You may have heard or read the news about a controversial app for the Android phone: Is My Son Gay? Out of a silly sense of curiosity, I looked up the questions allegedly asked by this app. I then sent the 20 questions to my mother and had her answer them regarding me — and my brother. Since both my brother and I have proven to be totally heterosexual, (though I must point out that he is still unmarried, and lives with a guy), and I have no idea how the Is My Son Gay? app calculates a determination from the answers, I thought it would be interesting to see how we come out looking based on our mom’s answers.

Mom answered these 20 questions from her memory of us as pre-teens and teens, when we lived at home.

First, the answers on Bullgrit:

1. Does he like to dress up nicely? Does he pay close attention to his outfits and brand names?
A: Yes, only didn’t care about brand name.

2. Does he like football?
A: No.

3. Before he was born did you wish he would be a girl?
A: No.

4. Has he ever gotten into or participated in a fight?
A: This one I can’t remember, so I will say no.

5. Does he read sports magazines?
A: No.

6. Does he have a best friend?
A: Yes.

7. Does he like team sports?
A: No.

8. Is he prudish/modest?
A: Yes.

9. Does he like diva singers?
A: Yes.
[Bullgrit: Huh? Who? This is weird. I can’t think of a single diva that I have ever liked.]

10. Does he spend a long time in the bathroom?
A: Yes.

11. Does he have a tongue, nose or ear piercing?
A: No.

12. Does he spend time getting ready before being seen in public?
A: Yes.

13. Have you asked yourself questions about your son’s sexual orientation?
A: No.

14. Are you divorced?
A: Yes.

15. Does he like musical comedies?
A: No.

16. Has he introduced you to a girlfriend ever?
A: Yes.

17. Is the father very strict or authoritarian with his son?
A: No.

18. In your family is the father absent?
A: No.

19. Was he shy as a child?
A: Yes.

20. Is he close to his father?
A: Yes.

———-

Now, the answers on brogrit:

1. Does he like to dress up nicely? Does he pay close attention to his outfits and brand names?
A: No.

2. Does he like football?
A: No.

3. Before he was born did you wish he would be a girl?
A: No.

4. Has he ever gotten into or participated in a fight?
A: Yes.

5. Does he read sports magazines?
A: No.

6. Does he have a best friend?
A: Yes.

7. Does he like team sports?
A: No.

8. Is he prudish/modest?
A: No.

9. Does he like diva singers?
A: No.

10. Does he spend a long time in the bathroom?
A: No.

11. Does he have a tongue, nose or ear piercing?
A: Yes.

12. Does he spend time getting ready before being seen in public?
A: No.

13. Have you asked yourself questions about your son’s sexual orientation?
A: No.

14. Are you divorced?
A: Yes.

15. Does he like musical comedies?
A: No.

16. Has he introduced you to a girlfriend ever?
A: Yes.

17. Is the father very strict or authoritarian with his son?
A: No.

18. In your family is the father absent?
A: No.

19. Was he shy as a child?
A: No.

20. Is he close to his father?
A: No.

——————————————————-

So, there we have all the evidence. The answers really say a lot.

I think looking at these answers, the incontrovertible conclusion must be:

The Village People cards were brogrit’s.

That is all.

Bullgrit

As I prefaced last week, my brother was in town with his band for a gig at a local tavern. The wife and I got a nap in the afternoon, then dropped the boys off with her mother for the night, had dinner with my mom and brogrit, and eventually wound up at a bar at 10:00 pm. That’s right — we were out for a night at a bar. With my mom. Yeah, things were gonna get happenin’! I don’t know what, but something. Probably.

By the time the band took the stage, two of Cowgrit’s friends had joined us at our table. Yeah, while the rock star was workin’ on stage, I was hangin’ with the ladies. And two of them weren’t even related to me. Don’t hate the playa.

The band blasted the 80s rock and metal; the crowd sang and drank, and danced and drank, and flirted and drank. I don’t know what was more entertaining the watching the band or watching the crowd.

None of the pics I took do justice to the scene. The tavern is shaped like a square doughnut, with four bars in the “hole.” So the crowd wound from the front of the stage, back to where I took the above photo, then around to my left, to circle around back up to the side of the stage. No one shot could capture the whole crowd.

The layering effect of the crowd was interesting. Right up in front of the stage were the women, (“women” — pshaw; college girls.) Behind them was a layer of men, (college boys). Further back was the mingling layer, where couples were hooking up. Then the far rear layer, was the older, (read: over 24), section. Later in the night, the ladies and I made our way up to the stage-front layer.

The ladies danced, my mom threw up the rock-horns, (after my instructions on how to make the sign), and I hung back a bit out the direct line of the brain-scramble zone of the speakers. Then a little after midnight, it was time to take my ladies home.

After getting my ladies safely in the quiet of our home, I headed back out to the bar. There, by myself, I was the proverbial fly on the wall. I got a kick out of just watching everyone “having a good time.” Folks drinking, flirting, dancing, singing, generally enjoying themselves and entertaining me.

Way back when, before I met my wife, and during our dating years, I did the club scene on a regular basis. So this wasn’t nearly the first time I’ve been in it. But it’s been right many years, and this was one of the very few times when I was so disconnected from it while being in it. Even when I worked in a bar, I was involved in the scene, just from a different point of view. This Saturday night, I was really just a spectator.

At 2:00 a.m., the show ended. The band left the stage, the lighting changed, and last call was announced. I hung out with brogrit “backstage” for a bit as the crowd started slowly dispersing over the next half hour. I met the rest of the band, and a friend from brogrit’s and my hometown who had come up with a couple of her friends to see the show. (Hi Jennifer!)

The tavern staff had already started cleaning up before the last of the crowd had vacated. Once the place was mostly clear, the hometown friend and I helped brogrit pack up his drum kit and gear.

A bar after the crowd is gone is a completely different place. I experienced this change over many times when I worked at a saloon for a stint in 89-90.

The building was mostly quiet except for the scrape of tables and chairs being moved across the wood floors, and the clink of glasses being picked up and put away. My head was numb and there was a constant ringing in my ears, and my body had that tingle of having gone too long without sleep, but I was enjoying seeing the behind the scenes action. Once we got the drums all packed up, brogrit and I headed out.

We arrived at my house at 3:00, where the only sound was that constant ringing in my ears. I ate a couple of brownies in the kitchen before heading upstairs for bed. Since our boys were having their sleepover at Cowgrit’s mom’s house, my mom was asleep in Calfgrit6’s bed, and brogrit took Calfgrit10’s bed. I joined my sleeping beauty in our room. It took me almost 30 seconds to fall into a solid, deep sleep.

Bullgrit

Saturday, I introduced half a dozen boys, (five 10-year-olds, one 7-year-old), and a couple of dads to the adventure of Dungeons & Dragons. (The dads had played D&D 20+ years ago, but none of the boys had any experience with the game.) I was the Dungeon Master, and afterwards, I was completely exhausted, physically and mentally — in a good way. Everyone, boys and men, said they had a good time and that the game day was a great idea. The excited talk and big grins on every face after the game showed the sincerity of the thanks. Every boy came to me and asked if we would continue the game another weekend — a couple asking for next weekend — and both dads said they’d be happy to participate again if I did it.

We used the Basic D&D rules (1981, Moldvay edition), and the Players explored the dungeon of the module In Search of the Unknown. Here’s how everything went down:

Each of the six boys had a 1st-level fighter, one dad had a 3rd-level magic-user (wizard), and the other dad had a 3rd-level cleric. The premise of the adventure was that the wizard and cleric were wanting to explore the dungeon to find a lost magic stone, and they needed the fighters as bodyguards. The dungeon was an old, abandoned fortress built into and under a hill in the wilderness. The original owners were long gone, and what might be left in the place was unknown. Monsters, treasure, magic, traps? All to be expected.

The party arrived at the location with a caravan of wagons, (for supplies and fighter replacements if necessary), but the wagons, drovers, and extra guards were left out at a camp while the core team of adventurers went inside the dungeon. The core team bravely entered the old underground fortress via a ten-feet wide and high corridor carved into the stone hill.

Sixty feet into the hillside, they came to the entrance door of strong wood with metal bindings. The group had their marching order: a double column with four of the fighters up front, followed by the wizard and cleric pair, and the last two fighters as rear guard. The lead fighters opened the door to find the corridor continuing deeper into the hill.

The party went forward down the hall, in a cacophony of excitement, sending echoes of their movement and talking and laughter far ahead of them. Immediately after the front door, they passed a pair of alcoves to either side of the hallway. They moved on. When they found another set of alcoves about fifty feet further in, they decided to search them in detail. A couple of the fighters searched each alcove while the other couple stood guard. One pair of searchers found a secret door in the back of the right-side alcove. But they hadn’t figured out how to open the door yet when they received their first combat challenge.

The party’s loud talking and laughing had attracted the attention of a pair of patrolling hobgoblins, who charged right at the guarding pair of fighters. The struggle was quick and painless for the party, as the hobgoblins fell easily to spear thrusts and throws.

Shortly after that, the alcove searchers discovered how to open the secret door, and they found a crossroads of corridors beyond. The group moved, still loudly, through the secret door and into the crossroads where they debated which direction they should go. The boisterously loud discussion attracted more attention from nearby creatures, and a group of goblins charged into their torchlight from both the south and east corridors. The party had to defend on two fronts, but the small goblins were well dealt with. A couple of fighters and the cleric took some minor wounding, but no one was seriously injured in the battle.

The party decided to explore down the east corridor. They moved down the hall, still loud and incautious. They came to a pair of doors on either side of the hallway, (which itself continued on further east). The fighter at the head of the party banged on the right-side door for some unstated reason — not that any creature in the dungeon didn’t already know the loud group was approaching. When everyone in the group finally got quiet, he listened at the door, and heard movement and voices somewhere on the other side. When another fighter tried listening to the door on the left side of the corridor, the party got noisy again with excitement over what grand battle might await them behind the first, right-side door. The lead fighter opened the door and the group charged through it.

The moderately large chamber they charged into was a throne room with tall columns reaching up to the ceiling twenty feet overhead. Half a dozen hobgoblins were staged about the area in a defensive stance, ready for attack. No leaders sat upon the thrones at the far end of the room. The party continued their charge and spread out to each take on a hobgoblin opponent. After a couple rounds of battle, and a few hobgoblin deaths, (with no adventurer death), a group goblins sprang out from behind the thrones to join the battle. The goblin surprise didn’t help the defense, and soon all goblinoid creatures were slain — even those mortally wounded goblins who had dropped their weapons and were trying to crawl away. A few of the fighters and the wizard were moderately wounded, but the cleric managed to heal everyone to at least near full health. (The cleric had a magic item that he could use to cure light wounds once per day for each person.)

After the battle, the party went about giving the throne room a cursory scan. There were three new corridors and a door leading from this room, and the group began another loud debate about what to do next. Then the wizard thought to cast detect magic. The yet unopened door began to glow, revealing a magic spell on it, and from the seat of one of the thrones, a small glow peaked out revealing something magical hidden under the seat.

Two fighters tested the door, and when it wouldn’t open, they set about smashing at it with shield and spear and sword. Another pair of fighters began searching the throne. They determined there was a secret compartment under the seat, and they also set about destructing their way into it. The door-workers made no way, but the throne-abusers managed to break the seat, and found the bottom filled with a jeweled crown, a pile of gold, and a glowing magical ring. One fighter grabbed the crown and gold while the other took up the magic ring.

Several ideas were suggested for using the ring to open the door, and eventually they had the fighter put on the ring and simply open the door. That worked. The group then lined up to move through the magical door into the next room.

The room was a worship area, with religious symbols covering the side walls, a large stone demon face on the far wall, a five-foot wide pit in the center of the floor, and four armored and armed skeletons standing at attention. The fighters continued into the room, stopping only when the armored skeletons animated and attacked. One of the fighters was badly injured pretty quickly, and he had to pull back from the front line. Another fighter took his place, and the cleric healed him. The other fighters handily defeated the undead.

The party began searching the room closely, taking time and attention to examine everything. The pit in the center of the room was three feet deep, blacked by fire and soot, with a pile of ash at the bottom. The demon face was carved directly from the stone wall, with a small concealed area down inside its mouth.

The group discussed methods of testing the room, and one fighter dropped a lit torch down into the ash at the bottom of the pit. Quickly, the ash started glowing and relit. In a puff of flame and smoke, a giant burning snake rose from the pit. The excitement was short-lived as one-two-three, the fighters around the pit destroyed the firey creature in seconds. After the fight, a fighter hopped down into the pit of ash and searched around. The dirty work turned out worthwhile, as he found a very large ruby concealed under the ash.

Then the group put their attention to the stone demon face. One fighter used a dagger to feel around in the demon’s mouth, and felt his blade bump and moved something within it. Another fighter incautiously put his hand into the mouth to feel around, and he snagged his hand on a sharp needle. A sharp needle coated with poison. Fortunately he resisted the poison’s effects. He then reached back into the mouth, again, but avoided getting stuck by the needle, and he pulled out a leather tube pouch. Opening the tube, he found three sheets of parchment with religious prayers written on them. The party cleric looked the papers over and found them to be magic spells: remove poison, continual light, and detect magic.

When the group was satisfied that there was nothing else to discover in the worship room*, they left to take a new corridor out of the throne room. The cleric used one of the just found magic scrolls to cast continual light on the spear tip of the lead fighter. This was useful, as having enough torch light for the party had gotten complicated.

Continued here.

* Note: The boys tried a lot of other activities and searches and ideas in this room, (and in other areas), that I’m not relating. The whole game session was four hours long, and I’m assuming you don’t want to take four hours to read the story in exacting detail, so I’m only writing about the activities and searches and ideas that actually accomplished something.

Bullgrit

Today is my birthday. Number 44. Forty-four magnum, I’m calling it. Like Harry Callahan’s hand cannon. “Do you feel lucky?” I do.

For this double-quad birthday post, I’d like to revisit my fitness efforts one more time. The last time I mentioned my exercise regimen was back in November last year,  when I showed my “final” results after the P90X and Insanity programs. Well, I’ve kept up my exercises, but I’ve dropped to working out just three times a week instead of the hardcore six times a week. I’m just in a maintenance mode, now. I’m happy with my fitness level and my physical appearance, so I just want to stay like this. I don’t need to buff up like a bodybuilder.

Forgive an old man showing his bare physique one more [last] time.

[And forgive the terrible lighting in these pics. Sheesh. Opening the blinds of the big front window just caused harsh shadows. Using the flash just washed out on my pale skin — too embarrassing to use for this post. I thought I could improve on the bathroom shots. I failed.]

Anyway. Something I’ve never mentioned before is that I have a pretty severe case of arthritis. My spine, let my show you it:

This image is my lumbar spine, seen from my left side. Note the solid black cartilage space between the bottom vertebrae. That’s well-developed arthritis. That’s what pain looks like.

This MRI image was taken back in August 2007, almost four years ago. I posted about the experience, but I never came out and said what it was all about. I’ve never talked about having arthritis, here, because I didn’t want you readers thinking of me as some decrepit invalid. I’m only comfortable mentioning it in this blog, now, because I can post the fit pictures with it.

Four years ago, I went from a general doctor to a specialist to find out why I was so regularly having back pain. I always got out of bed achy and groaning in the mornings. I often, (at least once a year), “threw out my back” when doing heavy work.

X-rays and MRI photos showed the answer: pretty well developed arthritis. I was rather stunned. I mean, I was just turned 40 years old. Arthritis is something senior citizens have. The doctor told me that the disease had been developing in me for a while.

“But doc,” I said, “I was doing martial arts several days a week, just a few years ago. I earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.”

“You were fit and strong from the martial arts,” the doctor explained, “and that keeps the pain away.”

Core strength and flexibility, like I had while doing TKD, is the best — really the only — way to overcome arthritis without drugs or surgery. In the years after last doing any good and regular exercise, the arthritis caught up with me. That’s why I was starting to feel the disease as pain.

The doctor explained that there is no way to fix, cure, or repair arthritis, but I could keep it from getting worse by getting back into good and regular exercise. But I had to be careful and mindful of how to do exercise properly; I had to protect my back because with arthritis, it’s easier to injure, and any injury is more painful.

I may have be having pains getting out of bed then, but worst case scenario if I didn’t get back into good and regular exercise would be that one day I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed at all. Knowing how bad my back hurt sometimes getting out of bed then, I understood what that meant.

So I got back into good and regular exercise. Well, sometimes and sort of. I was on again and off again with the exercise. At my worst, I was never really “fat.” I was overweight, yes, but I’m also 40+ years old with a sedentary occupation. I and everyone with whom I ever conversed about body weight considered me average and normal for a 40-something family man. My middle was getting thicker, but my belly never plumped over my belt.

As for my arthritis, very few people knew I had it. I ran and jumped and played with my kids like all the other dads around — more than some dads because I wasn’t fat and completely out of shape like some men my age. Only when getting out of bed in the mornings, or maybe getting up off a sofa or chair after an hour or more sitting around, did I make any groans of discomfort. My inconsistent efforts at exercise at least kept me out of severe pain from normal activity. I only took any kind of drug for the pain, (usually just ibuprofen, but rarely something stronger), when it was particularly bad.

Every once in a while — once or twice a year, about — I’d do something to “throw my back out.” I’d pick something up wrong, twist or jump bad, or just sit too long in an uncomfortable position. It was Arthur Ritus letting me know he was truly moved in for the rest of my life.

When I started thinking about picking up the P90X workout, I honestly didn’t even think about needing it for arthritis control. But I was reminded by a person who loves me that I need to remember my back problem and not do something careless to hurt myself. Starting a regular exercise regimen is a good idea, but going extreme and permanently injuring myself would be just plain dumb. Good advice.

I completed the three-month P90X regimen with not a single back problem. I continued the P90X for another couple of months, and then completed the two month Insanity program, and still had no problems with my back. My core strength and flexibility was better than ever. I’ve been in close to peak physical fitness for a 40-plus year old for a year, now. And I’m still going strong.

Only once did I hurt myself during any of these workouts. Fortunately, (and maybe ironically), it happened during this maintenance period I’m keeping up, now, (not during the first/main rounds of the programs). I got a little cocky and rambunctious during a power jump routine, and lost the proper form and control. I woke up the next morning in back pain. I had to take four weeks off from working out to recover. Frustrating, that was. But after the healing time, I got right back into my exercise routine, and I make sure I keep the proper form and control when doing my extreme maneuvers.

* * *

So, I’m 44 years old today. Forty-four magnum.

Booyah! :-)

And my birthday party, next weekend, will be a wonderful nerd-fest.

Bullgrit