Enjoy holidays -- one halftime at a time

During this season of giving and reflection and renewal, a man's thoughts naturally turn to football.

'Tis the season for men wearing plastic reindeer antlers and a fine dusting of Doritos crumbs to sprawl on sofas, basking in the TV glow while our plucky families celebrate all around us. It's a season of hope and joy, anticipation and disappointment, the thrill of victory and the agony of sweatsock feet. It's the time of year when grown men ask Santa to please, please grant one wish: a first-and-goal on the two with a minute to go.

While others sing carols and make resolutions and gobble leftovers, we men display as much holiday energy as your average potted poinsettia. Lumps of coal we are, as we watch round-the-clock games, sometimes two or three at once, moving nothing but our eyes and our overdeveloped remote control thumbs.

It's not that we're lazy. We're pouring all our available resources into rooting for our favorite teams, occasionally even jumping up from the La-Z-Boy to shout, "Yes!" and grab another egg nog. Our teams can't do it without us. We're the Twelfth Man, pouring spiritual energy into the television sets of America.

Our families, on the other hand, seem able to soldier on with the decorating and the turkey-basting and the party-throwing without us. Or, with the limited participation that we can offer during halftimes.

The football leagues and the TV networks pander to sports junkies by televising the important games during the holiday season, when the biggest audience is likely to be off work and lying in front of a big-screen TV, naked except for boxers decorated with candy canes and evergreens, eating day-old guacamole directly off its fingers.

This year, men will be distracted from their loved ones by an estimated 137 college bowl games. Plus the NFL playoffs, which take us well into the new year, finally culminating in the Super Bowl, which I believe is sometime in July.

While the rest of the world makes merry and bright, we football fans relish tackles and sacks and crackback blocks. We wallow in the violence and the spirited competition and the mud and the blood and the beer. Nothing says "Happy Holidays" like a crushing blindside tackle in the secondary.

Our preoccupation with football is partly a coping mechanism, a way to deal with the bustle and glow of the holiday season. All that danged JOY. Brrr. It's also a primitive urge. It's winter, so we eat lots of big meals and hibernate in our dark dens, waking only when the crowd noise alerts us to a big play, just in time to watch the slow-motion replay.

We know our football fixation sometimes stresses our spouses, who are forced to use food aromas and actual beer to lure us off the couch long enough to, say, open our Christmas gifts. Our lethargy sets a bad example for our children. Our children. You remember the children. The ones who run screaming in front of the TV screen once in a while? Them.

Our families should not despair. Eventually, the football season will end. Spring will arrive, and we men will rise up from our sofas and shake the crumbs from our pelts and emerge from our caves. We'll stop obsessing on point-spreads and statistics and fantasy leagues and and bad calls and boneheaded coaching. We'll once again gather our families in the warm embrace of our full attention.

Until March Madness.
　

Your party footprint

All the talk these days centers on carbon footprints -- how much pollution we generate and energy we consume. But party footprints are important, too, and more immediate. You might have trouble calculating your carbon footprint, but your party footprint can easily be tallied by counting the number of food stains on your shirt.

My personal party footprint is huge. I’m a big guy, so I take up a lot of space. I eat and drink more than my share. I spill. I tend to get effusive (especially when I’ve had a few) and talk with my hands. Anyone crowded too close is in real danger of losing an eye.

I suspect that the size of my party footprint inhibits our social life. When people make party plans, they say: “We can’t invite the Brewers. She’s OK, but we simply don’t have room for HIM.”

Men typically have bigger party footprints than women. We’re louder, larger, hairier, hungrier, thirstier. We tend to forget social niceties, especially as the evening wears on (see “thirstier”). Women at holiday parties are like bright birds, twittering demurely and picking at the food. Men, as we’re frequently reminded, are pigs from Mars.

(Yes, I’m speaking in generalities, but that is my native language.)

Let’s look at the different ways the genders approach parties:

Women enjoy parties for the conversation and companionship. Men like that stuff, too, but it’s difficult to keep a scintillating conversation going while eating with both hands.

When hosting a party, women want to make sure that all the guests feel good. Men want to make themselves feel good. Yes, this is similar to sex. (Hah, beat you to it.)

Women enjoy planning a party and getting everything ready. You can count on men to buy ice.

For women, fancy parties offer an opportunity to dress up. For men, parties are a reason to wear pants, at least at first.

Parties give women a chance to be artistic (décor, fancy food). Men are more interested in the mechanical (BBQ grills, proper keg flow).

At dinner parties, women compliment the chef by oohing over the food and asking for recipes. Men compliment the chef by groaning and asking for more.

Women politely offer to help the hosts serve food and drink. Men sometimes clean up their own spills.

Some parties include dancing, which many women enjoy. Men prefer a challenging game of drunken Twister.

Holiday gatherings let women bask in the warm glow of family and friends. Men prefer the warm glow of televised football.

At family events, women think of the children and the fond memories that are being made. Men say to the kids, “Don’t stand in front of the TV.”

Women like to make an entrance. Men prefer to make a memorable exit.

Women always remember to thank the hosts. Men often remember to apologize to the hosts.

Women like to engage in post-party analysis. Men are happy if they can find the car.

These differences don’t necessarily mean that women are superior to men, but it does mean women have smaller party footprints and often make better hosts/guests. Lucky for us guys, the women have to drag us along or face a lot of embarrassing questions.

Ladies, don’t feel you must apologize for your men’s enormous party footprints. Just say, “I’m with Sasquatch.” Everyone will understand.

Primp my bride

A comic cliché that goes back at least to the early days of Dagwood and Blondie: The husband pacing impatiently while his wife takes her good sweet time getting ready for a night on the town.

As with so many clichés, this one’s got some basis in fact. Women have much more to do to get ready, which means men end up with more time to watch the clock and get ulcers.

Proof comes from Great Britain, where a survey finds that women spend three times longer getting ready for a night out. On average, the study found, women spend an hour and a half preparing for a night out, including taking a shower, doing their hair, applying makeup and polishing nails.

Over a lifetime, this adds up to 3,276 hours (or 136 DAYS) spent on primping and preening.

“The figures come as no surprise considering the pressure that today’s women are under just to make themselves look good,” said Heather Boden of the body wash brand Skinbliss, which commissioned the research.

Women are bombarded with images from advertising and media, telling them what constitutes beauty and what products they must buy right now to reach that pinnacle. They’re made to feel that they must invest time and effort into looking their best.

Men, on the other hand, assume they look fine, even when they are covered in actual soil.

If you don’t believe this double-standard exists, try this experiment. Put any woman in front of a large mirror in a well-lit room. She immediately will examine her reflection for flaws. She will get depressed over every bump and wrinkle. She will sigh. She will decide her clothes are hopelessly out of fashion. She will decide to go shopping.

Put a man in front of the same mirror, and he’ll start flexing his biceps, saying to himself, “Looking good.” This is true whether the man is a fit young Adonis or a middle-aged bald guy with the physique of a toad.

(The British survey didn’t differentiate between single vs. married, but I’m guessing the answers were quite different. People who are “on the market” invest more time in looking and smelling their best, just in case they meet that special someone, whereas a married person can feel fully primped as long as he or she is not wearing fresh baby spit-up.)

A typical man can get ready for any occasion in the length of time it takes a woman to decide “does this purse go with these shoes?” Then the man is forced to sit around in his uncomfortable dress-up clothes, getting increasingly anxious, while the woman does her hair and her makeup and changes outfits seven times. By the time she is finally ready, the man has rumpled his clothes, consumed too many pre-party drinks and is fast asleep in front of the TV. He then must spring awake and tuck in his shirttail and smooth down the dagwoods in his hair and drive like a bat out of hell so they can reach the special occasion before all the food is gone.

Plus, the reeling, half-awake man must remember to tell the woman how beautiful she looks. If he knows what’s good for him.

Otherwise, he may find himself asking: Does this purse look good upside my head?

Rubik's rube

Erno Rubik’s got nothing on me.

Rubik is the Hungarian sculptor and architect who invented the Rubik’s Cube and other games. It takes a special sort of mind to devise such clever, addictive puzzles.

I have two teen-aged sons, so naturally we have Rubik’s Cubes lying around the house. My sons busily work the puzzles while simultaneously watching TV, texting on their phones, scratching, playing video games, listening to music and eating. Such are the nimble minds of multi-tasking youths.

My experience with Rubik’s Cube has been less casual. I sit down and give the cube my full attention, and after turning the colorful tiles every which way for 24 seconds, I say, “That was fun,” and toss it aside. Because that’s enough for me. It would take me hours of concentrated effort to even sort of figure out how the danged thing works, to get some type of system going, much less solve the puzzle, and it’s not worth it. The payoff’s not big enough for the time wasted. Unlike, say, a crossword puzzle, which only takes me a few minutes to work and the solution of which makes angels sing.

Scientists call the ability to see and manipulate objects in two and three dimensions “spatial visualization.” The term comes from the Latin roots “spatia” (or “shoulder”) and “visuali” (“door jamb”).

Several experiments have found that men tend to be better at spatial visualization. Yay, men! No offense to women, but we men don’t get many wins in our column these days. Along with spatial visualization, scientists have found that men tend to be better at lifting furniture, stealing elections and competitive eating. That’s about it.

Men’s special adaptation for spatial visualization, which may go all the way back to the days of prehistoric hunters, certainly explains teen-aged boys’ affinity for video games. I’m no better at video games than I am at Rubik’s Cube, and my failures led me to doubt my spatial visualization manhood. I felt intimidated. My sons mocked me, saying within my earshot: “Imagine the hefty Hungarian brain of Erno Rubik!”

Just as I was wondering whether there was a cure for my spatial visualization shortcomings, a mental Viagra, if you will, I had a breakthrough. I saw that non-Hungarians such as myself face spatial visualization puzzles all the time in everyday life and manage to solve them just fine.

Take, for example, our laundry room. We have two (usually full) laundry baskets. We have a washer and dryer, the tops of which serve as the work surface. The washer’s a top loader. The dryer’s a front loader. No problem, the baskets sit on the dryer, right? Except the lint trap is on top of the dryer. So I have to move baskets to put clothes in or out of the washer and to start each new load in the dryer. Back and forth, open and close. I’m so accustomed to this routine, I do it without thinking. My movements are polished by repetition. The baskets slide back and forth and lids slam and, ba-da-bing, new loads of laundry are under way.

Take that, Erno.

Don’t even get me started on the proper way to load a dishwasher. Oh baby, we could be here all day. Nothing arouses my manly spatial visualization skills like a sink full of dirty dishes. The geometry of loading the big stuff and filling in with the smaller items. The proper tilt to catch the best spray. The ups and downs of silverware.

Whew.

Maybe I’ll try that Rubik’s Cube again.

Quick, to the Crudmobile!

I know it's time to wash my car when the neighborhood kids use their fingers to write in the filth: SANDBLAST ME.

Some guys wash their cars all the time. The sky spits five raindrops or the wind kicks up a little dust or a weekend arises, and they're scrubbing and rinsing and patting dry, as gently and lovingly as they would a baby's backside.

I'm not one of those guys. I feel that a vehicle should be professionally washed once a year, typically in the spring, to get off the winter mudstains and road salt and spattered tar. The rest of the year, to heck with it. I simply don't care.

Some men take great pride in their cars. They motor around in their hot rods or their Hummers, stroking some psychological need by having the coolest ride, the loudest pipes, the biggest gearshift.

I drive a minivan. If my manhood were tied up in my wheels, so to speak, I'd be in big trouble. Once I took the aerodynamic-as-a-stick-of-butter family-vehicle plunge and gave up on ever driving a cool car, keeping the Nerdmobile clean seemed beside the point.

If my minivan starts to look too grubby, I might stop by one of those do-it-yourself car washes, where a pocketful of quarters earns a few minutes' wrestle with a powerful jet sprayer that will recoil and hit you squarely in the face if you're not careful, not that that's ever happened to me.

But those car washes don't really get a vehicle clean. They get it wet. Drive around until the water dries, then examine the exterior. All the road film and fingerprints will still be there. You'll still be able to read "WASH ME" on the back window.

A truly clean car requires scrubbing with a rag or those giant, thundering brushes in a drive-through car wash. Some version of elbow grease, either human or mechanical. I don't care enough to make the effort.

Sure, I could afford to have it done on a regular basis, but the truth is that it never even occurs to me until the van gets so filthy that the neighbors start circulating a petition.

Am I a total slob who can't be bothered to get off the sofa long enough to take care of his possessions? OK, don't answer that. I'll rephrase the question. Why do I (and guys like me, assuming there are any) not care about a sparkling car while, for other men, it's a top priority?

I think it's because I drove crummy cars for so long. Compacts with rusty wheel wells and Jeepettes with dented doors and "pre-owned" sedans with upholstery brocaded by baby spit-up. Washing those cars wouldn't have made much difference. In some cases, the dirt might've been all that was holding them together.

When I went shopping for the minivan, I intentionally got one the color of dust. Trying to hide my sloth from others, I suppose, trying to conceal the fact that I don't consider grime a crime.
But now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'll troop down to the local car wash and pony up the bucks to get someone to scrub away the crud and chisel the bug guts off the bumpers.

Yeah, I'm going to get right on that, soon as the playoffs are over. I've got to get up off the sofa anyway. Some idiot wrote "WASH ME" on the TV screen.

Parenting tips for dads

Dads of America, repeat after me: "Go ask your mother."

This useful phrase should be practiced until it becomes your standard reply to every question. When a child comes seeking permission or wanting something, send him right out the door again by saying, "Go ask your mother." Then go back to watching the football game on TV.

Kids' demands never stop. If you work up a decision every time, you will wear out the neurons in your brain and end up one of those gibbering old men with gravy on his cardigan.

Worse yet, most of the decisions you make will be, um, wrong. You might think, as the Man of the House, that your word goes, and each decision is final and blah, blah, blah. But you're wrong about that, too. Because here's what happens: If the child doesn't like your answer, s/he will appeal the decision to a higher court -- Mom -- and you will be overruled.

Sure, Mom may consult with you first, might even have a long discussion on the merits of both sides of the argument. By the time you lose that debate, the game will be over and -- pop! -- there goes another neuron. It's easier to send the kid to Mom in the first place.

At our house, my wife and I are known as the "Yes-No Parents." One of our sons will make some request -- to stay out late, to hang out with friends at the mall, to buy a genuine samurai sword -- and my wife and I will answer simultaneously. I'll automatically say, "no." She'll say, "yes." We'll share a long look, our eyes calculating the algebra of the disagreement. Then I'll say, "Whoops. I meant 'yes.'"

(To tell the truth, we both said "no" to the samurai sword. Shouted it, in fact. But that's another story.)

Why do I give in so easily? Because I know I'll lose on appeal. Because the result doesn't matter that much to me anyway. Because somebody's standing in front of the TV and I'm missing the replay.

Mostly, though, it's because I'm busy bracing for the next request. "Yes" is never good enough. If we say "yes" to loitering at the mall, the next question is, "When do I have to be home?" And that starts a whole 'nother round of talks.

Parenting experts tell us we shouldn't negotiate with our children, that we should give a firm answer and stick to it, but we all know that's so much claptrap. Life with kids (especially teens) is one long haggle.

That's why I've added a new tactic to my arsenal. Now, along with "go ask your mother," I use what I call "reverse negotiation." When a child tries to bargain with me, I go backward.

Say my son bids for a 11 p.m. bedtime. I come back with 10 p.m. If he then does the natural compromise and tries for 10:30, I say 9:30. If the baffled kid argues, I say, "Make it 9 p.m." If he's slow to catch on, we can negotiate a settlement that results in him going to bed before kickoff.

Here's another example:

Son: "Can Nick stay for dinner?"
Dad: "Yes."
Son: "Can he spend the night?"
Dad: "No. And now he can't stay for dinner, either."
Son: "Aww. But--"
Dad: "Keep talking. Nick can go home immediately."

Son slinks from room to play with Nick. Dad returns to football viewing. All is right with the world.

Until dinnertime. When Mom announces that Nick is spending the night.

FAQ on BBQ: Call 911, go to ER

Any fool can hurt himself in a modern kitchen, but to really get some third-degree burns, you need a barbecue grill.

Summertime is cookout season. Time to go out in the yard, stand under the broiling sun, and char some artery-clogging meat. Create a mushroom cloud of oily smoke that'll have your neighbors dialing 911. Enjoy the sizzle of spattering grease hitting your howling dinner guests.

For eons now, since the day our humble ancestors discovered fire, people have used open flames to turn simple animal flesh into crunchy, bleeding, chew-proof repasts. Cavemen squatted around fires on the ground, but we've come so far since then. Now we have barbecue grills, which stand on legs, putting the flames even closer to your face and other anatomical regions that react poorly to burning.

The barbecue grill was invented by the ancient Romans. In fact, the word "barbecue" comes from the Latin "barbecus," which translates to "my apron is on fire." Those fun-loving Romans knew nothing makes a meal more enjoyable than watching the host prance around in flames.

In contemporary times, cookouts have become synonymous with summer, as American as apple pie and fireworks and paper plates. When it's already 100 degrees outside, why not go out and start a big, hot fire? Heat stroke is a good excuse for steaks that are poorly cooked.

Outdoor grilling has become the province of men. Big, sweaty guys who wouldn't be caught dead whipping up something in the kitchen will push others out of the way to get to a barbecue grill.
Why? Because of the element of risk involved. There's something manly about poking and prodding among roaring blazes. Men bring their charred offerings to the table, their chests puffed out, the hair singed off their arms, and they feel they've proven something. They've proven they can produce a meal without setting the lawn on fire -- this time.

At our house, my wife has taken over the grilling chores. It's part of our whole role-reversal thing, plus it gives her the opportunity to cook burgers that don't come out like hockey pucks. This resolves a conflict that has plagued us through our married life: I like meat well-done to the point of inedibility, she wants rare, rare, rare. Her idea of cooking a steak is to show an unlit match to a live cow.

I don't feel usurped now that she's the one sweating over the grill. Better for me to sit in a lawn chair a safe distance away, swilling beer and offering advice such as: "Hon, your hair's on fire."

There may be those among you who haven't yet savored the joys of cooking outdoors. What follows is advice on properly using a grill. Take this advice seriously. I'm a barbecue veteran, and I've got the scars to prove it.

Choosing a grill

Barbecue grills come in a vast array of sizes and styles, from the big Cadillac models with side burners and aloe vera plants, down to the lowly "hibachi," (from the Japanese for "my kimono's on fire.") When selecting your grill, the main question will be: charcoal or gas? Gas grills are easier to use, but they're essentially just outdoor stoves. Charcoal gives meat a wonderful smoky flavor, and the risk is high. Ask any impatient cook who's decided a little more charcoal starter should be spritzed onto the sputtering coals. Nothing's as satisfying as the whoompf of sudden flames 20 feet high.

Cleaning your grill

You're supposed to clean them? Haha, just kidding. A wire brush does a nice job of removing ash and blackened meat bits. Don't worry about cleaning the outside of the grill. Just leave it outdoors over the winter and let Mother Nature do the work. Once it rusts out, it's time to get a new one.

Grill safety

Surely it's clear by now that "safe grilling" is an oxymoron. You want safe, you should go to a restaurant. Tell the waiter you want your steak just like you eat them at home: Black on the outside, bloody on the inside, covered in ashes and bugs. While you're at it, see if you can get him to set his apron on fire.

King of the castle

We've all heard that old saw, "A man's home is his castle," meant to convey independence and safety and the sanctity of private property.

The adage no doubt dates from the days when a man's home really was a castle, and anyone who dared interfere risked a moat and vats of boiling oil. Men were kings of their domains, as long as they "kept the home fires burning" under the oil vats.

Over the years, some men have taken the castle allegory further, using it to convince themselves they're the rulers of the household.

(Back in the "Ozzie and Harriett" days when I was a kid, my brother and I sometimes would try to put unpopular parental decisions to a vote. This was met with derision from my father, who would always say, "This isn't a democracy. It's a monarchy. And I'm the king." We children would shuffle away, muttering and plotting an overthrow that never came.)

These days, equality is the coin of the realm, and men who try to pretend they're kings are fooling themselves. Those emperors have no clothes, no matter how much they may rail about "wearing the pants in this family." Wives smile to themselves, knowing who's really in charge, and the kids can't even hear the king's commands because they're wearing headphones full of thumping rap music.

It's time to modify the old saying. Here's my suggestion: "A man's GARAGE is his castle."
In the house, Dad may be an impotent potentate, his blustery decrees overriden by calm females, his kids screaming for his head like an angry mob. But when Dad goes to the garage, he's still the king.

Drive around any suburban neighborhood on any Sunday afternoon and peer in the garage doors that are standing open. You'll find men in there. Building stuff. Tinkering with cars. Or just lounging in lawn chairs, sipping Buds and watching sports on portable TVs, sometimes in the company of other monarchs from neighboring realms.

Why the garage?

--All our stuff is there. Family men can't just leave oily rags and random tools lying around the kitchen. Not if we ever want to see them again. That stuff belongs in the garage, preferably on pegboards. Wrenches and hammers and mowers and drills and old saws, all carefully organized. We men can spend hour upon hour just arranging our tools. It's a harmless activity, akin to collecting baseball cards, and it keeps us occupied. And, when we need a particular tool, there's always the long-shot chance that we can actually find it.

--Men need time alone with their thoughts. These aren't necessarily deep thoughts, often no deeper than "where did I put that wrench," but the garage is the only quiet place where we can ponder them. We all need "down time" so we can sit among our sharpened lawn tools and fantasize about the demise of our bosses and other enemies.

--Garages are, by their very nature, dirty. Men may be afraid to set a beer on the coffee table without a coaster, but in the garage we can spill oil and paint and grease. Nobody cares. We're in our little fiefdoms, and we can make them as filthy as we like.

--The garage is the only place where we men might actually fix something. Most men, when attenpting a tricky car repair or reassembling toilet innards, need solitude so we can concentrate. Also, alone in the garage, we can curse with impunity when we're injured or the repair job goes wrong.

--We get a break from that raucous "quality time" with our families. Our wives and children know to leave us alone when we're in the garage. They know, if they interrupt whatever manly endeavors we're attempting out there, they're likely to be put to work. Plus, they don't want to hear all that cursing.

So, men of America, go to the garage. Consider it your hideout, your clubhouse. Heck, call it your castle, if you so desire. Fashion yourself a crown and wear it while you tinker. Be the King of Greater Pegboardia.

You'll get comfort and peace. You'll finally get some solitude. You can even spit on the floor if you want.

But don't try boiling oil. It spatters, and those burns will only set you to cursing.