Due to a confluence of factors, including spring cleaning, travel, deadlines, and taxes, I am taking a hiatus from the blog for a short spell. I hope to be back soon with new stories, updates and long-winded diatribes. Stay tuned. And thanks for checking in.

Whatever happened to the perfectly wonderful expression, “You’re welcome!”? You remember it. It’s what one used to say after someone else said, “Thank you!” It’s one of those fundamental phrases we learn at the knee of our forebears. When we learn a foreign language, we’re taught to say it in some other tongue. If a Frenchman says “Merci,” we’re supposed to say “De rien,” or “de nada,” if they’re Spanish. (Notice I used the contraction “they’re” not “their” as is becoming increasingly popular).

Recently I’ve noticed the demise of “You’re Welcome” while watching the PBS Newshour (which I still steadfastly call The MacNeil Lehrer Report even though neither of them are regulars on it anymore.) Just the other night, a trio of garrulous talking heads was invited to speak on some worldly topic (an earthquake could hit Los Angeles, but the Newshour wouldn’t mention it). At the end of their spiels, Judy Woodruff (who IMHO can do no wrong) said “Thank you” to them. Then each of them chimed in “Thank you” in return. Why can’t they just say “You’re welcome,” like we used to back in the good old days? Saying “Thank you” in return leaves the audience hanging, waiting for closure. It’s awkward and stilted, as is obvious when these grateful souls utter it and stare at the camera as if they’ve just gone up on their lines. There’s no resolution; it’s like a concert in which the music ends out of key, or a tennis match that ends in a draw. It makes me anxious and on edge.

This phenomenon is by no means limited to PBS. It happens on all the talk shows from Bill Moyers to Jon Stewart. I suppose people can’t say, “You’re welcome,” because that would imply some kind of deference on the part of the host. But in many cases it’s the pundit who is beholden to the host, so he is compelled to say “thank you” in return or else he would come across as an ingrate, or an insufferable self-serving blowhard. Or perhaps they can’t say it because an exchange has literally taken place, a transaction (clearly on some shows the guests are paid to speak their minds.) For them to say “you’re welcome,” would be admitting the practice, the verbal equivalent of slipping an envelope stuffed with cash in their jacket pocket. Much safer to say “thank you” and not open the door to further issues of indebtedness.

Do you remember the expression “Bad hair day”? It used to be funny to say to someone whose hair was uncombed, frizzy, or matted that he was having a “bad hair day.” It kind of softened the blow. Rather than saying you look ridiculous or ugly or dirty, you made light of it. But watching some of the folks at the Oscars the other night (which I did in very short intervals during the dull parts of the hilariously bad movie The Oscar, starring sexy Stephen Boyd, on TCM that same hour), I was struck by how meaningless that expression has become. Everyone is having a bad hair day these days. Well, at least those who might appear in People magazine. Doesn’t anyone use a comb anymore? Zac Efron is supposed to be a teen idol, a heartthrob. But he looked like he’d stuck his finger in a socket when he waltzed onstage during the Oscars. Maybe he did. It would have helped kill the time.

Same with George Clooney. You’d think that people who get paid as much as the GDP of most nations on earth to make a movie could hire a hair stylist. Or maybe he did, which is worse. Have you ever noticed that most hair stylists have the ugliest hair styles? It’s kind of like dress designers, who tramp around in rags or artists who show up unshaven and in stained jeans to accept awards. They’re too cool to dress up, but not too cool to accept the prize money. I’m always amazed when I see some doctors who are overweight, or smoking, or have bad breath and yellow teeth, or dandruff visible even on their white jackets. That reminds me of the time I went to get fitted for braces. The orthodontist told me I needed them for an overbite. When I asked how much it would cost, he smiled, revealing teeth that resembled roquefort cheese. Well, if he didn’t need braces, why would I? But I went ahead and ordered them, because I was a good little boy who did as he was told, and now have a serious underbite.

Getting back to those Oscars. Those very bad Oscars. I didn’t even have to watch them to know they stank. Do you remember that expression “that movie is so bad it’s good”? Think of Plan 9 From Outer Space, or Ishtar, or The Oscar, for that matter. One enjoyed such forays into cinematic trash because they were deliciously awful. And yet compared to the dreck masquerading as films today, they’re masterpieces. This point was driven home to me during the broadcast when Lauren Bacall was forced to stand next to Roger Corman to accept the congratulations of the crowd for their respective lifetime achievement awards. Talk about “like water and oil.” Class and Crass! She looked about as happy to be there as one of the victims in his schlockfests. Couldn’t they have given her the award on stage alone and lent some much-needed glamour to these ignominious proceedings?

And then, what about having ten pictures nominated for best film? Doesn’t that dilute the value of the award just a bit? Why not 100 pictures? Or 250 of them? Why not have IMDB host the ceremony? Frankly, I had a hard time finding ten pictures I would even want to see last year, let alone nominate for best picture. In fact, I didn’t see any of them. Why? Because few movies today are entertaining. It’s pointless to say “it’s so bad, it’s good” anymore. It’s become redundant. Most are bombs, and I don’t mean “they’re the bomb.” They’ve gotten “bad,” and that ain’t good.

Speaking of bombs, another expression I loathe which one hears all the time now on TV is “the bad guys.” We’re at war with two nations (if you can call them that), spending trillions of dollars on defense (although we seem to always be on the offense) and the best that the big wigs in the military can say is that we’re “getting the bad guys.” The other night I watched in horror as a soldier buried in a cave somewhere in a remote desert here in the States was taking out targets in Afghanistan using a drone plane. It was just like a video game, the interviewer said (although “interviewer” is a loose term when it comes to journalism these days. The questions all seem scripted, and the entire exchange reeked of carefully rolled-out Pentagon propaganda.) The highly-trained soldier aimed his missiles at targets thousands of miles away, then took out a few suspicious-looking individuals on the ground with the touch of a finger. The reporter asked him if he felt guilty about shooting people to death from such a safe distance. He said he didn’t because he knew he was getting rid of the “bad guys.” This is the level of discourse? In the past we used words like “Huns,” “Barbarians,” “Nips,” “Japs,” and “Gooks,” to dehumanize the enemy. Today we simply call them “the bad guys,” as if this were a TV western starring Clint Walker in Cheyenne. Maybe it is. The only difference is that there are more commercials now.

You can excuse such idiotic talk, I suppose, when dealing with soldiers lower down on the totem pole. They’re not, one would imagine, as educated or experienced as the top brass. But the other day I watched one of the top generals discussing the conflict in Afghanistan and he used the same expression. “We’re rooting out the bad guys,” he said, straight-faced, moments after footage had been shown of dozens of civilians killed by a missile strike, families weeping over their dead bodies, piled high like driftwood on the side of the road. It had not been an “accident,” some errant missile, as they tried to soft-pedal it, whitewashing the incident. A bus had been deliberately hit because they thought there were “bad guys” in it. Such are the fruits of war, some even bigger wigs with more brass argued. “War is hell,” one Pentagon official concurred. He might as well have added, “Shit happens.” But that’s missing the point. The issue isn’t whether innocent people will die during a war, it’s that the military can’t tell the difference between “the good guys” and “the bad guys.” It’s Cowboys and Indians time. Perhaps if they knew why these people were fighting against us, they wouldn’t need to use inane comic book expressions in describing them. Why not bring in The Green Hornet to fight them?

It reminds me of when President Bush reviled “the evildoers” who attacked us on 9/11. Yes, hijacking planes and killing people to make a political statement or even to thwart ill-perceived imperialism is wrong, dead wrong. Blowing up buildings to incite terror is mean and vicious and cruel. But is it “evil”? How is it any more evil than us blowing up Baghdad during operation “Shock and Awe” in defense of liberty? Lots of innocent people must have died during those attacks (we were never told how many exactly), but because we’re the “good guys” I guess it’s okay. For my money, “evil” should never be part of the equation. Leave “evil” and “good” in the pulpit where they belong. This is war, not a sermon from the mount.

“Evil” is used often in the media to describe serial killers and lone gunmen as well. The fellow who shot and killed soldiers at Fort Hood was “evil.” He was one of “the bad guys” working for Al Qaeda, or wanted to, it soon became apparent. After first announcing, erroneously, that he was dead, the media later told us that he was mentally unbalanced, a sick man, with paranoid tendencies. If he was that much of a lunatic, why did the military send him to Fort Hood to provide psychiatric counseling to its soldiers? It seems that all one has to do to become “evil” nowadays is to do a despicable act. But was he “evil” before he did it? Or did he suddenly snap? And if one can become “evil” without wanting to, by some instantaneous quirk of nature, then how exactly is that “evil”? Is the media implying that the Devil made him do it? If so, we’re right back in the throes of The Exorcist, or with Flip Wilson on Laugh-In.

Just yesterday I was reading about some fellow who is on trial for murder and kidnapping a number of young girls. He’s a “serial killer” who once made a splash on The Dating Game. He was the winner, the bachelor that the girl ultimately selected. But now some of the people on the show with him are saying they could tell he was “evil” even back then. There was something “creepy” about him. As far as I’m concerned, there’s something creepy about being on The Dating Game in the first place. I should know. I auditioned for it once with my pal Bradford, when I was visiting him in LA after graduating from college. We both got selected to appear, but both decided it wasn’t worth it (they didn’t offer to pay my air fare back from New York). Maybe we both were too weirded out by the creeps who worked there.

I wonder if I had gone on, whether one of my bachelor rivals would have guessed that I was out of my element, figuring out I was gay. Perhaps he would now be dissing me to others (especially if I had become a serial killer) by exclaiming, “That’s so gay.” That’s another expression that makes my blood boil. Since when did being gay become the equivalent of being bad? I remember when being called a “fag,” or “fairy,” or “queer,” meant you were homosexual, and that may not have been something little boys aspired to way back when, but no one thought of it as a euphemism for lousy or unfortunate. Now you hear it at football games or bingo tournaments. If someone gets 22 at a blackjack table in a casino, it’s not bad luck, “it’s gay.” Get a grip, Polly.

Another expression that rubs me the wrong way is “my bad.” When did this ludicrous phrase creep into our consciousness? The other night I was playing poker and a buddy bet out of turn. “My bad,” he said, as he took back the chips he’d flung into the pot. Was it really “bad” of him to make that mistake? Why can’t one just say I made a “boo-boo” and be done with it? If we’re all going to talk like children in this country, let’s at least be cute about it.

It’s not easy coming up with ideas for this blog. I mean, how many dead people can I memorialize? Glancing at some of my recent posts, I was taken aback by how often I discuss death or people who “passed on” (how I hate that expression) long ago. That’s due partly to the fact that I want to remember the greats of yesteryear and to promote their talents to a new generation. But it is also due primarily to the fact that I am lazy and it takes me a long time to catch up on my reading. By the time I get around to an author on my list, he’s already dead and buried.

I was thinking about all this yesterday as I took a walk through my community, hoping that the exercise might jostle my brain into coming up with a new story idea. As I was walking along the street, a pick-up truck came barrelling down the road and nearly knocked me to the side. In fact, if it had hit me, I wouldn’t be writing this update now. Remember Stephen King? He got hit by a truck up in Maine and nearly died. It seemed like an incident from one of his macabre novels, like the scene in Pet Sematary when the little boy is run over by an 18-wheeler. But such fatal accidents, I’m sorry to say, are as common as dirt.

That got me to thinking about the sorry state of affairs in this country for people, like me, who prefer to walk rather than drive. One of the main reasons I moved upstate is that I like the wide-open countryside, the mountain views, the riverscapes. I imagined that I would take long walks amidst the woods, contemplating poetry and art. I had wanted an escape from the hubbub of Manhattan and its endless stream of traffic jams and its ear-piercing horns. But what I discovered when I moved up here is that it is actually harder to take a walk in the country than it is in the city. When I lived in Manhattan (for nigh on 25 years), I would often walk from where I lived on the Upper West Side down to the Village, and back again. I thought nothing of it (unless it was raining). Once when I was broke and couldn’t scare up subway fare, I walked from Canal Street to 86th and Lex. I had holes in my soles, but it felt good to be alive.

Up here, I can barely walk two blocks without risking my life because some truck thinks it owns the road. Why am I not on the sidewalk, you ask? Well, sadly, there aren’t as many sidewalks here as there should be. For instance, when I walk to the post office, which is less than a mile from my house, I can use the sidewalk for about half that distance but then have to walk on the main roadway that passes through the town since there is no sidewalk outside the post office. You would have thought that the people who designed the post office would have considered the plight of people who may actually want to walk to it, rather than drive.

But clearly all they thought about was how many trees can we take down, how much asphalt can we pour, how much sidewalk can we remove in order to make it as easy as pie for enormous trucks to enter in and out of the parking space in front of the post office building. I literally walk on thin ice as I negotiate the narrow strip of shoulder leading from the local gas station to the p.o. When it rains or snows, this part of the road is under water or hidden beneath mounds of plowed snow. There are giant potholes that make stepping out a hazardous endeavor. You have to dash out onto the main road in order to get to the building. If a garbage truck or oil company semi just happens to be hurtling down the highway at that moment, then you have to jump into a ditch to avoid being hit. Okay, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit. You can skip, rather than jump.

When people in their cars pass me during my ambulatory activities, they often look out their windows at me as if I were out of my mind. I know what they are thinking. If I’m wrapped up in my winter coat with a wool scarf, gloves and cap, I look like a refugee or an escapee from the local halfway house who can’t afford to own a car. Honestly, unless you are walking your dog, people think there’s something wrong with you if you are merely walking. There’s a guy who lives down the street from me who hops in his Chevy truck just to drive to the diner that is literally a half block from his house. He weighs about 300 pounds so I guess he could be forgiven for not being able to make the trip on foot. But I can’t help but wonder if he had always taken that trip using his toes rather than his truck whether he’d be 300 pounds today.

Not a day goes by when some kind soul doesn’t see me walking the streets of my little hamlet, pulls over and asks if I need a lift. That’s one of the things I like about this town. People are hospitable, welcoming and gracious. But hey guys, I’m just walking to the bank. I don’t need assistance! It’s decent of you to ask. But this is the only exercise I get nowadays. I don’t want to end up on The Big Loser.

I noticed a similar phenomenon when I lived further out in the country at my previous residence in Rhinebeck. It was a two or three mile walk from my house to the nearest convenience store. If I needed milk or wanted the Times (they did not deliver in those days), I had to hop in the car and hightail it down to the Getty station. If I was lucky, the paper would still be there. Every so often, I would walk down instead. One time, as I was making my treacherous way down to the corner, a lady pulled over in her Cadillac and asked if there were something wrong. “Car break down?” she asked. She didn’t believe me when I told her I was just fetching the newspaper. I wouldn’t be surprised if she called the cops and said there was a prowler on the loose.

I tried to make that walk a few times. But ultimately had to give it up. An endless caravan of construction vehicles made it a reckless enterprise. In the short time I lived on that road, eleven houses were built on it. So the stream of pickups, cement mixers and dumpster-laden trucks was constant.

Sometimes, when I felt frisky, I tried to take a walk in the other direction, towards a beautiful pond that lay at the end of the road. But there was absolutely no sidewalk there (which I didn’t expect since it was a rural area) and no berm. I literally was almost killed one afternoon when a UPS truck came flying around a corner. The speed limit was 25, but he was going at least 60. A friend of mine was not as lucky. He was killed by a car when he was walking home from a bar. He had stopped to take a pee on the side of the road. A hit-and-run driver, who wasn’t paying attention, side-swiped him. The boy died of internal injuries a few weeks later. The driver later said he thought he had hit a deer and didn’t bother to go back and look. As far as I know, he was never charged.

Here I go talking about death again, and all I wanted to do was celebrate the lost art of walking. I can hear you saying, well, why don’t you get the hell out of Dodge, and explore the woods? Get off the goddamn road and prance to your heart’s content in the forest? I tried that once. I was covered in ticks. And nearly got my head blown off by a hunter who was illegally trespassing on private property. I could go to a state park or wildlife preserve, but that requires getting in my car to get there.

No, the only safe place to walk in my little village is the local cemetery (spelled “cemetary” here.) I don’t mind doing that, but it does bring up the spectre of death. It’s hard to traipse along the graves of people who share your name (there are an awful lot of Brookses buried in Athens) without getting depressed.

All of this has me thinking of Walt Whitman who wrote so many wonderful poems about walking. He talked of “Freedom — to walk free and own no superior.” And I think of Rimbaud. In Edmund White’s recent short-but-sweet bio of the poet, he reveals how Rimbaud’s ribs protruded from his skin, causing interior bleeding, because he walked so often and so vigorously. He walked because he was broke. In fact, Rimbaud walked through the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, down the mountains into Italy, because he couldn’t afford the fare.

I’m not advocating that strenuous an effort. I just want to be able to walk to the post office to mail a letter without taking my life into my hands. But then it won’t be long before the post office is gone, just like the sidewalk leading to it.