Precious Fathers

A rep for Hudson had no comment. A lawyer for Wilson tells Us in a statement, “[Anything] that suggests that the separation of Ms. Hudson was caused by Mr. Wilson…is absolutely false.” - US Weekly

Page Six reports that Owen Wilson - also known as the 'Butterscotch Stallion' - allegedly brought a woman back to his hotel room and licked her butt for over two hours. - The Superficial

I used to think Owen Wilson was really cool, until I met him at a wrap party for one of his movies that I was at with Frannie, and within minutes his dirty vibe exposed itself, wafting over the massive display of chilled dungeness crab that sat beneath a giant ice sculpture of a melting swan.

Fooling around is one thing, but carrying on with someone fresh out of a relationship is bottom feeding, and I can't help but think that guys that do it have some disfunction in their history that kept them from learning a little honor amongst men. I come from good stock, I don't do such things, although, I must say the temptation has presented itself on occasion. I made out with a girl once when her boyfriend was passed out in the other room, I felt like shit about it for weeks, and although it was years ago it still haunts me to this day, and I can only attribute this haunting of guilt to the men that influenced me during my formative years, my dad and his father.

I don't think my dad planned on working at a grocery store forever, but once my mom got pregnant there was little point in looking elsewhere for work since the money was good and he could work alongside his father who owned the place. They worked with each other during the week and would party together on the weekends, and since my dad's friends were the offspring of my grandfather's friends, all of them would spend time together, an entire generation of father and son, hanging out, drinking, smoking, hunting, and fishing. My grandfather's store did very well throughout my childhood and I was always in awe of all the toys my dad and grandfather had when I was growing up. They had boats for the summer, snowmobiles for the winter and always drove nice cars. My dad always had a convertible when he was younger, either a Corvair or an Impala, and my grandfather favored big Chryslers from the mid seventies, being sure to buy one every time a new model was released. For what seemed like forever, and what seems now like such a long time ago, they were there, at the back of the store, dressed in their blood stained aprons while standing on the sawdust covered floor of the small meat department that they ran together while my grandmother worked the till up front. Local radio would always be playing on a small transistor wrapped in a leather case that would sit on the ledge of an opening that allowed them to look out at the store from the back area where an oxtail stew or spicy chili would always be cooking on a hot plate they kept on a counter beside one of many ominous looking saws that would be used to cut through the side of a carcass at a blinding rate of speed.

My dad back then was very slight, he looked like Paul McCartney, and my grandfather was huge, more like Robert Duvall, except twice as thick. I always envied the pictures of them together, and I return to one in particular every so often as my favorite. My dad is sitting on a couch with his feet up on a coffee table, men of few words, they seem distant but incredibly close all at the same time. Dressed in the fashion of the day, which was mod skinny pants, beatle boots, and a short sleeved shirt with a collar, my dad has an eager smile that only youth can produce, while my grandfathers hulking body towers beside him in a white muscle shirt with a dead pan stare on his face and a whiskey in one hand with a cigar in the other. It took me years to figure out that my grandfather was actually very gentle, but because of his size and the way he looked I was terrified of him. An open family we are not, so stories about my grandfather being arrested in Paris for beating a man to within an inch of his life for eluding to some sort of homosexual activity in a pub, or downing 8 glasses of draft at the local legion while the delivery van full of groceries sat outside in the parking lot, I heard through friends at parties, because their dad's had told them the stories. It was a small community.

My dad is still alive, he and my mother are very much in love. They drink a lot, eat well, travel in the winter and spend the summer days beside their pool or working in their garden. I imagine he must have learned this model of living from my grandfather who loved his wife very much as well. Like most post war men, they were gentlemen, with a slight hint of mysoginist behavior. The kind that was born of necessity, innocence, and accepted roles. A model that was in its last days, and about to crack. My dad and grandfather were passionate about the things they believed in, they had flaws, they made mistakes, and they would fight anyone that threatened the things they loved. The people that wronged them were considered enemies, and were never mentioned again. I can remember being a kid and hearing hushed tones over the breakfast table about my dad shoving someone to the floor at a party the night before because he looked at my mother too long, and when I was wrongfully fired from my first job as a bus boy, my dad got into such a rage that he drove to the franchise steakhouse I worked at to threaten the manager with physical violence if he didn't give me my job back, which after an incident like that, I didn't want.

This was a very different contrast from the father of a friend of mine in school who's wife left him for a man she fell in love with by writing to him in prison while he was fighting the murder and rape charge of a teenage coffee shop worker. It went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and eventually the man in question got off and took my friends mom away to live in another province, leaving his father behind to look after the three boys they had together. While the peversity of all this was overwhelming for a boy in junior high who had been raised in a fairly sheltered domestic environment of lovers and fighters, the real shocker was the reaction from my friend's father who barely seemed to care, and not only didn't care, but would have the two adulterers over for dinner, and holiday with them and the kids in one big communal creep cult. The father of my friend was laid back to the point of comatose, and I suppose it took a certain amount of indifference to be able to befriend a man that was sleeping with his wife, but my parents would often ridicule his laid back drawling voice which asserted how they felt about the whole thing. It takes a certain amount of emotional vacancy to dine with the man that's fucking your wife, and I just don't have much interest, or respect for people that have complete control of their emotional well being, ultimately they are boring and predictable. I suppose my parents felt the same way.

So I learned. I learned from my dad, I learned from my grandfather, and his friends. I learned from my friend Cody when we were growing up, who used to assert throughout our time together in the hometown, "mowing someone else's lawn just isn't cool." There were movies too, I can remember John Wayne, the man's man, stating in The Shootist, "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." and we all know John Wayne was far from a model citizen, which is exactly my point.

I am angry, I am passionate, I make mistakes, but I know who I am and where I come from, and there are things that I would never do, but we're not all on the same page when it comes to cuttin grass, now are we.

Tap Tap - 100 000 Thoughts