You can meet fun people at funerals

My entire family traveled to Jackson, Tennessee, earlier this week for a funeral. My grandmother's husband Clyde had passed away unexpectedly. Even though he had recently been diagnosed with cancer, we all were just adjusting to the news and preparing for a long battle. Instead, his heart gave out.

I wasn't sure who would be at the funeral home, since Clyde didn't have any siblings and my grandmother's only sister had been dead since 1946. But when we arrived, my dad, after greeting his mom, went straight over to an older man and woman, and they all hugged and looked really happy to see each other.

It was my dad's cousins, Donny and Sookie, who had always inhabited the stories in my grandmother' phone calls over the years. Her niece and nephews had remained close to my grandmother after their mother's death. Donny and Sookie lived in Halls, Tennessee, a tiny town in between Millington and Dyersburg. North of Nutbush, south of Cat Corner. They were always in visiting distance, even when my grandmother moved to the Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky. And from her stories, I could tell they kept in touch.

I only remember actually meeting Donny once, when I was probably 8 or 9 and staying with my grandmother one weekend when she still lived in Memphis. Donny dropped by the house one evening, as my grandmother was making dinner. One reason I always liked staying with her is because she bought that Parkay squeeze margarine and let me put as much as I wanted on corn on the cob.

We were in her kitchen, and this man knocks on the carport door. My grandmother was all excited to see him. He came in and acted like he wants to show them something. He had this .44 Magnum pistol that he showed my grandmother and her husband, and the room got real reverent, which put me on alert because they were never reverent.

I have no idea why he had that gun. I'm not sure if he worked in law enforcement or security or was simply a permitted carrier. But I do remember how huge it was and how it changed the atmosphere of that room.

At the funeral home, Donny's wife Sookie had a quick smile and a great sense of humor. I don't know how this could be surmised at a funeral, but I noticed it about her right away. We joked about my grandmother because she has an, um, strong personality that's easy to, uh, joke about. Sookie told me her granddaughter worked in Brentwood, and I found myself living a cliche when I started to say something about how it's a shame that it takes a funeral to get us all together and how it would be so great if we could visit more often. I didn't say it, though. I kinda knew it wouldn't happen.

Once I'm in this rut here, with kids and schedules and bank statements and vacation days, it often feels like it would take TNT to blast me out of it.

Still, I heard my dad say something about a reunion, so I have hope to see them again soon.

We'll see.

I have to, though, because my goal is to find out Sookie's "real" name.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

I had to put on business clothes recently. For real! Read all about it here.

You thought airports weren't fun anymore

Ashley Klinger is my new hero!

She was stuck overnight at the Pittsburgh airport during the recent blizzard, and luckily for us, she recorded herself having fun in the deserted gate area.

Promise me you'll watch till the end. It's SO worth it!

Enough is enough

During the months after the 9/11 attacks, TV "news" shows thankfully took a break from their focus on celebrities. Rather than subjecting us to endless speculation about Britney Spears, they dealt in the currency of the day: good news. I remember it was a welcome respite from the nonstop worthless coverage of famous people being bad. It's the kind of pointless obsession that turned the paparazzi culture into what it is today, something like junk food TV that you might get sucked into watching but regret immediately.

Nearly ten years later, news media outlets are back where they were in 2001, as far as celeb obsession. Maybe it's a bit worse. Need proof? Well, some think the National Enquirer should get a Pulitzer this year.

Apparently that blessed period of media coverage after 9/11 was like Christmas, when we all spread peace and say, "Wouldn't it be great if we could act the way we act on Christmas throughout the year?" Going by that dream, I'd say we're in July right now and that Christmas peace is a distant memory.

For TV networks, though, Christmas Day will come this Friday when Tiger Woods finally shows his face. "His people" announced yesterday that he will hold a press conference Friday. They then allowed a photo agency to take pictures of him jogging on the same day as if to say, "See? Here he is, being normal, taking his first metaphorical steps toward a new life (i.e. image repair)."

Tiger has been like the Loch Ness monster since his bizarre Thanksgiving last year. Well, he's been elusive, but coverage of his apparent escapades has not. In fact, I am tired of jumping on the TV mute button whenever ESPN brings him up in order to shield my sports-fan boys from the icky details.

When I first heard about the press conference, though, naturally I was intrigued.

Then I read about the arrangements being made for his carefully orchestrated piece of drama. Employees at the golf club where he'll finally show up will come into work at 4:30 a.m. to prep the course, not for golf, which is what Tiger should be known for, but for Tiger's privacy. Then they're only inviting six reporters into the room where he'll materialize, though they will not be allowed to ask questions.

All the kowtowing is making me sick. I wouldn't be surprised if workers had been digging an underground tunnel from his home so he won't be subjected to his worst nightmare: someone catching a glimpse of him that he didn't want seen. Oops, too late!

First, he turns police away three times when they try to talk to him at home right after The Incident. I didn't even know you could do that! I bet if I tried to tell the police, "Come back later," I'd get Tased.

Today, they expect Tiger to arrive in a fleet of black SUVs, like he's important. Think about it. They'll drive him in underneath the clubhouse, lest he be seen by commoners with cameras.

I happen to be one of those pain-in-the-butt people who thinks that multimillion-dollar paydays to one person are disgusting. I know sports are a business and that Tiger is a moneymaker beyond compare. But just who does he think he is ... Obama?

I heard everything I needed to know about Tiger Woods when CNN played the voice mail he'd left Jamiee Grubbs after his wife looked in his inbox. In it, he didn't say, "We have to stop seeing each other. I can't do this. It's wrong." He told her to take her name off her phone so it wouldn't show up when she called him again. More secrets, more lies, more attempts to make the public think he's somebody great.

It's no wonder, really, that he thinks "the rules" don't apply to him. He must have read his own press. After all, his father did compare him to Gandhi. His mom proclaimed him a uniter of nations because he has "Thai, African, Chinese, American Indian and European blood" in him. Even other pro golfers who've played against him have speculated that there's something supernatural about Tiger. That's a lot to live up to when you're really just very good at ... golf.

It turns out he's less supernatural and more superfreak.

Personally, I've had it with the fawning and the bowing and the scraping, and I'm not married to the guy. I think I'll give up all these so-called "news" sites for Lent so I don't have to hear about it.

Right after the Friday press conference.

UPDATE! Good news! Some journalists refuse to be told how to cover a story.

This week's BHP column

How much fun is life when your kids are seven years apart? Read all about it here.

Bad ads during the Big Game

If you watched the Super Bowl commercials last night, you may have come away thinking that being an American man is a fate worse than death.

That's the overwhelming impression given by companies like Bud Light, Flo TV (Eh?!!!) and (cough!) Dodge in their ads that portrayed men as spineless idiots required to sign over their testicles when they sign their marriage licenses.

What's even worse is that at first I kept shushing my family when I would see a commercial come on since it is, after all, the Super Bowl and we know the commercials are a big deal. I guess I was too trusting that companies who paid a reported $2 million would do something worthwhile with that time slot they bought. Lesson learned.

At first I didn't catch the misogyny in the Betty White ad for Snickers, although I should have known woman-bashing would be the night's theme when eating a Snickers turned Betty White back into her normal, manly self. I was just laughing too hard at Betty White saying, "That's not what your girlfriend said last night."

Then I noticed that I felt compelled to yell at the TV after nearly every commercial (every commercial that wasn't hawking a CBS show, that is.)

"Wow, being a man really stinks," I'd shout sarcastically from my post in the kitchen, where I'd been making Super Bowl snacks for the four men in my house.

I grew more indignant with nearly every ad, until Tim said, "You know, they're catering to their market right now."

I disagree, though. A normal football game is a man's world, I'm sure. But the Super Bowl is a cross-cultural social event now. I know at least 10 female friends who were going to Super Bowl parties last night. And I'll bet that way more women were watching than during a normal game. We notice this stuff, you know.

My other problem, as it is during every network-televised football game, is that my boys were watching. The 13-year-olds really pay attention, and usually the only thing I have to shield them from during football games is the ads for horrible CBS crime shows like Criminal Minds, which might as well be named How will we torture and kill a young woman this week?

I'd just like my kids to get a chance to enter their first guy-girl relationship without having been indoctrinated by all this crap.

More than that, during the "Big Game," I had to be the lone voice in our house to speak up against the He-Man Woman Haters Club that paid for the ads.

Last year's ads were more serious or thought-provoking, so I can see the desire to use humor this year. Funny is good. But you know what's better than funny? Smart funny. Dockers using men with no pants? Stupid. Tim Tebow tackling his mom? Harsh. Go Daddy? Please. E-trade baby? Jumped the shark. Bridgestone "Your money or your wife"? Confusing. Coke and The Simpsons? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The worst of all, I thought, was for a Qualcomm product called FloTV, which obviously didn't get all the iPad jokes about feminine products last week. Their waste of ad space was the one with Jim Nantz scolding the "spineless" guy in the mall. "Change out of that skirt, Jason" hit me exactly the wrong way. Ha ha, shopping is stupid and girly and, ... wait. Don't forget, guys, that when we're doing all that girly shopping, we're spending money. That's what you want us to do to boost the economy, right?

The best Super Bowl ads are the ones that don't try too hard but surprise me, in a good way, as they go along. Like the old Michael Jordan-Larry Bird McDonald's showdown (recast less convincingly last night with Lebron and Dwight "Shoulders" Howard). I liked how the Dove for Men soap ad said it's OK to be a grown-up, unlike the Bud Light book club ad, where guys blow off their softball game when they see their girlfriends plan to have a couple of beers during their book club meeting.

My favorite was the Google ad about studying French abroad. I loved it because it stayed true to what Google is. It showed the product exactly the way we want to see it, but also hooked us into a storyline in a creative way without managing to insult anyone.

Getting your name out there is a tenet of the advertising industry. Perhaps agencies should add "first do no harm" to their mission statements now.

And CBS thought Tim Tebow's mom was going to be the night's biggest problem.