Fathers and sons

My father, who died in 2003, would have been 94 today. We didn't always get along -- what father and son do? -- and I didn't always take his advice, yet it wasn't until after he died that I realized just how much of an impact he had on my career. For most of his life he wanted to do two things above all others: travel and write. He was a child of the Great Depresion and the quest to make a living took him in a different direction, allowing him time for just a little traveling and a little writing. Although I never consciously set out to fulfill his wishes, I became, among other things, a travel writer. "You're doing what I always wanted to do," he once said late in life. I guess that, as Dan Fogelberg sang, I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band.

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The movie "State of Play" repeats the same dumb mistake that movies about newspapers have been making for eight decades. Listen up, Hollywood: Reporters do not write the headlines for their stories.

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POTHOLES!!!!

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Pepsi Cola's new natural sugar cola is called Pepsi Throwback, giving wiseacres the opportunity to refer to it as Pepsi Throwup. What were the product namers thinking?

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Speaking of such, I get a chuckle over the names of cellphones -- names like Curve, Dare, Storm and Bold. What are they, phones or strip-tease artists?

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When I read about negotiations between the Boston Globe union and the newspaper's parent company, the editorially liberal New York Times, I am reminded of singer Phil Ochs' description of a liberal: “ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right if it affects them personally."

Different strokes for different felines

After living with cats -- as many as six at a time -- for 30 years,  I have learned one thing: They all have different personalities, sometimes radically different. Take the current twosome who inhabit our house. Honey is a beauty, mostly Maine Coon I think, but she is a coward, at least in my presence. When I enter a room, she flies out of it (and "flies" is no exaggeration). Chloe, on the other hand, is of indeterminate breed, has a twisted tail and a hind leg of a different color than the rest of her. She rejoices at my presence and comes up to me to have her neck rubbed, purring like an Evinrude motor as I stroke the fur. The only problem is that she believes I exist solely to rub her neck and will not leave me alone until I hint strngly that her presence is no longer welcome -- by throwing her across the room, for instance. (Not really, although I've been tempted.) Both cats had nine traumatic months recently when my son moved in temporarily with his three cats, but that's a story for another day.

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Sign in front of a local church: "Give your troubles to God. He's up all night anyway."

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I mentioned a while back that I have several iPods. Well, I also have several pay-as-you-go cellphones -- 10 to be exact. This is truly odd because I never call anyone and no one ever calls me.

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The most exciting thing in today's newspapers was an ad for free shaving cream.