The Truth about Jon & Kate

Who didn’t see this coming? The demise of Jon and Kate. (re: TLC's cable program "Jon & Kate Plus 8.")

First, they need to stop saying they’re both all about the kids and everything they’ve done, they’ve done for the kids. Granted, this was the plan when the first hour special was proposed to them. The money would go a long way into creating a better life for the kids. But then things got out of control, and it’s about way more than the kids now.

What the show doesn’t address because it would turn off viewers is Kate was once very religious. Decisions to promote the family were made on behalf of the “testimony.” I have religious relatives and know all about the testimony. You have to testify. You talk in public about what God has done in your life. In their case, they feel He delivered healthy children and brought together a network of people and resources to support their family when neither one of them had a job and family support was iffy. All that is documented in Kate’s first book. When God gives help, you have to show thanks by testifying. So Kate and Jon accepted speaking engagements at churches. It almost seemed like the testimony was the whole reason God had given them this big family (if you count using fertility drugs as God’s will.)

The churches paid their expenses. Then, after the two hour-long specials on TLC proved so popular, TLC offered them a television series. Being a family became their job, as Kate often says. As their television fame increased, churches paid more for them to speak. Then talk shows wanted them. Then other organizations. But the talk shows and other organizations didn’t want to hear about God as much.

Part of getting the religious testimony out there – since the TV show would not let them speak about religion – meant Kate had to promote the book. Being the articulate, educated,and confident one, Kate was the natural choice. She was more religious than Jon anyway. But the testimony got lost since it was only being heard at the churches. The mainstream media left God on the cutting room floor.

Kate didn’t back away when the media put the spotlight on her instead of her God. She stepped off the path of faith and let the god of money and hubris tempt her. That’s not saying she can’t come back. You can’t have a good redemption story without first having a spectacular downfall.

That’s the religious viewpoint of what’s at play here. The secular viewpoint is this marriage was doomed from the get-go.

If you’ve seen the “how we met” episode, Kate is older than Jon by a couple of years and was a nurse. At an event she was attending, she spotted him working at a golf course. Jon admits he had no career plans at the time and was going nowhere. What about that was attractive to Kate? A younger man with no plan. I’ve been there myself and the attraction is: he’s your own boytoy to control unless of course somewhere along the line he develops a mind of his own. And Kate, we know, is a controlling person.

In their wedding footage, the faces of key family members are blurred out because by the time the couple were having children, war had been declared against certain family members. It has always been Kate’s way or the highway. Jon overlooked all these early warning signs of Castration Up Ahead. The pre-babies Kate of the early footage is almost unrecognizable, so happy are they as they honeymoon in Disney World.

Then – cue the shark music from “Jaws” – Kate immediately wants a family. I mean, immediately. No waiting for a few years to see what happens. Kate is certain it’s not going to happen without help. Why is she so certain when she’s so young and it’s so early in the marriage? They successfully have twins, but no sooner are they out of diapers when she wants another baby. They both admit Jon was happy to stop at two. Two should have been enough for anyone. Where was letting God’s will prevail in this scenario? (Oh, sorry, this part isn’t about religion, but really, how do religious people conveniently forget the story of Sarah and Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac?)

Anyway, with Kate all determined and preoccupied with babies, she couldn’t work as much. When TLC begins filming them, she’s still doing weekend shifts as a nurse, and Jon’s spotty career as an IT tech is still spotty. Throughout their marriage, he’s been fired and laid off repeatedly – the surface excuse being that his health insurance coverage would be crippling to the companies he works for.

Kate wisely decides that she can’t work and mother eight children. Jon's employment is too irregular, but if she goes back to work, she will have to depend on outside help – which is hard to keep since she’s so particular and bossy and such a clean freak, no one meets her standards – so the best plan is to become employees of TLC and make the family the family business. With such a big organization to run, she’s bossier than ever, and now Jon has no escape. Suddenly he’s being recognized in public and other people are asking him why does he put up with so much crap from that wife of his? (Because that’s what happens to the man-with-no-plan.)

Now, embarrassed, he wants to dial down the show. But Kate is at her zenith. In last year’s finale, while he talks about the awfulness of being recognized in public as “Jon & Kate,” she says she’s never been happier. She is master of all she surveys. She controls the kids, the husband, the film crew. She is the TLC network golden goose. She has a hairstylist who designs a signature look for her. She has sex appeal. Her photo on a recent People magazine cover was dazzling. During Octomom mania, she gets calls for appearances on talk shows to flaunt her expertise. There’s a second book deal and both books are on the best seller list.

Jon wants her to give all this up because people are calling him henpecked? What will she have if she gives it all up for him? The lackluster, career-less boytoy she married. She’d have to go back to nursing, being bossed around by arrogant doctors. They’d have to live in a smaller house. The trust fund for the kids would not grow. They’d be as broke and ordinary as you and me, passing on this rare opportunity to be rich and famous, and rich and famous for excelling at management, Kate’s favorite thing!

If you really loved me, you would not ask me to give all this up, Kate thinks. If you really loved me, you would not ask me to live this way, Jon thinks. And they are both right. They do not really love each other. There was no real love in this marriage from the beginning. It all happened too quick, too impulsively. So Jon does what many men do when they feel henpecked, controlled, or trapped. I’ll show her. I’ll go out and have some fun.

He's disloyal. He embarrasses her in public. It’s all unforgivable to a controlling woman. Being one, I know. It is the worst thing. Jon is now doomed to multiple relationships with women looking for fame, impending baldness, irregular IT jobs and living off of alimony provided by Kate for the rest of his life.

(Rereading this in 2012, I was tempted to delete it since both Jon and Kate have disappeared from view.)

This Makes Me Strangely Happy

I Don't Need Mother's Day

Every year people ask me on Mother's Day if I heard from my son, or what did he get me, or where is he taking me, and when I say no, nothing, nowhere, they are appalled. But I'm not. I don't expect or require any kind of behavior on Mother's Day out of the norm, and he knows that.

That there's a day that requires a certain behavior seems insincere to both of us. If he suddenly decided to buy me a gift for some appreciative reason, I'd be fine with it any other day of the year. If he wanted to take me to dinner or somewhere to enjoy my company, I'd also be fine with it any other day of the year. And we'd probably get a reservation easier.

I'm happy without a phone call. Silence means he's handling his own problems, paying his own bills, busy, and relatively at peace. I'm a helicopter mother, always hovering, ready to swoop in and rescue my troops...and he's a generation that only marginally has a problem with that. For the most part, they let us hover and rescue. I know I won't always be around to do that, so when I'm not needed, I'm glad. If he can manage, that's good. I've done my job.

Why Urban Pigeon?

Every day at the bus stop downtown, I watch the pigeons. They are fearless. They don't care that cars and buses are whizzing by inches away from them. They don't care that people are sharing the sidewalk with them. They're busy looking for garbage to eat.

Then they fly to a monument and crap on it.

It's sort of like my life. There's been a lot of traffic and a lot of garbage, and my career as a writer hasn't advanced much past crapping on the monuments of decorum and tradition that is Richmond, Virginia. I came here just to go to a college that would let me get a degree without taking a math or phys ed class, and then the plan was to get out of here. But I keep getting married to people who want to stay here, and when I'm between marriages, I don't have enough money to rent a U-Haul. My life is in New York City but someone else is living it.

I think about that when I see the pigeons at the bus stop, one thing Richmond does share with New York. Pigeons.

What am I doing here?

Actually, I really do like pigeons. They also remind me of my father. As a boy growing up in the 1930s in the tenements of Long Island City, he raised pigeons. A lot of city kids did. They kept the roosts on the roofs of their apartment buildings. You didn't need pet food as the pigeons could find things to eat while they were out flying, and they always came back.

When I was in the 7th grade, we moved to a house in Greenville, North Carolina. It was the first house we ever had to ourselves. In New York, we had lived with relatives, like many Italians do. Everyone in the same house. Then we lived in an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, and then we moved to this house in North Carolina. There was a kid in the neighborhood who had a pigeon coop and we were so enthralled with it -- I had heard my father's pigeon stories -- we decided to buy a couple of the pigeons and build our own coop.

So for a year or so, I had this project I shared with my dad, the pigeons. I have never had a very close relationship with my father, and this was the last chance. Before long, I'd move to permanent alienation via puberty and then distance, and then evil stepmothers.

Our two pigeons had babies (squabs are very ugly babies; I don't think there is an uglier baby in the animal kingdom), and the babies had babies, and I kept journals of which pigeons were married (they mate for life) and who their children were, and who their children married. We let them out. They flew around the house, sat on the roof, and came back to the coop. We cleaned out the coop. That was an awful job, and what eventually distanced me from the pigeon project. That and puberty.

(By the way, do not, and I repeat, do not, google "squab" for a photo. Apparently squabs are a delicacy, and you will find only photos of cooked squabs, which are more disgusting to look at than live squabs. It will also turn you into a vegetarian immediately. I warned you!)

Towards the end, it was just my dad. I'd see him out in the yard, hands in his pockets, wearing his Eisenhower jacket, watching the pigeons circle the sky around the house. Eventually it was no fun for him either, or no fun to do alone, and he sold our pigeons back to the boy who had gotten us started. The decaying roost was still in the yard when we sold the house.

And that was pretty much it for me and my dad. He died a few years ago, an old guy in his eighties that I no longer knew. His third wife kept us all at a distance, so I hadn't seen him in 20 years. But he wrote me one letter every month of just casual chit chat and put a $50 bill in it. I would write him back not to send cash through the mail, but then it occurred to me it was the only way he could do it without his wife knowing. And sending me money was the only way he could make up for not ever coming to see me, or being there for me.

So I watch the pigeons at the bus stop, and because of my dad, I know they're not well bred pigeons because they don't have thick crusts on top of their beaks, but they're not trashy birds either because they do have rainbow coloring on their necks. I wonder who they're married to and where they live. And I think about my dad, standing out in the yard by himself, hands in his pockets, wearing his Eisenhower jacket, and watching the pigeons we named and raised together, flying around the sky.

Mortgage Voodoo

Even though the whole housing crisis, bubble, creative mortgaging, etc. sunk the economy, the evil persists. This week I received a letter from First Fidelity Mortgage Group in Baltimore. They knew my name and roughly how much I still owed on my house. They were offering a 4.5 percent refinance, with a monthly payment almost two-thirds less than I'm paying now, plus for a mere $90 a month more, a $24,000 cash payment.

Down in the small print, there's a reference to interest only, and the 4.5 percent is good for five years only. After that, it could go anywhere. "Rate and programs subject to change at any time." Something mysterious about my refinancing charges being "higher over the life of the loan."

Isn't this how everyone got in trouble?

Legalize Marijuana, Already

The first person who offered me pot was a 4-year-old boy. You read that right. I was 17. My girlfriend, a Ritalin addict, wanted to visit some world traveling hippies she had met somewhere so we went to the run-down hotel where they were crashing and a cigarette was going around. Their 4-year-old was sitting next to me. He took a drag and then passed it to me. I had no idea. I pretended to take a drag and passed it to the next person.

Like Clinton, I’m not an inhaler. Having been a severely asthmatic child, breathing is important to me, so anything that fills my mouth, nose or lungs with smoke has no appeal. Throughout college, whenever I found myself in a similar situation, I did the similar fake-out and left before the conversation bogged down into too much mellowosity. I like provocative conversation and plans of action. Pot smokers like sofas, television, and silence punctuated by endless loop observations of the obvious. They are too content to change the world, or even change the channel.

Plus it’s nasty. It smells bad. Bong water is a whole other kind of vile. I’m not a fan of anything that someone puts in their mouth and then hands to me. Too much spit-sharing going on here.

Except for a caffeine rush from Mountain Dew, I am immune to most addictive substances anyway. Nicotine, alcohol, prescription painkillers – nothing does it for me. I have an Eeyore level of discontent that nothing can dislodge, even temporarily. Although the one time I did inhale at a Christmas party when I was making a feeble attempt to fit in, I actually did feel a lifting of my usual innate apprehensions.

I was lifted enough to get into a car with bald tires on a rainy night and not pay attention to my driver’s directional skills, and broke the windshield with my head when we hydroplaned into a guardrail on a Chippenham off ramp. Natasha Richardson died from less of an impact. I don’t know why I’m alive. After an ambulance ride to MCV and a full body x-ray, I proceeded to the next Christmas party, minus my holiday dress and underwear, which were scissored off in the emergency room. Just paper scrubs and party shoes.

That was 15 years ago, and I considered it a Message from God: Received. If I need to be in the game, back to Mountain Dew. Out of the game, extra strength Benadryl and an hour of C-Span works fine. ZZZzzzz. I will deal with life by continuing to be aggravated.

All that said, I support the legalization of marijuana. (If my driver had been drinking, I think we would have hit that guardrail a lot harder – and in a muscle car.) This really needs to happen, and soon. I have been in rooms full of beer drinkers and rooms full of pot smokers, and I’ll take the smokers any day. It’s quieter, less stupid, less marred by incidents of indiscriminate urinating. There’s definitely less fighting. And less vomiting. Pot is the drug of less. Less worries, less violence, less ambition, less money.

For those who are easily disappointed, angered, or frustrated by life, less can be more. I don't understand why alcohol is not only legal, but sold by the state.

I don’t believe pot is a gateway drug. And if it does have medicinal qualities, if it does ease nausea caused by chemotherapy or dulls the pain of arthritis, how is that a bad thing? Seems like a plant put on earth by God is being used as God intended, instead of pharmaceuticals cooked up on lab hot plates.

The columnist Joe Klein recently proposed in Time magazine, tongue-in-cheek, that marijuana should be legalized for seniors who give up their driver’s licenses. But there’s a good point here. Keep the Boomers sedated as they segue into substandard, under financed, understaffed assisted living and nursing facilities. If marijuana is legally sold only to those 62 and over, then everyone will want granny to live with them.

Klein also points out that decriminalized marijuana means fewer people in jail, that 47.5 percent of all arrests are marijuana-related. Police can concentrate on something more damaging to the public welfare.

It would save Philip Morris, not to mention California. Even when limited to medicinal use, pot is the largest cash crop in California with $14 billion in revenue. What kind of sin tax can you levy on that kind of moola?

It would reduce crime, like repealing prohibition did, by taking the transporting, sales and marketing out of the hands of the underground criminal economy and creating jobs for regular people.

Sure, at first the novelty of it being mainstream will make everyone eager to try it, but then all those, like me, who inherently don’t like the stink, the smoke, and the inertia will quickly move on. And as Klein writes, given the “assorted boozehounds and pill poppers” in talk radio and Congress, “the hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering.” Bad influence on children? And Joe Camel, Captain Morgan, and the Budweiser frogs are what?

As more and more of the WWII generation dies off and out of political office and those born in the 1960s and later rise to power, it’s going to be a done deal anyway. The whole 20th century prohibition of it will seem like an historically quaint era.

Marley & Journalism

"Marley & Me" wasn't so much a story about a dog to me as it was a fantasy journalism story. The movie did not take too many liberties with the facts of the Grogan's careers. By 1991, both Mr. and Mrs. were employed journalists on neighboring South Florida newspapers. Mrs. voluntarily gives up writing to be a mom. Mr., at least in the movie, is almost forced by his gruff but lovable editor to switch from being a reporter to being a twice-weekly columnist. Then he again is almost forced by Gruff But Lovable to write a daily column at twice the money (!!!)...about things that take little or no research: the life of his community and his personal life in that community.

He easily changes from Florida columnist to Pennsylvania reporter and moves into a big stone house on lots of acreage. At the turn of the new century, apparently you could still live high on the hog on a single income as a newspaper or magazine writer. In the book, he actually left Florida to be the editor of Organic Gardening magazine, a Rodale Press product, and tiring of that, walked right into another columnist job with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It was reading stuff like this as a child that made me think this was the desired life and within the realm of possibility, making a grand living writing about myself for a daily paper. Grogan, though, is a rare case of an extraordinarily lucky guy since his writing skills are average. The prose is workmanlike but doesn't sing or soar in "Marley & Me." The amazing second act of his fantasy life is not only did all that dream journalist stuff happen to him, when his dog died, he wrote a book about the dog's life and it became a best seller of such monster proportions, he never has to work again. Money has just poured down upon this guy's head. (And who among us has not had a pet that did stuff and then died of old age? We've all been sitting on book fortunes all this time and never knew it.)

His payday for the movie "Marley & Me" is icing on the icing. The movie is actually faithful to the book (which is not a plus here) and a stupider movie you couldn't ask for. Owen Wilson, he of the bizarrely indented nose, and Jennifer Aniston never age during the 12-16 years this movie covers. Not only do they not age, they never change their hairstyles. Aniston, showing why she will always be a celebrity and never an actress, doesn't employ a single wig to show the passing of time. She is Jennifer Aniston and her trademark hairstyle stays in the movie. Throughout I wondered what this movie might have been in the hands of two actors who were more committed to the roles instead of two celebrities who usually pick the worst scripts and don't act other than to be the same character they play in every movie.

Kathleen Turner, who has not aged well at all (I think she has actually become a man), appears as a dog trainer who gets humped by Marley in one scene. How terrible is Turner's finances that she had to accept this role? No hairstylist or costumer lifted a finger to try to make her look like something...anything.

And worst of all, after enduring the movie, I was really looking forward to the extra features on the DVD, especially a look at the many dogs used to play the life of Marley, but my Netflix copy did not include them. What...was this a two-disc DVD set in the stores?