Flashback 2006: Have a happy one — try, anyway

Ron Bernardi, of Sunset Foods in Northbrook, setting the tone in 2024.

     How was your Wednesday? I've had better. While you were hugging relatives and chugging nog and whatever else you do at this happy time of year, I was struggling through a computer snafu of my own creation and then trying to reproduce the writing I had stupidly lost. It left me at 6 p.m. drained, teeth on edge, wondering how to spread some joy on your Christmas Day. Then I realized: I've been at this a long, long time. I bet there is some joy from years past that will serve. This does big time —it even includes a shot at Donald Trump, and a reminder that he never, ever learns or changes, since my observation of 19 years ago is spot on today. This ran back when the column filled a page, and I've kept in the original subheadings. Merry Christmas.

OPENING SHOT

     "Do you think this is a particularly grim Christmas?" I asked the managing editor. "People are saying it's grim."
     "I think that depends upon whom you ask," he said. "Look at our circle."
     I instantly understood.
     "We're middle-aged," I said. "Everything seems grim."
     We both laughed.
     Phyllis, the bartender at the Billy Goat on Washington, has her own theory about why the season feels the way it does.
     "It's the weather," she says, leaning in, as if confiding a secret. "Too sunny. Too warm. It isn't right. Something is out of whack."
     Something is always out of whack. Especially at the holidays, so often plagued by problems and pressures. Getting everything wrapped and ready and everybody in the car and all the relatives and grudges to deal with once you claw through the traffic and get there, made all the worse by the canard that everything is supposed to be perfect and happy and Norman Rockwellian.
     Christmas is a time to rest and reconnect, to celebrate and ponder, and try to be a little less miserable than usual. To whatever degree you can, I hope you have a happy one, and remember this: It beats working.
     Usually.

IT DRIVES 'EM CRAZY . . .

     Donald Trump is not the brightest man. Yes, he is rich, but his father was a millionaire real estate developer — an inexplicably obscure fact — and he would have been flush had he never done a single deal.
     So naturally Trump would thickly rise to Rosie O'Donnell's bait, to her unarguable observation that Trump isn't exactly a moral role model for America's youth. He should have laughed it off, but instead he replied with a barrage of insults — that Rosie is fat, is loud, is a lesbian. Typical Trump, as classy as a gold-plated toilet handle.
     The media, of course, responded like grade schoolers on a playground, shouting, "Fight! Fight!" and egging the participants on to deliver fresh insults and keep the thing going.
     Perhaps I'm biased, but Rosie seems to be the winner here. Has The Donald learned nothing from being ridiculed, non-stop, for the last 20 years? When someone castigates you, the most cutting response is to pretend you're indifferent. Oh really? Did Rosie say that? How wry. . . .
     Even better is real indifference. I've earned my share of enemies — OK, more than my share — over the years, and have learned that nothing leaves them fuming in the dust like warmly casting away all hard feelings and resentments on my part and viewing them affectionately, with perhaps a trace of pity.
      Forgiveness is always portrayed as a humble, spiritual act, and I guess it can be. But abandoning resentment also makes you feel good and can be a clever, soft form of attack, as well. The Florentine master, of course, said it best.
     "The wise man will not lock the chamber of forgiveness," Dante wrote in his Convivio. "Because to forgive is a fine victory in war."
      

On the watch

     'Tis the season to buy expensive watches, apparently. There were 28 photos of watch faces in ads in the front section of the New York Times on Thursday. So while I still believe — as I wrote before — that wearing watches will be less prevalent because of the clocks built in to cell phones and such, all those fancy watches represent one rather large exception that I didn't consider, not until my colleague Richard Roeper, passing me in the hall, yanked up his sleeve to show a knee-weakening example of the Swiss watchmaker's art and noted, with typical pith:
     "You can't bring your car into a bar."
     Translation: Financially successful men will always want to strap on a few grand — or a few dozen grand — worth of wristwatch, as a subtle reminder to those who might not otherwise grasp that their cisterns of cool capital are deep and wide and filled to the brim. Must be nice.
     Speaking of watch ads — I couldn't examine two dozen-plus photos of pricey timepieces without noticing that the old custom of watch ads showing 10:10 still holds mainly true — 26 of the 28 watches advertised had that magic hour, though the precise time tended to be 10:08 or 10:09 on many of the watches.
     The classic explanation is that setting the hands that way shows off the manufacturer's logo, typically under the "12," is balanced, and resembles a smile. Though sometimes the practice is carried out to irrational limits, such as the "woman's dual time zone stainless steel watch with diamond markers, mother-of-pearl dial and purple galuchat strap," a steal at $1,320.
     The watch has two faces, with both set to 10:10, which is just silly, plus being a reminder that a true world-shaking executive could figure out the time on the coasts by simple addition or subtraction of an hour or two, without the crutch of a second dial.

TODAY'S DEFINITION

     Galuchat: The skin of various fish, such as dogfish, small sharks, etc.
     You'd think for $1,320, they wouldn't give you a fish-skin strap.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE:

     John Williams from WGN called just now and asked me to talk with him a bit.
     While waiting to go on the air, I phoned my wife.
     "I'm a gonna be on the raydyo!" I enthused.
     She listened in, and called me immediately afterward.
     "You sounded good — very cheerful," she said.
     "I was just feigning cheerfulness," I admitted.
     "Well, feign it when you get home, too," she said.    

— Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 24, 2006