Lucky 13: S**t That Makes Me Happy (And Maybe You, Too!)

Okay, I am officially worn out by the world’s woes. It has been a dark year in a dark decade in a dark young century, in which the threat of End Times seems to come knocking about every five minutes. We live on a planet where some of the worst humans to ever emerge from a womb have been given the keys to great power – and they’ve used that power as a means to sow chaos, bludgeon their perceived enemies, and massage their tender little egos. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world just wants to parade around TikTok or Facebook, sharing painted-on smiles and lunch photos, basking in the glow of their fabulous selves, while Rome burns.

A damn shame indeed. But still….

It’s a nice day outside, and my personal misery meter is running near an all-time low. You’d never know it from some of my recent blogs, but I’m actually a pretty upbeat dude. I wake up in a decent mood most days, ready to crank my engine and embrace the world. I have a million things to be thankful for. I get annoyed easily and recover from it just as easily. Life is rich; blessings are plenty.

There is much to be joyful about. If you have enough to eat today, be joyful. If you are in good health, ditto. If you are financially comfortable, ditto. If your loved ones are safe and healthy, ditto. If you hear songs in your head while whiling away a lazy afternoon, you have much to be joyful about.

I have much to be joyful about. Even if I didn’t have much to be joyful about, I’d have much to be thankful for. And even if I didn’t have much to be thankful for, I’d still have some kind of human obligation to take a stab at coming up with things I should be thankful for.

The world’s roster of psycho tyrant assholes will be here tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that. They were here yesterday and all the yesterdays before that. You can’t kill them off, tempting though it may be. They’ll just hatch more, anyway.

But right now? At this point in time?

Oh, f**k ‘em.  

It’s time for Happy Thoughts. So here are 13 things that make me Very F*****g Happy.

First off, some ground rules: This list includes “things” that make me happy – inanimate objects, concepts, pursuits, food, philosophies, all that. It does not include people or creatures. That’s a whole other blog.

But just for the record: My family makes me indescribably happy. My whole body breaks into a big, stupid smile just thinking about them. My friends make me happy — especially when I’m having fun at their expense (and vice versa). Nice people make me happy, and kind strangers make me happy. Hell, even grouches can make me happy. So can cute dogs, and the bunny rabbits in our yard, and the cardinals that fly amongst our trees.

With that out of the way, let’s proceed with the list….

• Trumpet solos: Back in junior high school, we students had to choose some kind of musical pursuit, either singing in the school chorus or playing in the school band. I should have chosen singing, because I am actually a very fine singer, with a gift for harmony, at least according to me. But I chose band instead, and picked the trumpet. Well, it turns out I sucked at the trumpet. I mean I was really, really an awful trumpet player. I was so bad the band director had to move me to baritone, a brass instrument that basically involved playing two notes over and over. But to this day, I still love expert trumpet playing.  There is a muted, understated, almost wistful beauty to it that you just don’t find with other instruments. Miles Davis was a master at this, which is why he is maybe my favorite musician ever, along with Robert Zimmerman (google it).
• Enchiladas with mole sauce. Regular readers of this blog will know that I love Mexican food. If there’s one cuisine I crave more than any other, it’s Mexican/Tex Mex. This is a decades-long food obsession, and during most of that time I’ve always ordered enchiladas with a red or green sauce. I’ve only recently discovered the magic of brown enchiladas, made with a mole sauce that features a complex mix of chilies, spices, nuts, seeds – and chocolate (yes, but it’s verrrrry savory rather than sweet). I used to swear by green or red enchiladas. But no more.
• City streets: One of the true pleasures of life is walking down a city street on a pleasant afternoon, or morning, or night. There’s a magic to it that I have a hard time describing. Now, not everyone feels this way. Many prefer a more serene walk, one in the country or woods — and I get that. I love those, too. But I could spend all day and night happily strolling down city streets, past shops and plazas, dodging cars, gazing into storefronts, soaking up the grime and grit and endless activity.
• Cookie cutter suburban neighborhoods: Considering what I just wrote about city streets, it might seem weird that I also love modern, 21^st century cookie-cutter neighborhoods, with their exacto-knife green lawns and their two-car garages and their houses that all look kind of the same. But I do.
• Baseball cards: Here’s something you might not know: I own several thousand baseball cards. Some I’ve had since I was a kid; some I bought a couple months ago. Most I bought during the many years in between. Some are worth a serious amount of money; most you couldn’t trade for a breath of fresh air. I keep them neatly organized in binders and boxes, and have created an Excel file noting their years and market values. All give me a thrill that would seem weird if not for the fact that there are millions more just like me.
• Falafel: I am fascinated by the origins of certain foods. Like, who decided you should mash up chickpeas, add herbs and spices and lemon juice, form the mixture into balls, and fry them into little pieces of deliciousness? Who could conceive of such a thing? Whoever you were, God bless.
• 87^th Precinct Novels: One of my favorite book genres is American crime fiction, particularly the hardboiled kind featuring world-weary cops and cynical private eyes. I have spent the last 30-plus years reading hundreds of these books by dozens of writers. I began by gobbling up books by late 20^th century writers like James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly, Carl Hiassen, Walter Mosely and George Pelecanos, but then I felt like I exhausted my enthusiasm for them. So I went back a few decades and started reading works by Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Ross McDonald, and found that I liked those much better. Of all the crime series I’ve read, I think maybe (maybe) my favorite is the 87^th Precinct cop series by Ed McBain. I can’t even say why. Maybe it’s because these books just always seem to hit the right notes, and they’re uniformly good, and the characters are believable, and the stories ring true. The cops who populate these books are grinding their way through the world with wins and losses and doubts, like most of us. There are 55 books in the series (I think), and I’ve read maybe 20 of them (I think).
• My backyard tennis net: Our backyard here in Jersey is partly grass and partly paved parking space. This turned out to be a great blessing, because there’s enough pavement for me to hit tennis balls endlessly against the tennis practice net I bought, which you can see here. It’s not the kind of tennis net that separates two sides of a court. It’s a net you can hit balls against – and I do so daily, with great joy, and great frustration (but mostly great joy).
• Live jazz: I watch a lot of live jazz, and have for 20 years now, when my wife and I lived in New York City and I discovered a cozy jazz club called the Kitano, not far from our apartment in midtown Manhattan. In the years since I have rooted out live jazz everywhere we lived: Charlotte, NC (Blue Restauarant, RIP); London (Ronnie Scott’s, Pizza Express); and here in Jersey (Halcyon). It’s a blessing I don’t dare take for granted. In fact, I saw live jazz at the Halcyon tonight before wrapping up this blog.
• Old school arcade baseball games. When I was a kid, our family traveled to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, every summer, and stayed at the Patricia Inn (RIP). It was probably our favorite trip of the year. The beaches were warm and wide, and there was a carnival nearby where you could ride roller coasters that were probably not that safe. Next to that was a game arcade that featured these pinball-like baseball games that my brother and I spent hours playing. You hit a button and a little metal ball delivered pitches, then you hit another button that let you swing a little bat. If you hit the ball, you might get a single or double or triple or homer or out. Well, those games are still there at the exact same arcade in 2025. My wife and daughters and I just played them a couple months ago, during our annual trip to North Myrtle Beach. I’m pretty sure they are the same machines my brother and I played back in the 60s.
• My vegetable garden: Just about every year since my wife and I bought our first house (2008), I have planted a vegetable garden. The only exception was London. I gave it a shot our first year there, but our little back yard simply didn’t get enough sun to produce decent veggies. Since moving back to the states in 2023, I returned to planting a vegetable garden. This one consists of four garden boxes, where we grow herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and green onions. We’ve had mixed results this year because winter pretty much spread into mid-May, and then all of a sudden we had these crazy heat waves. The herbs and lettuce have done fine. The tomatoes and cucumbers less so – but I expect better crops in the next month. In any case, I look at my garden every day, and tend to it, and am happy.
• Bicycles: I took up biking as a source of regular exercise around 1991 and have been at it ever since, which I have blogged about before. But even if I didn’t bike regularly, I’d still love bicycles. To me, bikes are the perfect machine, the ideal combination of design and function. Take a good, hard look at a bike sometime. It’s a work of art.
• Carolina style burgers: The best burger in the world is North Carolina style: Mustard, mayo, Cole slaw, and chili. Being a Carolina boy, I know of what I speak. Don’t argue with me.

Images: All courtesy of my iPhone.