interact with his cousins or his aunts and uncles. I thought it was just another case of “Videogame-itis,” (the childhood disease that shuts down all brain matter when a child plays with his Gameboy DS a little too much), and I scolded him for his anti-social behavior. However, when I put him to bed that night, I felt his forehead.

Oh no. Sure enough, he had a fever.

The next morning, Sean started sniffling. The next day Bridget started hacking. The day after that Johnny’s cough was back. Now all of them are sick, and the most unqualified nursemaid in America is caring for them once again. Badly.

So why haven’t I gotten sick despite the disease floating in the air all around me for the past two months? The same reason my mom never seemed to get sick when I was a kid. I can’t. My family needs me. Even though my level of care is woeful, at least I’m there for them.

But mark my words, as soon as they recover again, it will be my turn. I may even expand my definition of sick to include things beyond the usual coughing up blood and projectile vomiting. Or I may just rub some dirt in it and pretend like everything’s fine.

Old habits die hard.



If you missed any previous Suburban Man columns, click here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com

Guest Blogger: Brendan Sullivan

Brendan Sullivan is a Corporate Creativity Coach. He helps organizational teams and leaders to create more dynamic solutions, more productive collaboration, more effective leadership and a healthier work environment where talented people can thrive. He has a checkered past which includes acting, producing radio, selling advertising and writing stuff. And of course he has a website, http://www.creativitycoach.net.





Contemplations on Growing Up “Southside Irish”
By Brendan Sullivan

When your name is Brendan Patrick Sullivan, a certain level of Irish American wisdom and experience may be assumed. As an adult, I have been asked all sorts of things that you of other ancestry may not have: Do you support the IRA? Have you read “Angela’s Ashes”? Is the Guinness in a can as good as on tap? What are you doing for St. Patrick’s Day? Would you guest-write my blog with your thoughts on being Irish? I don’t think I look particularly Irish, I don’t have a brogue and I don’t belong to any Irish or Irish American organizations. So all I can assume is that my name conjures up these questions.

Such was not the case when I was a child. I grew up on the Southwest side of Chicago, in the 1960s. I was named after my father, and was the oldest of six children. And I never realized how “Irish” I was because everyone in our neighborhood, it seemed, was just as “Irish.” We lived down the street from the Flynns and the O’Connors and the Walshes and the McDonoughs. And everyone had about six kids. No one ever spotted me as being particularly Irish because everyone was. So no one ever said “Gosh, that’s a really Irish name.” What other kind of name was there?

And of course we all went to the Catholic school and church. Oh sure, there were a few outsiders, whom we referred to as the Publics. And we weren’t sure what the Publics did. They had little churches with various names that sounded alike. We had huge Gothic churches that were packed to the rafters every Sunday. The Publics went to a different school and didn’t wear uniforms to school. They had spring break and winter break. We had Easter break and Christmas vacation. And I never really got to know any of them that well. They were all going to roast in hell, anyway.

So my world was all Irish. And all Catholic. In fact, you didn’t live in a neighborhood, you lived in a parish (St. Cajetan, Christ the King, St. John Fisher, St. Barnabas, St. Christina, etc.) And yeah, there were a lot of pubs. I went to a Catholic all-boys high school where they would suspend you if you were caught drinking. But the school gave you a personalized porcelain beer stein when you graduated, and our senior prom favor was an etched brandy snifter. Hmmm?

There is something very insulating, and very provincial about the Southwest side. So that when I moved to the North side after college, I may as well have gone over to the Dark side. How could I? Lord knows there’s nothing north of 35th street. And I now live in a neighborhood with Applebaums and Espositos and Jacksons and Lis and Pashas and the gay couple down the street too.

But I return every year with my wife and four very Irish kids to sit with their multitudinous cousins and watch the parade, using my sister’s house two blocks off the route as our home base. And we eat corned beef sandwiches and wear green and you stand on the parade route with hundreds of thousands of others with equally Irish surnames, watching the endless stream of marching bands and firemen and policemen and veterans and clans and politicians and community groups and Knights of Columbus and there’s a feeling that you are a member of a very large green cult.

Oh, I’m still Southside Irish. I still believe that the White Sox are far superior to that team down the street. My parents and all of my brothers and sisters all live on the south side, or in the southwest suburbs. And there’s an Irish flag flying in front of our house this week. But it’s the only one on the block.

Suburban Man: Unhandy Man

By Rick Kaempfer




I used to feel guilty about my skills as a handyman. I don’t have any. I’m more of a “Wow your hands are really soft, do you use Palmolive?” kind of guy. If it’s broken, I can’t fix it. That’s not just being defeatist, that’s forty-plus years of experience saving me lots of heartache and humiliation. And I used to feel very guilty about it.

After all, I’m a man, a son, a husband, and a father. For years I felt the shameful sting of being unhandy. My widowed mother would give me that “Where did I go wrong?” look when she asked for my help with something in her house. My wife would give me that “I didn’t read the fine print when I married this guy” look every time something broke in our house. My three sons said “How can I ever be handy when you’re my father?” with their eyes. Each and every look from them was a dagger.

The shame I felt wasn’t confined to my family’s opinion of me—it was a society-wide shame. When we would go to neighborhood parties, the men would inevitably congregate near the grill, and I would pray the conversation never turned to home improvement projects. If it did, I knew better than to contribute anything at all to the conversation. I was certain that handy men could smell un-handiness on other men the way dogs smell fear. Any word, any exchanged eye-contact, would expose me. I had a key word or phrase in my back pocket just in case (say “intake manifold” or “drill chuck”), but I only uttered these in uncomfortable silence emergencies.

But that was the old me. I no longer feel guilty, and I no longer feel shame. I had an epiphany while a workman was fixing something in my handy friend’s house the other day: Nobody in the world is handy.

You read that correctly.

“Hey wait a minute!” you handy guys say, “I built the addition to my house myself with pinecones and a sandblaster.”

Fine. I’ll grant you, that’s quite impressive. But be honest with me; you’ve had to call a workman at least once or twice over the years, maybe even to “fix” something you already fixed, haven’t you? Did that person utter the following phrase?

“Whoever worked on this before didn’t know what the heck he was doing.”

That’s what I thought. Don’t feel bad. They say that to everyone, even other handy guys. Maybe you’ve even said it yourself when some unhandy friend asked you to help them out. It’s inevitable. It’s as much a part of the home improvement process as the building supplies themselves (note: I won’t attempt to identify what those are). Before the last nail is hammered, someone will utter the words:

“Whoever worked on this before didn’t know what the heck he was doing.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve heard it every single time anyone has done any work in my house. The first ten or fifteen years I heard it, I bought it. I figured I was simply living in bad homes with bad plumbing, appliances, electric, drywall, insulation, siding, windows, bricks, and concrete. Talk about bad luck. It wasn’t until I heard the same phrase being used at a handy friend’s house that I finally experienced an epiphany.

A gigantic weight has been lifted from my shoulders now that I know the secret. There are men all over the neighborhood working on their own homes who aren’t handy—they are at best “sort of handy.” And there are men all over the world making a living as “handymen” who will one day be called “someone who didn’t know what the heck he was doing” by the next handyman who comes by.

I’m no longer upset I can’t do it myself. From now on, when my wife or mother or sons give me that look, I’ll just walk away guilt free. When the guys at the neighborhood party start talking, I won’t be ashamed or avoid the conversation. I’ll just admit the truth unapologetically.

“I use the yellow pages, fellas, because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.”

There I said it.

Now where did I put my Palmolive? My baby soft hands are feeling a little dry.



This article was written as a Suburban Man, but it also appears in the current issue of "Shore" magazine. See it in the magazine here.... http://www.visitshoremagazine.com/feat_unhandy.php


If you want to check out any previous Suburban Man columns, click here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com


By the way, this post is my 100th post on Rick's Blog. Thank you for all of your support and feedback.

LAKE MAGAZINE ARTICLE: The Blue Bionicle

This article came out two years ago in Lake Magazine, but because today is Johnny Kaempfer's 8th birthday, and he's the star of this story, I'm re-posting it today. Happy Birthday, Johnny!








The Blue Bionicle
By Rick Kaempfer

From the "Best of 2004" issue


I remember the moment like it was yesterday. At the time I was working as a morning radio show producer in Chicago, but I was also running my own advertising agency and writing a novel and a non-fiction book. That particular Saturday morning I was sitting at the computer terminal in my basement putting the finishing touches on one of my books, when my middle son Johnny jumped on my lap. He was four years old.

Johnny is the kind of kid who regularly treats his father like monkey bars, so I continued with my writing undeterred, peaking around his bobbing head to see my manuscript on the computer screen. He began his usual rundown of his magical powers. On that particular day he was “Rainbow Dragon” and he was able to breathe fire on things to make the world a more colorful place. I nodded a few times and gave him a few of my usual “that’s nice Johnny” comments, when he grabbed both sides of my face. He stared into my eyes from just a few inches away.

“You never listen to me, Dad,” he said.

He was absolutely right. That was the day we officially instituted our new Saturday policy. Saturday became “Play with Dad Day,” and nothing in the world was allowed to supercede it. My oldest son Tommy was six at the time, and the following year my third son Sean was born. During those two years “Play with Dad Day” was sacrosanct. One simple day of undivided attention a week brought the four men of the house closer together.

Last fall my radio gig ended and my family faced a decision. Would I once again work those incredibly long and inconvenient hours, or would we shake things up a little bit? We opted for the latter. My wife went back to work full-time, and I stayed home. I was determined to make “Dad” my full-time job. It was easily the most rewarding, important, and difficult one of my five jobs, and it seemed like a no-brainer. At the time I didn’t understand why my wife was returning to work with such a big grin on her face.

My New Job

I thought I was just going to be full-time Dad. I didn’t realize that my new duties included keeping the house in order (another full-time job), and turning in my good cop badge for the dreaded bad cop badge. It also included giving up my traditional “Play with Dad Day” so that it could be transformed into “Play with Mom Day.” In short, I was no longer going to be the fun one.

I spent the first few months of our new arrangement struggling with my new assignment. I was in the same house as my boys, but it didn’t feel like I was spending quality time with them. Again, my son Johnny came to the rescue. He was sitting at the kitchen table playing with his Bionicle robots when he began the usual question and answer session. I was barely paying attention because I was making dinner at the time.

“Dad, what’s your favorite robot?” he asked.

“The blue one,” I said half-heartedly as I always did.

“Dad, we need to chat,” Johnny said.

It was such a strange comment from my son that it snapped me out of my usual half-hearted multi-tasking. The noodles didn’t need to be watched for another five minutes, his little brother Sean was happily sipping his milk, his big brother Tommy was working on his homework, and there wasn’t a reason in the world why I couldn’t sit down with Johnny and chat for a few moments. I’m glad that I didn’t come up with an excuse.

“What do you want to chat about?” I asked, pulling up a chair.

“Why do you like the blue one so much?” he asked.

“Because blue is my favorite color,” I said.

“But the blue one is Tommy,” he explained. As he said it, I saw the pain in his face for the first time. “The red one is me.”

Learning a New Language

I realized my brain had stopped listening to my boys as soon as they began talking about things I didn’t understand, and that I had been answering a loaded question incorrectly for months. My inattention had caused me to inadvertently hurt Johnny’s feelings, and I’m certain it had done the same thing to his older brother Tommy. That night I began to make a concerted effort to educate myself in the things that interested them.

And it wasn’t easy. When we got into a discussion of Bionicles and Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, they almost lost me. It was like trying to learn three new languages. Each of the Bionicles and Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh characters has a different name and nearly all of them are unpronounceable. If I wasn’t determined to learn about them, and let’s face it—it was making my brain hurt, I wouldn’t have made another important discovery. When I pointed to the blue Bionicle Robot in Johnny’s “Bionicle Book,” I was excited to finally intelligently contribute to the conversation.

“That’s Tommy,” I said.

“Hey!” Tommy protested.

Johnny, the emotionally injured middle son, snickered as his older brother got upset with me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Tommy.

“I am NOT the blue one,” Tommy protested.

“But Johnny said that you were,” I explained.

That’s when the punching began. I had seen this seemingly incomprehensible fighting between my two oldest sons many times. In the past I hadn’t bothered to understand the basis of the argument because it seemed so frivolous. I don’t know what made me do it, but instead of stepping in to break up the fight, I read the description of the “Gali-Nuva” Blue Bionicle. The translation to this perpetual fight was right there in blue and white.

The blue Bionicle was a girl.

The Circle of Fatherhood

I hadn’t realized it until that night, but I was making the same mistake that I always blamed my own father for making. My dad was a German immigrant, and my interests (baseball, comedy and the Beatles) were about as foreign to him as the Bionicles were to me. He tried to get me interested in his favorite things like soccer and polka instead of trying to understand what I liked. I really don’t blame him now that I see how much harder it is to learn new things when you get older. But after months of studying, I’m nearly fluent in Bionicle. I’m still in remedial Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, but I’m making progress.

I’ve even discovered ways to merge my interests with my boys’ interests in some cases. For instance, Johnny loves cowboys and I love television, so I introduced him to the Lone Ranger, and now we watch it together. Tommy loves astronomy and I love comedy. So, I showed him the comedic potential of my favorite planet “Uranus.” Granted, his teacher wasn’t too thrilled with our shared interests when he brought up “Uranus” at school, but I’m sure she understands that it was for the greater good.

Living in the moment

Every time I ask veteran parents about their most cherished parental memories, they always fondly recall the days before they lost their children to adolescence. I may end up losing my boys too, but I’m trying my best to savor every moment before that happens. And I’m praying I still have the energy in my tired old bones to make the same effort for my youngest son Sean when he starts talking to me about things that I don’t understand.

At the very least my boys won’t grow up saying “My Dad was never around” or “My Dad didn’t take the time to care about what interested me.” My home will never be profiled in “Town and Country” magazine, and I still have to be the bad cop when things go awry, but I’m a little more comfortable with my new assignment these days. Until they get sick of me, every day will be “Play with Dad Day,” and together we’ll eagerly await the nightly return of the good cop, the Blue Bionicle; their mom.





Coming up next week: New SHORE MAGAZINE ARTICLE--"By the Dawn's Early Light"