This why I ask for your forgiveness if the following commentary even slightly resembles a post of the nutrition or foodie variety.

Over the past Christmas/New Year break I caught an episode of Dr. Oz where he did a feature on what he described his “go to” foods. One of the edibles on that list was Kale – that curly leafy green that’s broccoli and cauliflower’s botanical cousin.

Enroute to tomorrow's lunch

I’m sure Kale was available back in the 70s. Despite that, growing up the only leafy greens we ate on Drexel avenue were Collard and Turnip – cooked thoroughly for hours in a briny pot soaking up the porcine goodness rendered from some part of a pig’s lower extremities.

Again, I am by no means Johnny Nutrition, but as I cruise through these mid life years I have gotten better at eating more – shall we say – carrot sticks than carrot cake. So I listened to the good Doctor and gave Kale a try.

Several weeks later, all I can say is… Hi, I’m John and I am a Kale-aholic.

I’ve had it raw in salads, lightly sautéed in olive oil with a little garlic and – brace yourself – tucked away in a banana and blueberry smoothie (the image of Daddy throwing back a frosty purple-green concoction has scarred my daughter for life).

I don’t think I’ve been this excited over a food product since my first Buffalo wing darn near 30 years ago as a wide- eyed freshman at SU.

Time will tell what – if any – health benefits I will realize from consuming this versatile (and pleasantly inexpensive) leafy green. One thing I am noticing is an improvement in the…uh…how do I say this.. reading room. Let’s just say I’m moving faster (and with more regularity) than Usain Bolt on a Red Bull jag.

Live and let live kinda guy that I am, I rarely offer recommendations on these pages, but in this case I am compelled – perhaps by all of that vitamin C and beta carotene – to encourage you to take another look at Kale.  If you like veggies, give a try. If you don’t – try it anyway! Your lower colon will thank you!

Also, once you start blogging and social media-ing (The really cool kids in the marketing playground get to make up new words) about the gig, you have to add those pesky CYA opinions are my own, not speaking for my company disclaimers.

Yet, this week, with Judith Jamison-like grace I am pointing and inserting a well-pedicured toe into the murky waters of business communications discourse and analysis.

It all started with an email I received a couple of weeks back that caught my attention. It is a creative that – in my humble opinion – stands as a good example of how to bring lapsed customers back into the fold. It’s from Chuck-E-Cheese. I love Chuck-E-Cheese! It’s one of the few places where a late 40s, fully grown man-child can get in a good game of skee ball and enjoy pizza that – while clearly mass produced – ain’t so bad.

 The email arrived under the subject line: Are we still welcome in your inbox?

Where is the free pizza offer?

As I said, I like Chuck-E-Cheese. The only reason I haven’t been opening/reading/acting on their emails is because, as she will willingly tell you, young Ms. McC is a birthday candle or two past the Chuck-E-Cheese demographic. Digital hoarder that I am, I just haven’t gotten around to taking myself off of Chuck-E’s mailing list.

I thought this was a pretty effective way to reengage with a lapsed customer. Touching my heartstrings with a line like “are we still welcome” is a smart way to get one’s attention – especially an eager to please, dancing on the edge of co-dependent old softie such as yours truly.

What would have made it even more attractive would have been an offer, or a coupon or two. Free pizza or some skee ball tokens definitely would have closed the deal.

I’ll probably let myself be excised from Chuck-E’s mail file, if for no other reason than to make room for the rapidly increasing number of tween marketers who are prospecting for gold in my inbox. 

Esquire magazine interviewed John Oates as part of its What I’ve Learned feature. It’s worth a read.

Courtesy of the Hall and Oates blog www.oohyeah.org

Who knew a guy who bopped around on stage in red leather pants nearly 30 years ago could be so insightful! (alas, I was never able to afford those red leather threads back in the 80s!)

One of Oates’ answers speaks to the enduring dynamic between these guys…

” ‘You play your song and I’ll back you up, and I’ll play my song and you back me up.’ That’s what we do.”

This notion of backing one up got me thinking how cool it is – not just in music, of course – but in all aspects of life to have someone backing you up while you’re playing your song.

Mrs. McCullough backs me up every day when I’m playing my song (especially when I may miss a note or two) and of course I am proud to stand as the Bubba to her Gladys Knight.

It’s a good feeling, while performing on this stage called life, looking over your shoulder and seeing your backup singer. It’s equally special being responsible for adding the harmony in another’s life as well!

I hope you have a good backup singer in your band!

Yeah, I really let myself go– including falling off the social media radar – save a “Like” here and there, and I totally ignored the venerable ritual of writing and sending Christmas cards.

Please accept my humble apologies! Not one to make excuses, nor one to make serious resolutions – I’ll just say I’m taking a particularly keen interest in making the best use of my time in 2012. I went down this road last year in these pages. I guess I need to read my own rants a bit more closely.

I do pretty well catering to a schedule, hitting deadlines, meeting objectives and all that corporate stuff during those 40 or so hours of my life when I’m making the donuts. I just need to get a little better at bringing that discipline into these hours off the clock.

Minutes to hours – days to months to years – time is a valuable, irreplaceable resource. You can’t really make it – just use it wisely. I don’t want to get all Oprah on you (or on myself), and start going on about living one’s best life, but with the half century mark getting sharper in my sights, part of that best life is making the best use of my time. This is a pretty important task – one that will be a priority in this new year and the new years to come.

Now, what constitutes best use of my time, that’s for me to know and for you to read about!

Happy (belated) New Year!

Jorelys Rivera was laid to rest today. For those of you outside the metro Atlanta area, Jorelys is a 7-year old girl who was sexually assaulted and fatally beaten allegedly by a 20-year old maintenance worker who police say snatched the girl from her apartment complex playground.

This story, rightly so, dominated local news coverage over the past week. And with each retelling, my sadness turned quickly to anger and just as fast back to sadness.

A lingering feeling that’s been bothering me every since news of this story broke is that this tragedy could just have easily fallen upon my little girl. You see, before moving into Casa McCullough, we lived in an apartment complex very similar to the residence where Jorelys lived, an apartment complex with a playground, and what’s truly disturbing, an apartment complex with seemingly nondescript somewhat interchangeable maintenance personnel. There were times Zoe wanted to go outside by herself, but being the Apache attack chopper of the helicopter parent that I am, she never set foot on the playground without me or Mrs. M within pouncing distance.

I don’t want to get too spiritual here, but I am a man of faith and I like to think it’s unwavering, but things like the brutal death of a child can really leave one asking seemingly unanswerable questions. Why did this (or any) child have to die? What would compel this sick son of a bitch – allegedly – to hurt this little girl? Of course, the general catch all question – why do bad things happen to good people?

There’s not much more to say – except to say a prayer for Jorelys and her family.

Keep the faith, even when it’s easier said than done.

Even more rarely, have I taken any significant amount of time to analyze – or in this case – reflect on the content of those cyberspace chuckles.

This week an old friend – whose sense of humor is closer to Borscht Belt than Def Jam – sent an email, in which was embedded the following graph (please forgive my sub-standard Photoshop skills as I tried to scratch off the nasty four letter word, since we’re all about the PG rating here at the Chronicles).

Cheesy, yet thought-provoking!

The chart suggests that the older we get, the less of a f**k we give. After my initial amusement, I began to give this notion a little more thought. As I soar through these middle ages, I do find myself giving less of a f**k about trivial things. Maybe those of you of certain age do as well?

Things that kept me awake in my 20s seem to carry much less importance in my 40s (especially since I place a good night’s sleep high on my list of life’s simple pleasures). In my 20s I cared about trying to have it all. In my 40s I care about appreciating all I have.

Don’t you just love the perspective that comes with age!!!

Maybe it’s better stated that as we get older it’s not that we give less of a f**k, it’s simply that we care a f**k lot less about things that really don’t matter (like over thinking email jokes) and perhaps more about things that really do!

I am blessed in so many ways – family, friends, good health – and I’m extremely thankful for those blessings – not only on the last Thursday in November – but each and every day. 

In fact, the only real worry I have this Thanksgiving, besides running out of the grape, is having to take an old school “juices run clear” temperature reading on my bird as the result of a digital thermometer that picks today of all days to act up! 

Now if I had to pick one special thing for which I’m thankful, it would have to be my daughter’s dawning culinary point of view (a point of view that opines my cobbler is too crusty, but that’s another story). Since early October she’s looked forward to Thanksgiving. Not for the turkey, but for what has become her Thanksgiving dish – mashed butternut squash.

A Master chef in the making!

Don’t ask me why. It was just a random side last Thanksgiving, but for some reason, Zoe took to it. Not only does she enjoy eating it, but she enjoys helping prepare it. 

Who knows, today a side dish, maybe tomorrow she’ll be getting up before dawn to make the brine.

I am now proud to report that I’ve cut yet another notch in my midlife belt, leaped another 40+ hurdle, got done another person of a certain age to-do list item. The task of which I speak is the completion of my first colonoscopy. Yes, that special intimate look into the deep recesses of one’s, shall we say, inner workings (Why, I wonder, as I type this, am I having images of childhood memories of my father cleaning chitterlings???).

This inspection of my southern region came several years early. Bet you didn’t know that the boys and girls in the white jackets now recommend that gentlemen of my ethnic persuasion drop trou at 45, not 50, like other male members of the species. Combine that with my history of rogue cells and voilà, it’s scope time!

The preparation was the most uncomfortable part of the procedure. Let’s just say I know how many tiles there are on my bathroom floor. Beyond that, it wasn’t a terrible experience. In fact, I even had a nurse anesthetist with a sense of humor.
 
Me: (looking at the white substance in the syringe) Hey, is that Propofol?

Anesthetist: (as she pokes the needle into my IV line) Yeah, but don’t worry, I’m not Conrad Murray!

Me: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Despite the sincere full disclosure I share with you kind readers, I won’t go too deep, the doctor already did! (cue rimshot, whoa, did I say rim, oh, somebody stop me!!!). Let’s just say I’m good for another three years or 60,000 miles, whichever comes first!

So I wonder what’s the next mile post I’ll pass along the middle age highway? Who knows, but I bet it won’t as probing as this recent rite of midlife passage!

While in the midst of my organizing jag, I couldn’t help going through the bin that houses an assortment of gadgets and electronics, from an old Walkman to a handful of floppy discs, a few old Bell Atlantic (Verizon Wireless long before ‘can you hear me now’) cell phones and pagers and a couple of cameras that used what was called back in the day ‘film’. 

Cutting edge tech at its finest!

Odds are, whatever data is on those floppies will never see the light of day and it’s not likely that I’ll pop my old Voices cassette into the Walkman and don a pair of neon legwarmers for a workout tomorrow morning.

Still, I don’t know why I can’t part with these examples of modern technology from a day long past.

I don’t expect to get a call from Sotheby’s interested in my old gear for an auction of obsolete technology. But if they do, these relics are packed and ready to go – except for my old camera. (I think she’s on the Web now trying to find someone in Atlanta who sells Polaroid film!)

Say cheese!

But I’m working on it! 

Today, I didn’t eat alone. In fact, I dined in a packed eating establishment with some of Atlanta’s smartest, up and coming future leaders. Today I enjoyed an early Thanksgiving lunch with my daughter at her school. You know, as I think about it there were other adults there, so technically you could say this was a networking lunch…but I digress. 

Zoe is getting close to the age where hanging out with dear old dad is bordering on being passé, but despite her best efforts toward appearing coolly un-phased, there was still a twinkle in her eye and a quick, controlled smile crossed her face when her class filed by the assembled parents and she saw pops waiting for her. 

Frequent readers of these pages know I enjoy participating in activities at the kid’s school, but the annual Thanksgiving lunch is one of the highlights of my parental duties – even though the veggies could have stood a bit more seasoning and I may have to lobby the school system to procure a higher quality brand of canned cranberry sauce. 

As always, I get to hang out with some of Zoe’s friends – some of whom are old timers who have been around since Kindergarten. This year, I had the pleasure of meeting a young man who happens to be interested in my first (and only) born. That part of the lunch didn’t go well (yeah, I know you’re not surprised), and once I completely calm down and gather my thoughts, I’ll share that experience with you at some point down the road. (…as I slowly count to ten) 

When I was in third grade, the pre-Thanksgiving highlight was tracing our hand with a crayon and scribbling a beak at the tip of the thumb and calling it a turkey. They certainly didn’t have special lunches for parents back in the 70s. I don’t know why. Maybe the ’73 oil embargo had something to do with it? Oh well! I’m glad they do now and I’m glad I have the opportunity to get away from the desk and the desktop to enjoy an early Thanksgiving with a young lady for whom I’ll always be thankful!