I Wear Women’s Makeup.

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Before you ask, I do not press wild flowers. The only suspenders I own are on my suits. Bra? Nope. Why, I’ve never even wanted to be a lumberjack.

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However, I do have some temporary facial scarring from my recent browplasty. Mind you, it’s healing even better than I’d hoped, but I recently had an audition for a television commercial. Yes, they shoot Christmas commercials in July and August. This left me with two very visible scar lines above and to the side of my eyes. In three more months they’ll be invisible, and I won’t need anything to hide them except my bushy eyebrows.

But now, on 4K television, it’s not good if Santa has eyes with scars around them. Which leads me to the very strange experience of having to ask women I know about makeup. (Yes, I know the joke: I was just asking what kind of shampoo women were using. I don’t think they needed to start screaming and calling for the police. It was really loud in that shower room… bah-dum-bump!)

My beloved spousal unit doesn’t use makeup. She’s naturally beautiful and hasn’t indulged in the stuff except on very rare occasions. Like as in maybe 10 times in 34 years. So she wasn’t the perfect victim for the interrogation. A beloved coworker, however, was ideal as she does use makeup and looks good with the stuff.

After examination, she recommended a liquid foundation. For those of you in the audience that never use makeup, I can tell you that it struck fear in my heart. For, based on my limited experience with theatrical makeup, that meant something that would cover the scar completely. What’s wrong with that? It meant that I had to match it to the surrounding skin so it blended in neatly – invisibly.

Thus I found myself in Walgreens at eight at night, sitting on a little chair in the makeup department while my wife and I examined the multitude of products and tones that are available. Minnesotans of a certain sort (me) delude themselves and think that they “have color” by the middle of July. I must tell you that after a couple of attempts to match it with what my brain said was my skin color, I was reduced to the lightest shade they had on the shelf.

That’s me: Vanilla #06. Once I rubbed the drops in, you couldn’t see where it started and I begin. As I said, this is temporary. By October the eyebrow hairs will have grown back, and through, the scarred area. But at this moment it takes a couple of drops per eyebrow to cover the scars.

While we were sitting there, playing with makeup, one of the clerks came over. I thought that was great! She had makeup on, perhaps she had a suggestion.

“Hot date, eh?”

Not much wounds a manly-man such as me more than having a pretty twenty-something suggesting that my using makeup was for, uh, romantic reasons. (Please don’t bother to call me any kind of “phobe” or tell me how good makeup makes men look. If Audie Murphy didn’t wear it around the house, I’m not wearing it either.) I’ll admit, the blue eye-liner with pearl highlights that was on the counter would have really topped things out, but it wasn’t mine. As I tried to explain she walked away with a grin. Darned kids these days.

After wiping off as much of it as I could with a paper tissue, my wife and I retired to the local Dairy Queen. Sometimes a guy just needs a dip-cone.

This is me, post application of the beard whitener/eyebrow whitener, and a generous application of #06 Vanilla. I think it turned out pretty well.

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When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.

Sometimes No Means They Love You

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This blog has all sorts of friends. Some are readers, some are real world friends, and some are virtual friends I’ve made over the years.

Some of these friends have demons. The kind of demons that hurt. Loneliness, disease, divorce, addiction, anger, poverty. If you’re out there, you’re either suffering from one of them or you have friends and relatives that are in the midst of them.

A dear friend recently had to put some distance into a toxic relationship. I know from talking to them about it that it hurt them to be forced into that corner.

But it made me acutely aware of something we dismiss: sometimes no means “I love you.”

No means you can’t ignore your health problems and continue to live with any quality.
No means that you’re broken spiritually and need to change your ways to survive.
No means I’m not going to enable you to hurt yourself, and me.
No means that all of your circle are concerned, and you’ve rebuffed them without listening.

But no means, most of all, that you are still loved. It means that your friend is hoping you hear them this time and get some help.
No means that you are not alone unless you choose that path.
No means that a crisis is at hand, and they’d rather see you control your blood pressure instead of visiting you after the stroke.

That’s what no means: I love you.

Hard message to hear. Harder still to give.

I love you. Great words and the ones that He spoke to us all.

Three Greats On My Mind Today.

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I can tell you where I was when Elvis died. James Brown – not sure, but remember being sad. Now Aretha Franklin. Never got to see any of them in person, but all three provide the soundtrack to a big part of my life. Two of the three had amazing Gospel careers. James Brown was… not a gospel singer. Man, was he ever not.

But I digress. Right now God’s got the band warming up with Elvis and Aretha doing duets later for the next 1000 years. Just a short time up there.

I just wanted to share three videos from them. Because it made me feel good.

In order of their deaths, I present Elvis, James, and Aretha.

First up, Elvis Presley with Suspicious Minds. At 2100 in Rota, Spain about 1987 we’d hear this every night from the apartment on the top floor. It wasn’t really bedtime until we’d heard Elvis.

Around that same time, James Brown was in part II of his career. He’d come roaring back with Living In America from one of the Rocky movies. I love this more than I can tell you.

Last, but by no means least, Lady Soul. Aretha had been part of my music word since I was a little kid. But she not only stole the show with this vocal performance – she outdanced everyone in the flick while wearing pink slippers. RESPECT is one of the best songs of all time. I will greatly miss her.

I hope this made you all smile. I know it made me grin.

Book Review of Once Upon A Town: The Miracle Of The North Platte Canteen

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I love history. I love the obscure. I love the United States of America. Imagine my delight when I found a book that meets all three of those categories, and does so in a non-fiction narrative that will choke you up about every three pages.

Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen is such a book.

A beautiful salute to an American town.

If you are a regular, you know that my book reviews are nonstandard. It comes down to this: it’s a really great story. It’s a true story. It’s full of the stuff that makes me proud to be an American. It has a wonderful style to the writing, and Bob Greene’s mom should be very proud of him. I read about it somewhere else, can’t remember where, and read it in just a few days.

Okay, if you insist: it’s the story of a small town in Nebraska that met every troop-train that stopped there for almost all of WWII. They started in December of 1941 and continued on through the war. They met every train. They charged nothing. They did it all with volunteers. They changed the lives of thousands of soldiers and sailors.

That enough? Good. Go buy a copy and get to work. It’s magnificent.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits! Oh yeah – grab a copy of Assault on Saint Agnes if you’re of a mind.

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That May Have Been The Towel You Heard Hitting The Floor.

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Last week I put up a thoughtful piece on a very popular television show. I promoted it on Facebook, hastagged it on Twitter, and flooded the search engine part of the post with every tag known that would apply to the show.

I got 1 like, 1 share. That works out to exactly 1/2 of a “who cares” per author hour.

So this week you get what might be my most lackluster post in half-a-decade. I present, without further babbling, The Leningrad Cowboys performing These Boots:

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits! Oh yeah – grab a copy of Assault on Saint Agnes if you’re of a mind.

On the other hand, I did spend the weekend with the fine folks of the Athanatos Publishing Group. Very much fun, great authors, totally outside the conventional mold of Christian fiction. So we brainstormed, may have had adult beverages, toasted Athanatos Ministries (the home of the publishing house) and eaten at Fannie’s Supper Club in the heart of America’s Dairyland.

Most of all we talked. And brainstormed. And I will be taking a brief hiatus from my own work to participate in a group writing project next winter. Yes, time is already blocked out to undertake the work. It should be an excellent experience.

The blog, however, is not getting much love today. If you have any ideas on how I could get more readers, please put in a comment. I will not be handing out cash, so you can skip that right now.

Have a good week. Next week’s post will be a considerable improvement.

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When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.