Super Dog Bowl

Football. Packers. Steelers. Road dog rabble rumble. Even The Dog got into this Stupor Bowl. The best team won. This game was like a dog fight that even Michael Vick couldn't handle. Some of the announcers called it a "blue collar bowl". Nope, sorry, this was a dog bowl from the get-go.
These dogs came back from everything nature and the God Dog could throw at them. Rodgers (note the "d-o-g" hidden in his name...) made Brett Favre a distant memory with just enough emotion to keep the pack moving forward and just enough cool to bring them back from the edge. McCarthy. Now that guy just looks like a dog lover and has just enough hidden bite to make the most rabid foe think twice.
Couple of Road Dog thoughts on the game and post-game babble. Why is everyone so quick to find something wrong? Start with the stupid stuff; like half time. The Black Eyed Peas got critiqued for a less-than-something show. Good Gawd people... these puppies gave their best shot to perform in a zero-acoustic location with 80 bazillion people watching them. As will-I-am (love that name) said, "if critics didn't criticize, they'd just be fans". Good one.
Then the game wrap ups. Can somebody put Ache-man on a shelf some place? Let "Bring me another brew Bradshaw" do the game. Now that guy is an old dog who still throws a good bite every now and then.
Of course, Steeler QB Rottweiler couldn't bring them back to win in the last 2 minutes. Hey guys, so what? He was out there trying, where were you? And, Troy Potowanami wasn't the MVP he was hyped to be. I don't know what game you were watching, but I saw that hair on almost every play.
All of them, on both sides, deserve an extra bowl after that one.
Anyway, enough babble - off for kibble.

Road Tripping

Ponderable question for you Road Dog's travelling during the holidays: Why do they do that?
Airports...forget the illusions of porno scanners and the pervert pat downs, just answer me this: does anyone ever go "just the right speed" to get through the security checkpoints?
On the way out, there's the guy painstakingly going through his own carry-on, piece by piece, before it goes on the belt, as the line behind him stretches beyond the Starbucks counter in the main concourse. So the next guy in line makes a move to pass and, you know it, guy #1 raises holy hell for cutting the line.
Then the Dog barely gets a hand on one of those rubber-maiden gray bucket tray things when "Mr. $100-a-week-executive" is crawling up your back with blue teeth ears and blackberried iPhones. Take a 'lude, dude, you're not that necessary to the success of your company, or my life. It would be tragic if my Swiss Army knife, butane lighter and autographed picture of bin Laden somehow ended up in your carry on bag.
Airports... then the herd is migrating down the concourse between planes...wall-to-wall wild-e-beasts migrating....and someone comes to a spontaneous complete stop for no apparent reason. WTF? How does it feel to get trampled?
Airports, next question, why would several of these wild-e-beasts decide to stop in the middle of the herd and have a chat about gawd knows what -- and then look peeved when 10+ people have to "excuse me" to get by them?
Airplanes... carry-on bags. Simple idea, really, one under the seat, one in the overhead, or gate check. We've all figured out how to skirt the bag fees by now, right? Okay, so seriously, why would someone want to vehemently argue with the gate agent that her cello will fit in the overhead compartment? Really?
Airplanes...turn off the GD cellphone Harpo, you're not that important. If you are so desperate to "stay connected" that the flight attendant has to ask you twice to shut if off, then you should have stayed home. Several of us would have gladly helped you off the plane.
Hotels... the doors on most hotel rooms really can actually be shut quietly. I know it's really fun just to let them slam shut all by themselves, but even the dumbest of asses should be able to figure out someone's going to hurt them if they keep banging the doors at 2:30 in the morning. Nothing like a "brawl in the hall" of a 4-star hotel. The Dog witnessed that one... highlight of the trip.
Hotels...God knows the Dog enjoys a good night out, but none of the people along your hallway really want to hear you and your tanked buddies do a loud mouth play-by-play recap of the evening's adventures in the "club". Again, you're not that cool, Dipwad, and I'm guessing most of the girls you were talking about agreed with me. That's why you and your fellow brotherhood of morons are coming back alone.
Hotels...Parents, please control your darling children. The hallways are not running tracks, playgrounds, or soccer fields. Screaming kids should be gagged and their parents exiled to the Chuck E. Cheese Arms.
Hotels finale...I'll admit it, I did go around to the loudmouths rooms and turned all of their "Do Not Disturb" signs around to "Make Up My Room Early" signs. Then slammed my door a few dozen times around 5 am and turned the TV up to about 20 on the Richter scale.
Breakfast was enjoyable that day.
Who has to grow up?
Stay tuned... you know there'll be more.

Rock Dog

A big dog Happy Birthday to John Mayall, and if you don't know who he is you should. His musical influence spans generations and genres. Good God Awmighty, the Blues Breakers are legendary. His album "Road Dogs" (2005) is a classic. John turns 78 today, Nov. 29, and still rides the tour bus. He physically wore out in 2008, said the "retirement" word, and then came back with another tour in 2010. How can this guy not be the hero to all Road Dogs?
In Road Dog style, the music dedicated to him today on the office iTune is his.
BUT, the finale set for this evening won't be his. They'll be in his honor by other old dogs, Elton John and Leon Russell just did their future-classic album, The Unon and the song for John Mayall, the rest of the dogs out there will be "Never Too Old". Follow that one up with Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias singing "To All The Girls I've Loved Before"; and you've got a Road Dog birthday.
Happy Birthday John, you've influenced more than you know.
.

The Dog Returns for Veterans Day

It's Veteran's Day... the big news is people "stranded" on a luxury cruise ship being forced to eat Spam with their free alcohol. Not having ice is apparently a major hardship. In other news, Marines of the 3/5 are pinned down in Afghanistan and I'm pretty sure they're worried about those folks on the ship with the smelly toilets.
Anyway, enough sarcasm Dog, get to the point. It's Veterans Day and people around the country give their token "thank yous" and wonder how to treat these dogs of war. To answer that question, I give you the following definition of Vietnam Veterans. If you, or someone you know, is a veteran of another "conflict", all you have to do is change the enviornment adjectives to get to the root definition.
In 1996, a college student asked "What is a Vietnam Veteran?" Following is the answer written by Dan Mouser. It is the truth.


Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.
Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit -- or a great bit -- closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recorgnized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a days' work. Life's a bitch and then you die. But most of us remember and we get twitchy, worried, sad.
We are crazies dressed in camo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suits wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.
We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.
We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist high water or lying still on cold, wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ship berths at sea.
We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tick of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.
Mostly -- and I believe this with all my heart -- mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most oof us, were civilians one day, jerked out of "the world", shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egoized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.
And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversatioin or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.
Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different -- what makes us Vietnam vets -- is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate you asking.
Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige, and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the "real world", we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese.
We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor, but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranches. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.
Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but would never be the same.
We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists -- though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.
We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desparately, to go back to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want to never see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember.
Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer.
If you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in in your car or cage a friend to drive you to Washington. Go to the Wall on Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there...no thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. We'll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. We will. We are Vietnam Veterans; I am a Vietnam Veteran, and after 30 years I think I am beginning to understand what that means.

Mickies Dog Food for Thought

The Dog had breakfast with another old "dog" this morning, in an old diner with memories and scars going back a long time. It has been the home to a lot of radical people and thoughts over the years.

Among our ponderings were some questions for everyone in our generation:

When did we become the people our parents warned us about?

When did the radicals of the '60s become the pseudo intellectuals of today?

When did we stop being passionate about our world and stop trying to fix it?

When did we give up the revolution and actually buy into the idea of political process?

When did we become wimps?

The Dog's generation felt real frustration with politics "as usual" and were hell bent to change the world. We were surrounded by corrupt politicians and government at almost every level. We were being "regulated" on everything we did and paid taxes for things we didn't want. We were fighting a pointless war in a land we couldn't understand. Corporate pigs exploited people and resources like they were both expendable...and laughed in the face of anyone who challenged them.

Sound familiar? My reference is 1968, what's yours?

A big difference between then and now is that we did more than write about it on blogs. We didn't suffer the passive aggressive convenience of the Internet and blackberry politics. We took physical action and challenged on an in-your-face strategy. We may have been a little extreme, at times, but we fought a good fight and were not afraid to stand up for what we believed in. We weren't afraid of getting dirty. Chicago in 1968 was a whole lot different than it was in 2008.

I miss those days.

What happened?

Some of us gave up the idea that we could change the world. Some of us felt we could only change the way we dealt with it. Our passions were subverted by our material success. We settled on the idea of singing kumbaya around the campfire with a good income to pay for the firewood...was being what we wanted.

We told ourselves that we would take "revolution" underground and change things from the inside out. Unfortunately, I think that strategy overwhelmed a lot of us and compromised a lot of others. The mantra changed from "Revolution" to "Money is nice to have".
We became the people we used to despise.

We became hard charging to make a better life for ourselves and our future generations. We blasted forward to create technologies and opportunities for an easier way of life, without fully considering how those things would affect people who never had to struggle for them.

We became the people we used to despise.

The problem is that our generation created a lot of entitlements, enablements (my new word), and other collateral damage that set the stage to lose touch with the realities of life -- and living. We never expected anyone to learn from what we did -- or what they were doing.

We did not honor the past for what it did accomplish... until it was too late. We forgot a lot of what we believed. Worst of all, we actually believed our own "press" about our accomplishments.

We traded our passion for big houses, nice cars, and giving our kids "things we never had".

We are now in a world having to deal with that.

Speaking for my generation, I am sorry. I am truly sorry for the mess our generation is leaving for our children to live down.

What we realized at Mickies was that a lot of us are now rethinking the past 40 years and looking to bag it all, grow what's left our hair back into ponytails, and head for hills and a simpler way of life. We don't want to burden our kids, our society, our anything. We just want to live again, because we forgot how to do that while we were changing things.
I hope the future generations take the time to read up on what we did. Ask us about it while we can still remember it. And, try, please try, to learn from our mistakes.

Places like Mickies still crank out the platters and the milk shakes. The ghosts of past dogs live on. I hope somebody hears them.

Guest Road Dog

The Dog doesn't share this space with other's, but this is an exception. Written by a true Road Dog, this "parable" should be required reading for anyone in a leadership position. Susan Butcher, Four-time winner of the Iditarod sled race, as quoted in the book, "The Nature of Leadership":

"One spring day early in my career, I was taking my team on a trail that crossed a frozen river -- the same trail we had used almost daily all winter long. As we started across the river, my lead dog suddenly veered to the right. I gave her the command to go left and she went back for me, but then she immediately veered off to the right again. Several times I tried to get her back on the trail, and each time she responded the same way. I couldn't figure out what was happening. She had never disobeyed me before. Finally I went ahead and let her have the lead, and just as she pulled me and the team off to the side of the trail, the entire river collapsed ! Her sixth sense saved our lives."
"Since that time, I've learned a lot of leadership is about team work. I usually have about 10 leaders in a 15-dog team, and one of the leaders will let me know, "Hey, we're getting into a storm. This is not my bag. Can you get me out of the lead?" And another member of the team will tell me, "I love this stuff! Put me up there." They are constantly changing off the lead based on who is most adept to handle a particular problem."
"I own and run a business, and this has certainly helped me to know that when I am dealing with something that I may not be the best expert in, I can turn to my employees and let them take the lead. Success is a total team effort, and it sometimes takes letting go and trusting in the talents and instincts of those whose "paws are on the ice," so to speak."

This Road Dog parable to not only about teamwork and reminding us to listen to those front-line peope with their "paws on the ice".... but also to remind us that oftentimes, in order to find the best path we have to go off the path we are on, even for an instant.

That's risk-taking. That's trust. That's answering to yourself, in that instant these questions......
- What's the difference between being the sole voice in the crowd crying for change.. and the sole voice crying not to change?
- What makes the difference between right and wrong here?
- What makes one voice more correct than the other?
- What makes one person seeing something, different from another person not seeing something?

Such are the questions we are asked... and we have asked.
This is what makes leaders.
This is what breaks leaders.

Road Dog Music

The Dog heard an old song this morning. "Conquistador" by the British group Procol Harum. Did you know that group's name came from a cat? The Dog was troubled that such fine music would be tied to a feline, but upon research he found that that was one dog looking cat, so we'll let it slide. You probably thought it had some deep rooted meaning related to protocols in harems or something, didn't you?
Take a few minutes and go find that song on some machine you have and crank it up. That song is good Road Dog music, bluesy, rambunctious, grabs-you-by-the-chest-and-gets-you-going kind of music... and it carries a wonderfully scripted, thought provoking message... but for the fact there's no way anyone can understand all the words. There is no way that you can understand those words, even the chorus: "And though I hoped for something to find, I could see no maze to unwind."
Another Road Dog trait. Rare is the individual who can figure out Road Dogs. Usually they're off and gone down the trail by the time you figure out the maze to unwind. (Pause here... think about that one... )
Let's add a music theme, here's the CHORUS for this epistle:
"The Dog Brain then drifted off into the world of "communication" thought, and how things get screwed up when humans try and communicate. Fascinating to think that we may have communicated better before we could talk...at least then people were tryiing to figure out what you were trying to say." (END OF CHORUS)
How many times have you been in a conversation with your mates (personal or work), your local barkeep or barrista, or any such personna and at some point, you realize you're not saying what's on your mind, s/he's not saying what's on their mind, and at the end you wander off thinking, "WTF? I should have said this." The best part is that the other person is probably saying the same thing. Don't feel too bad, we all do it.
REPEAT CHORUS...
Why is that? Simply put, we're afraid. Most human types are wimps who under/overthink their impact on other people. We don't want to fight, so we lie or hide the truth or we only tell part of the story. Go ahead admit it, this Dog won't bite you. Why do we do that? Why do we care? Why do we want to change?
REPEAT CHORUS...
Maybe because like the Conquistador, we're afraid people will see our armour plated breast has long since lost its sheen? Maybe we're human and that worries us more than anything else? Not sure we'll ever overcome that, I'm afraid. So, carry the day with love in your heart. The rest will take care of itself. Just try and figure out what the other side is saying....it's hard to face yourself and that's what get's you in the end, doesn't it?
REPEAT CHORUS

Final note... The Stones came on after Procol Harum with "Start Me Up". Another Road Dog song.... love the closing lyrics. And Mick's a Road Dog too... pedigree from the London School of Economics. Didn't know that either, did you?