An American Lion - The Autobiography of Norman Rogers

"Another Liberal Rides the Lightning" 

The idea of writing my autobiography came to me one day when I realized that no one was going to pay me to write it. I became quite angry. It would seem that I have "fallen short" of being one of those men whose life story is worth a book advance and a triple printing in hardcover. The American publishing industry is in the toilet anyway. Newspapers are telling everyone to take a hike. The media is sexist and absurd. Do you think a person like me takes "no" for an answer?

No. I don't take "no" for an answer, even when "no" makes sense.

I discovered Blogger. I began writing a blog. I had not idea what I was doing. Father deleted my first blog in a fit of outrage over the disclosures that I made about our family history. Months passed. I was restless.

I started another blog, but I wised up and I didn't share it with Father. I used Blogger for a time, then I migrated the blog I was writing to Word Press. That was a mistake! Word Press is good, but it comes with all kinds of rules. Then, I hit upon the idea of registering the title of my autobiography with something they call Godaddy. I chose "An American Lion" because it was available and brilliant. I was well on my way to being famous for the right reasons. But I needed freedom. I needed Squarespace. After migrating my blog to Squarespace, I realized that I had destroyed all of the previous "links" to the first two blogs, and I had to start all over again. No one read my blog. I had to use pictures of Eastern European porn stars--against my will!--to attract "hits." Then, I realized, I absolutely loved putting up whatever the hell I wanted. Hundreds of hits appeared that tracked back to the United States military. Servicemen all throughout the world on the information networks that supply Internet connections to far-flung outposts showed that, as long as I kept everything safe for work, the blog was not blocked by the censorship systems in place. I took it upon myself to keep things safe for work, but fabulous.

I stopped writing my autobiography and I started blogging. I do whatever I want, whenever I want, and it's the best thing out there, in my considered opinion.

Here, then, is what I wrote to tell my story. Really, though--my story is the blog. It's where I put all kinds of things that interest me and cause me to remember the past.

My story is one of setting the record straight. When I dispatch an absurd liberal with my patented Northeastern common sense, I chuckle and say, "Another liberal rides the lightning." I do that because that's who I am. I'm brilliant. And, you're welcome.

An American Lion

My formative years were spent abroad, when Father was attempting to expand the reach of the family business into countries that had significant problems with social unrest and strife. The business of my family centered around the manufacturing vehicles that could be deployed to put down rioters or protesters, as well as around the manufacturing of undesireable chemicals and non-functional pipework.

Now, please note that I’m as Irish as anyone who happens to actually be Irish. I'm so Irish, I laugh when the Boston Celtics lose because they're simply not Irish enough for me. But, for obvious reasons, I am not Catholic, nor have I ever been. Father changed religions as often as he changed his hat. But religion was not a central theme in his life. Designing terrible machines of war was all he cared about.

Father designed the first one in order to become an employee of the Pinkertons in the early 1920s when he was merely an eight year old immigrant from County Derry, fresh off the boat and hungry for a fight with someone trying to organize a union. With all the pluck and energy a half-starved five-foot tall child with mismatched shoes and a stolen woman’s nylon sock for a belt could muster, he ordered two mechanics in a tumbledown garage to weld steel plates onto the side of a flatbed truck. He then added slits for Springfield rifles and a pump with a hose running to a fifty gallon drum filled with rubbing alcohol that could be sprayed at striking workers. He then created special darts with flaming feathers on their tails that could be thrown at the strikers in order to set them on fire.

The whole thing was a monstrous failure. The strikers merely flipped the truck over onto its side—it was horribly top heavy and filled with flammable material—and it went down an embankment and set a row of houses on fire.

Failure, which I have always been taught to consider as inexcuseable and wrong in all ways, would normally preclude someone from having a second chance. But the man who ran the Baltimore office for the Pinkertons saw something in my father. I don’t know if it was spunk, determination, or a blinding hatred for people that was channeled through anti-social behavior and a desire to gnaw someone’s fingers off in a fit of rage. I don’t know if he thought my father was a moron or a genius. All I know is that he put my father in charge of breaking the Stevedore’s Strike of 1922 on the Baltimore Docks. In those days, a strike could cripple an entire nation. A strike could leave millions of Americans without butter, screwdrivers or postcards. Strikes were things to be broken by men with desperate need of income.

In this country, when you see a need that must be fulfilled, you either fulfill it or die trying.

My father was eight years old, and he spoke in an indecipherable Irish brogue that was shot through with profanities and mismatched metaphors. And he was given a second chance because someone saw something in him that was powerful. Perhaps this was the Creator, deciding that this plucky little foul-mouthed Irish boy was worthy of a second chance. Either that, or there was no one else who wanted the job. This is an example of how my Father spoke:

“A shoe in your ear and the devil can split the hollow of your eye for the Molly Maguires making fuck in the cupboard.”

“Ah, Jesus, Mary and her househusband the rat bastard Joseph, I’ll cut you tits to testicles for saying that. I’ll put the pitchfork between your ribs and give you a bang on the ear and sink you in the cold ground for eternity and a day.”

“Heavens to Betsy Ross, sewing on a flag Christmas Eve in the morning. Cocksucker you are, you shit eating heel of a motherless son left by the side of the road to suck on the dry teat of the last whore in town.”

And, last but not least:

“I’ll rip your scalp off, boil your bone of a head in the caldron of the Devil himself and skullfuck you until I’m tired of being pleased with the whole matter,”

was the kind of thing my father would scream at people, for no reason whatsoever. In fact, this was what he said at my first and third weddings. As a toast.

Father broke the strike, broke the union, and broke eleven Federal laws. He broke windows and he broke a bicycle with a small motor on it, called a “motorcycle.” He did this jumping over a burning ditch full of hooch that was used to lure the strikers out of their enclave down by the docks. He broke everything he could get his hands on. He even broke things that were already broken, so determined was he to break the strike by focusing on inanimate objects instead of actually organizing efforts to undermine the strikers and their strike activities. The Pinkertons were so successful in Baltimore that they erected a statue in downtown Baltimore for my Father. Angry communists and outraged union members tore it down and threw it in the harbor. A corrupt district attorney had my Father jailed on charges of breaching the peace.

Thankfully, President Harding was able to pardon him and grant him immediate citizenship, based on the fact that my Father was the perfect immigrant at a time when the nation needed foul-mouthed little Irish boys to tell grown men how to do a man’s work. In point of fact, President Harding named my father Secretary of War through a recess appointment. Father served this nation for a grand total of eight days, until some nosy US Senator who wanted a bribe looked in on the War Department one day and saw my father throwing beer bottles and paint cans out of the window at some girls. President Harding kept my Father at the War Department for six more months, but eventually had to replace him with his son-in-law when the country nearly went to war with Haiti over sugar cane exports. And we all know how that turned out!

Some people claim that the real reason my 8 year-old Father was fired from his position as the Secretary of War was because he detested Will Rogers, and that President Harding was hoping to curry favor with Rogers. Some people claim that Rogers tried to say that my Father was his “little Irish brother.” Then there is the often-quoted anecdote about what President Harding said to Will Rogers in the White House. Rogers is recorded as saying, “Morning, Mr. President! Would you like to hear the latest political jokes?" And President Harding is supposed to have replied, “You don't have to, Will. I appointed them,” meaning, I suppose, his appointment of an eight year-old boy to run the most important cabinet post in his administration.

None of these things are true. My Father nearly succeeded in killing Will Rogers with a steering wheel pulled from a Model D Doble Steam Car. Will Rogers had, in fact, mussed my Father’s hair and said he was a good little man, and this infuriated my Father. He delivered a vicious beating that was only halted because my Father realized that the Model D Doble Steam Car would be a perfect platform upon which to mount a flamethrower. Some people also believe that my Father was fired because of a tempestuous love triangle that involved him, Charles Lindbergh, and Mary Pickford.

Also not true—my Father was prepubescent and didn’t care for Pickford at all. The truth is that my Father found Warren Harding to be an incompetent dolt, and he abandoned his administration so that he could return to the private sector. He also couldn’t sit still for cabinet meetings.

When my Father turned nine, he was a US citizen, a member of the board of trustees for the Pinkertons, nationally famous as a strike breaking, foul mouthed Irish immigrant, and he collected a nominal pension for his brief time running the War Department. One of the first things he did was to borrow eleven million dollars from the Central Bank of New York City and purchase land in Groton, Connecticut upon which he would build a manufacturing plant that would fabricate vehicles and boats that could be used to suppress rioters, protesters and strikers.

The first vehicle that was produced was a tracked vehicle, weighed approximately eighty tons, and could flatten small buildings. It was equipped with spinning block and tackle pieces that would swirl chains and whips out to a distance of thirty yards and spray bullets in four directions. It was sold to the British, for use in India, and my father sailed from Groton with the vehicle strapped to the deck of a converted World War II German Navy corvette, called The Admiral Hassenpfeffer.

Der Admiral Hassenpfeffer

The Admiral Hassenpfeffer was abandoned by the German Army in North Africa, and it had one dubious distinction--it was used by the Germans to transport condoms to their forces, which desperately needed fuel, bullets and an evacuation plan.

By the time my Father returned, orders were piling up and the company could not keep demand. World wide Communism meant protests and unrest, and my Father rose to the challenge, designing more lethala and more effective vehicles than ever before. Every August, he sailed to India and returned by Christmas, taking better and better vehicles to the British so they could contain a growing resistance movement in that far flung place. But, I'm forgetting the most important thing of all--how this all affected me. We forgot the Admiral Hassenpfeffer, for a time, but we have now returned to it. It is integral to this family. My daughter Miranda does an excellent job of navigating it and sailing it. My sons are too frightened of it to go aboard. And my new assistant Peej seems rather adept at keeping the weapons on board from getting out of hand.

As many of you who may have read the first blog may already know, a series of events in 2008 transpired to destroy all that I had built. I was beset by calamity, tragedy, fire and madness.

Stick urchins in the neighborhood near where we used to live threw bundles of dry leaves and sticks under my Lexus SUV, causing it to burst into flames. The flames spread to the garage and burned down my newly purchased home in Stone Lake, Maryland. Well, the house was appraised and settled at $789,500 and the belongings were also “settled” and we have already begun rebuilding. We expect to move BACK to Stone Lake and continue to live a life of fabulous leisure. I will return to lobbying and Peej will return to backyard shenanigans–he is famous for knocking over bottles with a frisbee while he cooks lamb and goat meat in the outdoor barbeque pit. We shall rebuild our mink farm–the little mink are too precious not to raise.

I am famous for my adventurous use of a jet ski and my prowess with money, wine, women, song, and the written word.

Father seized that blog, and when I wrested it back from him, he deleted the blog and called me a shit sucking blasted toad on a potato’s smooth baby’s ass. I thought all was lost–until I discovered that no one in all of Christendom had thought to register the phrase “An American Lion” and so I sprung into action. Weeks later, I had my blog back!

I am blogging to write my autobiography in a way that is both productive and therapeutic to me. I am looking for the courage one day to write some blog posts about my smother in a way that will allow me to acknowledge all that I owe my smother and her influence on my upbringing. Screw you, Meacham! I had the title first.

Our family history doesn't stop with the Admiral Hassenpfeffer. Our love of riot control vehicles and dangerous chemical manufacturing unites us as well.

The incident that caused Father to divorce smother was one for the ages–she protested my Father’s development of a flame thrower mounted on a converted bread truck that could suppress crowds and restore peace to a troublesom population.

The reality is, any group of men firing a flame thrower from the back of a pick up truck that can go off road and hide in the foliage would do so with what the hillbillies call a “shit eating grin.” I wish the artist had captured the glee with which these men were incinerating their enemies. And the flailing, burned bodies would have been nice, too.

Father made the treacherous journey seventeen times, ferrying back German equipment. He brought the weapons to America and secretly built a multi-million dollar company that turned those weapons into vehicles that could be used to make riot control vehicles for various governments in the post-war era. And Father never returned the The Admiral Hassenpfeffer because he had customized the ship with a fake hold, a ballroom with a dance floor, a bowling alley, and a horticultural section that grew the Irish potatoes that he had loved all of his life. Oh, sure. President Truman called him a traitor and sent the US Navy after him, but Father was too clever by half--he painted the Admiral Hassenpfeffer to look like a "dazzle ship," and the US Navy never saw him.

Smother hated him for his skills and abilities, so she divorced him, using the creation of the flame throwing riot control bread truck as the reason.

I wept.

Fast forward to 1944, and I am born into this world he had created. (I tend to jump around a lot when I tell my story, so don’t fret. There are many, many things I will be writing about. One seriously doubts any editor would tamper with what I am doing.) Anyway, I am and was a happy, pink baby with a swirl of hair and a taste for adventure. I remember putting a towel on the back of the family dog and fashioning a bridle out of the cloth cord for a discarded lamp that I took away from the hired help.

The most significant invention that I created was one that could have gotten me into a lot of hot water. I made a hot air balloon out of stolen tarps and a kerosene heater that I forced the gardeners to assemble for me one Sunday afternoon.

I ended up in Millbury, Massachusetts and had the foresight to use my piggy bank change to call the family driver to come and get me before anyone found out what I had done. I may have been four or five months old at the time. It was then that I realized that adventure was my calling, and not necessarily the kind of adventure found while being bucked off of the back of a hyperactive beagle.

Chetley, Chase, Chip and Dierdre

You know you're getting old when a phrase makes you stop and think about your family.

Miranda was going through some old boxes down in the basement when she shouted up to me, "where do you want the Chetley, Chase, Chip and Dierdre boxes?"

I haven't heard anyone say Chetley, Chase, Chip and Dierdre in years. Years.

Miranda was, of course, referring to my family.

Chetley Rogers is my next youngest brother. I am the oldest, hence, I am Norman junior and "Chip" even though I am not my Father's favorite or his eldest child (he has two other children who are older than myself by two other women who can claim that mantle, one child of which he fathered when Father was 15, and, of course, he has at least nine children younger than myself besides Chetley, Chase and Dierdre).

Father's oft-stated reason for making me last in the phrase "Chetley, Chase, Chip and Deirdre" is because I am not his favorite, and because I remind him too much of my mother. Dierdre comes last because my Father is extremely sexist and, well, because she's a girl.

Oh, you can weep for me if you like, I will accept your sympathy, truly, I will.

Chetley Rogers lives in San Diego and Germany, where the Rogers Family has the loose ends of Rogers Defence Industries just outside of Darmstadt and Wiesbaden, Germany (we make riot control vehicles for European customers who insist upon humanitarian devices and low-emission engines). Chase Rogers is my second younger brother, and he's living in Minnesota right now, working for the 3M corporation and trying not to be an odious toady, himself. He is a strong businessman, as is Chetley, but the difference between them is thus--Chetley will have things done to your family. Chase has standards and is a Rockefeller Republican like myself. Dierdre is my youngest sister, and though she doesn't speak to me anymore, she's responsible for my foray into blogging.

Falling From Grace

I did not hear the footsteps, but why should I have heard them at all? I was riding high, millions were flowing into the coffers of my company, and my star was rising. I was being asked to appear on cable television programs to talk about the economy. I was being asked by business writers to make comments on various deals. I was being feted, as it were, and when you are riding high you do NOT expect forty Federal Marshals, eight FBI agents, and a dozen or so lackeys from the Securities and Exchange Commission to use battering rams on the glass doors that welcome clients into your place of business. And you certainly don’t expect them to step on the glass end tables and muss up the magazines with their rubber soled boots. This is not the visual one would like to present to reputable clientele. The magazines should be sorted and ordered.

Always.

My trusted gofer Peej came hurtling down the corridors, pulling file cabinets down behind him as the Federal Marshals ran into the open bay area of my company. Peej may have been born in Bombay and there is a strong possibility that he had run track at his school, if in fact he ever did attend a school with a legitimate track and field program. He was exactly my height, looked 26 years of age most of the time, and liked to look people in the eye. Beyond that, I knew nothing of him.

I’d like to take this opportunity to speak directly to an employee of mine. I promise you, Peej, as soon as this book is finished, I will look into what might have happened to you. Of my 78 employees, you are only one of five that did not testify against me in some way. I apologize if this biography starts off this way, with me not knowing the fate of the one man who committed several misdemeanors by blocking the Federal Marshals as they were attempting to get through the open area of my company and seize me in my executive office. They might have sent you back to Bombay. If they did, I hope you tell your friends over there about the insights in this book that follow these first few chapters. I hear there’s quite a book market in China or wherever you’re from. Not only are they buying bicycles and cooking stoves, they’re buying books as well. Good on you, the kids like to say. Good on you, sir.

“Mr. Norman Sir,” Peej called out, slamming the double oaken doors behind him, “we are under seizure. The men with the angry faces have made themselves enter through the main doors and they are questioning everyone in a very impertinent tone of voice.”

I had a pair of expensive headphones on. I had my shirtsleeves rolled up, but only the cuffs and only the one fold so as not to make a crease where it counted. I was reading The Celestine Prophecy. Meaning, I was listening and reading at the same time to the same material. I speak of course about the audiobook and the book itself—I prefer to read along with the narration, and any mistakes I find, I refer to the publisher. If you find yourself doing the same here, you will NOT find any errors.

As I read these words to you, and as you read them, know this—I did not spend three weeks doing this in order to make mistakes. We will be in perfect sync from this point on.

“Mr. Peej, how many of them are there?” I asked, slowly putting the headphones down onto my shoulders and the book onto the desk.

“Mr. Norman Sir, I count over fifty with body armor, with many, many guns drawn and such. Oh, it is madness, sir. There are possibly two men with court orders and the like.”

“Do they look angry?”

“Oh, so very, very angry in the eyes, angry and unkind in such a way as I have rarely seen, and upset, yes. Many of them are so not smiling at all.”

“Do they have the look of the white devil? The one we talked about? The one who looks like he has all the answers but really doesn’t? The white devil with the look of authority, as if the rule of law is behind him and a conquest of some sorts is ahead of him?”

Peej nodded quickly. “They have the capacity to be quite rude, I suspect!”

I could hear shouts and confusion. They were making short work of my associates. Even if I had heard them coming, would I have been ready? Perhaps not. This was one of the few times in my life when I did not know exactly what to do and when to do and who to do it to.

“Today would have been a good day to remain at home with your loving wife,” Peej observed.

“If I was home right now, that screaming nag would be chasing me all over the property, trying to get me to listen to her problems. No, I am thankful that I am here today, sir. Thankful, indeed.”

Peej was terrified, and he began his nervous shaking and his uncontrollable herky-jerky dance. It was as if someone had turned on a Joe Jackson song that Peej didn’t know how to dance to. Never mind that he was a sweaty fellow to begin with.

“You will hold them here. You will make a last stand here, and pretend that YOU are ME. Put on my suit coat, and these glasses. Slick back your hair. Stand up straight and speak from the diaphragm. Speak clearly but, more importantly, act as if you have been intoxicated for several days. You know how to enter the world of make-believe and pretend to be that which you are not? Do my instructions make sense to you?

Peej nodded.

“You must engage them in this deception. The reason for this is quite simple. I must be allowed time to escape. What you do here will throw them off my trail. I have to get to the server room,” I handed glasses and a brandy tumbler over to him and heard a massive thumping outside of my door, which was the sound of the filing cabinet that Peej had knocked over being righted. The door rattled, but Peej had already secured it.

“These things I shall do. But whatever will you do to properly close down the server system we have built for you?” He asked, putting on my glasses and my suit coat.

I paused. “Mr. Peej, my dear boy, if you can hold them here, I will make short work of the servers and spare us a trip up the river to what some call the Hoosegow. Pay attention—do not panic and flush anything down the toilet. Do not take your socks off and fashion a noose for yourself. Don’t kill anyone. Act confused and stupid, like I have just explained to you, and I will live to see another day.”

Peej went to the wet bar and threw brandy on his face. “I have the smell upon me now and that will confuse our adversaries. Strangely, I will behave, Mr. Norman Sir—I will not fail you, my dear brother.”

I paused, not knowing what he meant.

“Never mind my rambling, Mr. Norman, Sir. Make haste!” He called out.

As the door rattled and as the Federal Marshals tested the strength of the doors, I went through my Executive Bathroom into an anteroom that adjoined that of one of my Vice Presidents, Winthrop Beans, best described as an absentee landlord and a man who went to Princeton at roughly the same time that I went to Princeton. I stepped quietly, trying not to make a sound, and I was able to open the door to the stairwell without a loud clicking sound. I silently closed the door and then bounded down the stairwell.

Our servers were in the basement. Our offices were on the fifth floor of a modest facility. Think of a lot of glass and businessmen walking around. Not too shabby. Not the sort of thing that would inspire a man to great heights. But those heights were there for me to climb. And I was climbing them. I had just sealed the deal to liquidate a company that sold special plastic spoons to prisons that could not be sharpened into weapons. The plastic was designed to disintegrate when manipulated. I merged that company with a company that manufactured and marketed special body armor for prison guards to wear. Why would you bother to sell the special plastic spoons when you could make more money off the special body armor? Hence, the company was liquidated.

This was one of my best deals ever—a perfect example of “synergy.” By eliminating the special spoon manufacturer, the special body armor company could expand and grow. This is why shareholders loved me and this is why the Feds disliked me so much. I was too good at what I was able to do. I was the best there was, despite the fact that I did not work for one of the big investment banking firms. I was building my own company, from the ground up. I was dangerous. If my ideas about synergy caught on, it was curtains for the establishment.

It was 1994. Bill Clinton was busy ruining the country. I was an investment banker. And now, because I was too good at what I did, the Federal Government decided that it was going to ruin me. This is the story of my life—battling liberalism, my incompetent father, my adversaries and all of that nonsense. I am a fighter. I fight. I win. I get up in the morning and do it all over again. It is my destiny. My destiny was certainly not on my mind as I pulled the fireaxe from the cradle where it was stored for emergencies. Would this mess up my arm for playing tennis?

That was what kept going through my head over and over again. If I injured my arm or my elbow on my racket side, I would have great difficulty and inconvenience playing tennis. I was filled with fury and confusion all at the same time—could one swing a fireaxe hard enough to do serious injury? Or was there a rubber grip that could be put on the handle of the axe, just like a tennis racket. Did I have the time to go find a rubber grip to put on the handle of the axe in order to protect myself? Would I risk not destroying everything if I went and found, for example, a rubber grip from the handle of a nice mop to put on the handle of the axe? Did I have time to even think about these things? Probably not, I suspected. I broke open the locked door to the server room and wondered if I would have the strength to do what I needed to do.

I must admit—the first time the fireaxe hit plastic and metal, I felt it in my hands and my arms. The shock traveled all the way into my shoulders. This is what it means to be a working man, I thought to myself. A shiver of fear went through me at the thought of having to break rocks while wearing striped pajamas. Well, I have serious work to perform if I am to survive another day, I thought, putting the cartoon image of serving hard time out of my mind. I smashed the racks and yanked the fireaxe backwards with a single, violent movement—it was caught in the wires that ran everywhere. That rubber grip now looked like it would have been a nice-to-have, you know? Like when you go to a hotel and ask for extra towels or blankets or maybe an extra rollout cot if an extra female companion doesn’t feel comfortable sleeping it off in the main bed or smells bad afterwards. A nice-to-have is where you can put someone who stinks. Remember that the next time you’re travelling.

This went on for a few minutes. I thought I was making short work of it all. I even sat down and caught my breath and straightened out the cuff of my pant leg. I really dislike it when a double cuffed pant leg gets out of sorts and clings to the inward part of the leg and gets messed up with a good dress sock.

I smashed and yanked and pulled and pushed and did as much damage as humanly possible. And yet, I did not damage a single hard drive. I damaged motherboards, casings, cables and power supplies. I damaged processor chips, monitors, keyboards, and several trackball mouse contraptions, even smashed what they call an Uninterruptible Power Supply and sprayed battery acid all over my pants, ruining them. The burning smell and the confusion of exhaustion, the sweat in my eyes and the fever that raced through my body—all of these things made me lurch about and retch. I was a man possessed. I was a man with a mission. I was a man with a purpose.

I was a man who did not damage a single hard drive. I did not damage the thin aluminum cases that held the hard drives and I did not think to take any of the magnets out of my pants and set about erasing them. (I keep four magnets on me at all times for holding papers or pictures to metal cabinets and things like that, a personal habit of mine).

A success, all of my life, and yet I failed in my endeavor.

The Federal Agents took me into custody. I was exhausted and covered with sweat. I was dizzy and I couldn’t feel my arms. I have always had very strong legs, but my upper body strength has always been my Achilles Heel.

Poor Peej kept up the act, even as they were leading him into the passenger vans that took us to be processed into the Federal Law Enforcement system. He kept repeating over and over again that he was Mr. Norman Rogers, Mr. Norman Rogers. I was heartened by his loyalty. It was the last look at loyalty that I would have for many years. I still remember the bandage on his head and the fear in his eyes—the fear of what Bill Clinton could do to good people was always there. It did not matter whether you were a Captain of Industry or a fresh faced 57 year-old immigrant from wherever Peej was from—this was a country on the wrong track, putting the wrong people in jail for the wrong reasons.

Boyhood Adventures

It was the year 1955 and my Father commanded me to appear at the docks of Groton, prepared to sail to India on board the newly refurbished Admiral Hassenpfeffer, with my belongings in seven steamer trunks and with a Colt .45 caliber pistol in a holster on my hip. I complied.

We sailed the stormy seas of a world that was alive with excitement. Every passing ship was filled with jaunty travellers and friendly merchant marines. The mid-1950s were an exciting time for a boy. I hasten to add that, were it not for the over-protective policies of a woman purporting to be my ‘mother,’ who my Father was married to at the time, I might well have become a race car driver or a jet airplane pilot before my fifteenth birthday.

This extended enterprise arrived in India on what seemed to be the hottest day of the century. The docks were bristling with activity and with the bureaucrats of the new Indian government. After my Father successfully sold protest-suppressing vehicles and boats to the British for many years, he simply started selling them to the government that forced the British to leave. But the need to bring seventy-five bureaucrats down to the docks in order to process the paperwork for a simple cargo had infected the local mindset. Papers were stamped, signed, disregarded, and left to fly off into the wind. One could find foodstuffs wrapped in them in the markets near where they were once the official papers of a customs official who had to be bribed before he would allow anyone to loosen so much as a rope on the deck of the cargo vessels.

“Norman, my boy—come here. There are some people I would like you to meet,” my Father said, with authority. “This is Trace Gannon, a man familiar with explosives and weapons. He is to protect you from people who would likely kidnap you and skin you alive so that they could collect a ransom and not have to turn you over to anyone. This is your brother, Peejamod Shalamar Rogers. And this is Dr. Habib Mufstafah, the director of research at the Scientific Institute of Calcutta.”

I was momentarily confused, and stammered, “Hello, Mr. Gannon. Hello, Dr. Mufstafah. And this is not a bother to me to meet Peejamod,” I said, staring at the eleven year old boy who wore a white turban with a red jewel in the front.

“No, he’s your brother.”

“Father, please. He’s no bother at all.”

Confused, my Father merely started speaking to Trace Gannon and Dr. Mufstafah. I’m not sure what it all meant, so I immediately dismissed it all as “travel fatigue.”

I certainly did not care about what adults had to talk about—I wanted to run around and get into trouble.

“Mr. Norman sir, I have heard so many things that concern you. In this harbor there are many islands with caves and the tide is low. Would you like to accompany me on an exploration? Perhaps we could find something of interest together.” Peejamod was a strange fellow, very polite, and he looked familiar in many ways. He was probably my age, as we were the exact same height. I’m not certain as to what happened to him, but I found him to be pleasant enough.

“Hold on, I need to get my Colt .45, my Thompson submachinegun and my stick of dynamite,” I explained, “I think the humidity is going to ruin the dynamite if I don’t use it soon. Do you have a detonator cap that I could use?”

“I have a fuse type blasting cap in my musset bag, and perhaps a spare, but I will have to verify that for you. Will nine inches of type 2 fuse suffice?”

I had to think about that for a while.

“Fifteen inches is what I normally use, even though I’m quite a fast runner, but if you only have a foot, that will have to do.”

“That is most certainly no problem for me, Mr. Norman sir.”

Peej and I took the first speedboat we could find and headed for the cluster of islands at the mouth of the harbor. He didn’t mind the fact that I wanted to sit in the back of the boat and practice shooting fish with my Colt .45 and he was amenable to the fact that much of what I was doing resulted in fish entrails being sprayed into the air around us as we bounced through the waves towards the mouth of the harbor. One could use a Thompson submachinegun to fish with; however, one would have a sore shoulder before too long. Plus, I only had a few thousand spare rounds. All in all, Peej was pretty easy going, except when I shot all of those dolphins.

The farthest island in the chain rose up out of the Indian Ocean and looked somewhat like a sideways mushroom. Green on the top, grey and black rocks on the bottom, and dozens of crags and spurs were exposed by the receding tides. Birds swarmed the exposed rocks and pecked their way through the stranded sea life.

“Look!” Peej shouted.

A massive catamaran equipped with two powerful jet engines and a menacing harpoon gun was sitting at anchor. Weaponry bristled everywhere there was a gap in the railing or the superstructure. A five inch cannon was covered discreetly by a canvas tarp. The deck was bare, except for several uniformed henchmen and it loomed just beyond the point where the sea broke against the westernmost point of the island. The jet engines were silent and the henchmen appeared to be up to a vague and unsavory type of activity that I could not name.

I hunched my shoulders and locked a fresh clip into the Colt .45. “They’re up to no good. And look, Peej,” I said, “their catamaran has the mark of the dagger and the tiger and the half-eaten raven. They’re part of the evil narcotics smuggling ring that is controlled by Habib the Rat.”

Peej stared into the distance as our speedboat rocked in the gentle waves. “It would be adviseable for us to keep our distance from them, and to use caution while we are so near the most exposed part of this harbor, Mr. Norman Sir.”

“I’d better contact Father.”

“Yes, I will contact Father on this radio he gave me last year for my birthday,” Peej said, and then added, awkwardly, “I’m certain you have one just like it.”

I did have one just like it. But I had used it to kill a dolphin when I couldn’t reload fast enough, and now it didn’t work.

“Yes, Father is, well, I suppose he seems like a father to everyone. Contact him, Peej, and warn him about the catamaran. Did we bring any beverages? This heat is making me thirsty.”

Peej handed me a grape soda—my favorite. “Thank you, Peej. You did that just like a steward with the ability to read minds.”

“It is my favorite beverage and is quite refreshing on a day such as this. Look, Mr. Norman sir, a launch approaches at high speed!”

I swung around and spotted a launch approaching from the docks in the harbor, making a straight line approach to the catamaran. In the bow was a man in a white suit, clutching a black cloth bag and a pistol. A man dressed just like the henchmen on the deck of the catamaran powered the boat and tried to keep the approach as straight as possible.

Well beyond the launch, bounding through the water, was Trace Gannon and Father, trying to catch up to the launch.

The radio crackled to life.

“Son, can you stop that launch before it leaves the harbor? It’s imperitive that you do!” It was Father, speaking from far off into a radio that was similar to the one Peej was holding.

“Yes we can, Father,” Peej and I said at the same time, and it was strangely silent for a moment.

“Good! Stop him! He’s not Dr. Mufstafa—he’s really Habib the Rat!”

“Yee, we figured that out when we spotted the catamaran with his symbol on it, Father,” I said. Peej nodded in agreement with me.

“Well, were you going to tell me that? Because if you had, I could have shot him and killed him right back there on the docks and I could have stopped him from stealing the Maharabala Ruby and we wouldn’t be in this predicament!” Father said, angrily.

“Father, we were moments from contacting you—it is my fault,” Peej said, imploringly.

“No, Peej—Norman is a real dimwit sometimes. Don’t try to take the blame for your brother,” he said.

“Father, Peej isn’t a bother to me. I quite enjoy his company.”

There was an audible sign on the other end of the radio, and Peej put the radio down so that he could fire up the engines for the speedboat. I remained puzzled and confused by my Father’s statements, but I put it off to the fact that his impenetrable Irish brogue often utilized strange words and confusing expletives.

“Take us close to the catamaran—there’s no point in confronting the launch when we have a stick of dynamite,” I said to Peej, and he grinned in agreement. “We have one shot to ignite the jet fuel stored in those tanks on the catamaran—and if we do, it will sink and we can capture the launch at our leisure.”

“You are a strategic genius, Mr. Norman sir.”

“Many people have said that about me, Peej. Many people have suggested that the business world is where such talents would be best applied, and I would tend to agree with them because the medical profession—aaah!” I screamed, as the swerving of the speedboat put me on my back after I lost my balance. I didn’t understand—I was wearing my best pair of boat shoes. I should have had near-perfect traction on wooden surfaces in any boating situation, regardless of rain or high seas.

Peej gunned the engine of our speedboat and swung around in a large arc to an intercept course with the catamaran, which had weighed its anchor and was beginning to move, slowly and cautiously, to meet the launch carrying Habib the Rat, who had successfully impersonated Dr. Habib Mufstafa.

Machine gun fire tore into the hull of our speedboat. Peej and I reflexively ducked and tried to disappear into the safety of the cockpit area. As we approached the catamaran, I held the fuse of the dynamite stick and a lighter in the other. I realized that I had to shorten it considerably and bit the excess off with my teeth. I spit it into the ocean and laughed my nervous laugh. That is, I laugh when I’m nervous, a staccato kind of ‘ha ha ha’ laugh that reassures me and keeps me focused on the task at hand. It is unnerving to your opponent to laugh in their face, you know.

“Mr. Norman sir, use your pistol to kill that man with the most dastardly aim,” Peej implored me.

I stood right up and planted a foot on the side of the boat, steadying myself. The Colt .45 was a heavy weapon, with a pronounced kick, and I was barely eleven years old. I felt like the time I had spent playing squash at private school was wasted—I should have been shooting at things whenever possible. I should have been shooting from the hip and from the prone position. And I should have been firing on the aquatic firing range that no one had thought to build. I did not hear bullets whipping past my ears because the bullets were hitting in front of us as we approached the catamaran. When I had settled my aim, I squeezed the trigger four times. The man on the deck firing the machine gun was hit in the abdomen, the throat and the arm. One of my bullets, I must admit, did miss him. But I blame Peej and his careless manner with the steering of the speedboat for that. Blood seemed to explode out of the man as he shook violently on the deck of the catamaran, spinning the machine gun on its tripod skyward. I laughed at his convulsions and watched his companions duck down and hide. This was only the fourth or fifth man I had ever tried to kill, at least intentionally, and I was full of adrenaline. No questions would be asked of me, no one would inquire as to whether I had used a saw on some ladder rungs or if I had set any fires in the rectory. No one would call the authorities and try to claim it was me who had done something dangerous and violent—it was done under the clear blue sky in a harbor in the middle of a country with millions of citizens and in front of my own Father.

“Now, Mr. Norman sir,” Peej screamed as we passed near enough to the hull as it rose up out of the ocean. Peej banked away from the rear of the catamaran, wisely putting the wind at my back. I flung the dynamite high into the air, and ducked down behind one of the seats as the now-recovered henchmen of Habib the Rat reappeared on the deck and peppered us with machine gun fire. A deafening explosion rattled across the water, and we both turned to see parts of a jet engine fly into the air, cartwheeling madly into the blue sky. The henchmen disappeared in a red and pink dust, their remaining body parts thrown clear from the wreckage. The catamaran was split in two and began to sink into the ocean at different angles. Smoke billowed into the air and was carried by the breeze away from shore. The seabirds that had been feasting on the nearby harbor island were swept away by the sound and the heat, dipping low over the water then disappearing into the sky.

The radio erupted in cheering, as Trace Gannon and my father shouted their approvals. “Excellent throw, son! That was right on target, Peej! Now, maneuver towards the launch carrying Habib the Rat! Careful, he might have more than one gun!”

“Father, it was me who threw the dynamite,” I said, pleasantly.

“Norman, your brother did a magnificent job steering towards that catamaran.”

“Really, it was…it was no bother for him to steer,” I said nervously, and turned off the radio.

Peej turned the speedboat and drove across the burning waves. Oil began to gather and ignite, mixing with some of the jet fuel used to power the catamaran. Black smoke seemed to appear everywhere. Habib the Rat was now steering his own launch, but it was no match for the speedboat that Peej and I were using. My Father and Trace Gannon were trying to close the gap between all of us with their own launch, but there seemed to be something wrong—yes! Habib the Rat was shooting at my Father and Trace Gannon was afraid. They were arguing, it appeared, at least to me.

I took the Colt .45 and started shooting at Habib the Rat. I emptied the first clip without so much as getting more than a round or two in his general vicinity. Peej was working the speedboat as best he could, but I’m afraid he just didn’t have the killer instinct necessary to do the job. Yes, he did cut off the launch and stop Habib the Rat from leaving the harbor. But I could have done it so much better.

As it was, I was forced to reload and continue shooting at Habib the Rat in order to save everyone’s lives. His launch angled towards the rocky shoreline, where he could escape if he was able to get to the beach. From there, he would have all of India in which to hide, except for the parts where he was not welcome, such as the jails or the courts of trial.

Peej pointed to the break on the beach where he suspected Habib the Rat was going to try to land. “I will keep the nose of the speedboat pointed at him as you fire at him, Mr. Norman sir, and if we are favored by the winds, we will not fail to stop him in the commission of his dastardly crime against Father.”

“Against my Father,” I corrected him.

“Certainly, if that’s what you think you keep hearing.”

“I’m fine with that. There are three more clips—this one is spent,” I said, releasing the clip so I could load another.

Habib the Rat loomed up ahead of us, shooting madly and howling in some otherworldly language. A man who has built a narcotics empire in the Orient has a difficult time watching his most prized possession—a jet engine powered catamaran—explode and burn. A man who has spent his lifetime engaged in skullduggery and nefarious schemes cannot rationally deal with the idea that a pair of eleven year old boys who were not, in any way, shape or form, related to each other, could blow up his catamaran and shoot his henchmen and then try to stop him from getting away. A man like that is sort of like a liberal who discovers that the government really doesn’t just print money so they can give it to poor people. And that was a sad thing to behold, way back in 1955. I’m sure there are some people who think that, because of the times, that it was absolutely NOT perfectly normal for me to be shooting a Colt .45 pistol at people and carrying dynamite around on my person. Well, deal with it. Those were different times. And I once owned a flame thrower that worked exceptionally well, even in rainy conditions.

I raised up again, just as before, and steadied myself. I levelled the pistol at Habib the Rat and fired. One of my shots hit him in the belly, which exploded and started squirting blood. Another shot hit his henchman in the forehead and sent him flying from the launch into the water. Peej steered closer and closer, and my aim improved. I fired one last round from my second-to-last clip and hit Habib the Rat in the leg, sending him into a frenzy. He leapt into the water and disappeared. The launch foundered and began to drift with the wind out to sea.

Peej and I celebrated by jumping up and down. I could really feel the adrenaline coursing through me. As we were near the point in the water where Habib the Rat had gone into the water, we didn’t see him come out of the water on the other side of our speedboat until it was too late. He was a wet, screaming, horrified monster of a man, his beard streaked with the blood that poured from his wounds, which now stung with salt water. He reached out to grab my arms but a shot rang out—from Trace Gannon. He shot Habib the Rat in the arm and stared at his pistol as if it had betrayed him. I put my hand up and pointed into his filthy, evil face.

“So you think you can shoot at my Father, do you?” I screamed, and he howled back at me, almost laughing at my impertinence.

“Oh, my God, we are both to die here,” Peej said.

“The only person who’s going to die on this boat is Habib the Rat,” I said, and I raised up my other hand, which held the submachinegun against my fragile shoulder--it's true, I do bruise easily so this was a HUGE deal for me, and I squeezed the trigger. The first burst grazed his left eyeball and his cheek, and the horrific site of his scalp being peeled away and sending his eyeball flying into the air in a spray of blood caused Peej to vomit almost instantly. The second burst went into his neck and blood exploded from his carotid artery. The entire head disappeared into a violent pink mist of flying meat and hair. His headless torso convusled, and his hand, operating with the last remaining signals from a spinal column now separated from the nervecenter of the brain grabbed my shoulder and slumped, screaming hysterically. My third, fourth and fifth bursts went into his chest, causing his lungs to collapse. My sixth full burst went astray, because I slipped in Peej’s puke. The seventh and last burst went into his foot and his leg and his elaborately patterned golfing socks were thusly ruined. Blood splattered all down the front of my black shirt and my chinos. As a matter of fact, I was covered in a lot more blood than you would normally expect. My shoulder ached, and I lamented the bruising. I questioned whether or not I would have to detach the expended ammunition drum and reload--was he, in fact, dead? At that time in world history, headless torsos could still live on their own, we believed. It turns out, no, I did not have to empty another drum into his corpse. I made the decision based on how the bruise on my shoulder might look if I was shirtless before a really lovely young lady.

As he slumped down dead, I grabbed the bag he had stuffed in his vest—the cloth bag that contained the Maharabala Ruby. I handed it to my Father, as he and Trace came up alongside the speedboat, and I knew what was to follow. My Father failed to appreciate the fact that I was brave, and that I could kill any man who stood between me and what I wanted. He failed to acknowledge me. He simply hugged me, told me he was afraid for my life, told me he loved me and then, like it was an afterthought, told me I had done a good job.

Peej looked off into the distance. “He who kills Habib the Rat kills the eleventh most powerful man in the South Asian narcotics smuggling trade. One does not escape responsibility for killing such a man, for it is certain that he had whores in all of the major cities, whores that begat him sons, and those sons will surely unite as a common brotherhood to avenge the death of their evil father. It is known that his brother, Sahib the Weasel will avenge the death of his brother by using fishooks and barbed wire to kill whoever kills his relations. And it is quite possible that any one of Habib the Rat’s six thousand or so customers, associates, and underlings in the international narcotics trade would crawl across a mile of broken glass in order to slaughter the man who killed Habib the Rat. Plus, there’s his Mother, who is still alive, and lives in town. She will likely come after whoever killed her son with a butcher knife, possibly even a dagger shaped like a lightning bolt.”

“A lightning bolt?” Father asked Peej.

“Well, that would make sense, would it not? One could not kill a human being with a dagger shaped like a kitty cat or Frosty the goddamned Snowman, correct?” Peej said, showing a familiarity with my Father that I did not quite understand.

“You’re right, son—I’m a little distracted today, what with all the gunfire and whatnot.”

From that day forward, it was glory or hell for me. I wanted glory, and nothing more. Damn everything else to hell, I wanted glory and thrills, and I wanted to shoot henchmen and blow things up.

Clothing

I have worn several different “looks” throughout my life. By “looks” I mean combinations of clothing. The schoolboy years were the years where I wore the short pants. I attended exclusive schools and was required to maintain a certain decorum. Anyone who went to private schools in the Northeast will know what I’m talking about. I had long blonde hair and my mother insisted on blue ribbons in my hair. The ribbons tied back my hair on both sides and let the natural curls fall down to my shoulders. They were an affectation that she refused to part with. For nearly all of the first 20 years or so of my life, I had to wear a strikingly noticeable pageboy styled haircut, and if I had been born in 1954 as opposed to 1944, it might have made a huge difference for me as long hair was the style well after my time. More than a few people, Father included, told her to cut my hair into the standard buzzcut on small boys in the early 1950s but my mother refused to let anyone cut my curly blonde locks. We compromised on the ribbon, of course. She insisted upon pink or orange ribbons and I allowed blue and blue only. Yes, it was a battle of wills. And when I was old enough to object to being dressed like a girl, I objected, and fairly strongly, too. In college, I wore what all of the football players wore–slacks, ties knotted at the neck, pledge pins, rolled down socks, loose shirts, and a look that said that the devil may care, but I certainly didn’t. We wore expensive clothes somewhat loosely so that we could hide beer bottles in our pants. Invariably, you’ve have to flop out your shirt to hide the wet spots in your waistband and invent new reasons to explain why your underwear smelled like a soiled tavern rag. When Father demanded that I go to work for him after college, I wore black suits and white shirts with thin ties. This was the look of the salesman. I sold riot control vehicles and I was rather good at it. But it was stifling and cruel–I couldn’t sell riot control vehicles to the countries that appeared on the DO NOT CALL list. Too many of those countries were the ones that were the easiest to sell to. I threw a wastepaper basket at Father and walked out on him. During my mixed martial arts years, I sowed my wild oats in the Orient and wore catsuits made out of nylon that were designed for free movement and fighting techniques. I wore a skin-tight nylon mesh t-shirt, either in black or gold, and I wore high-top sneakers very similar to what Bill Walton wore when he played college basketball. When you wear shoes that are too large for your feet while competing in mixed martial arts, your opponent will invariably stomp down on one of your feet to pin you down and gain an advantage. By wearing overly-large shoes, I would sneer at them as they came to the slow realization that their little ruse had backfired on them–I was wearing big floppy shoes and they had missed my actual foot. Everything had zippers and when you walked, the swishing of the nylon was like a wake-up call for every mating-aged woman around you. Zippers bulged, pants bulged, everything bulged. The telltale flapping of pant legs and zipper handles still rings in my ears.

I trained in nylon, I slept in nylon, I even went to formal dinner parties in nylon. It was the 1970s. No one noticed. In the 1970s you could do three things–you could eat steak for breakfast, you could drive in the ditch, and you could slap a woman on the rear end and she’d say “oh, you!” And, you could wear the same pair of nylon pants for a week. When I had to go back to work for Father, the times had changed. I wore a blue dress shirt, tan khaki slacks, and leather boat shoes without socks. I have worn this time and again throughout my life. When I became a pop singing sensation and partied in Manhattan in the mid-1980s, I wore a tuxedo every day with jaguar fur caps and very, very tight trenchcoats. That was a brief intermission for me. It might have been for less than a year. It could have been from 1983 to 1989. I don’t recall. The teenaged boys that I was somehow tricked into having and raising all needed husky boy pants, and in great quantities. My boys would constantly rip their pants on things. The grunge look of the early 1990s all but ensured that I was going to spend every weekend in a mall somewhere, coaxing a surly teenager in and out of a dressing room, trying to find that magical pair of cool pants that wouldn’t bunch up or split down the butt crack. The boys would put on their husky pants, wear flannel, and hide behind a sneer and stringy hair. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Byron’s eyes. He has always worn a mop of hair over his face. Two weeks ago, there I was in a mall, buying him husky boy pants and he’s somewhere in his late teens or twenties. I don’t know what they give my eldest son in prison–probably something made out of gabardine? I don’t know any jailbirds so I don’t have anyone to ask. My daughter Miranda has always had special needs when it comes to clothes. She has fat legs. I already know what you’re going to say–put her in husky boy pants! Can’t do it, sir. Can’t do it. There isn’t a belt strong enough to keep a pair of husky boy pants on Miranda. She’s too squirrely. The rest of her looks fairly normal, but her muscular thighs and legs (I warned her not to play volleyball!) have presented issues to us as far as clothing her appropriately. For years, she couldn’t even wear girlie-girl jeans and we had to put her in sweat pants (stretch pants seemed too pathetic). Now, she favors flowing skirts and telling everyone that she hates and resents me. Who saw that coming? Not I, sir. I agree with Mr. Will to a point–jeans are awful to look at. I have never tried on a pair. I have never had the time. I believe that slacks make the man, and my slacks have always been cut and worn perfectly. I switched to looser fitting duck pants when I reached the age of 60. I could go back to wearing tight pants, but I don’t want to get married again. I know what I like in a woman, and, honey, jeans aren’t it.A Nothing makes me angrier than to see a woman wearing a man’s pair of jeans without a belt. Nothing.

Prep School

Prep school wasn't all bad, I guess. I say that now, and it probably doesn't sound like I mean it, but there it is. I cannot embellish those years, nor can I forget them. I suppose I could forget them, but that would mean serious brain trauma or injury. I would like to avoid that, if possible. The thing you have to remember about Prep School is that you probably didn't get to go. I did. Rather, I got to go because Father made me go. He was initially opposed to sending me, preferring that I join the Marine Corps, but there was, in those days, a preference for boys to be at least fifteen before joining the Marines. I was all of 11, and Mother insisted that I keep my long blonde pageboy locks. I was probably indifferent to the presence of so much hair in my life. I had grown up with long curls and a face framed by hair that had been fussed over. Every time my Father threatened to shave my head and make me work in a coal mine, Mother would gently scold him and obtain a restraining order. Father ended up going into hiding for most of my teens anyway. During Prep School, I was required to tie my hair back with black ribbons, and I complied. This was a school requirement, not a personal preference. I liked the red or orange ribbons, myself. I was not able to go to any of the old money schools. I had to go to a school that accepted new money sons from self-made men of means. That means that I was already suspect in the eyes of many. Even though many of my peers were students of merit or able to attend school because their families were newly wealthy, I was still singled out because of who Father was. He should have been old money, but he was new money. He had a propensity for making fortunes and losing them. He would take a job working for President Harding and, several months later, throw Harding's chief of staff into a fountain with his suit coat pulled over the back of his head. This was considered gauche. My Father was considered a rough customer. Therefore, the pressure was on me to be enraged and violent whenver possible. The problem with that scenario is that I'm easy going and happy. I always let little people get the last word in a dispute. That's because the little people have very little else to cling to. Might as well let them think they have the last word, right? Prep school routines were fairly predictable. I would wake up, do some things, and the rest I forget. I wasn't bullied. My Father had too much money. I was laughed at once in a while, and it was usually by a boy who had no hair or some kind of a buzzcut hairdo. I put this down to jealousy. I had beautiful, beautiful hair. Many times, I would be with my Mother and someone would remark on the fact that my hair was much nicer than that person's daughter or whatever. I think we went to classes for most of the day, at meals in a place called a cafeteria or dining hall. I believe there were other events, like sports. I can't remember if I played sports. I had to shave my head to play football, eventually, and that meant breaking Mother's heart. She saved all of my hair and had it fashioned into a wig that I would have to wear in the summertime or when I was home for the holidays. I never did like wearing that wig. It would fly off my head and land in filthy places. My grades were dismal. I could not adjust. I would get up and walk out when I was bored. And I hated being bored, just hated it. I loved being on a fast motorbike or in a stolen car or perhaps on the roof of a delivery truck being driven by a man who worked for Father.

My Lifelong Fascination With Dynamite

Throughout my life, dynamite has played an important role in shaping not only my destiny but my choices and my values.

Where some people have important experiences with religion, family, faith, love or law enforcement, my most important experiences have all involved dynamite. That's a strange thing to say, I will admit. Many children did not have the same upbringing that I did. My own children fail to understand that I am a product of a broken home--Father and mother may have raised me, but there were other women in Father's life, or so I am told. Peej nods his head and starts to say something about this, but then he goes silent and has a curious smile on his face. I can't explain it.

Not only did Father disapprove of my page-boy styled hair, he insisted that my mother justify it in writing. She did not comply. But one thing I do know--he was too afraid of her to shave my head. Growing up the son of a famous defense industrialist meant that my childhood would be vastly different from the one most men my age experienced.

I was born in 1944, and by the time I was 9 years old, I had already learned how to insert a blasting cap into a stick of dynamite and set the fuse, then light it and run. I was introduced to the world of machine guns, large vehicles, and defending America. It was a different time, and in America, when you were wealthy, certain things were acceptable for certain types of people. In many cases, you'll find that this was an entirely different country if you are able to suspend a little disbelief and look at American society as it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

It's one thing for a father to bring home a toy gun for his son. It's another thing entirely when your Father makes vehicles that mount guns that sometimes have defects in them and your Father decides to bring them home rather than discard them. I'll never forget the time I brought a Thompson submachine gun (defective magazine spring, sticky bolt handle) to school for show and tell. The police said that my Tommy gun was the nicest one they had ever confiscated from a perpetrator. It was more than just the guns, however. Father's company, at that time, was heavily involved in flame throwing vehicles, projectile firing weapons such as recoilless rifles, and mounted chemical weapons dispensers.

The lethality of these weapons, and their violation of basic laws of warfare and those of the Geneva Accords, put Father on a collision course with none other than President Harry S Truman, the first Democrat who tried to have Father killed outright.

Truman sent thousands of men, in dozens of planes and ships, after my Father and they hunted him all over the world. Truman told anyone who would listen that my Father was a monster who had profited from what they then called the Second World War and accused him of stealing the Admiral Hassenpfeffer. Never mind that Father had a document, signed by President Roosevelt himself, that ordered him to North Africa and granted him lifelong ownership and use of any Axis-flagged vessel that my Father deemed necessary for transporting captured German war material. They hunted him through the Straits of Magellan, they chased him to an island in the South Pacific near Borneo and the only thing that saved Father was a canoe filled with orphans and old ladies came by just as the US Navy was beginning to fire on the Admiral Hassenpfeffer with 12-inch guns.

Only Father's ability to bribe local officials, sail the Admiral Hassenpfeffer with incredible skill, and his ability to beat a man down with his bare hands saved him. This experience probably shaped Father as well. I do not know. He will not speak of his time on what her calls "the lam" because he is probably either extremely proud of that time of his life or ashamed of it. Then there is that third option we've come to know and love--he's forgotten about it, but if his mind suddenly snaps, he could remember it and turn it into something profane and horrible in the middle of a public place. It was during this time that he shaved his head, started wearing striped pajamas everywhere, and he even started using heroin or morphine to get himself psyched up. People talk about Graham Greene and his use of opium. Goodness, Greene was a piker compared to Father.

Father would roll poor little Mr. Greene out of an opium den, take his place in the center of the room, and shut the place down for a weekend on one of his benders. Once Truman left office, Father was able to reconcile his weapons development with the more dictator-friendly Eisenhower Administration after finding out exactly how much campaign donation money they needed to have deposited into exactly the right accounts. Father went from being Public Enemy Number Three (J. Edgar Hoover refused, out of envy and spite, to make him P.E. Numero Uno) to being the number one supplier of riot control and peaceful demonstration vehicles in the world, behind Union Carbide, General Motors, the Disney Corporation, Ma Bell, and Pan Am.

Those companies may have sold more vehicles, but only Father could devise a riot control vehicle that fired sticks of dynamite into crowds of protesters AND kept the crew inside the vehicle safe and secure. As the development of the Rogers Flying Thunderstick Launcher Series of vehicles proceeded into the mid-1950s, my fascination with dynamite grew out of the fact that Father named me the number one tester of dynamite throwing slings. I was a frisky boy when it came to testing things. I would test something for hours on end, trying to get it to break.

We installed a dozen different types of launcher on our estate, near what used to be an old quarry, and we tested them endlessly. Saturdays, most boys went to the movies and played catch with their fathers. On Saturdays, my Father and I ate cheese and tomato sandwiches and launched short-fused sticks of dynamite at stationary objects with short-arm catapults and elastic-band launching devices. Some of the designs were duds and we would have to duck down and hide behind the small concrete blast wall that was hastily built to save our lives. Some of the better designs threw the sticks of dynamite too far, and passing cars would have their tires and windows blown out by the concussion. That's where the word "skadigetty" comes from--

Father would scream "SKADIGETTY!" whenever a stick of dynamite landed short. That would mean that I was to stop dancing and laughing at the destruction and scramble into the blast bunker. To this day, whenever someone tells me to skadiggety, I stop dancing and flatten myself on bare concrete. In point of fact, the majority of this dynamite was left over from what used to be known as "World War I." And, what many people probably do not remember, and I know I didn't, was that the surplus in explosives from what used to be known as the War Between the European States resembled in scope and size the vast surplus of unexploded ordnance from the US Civil War, which used to be called "The War of States Rights and Secession."

The cost of storing that Civil War ordnance was so prohibitive that the US Government wisely decided that it would be best put to use by farmers throughout the country who were too poor to dig their own ditches. Hence, great numbers of US farmers were blown up by their own incompetence while trying to blast open drainage ditches they could not afford with government dynamite that was already starting to go bad. But farmers weren't the only ones who got free truckloads of dangerously unstable dynamite from the Federal Government. Father put his name in and received more of it than anyone in coastal New England.

The only catch was, he had to figure out how to get it to a handful of rather unpopular dictators in a way that would keep the CIA and the US Congress from finding out--in those days, everything really top secret was handled by the Hoover people in a special building called "FBI Headquarters."

By the time Father was able to distribute several thousand crates of this dynamite, it was pretty much useless. Never one to pass up an opportunity to make a few hundred thousand dollars, Father decided to skim some of the dynamite off the top and remanufacture a few dozen crates by creating what he called Near-Dynamite.

The sticks were cut in half, glued to dummy half sticks, repapered, and sold as full sticks. This is called "cutting the stash" and drug dealers adopted this practice much later on. Once we were able to remanufacture the dynamite and double our allotment, it was time to find a way to make money. We had to find a third world country desperate enough to buy it. Mexico bought quite a bit, as did Cuba and Paraguay, two countries that I have fond memories of.

Father would bring the Admiral Hassenpfeffer into Havana Bay, gingerly offload a few pallets of dynamite to the Batista people, and then we would sail away with cash in hand and the distant puffs of chemically-reacting unstable dynamite wafting away from shore. Father would laugh and punch me in the arm, in his curiously profane Irish way, and show his bare backside to passing ships. (yes, Miranda has that problem as well--perfectly shy and retiring in the real world, but profane and given to showing a butt cheek to whoever dares pass the Admiral Hassenpfeffer without lowering a pennant or flag out of respect). Now, my children have never really been around dynamite, at least that I know of.

It was nothing for me to be around dangerous vehicles, poisonous chemicals, or loaded weapons. If something bad happened, there was always a hospital nearby. I once got a lung full of mustard gas that Father wasn't supposed to own. Instead of going to the hospital and revealing to several million panicked residents of the upper Northeast that my

Father was testing a riot control vehicle that could deploy chemical weapons, I sucked it up, got on a plane, and was treated at a suburban Pittsburgh hospital for exposure to chlorine from a badly-maintained above-ground pool. Wink, wink. About eighty crates of the better dynamite found its way into our possession.

Father refused to cut the good stuff down as that would ruin our personal stash. He would remind me to not hand out our prime blended dynamite to the hired help or to passing strangers. I was responsible for anything that was blown up near our property. So long as I told the truth about the things that I destroyed, flattened, razed, or burned to the ground I was alright.

That's a lesson I've imparted to my own children. They're never in trouble if they tell me the truth, straight out. Even today, when I see some children playing with matches or gasoline, I'm reminded of my idyllic youth, firing short-fused sticks of dynamite high into the air near the duck pond near our estate, killing hundreds if not thousands of fish, deer, ducks, geese, and squirrels with well-aimed shots. Ah, the memories.

Just Because Father Put Me In A Dress Does Not Mean That I Hate Him

I guess I must have been about ten years old. I was a wild child. I had longish hair for the times, which was cut into a pageboy haircut, of course, so don’t envision me as some sort of long-haired hippie child, running through fields of flowers and singing tra-la-la. No, I was a child of privilege, and that meant that my long, salon-curled blonde locks were fashioned and held with a series of bows and pins. My mother used to use pink ribbons on my hair until we reached a compromise and switched them to black.

No, I regularly beat up the staff and cursed out men as well as women. Adults did not concern me. If they didn’t do what I wanted them to do, I would call them names and laugh and stick out my tongue at them. I did whatever I wanted. I had my own supply of dynamite. I had six different guns, two of which were capable of fully automatic fire. I had a switchblade comb and a switchblade knife. I had access to my own vehicle, if I wanted to drive. I had special shoes that let me work the pedals. I was fearless.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Father put me in a dress one day. He made me switch clothes with one of the laundry maids and I even had to wear her flat shoes and a pink ribbon tied around my head. He made me put on red lipstick and he made me carry a purse.

Father marched me out of the house, and in his indecipherable Irish brogue he said, “I cannot send you far enough away and I cannot manage your madness here in the house, and the devil has to pay his dues if he wants to find heaven on Earth.”

“I understand, Father.”

Father rolled his eyes and whispered, “it’s for your own good, Norman. You’re living the life of Reilly on borrowed time.”

I shrugged. I had no clue what he meant.

Father had the driver take us to the rough part of town where tough kids threw rocks at old ladies and hurled soda pop bottles full of sand off bridges at big trucks. He found a playground where some tough kids were congregated around an overturned bicycle. With my long blonde hair, cut in a pageboy, and held back with black and green ribbons, I must have looked a little strange. It WAS the 1950s. Every boy I knew had short hair and wore horn-rimmed glasses, if necessary. But, I was different. I was definitely not your average boy.

The driver opened the door and my Father told me to go play with the boys over by the bicycle. I obeyed, reluctantly. They stared in disbelief as I walked over to them.

“Hello, fellows. My name is Norman Rogers.”

“Did you dad just make you get out of that car and come over here?” One of the larger boys stood up and waved everyone behind him to be quiet.

“Yes, he told me to come over here and introduce myself.”

The boy looked at his friends and then looked at me. “Kid, you ought to know this. Your dad wants us to beat you up because you look pretty goofy.”

I shrugged. “I have to obey my Father. It’s good for my character and it one of the secrets of my great success as a boy so far.”

Another boy stood up and waved a wrench at the car where my Father sat reading the newspaper. “That’s not right. He put that wig on you and made you get out of the car?”

I pulled on my hair to show them that it was not a wig. “I have a medical condition that forces me to wear my hair like this. I'm kind of frisky, so I have to keep it tied up in ribbons. When I roll around on the ground in my good pants, my hair gets stepped on it I do not do this.”

All of the boys stood up at once. “Let’s get him!” they cried.

I rounded my shoulders and closed my eyes, figuring that if I didn’t look at them when they pummeled me, it wouldn’t hurt as much. Instead, they all ran past me, except for one short fellow with a gimpy leg who looked at me and said, “Kid, all we have are these three bottlecaps, and you can have two of them.”

I stood there, puzzled for a moment, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. All of the boys were either on top of the family limosine or trying to figure out how to negotiate the shiny, curved surfaces and get on top of it. One boy swung a bicycle chain as hard as he could at the hood and another boy was beating on the windows with a plank. My Father looked helpless and terrified.

The driver attempted to drive away, but two of the boys got the door open and dragged him out of the vehicle. They seized the keys and threw them into the grass. The driver fled the scene, and I don’t think Father had the man arrested for incompetence. I think he let it go.

The boys were able to get a rope around my Father’s neck and drag him out of the rear of the vehicle. They ruffled his suit and knocked his hat into the weeds. My Father was an excellent fighter, but he was swarmed by a dozen tough street boys who were used to beating up beat cops, milkmen and prostitutes.

I put up my hands and walked over to where they were arguing over who would get to take my Father’s leather shoes. “Fellows, please. Father was trying to teach me a lesson and I failed to explain myself properly.”

“Kid, we get a rich papa and his fancy pants baby buster boy out here once a week. We’re sick and tired of having to beat up kids who don’t deserve to get beat up.”

Another boy put his finger up to his temple and said, “I think they call it manipulation, if I get the word right.”

“Manipulation and deceit is what they call it, yep, you’re right.” The largest boy said, holding the rope that my Father was clutching with both of his hands. The family limousine was smashed and battered and my Father’s suit was torn and his suit jacket was half off. His white shirt and his vest were all that remained of his proper attire, as his trousers and shoes were either ripped or being fought over.

“Well, fellows, I would like to ask you to let my Father go. We will trouble you no more. If one of you could drive us home, we would appreciate it a great deal.”

They considered this for a moment.

“So you don’t want us to kill yourpops hereand save you from being treated like you’re a retard up in the head?”

“No, not particularly,” I said. This was a watershed moment. Right then and there, I could have disposed of my Father. The timing was wrong, however, and I showed mercy. But never again would mercy be mine to give freely.

“Most guys I know would demand that we beat the pillow feathers out of an old man like this, and hang him by his neck down by the river and stick boards with nails in him. Are you saying that you don’t want us to hang him by his neck and hit him with those boards with nails in them, you know, the kind that stick into a person because they have the nice long nails?”

I shook my head. “No, I think I’d like to go home and get my bottlecap collection and give it to you fellows.”

Their eyes lit up. One of the boys took the rope off of my Father’s neck and they helped him into the back of the limousine. I climbed into the back and three of the fellows took turns driving us home. They hit parked cars and a street lamp on the way, and had a great laugh about it.I was true to my word and gave them my entire bottlecap collection—three thousand bottlecaps, most of which came from Europe, were handed over and those boys lived high on the hog, well into the 1970s on the proceeds.

My Father commanded me to never speak of what happened again. I am not bound by his wishes, of course. I'm feeling rebellious these days. I may even grow my hair out again.

Marriage

If you're looking for someone to comment on having a successful marriage, you should probably move on, sir.

You should probably find another rich, fabulous blogger to explain things to you. I'm not your fellow. My poor choices are somewhat to blame for the failure that I've had with marriage. I refuse to take all of the blame--there was another person in that marriage with me, you see. Why couldn't most of the blame go with the wife?

It's not like I've even been married in this decade--all of my marriages imploded before 1994. That should tell you one thing--I learned my lesson.

I chose the wrong women to marry. They chose the wrong man to marry.

Now, the given here is that a man trusts that a woman who makes a bad choice will have a friend or two who will talk her out of marrying the wrong man. That, and only that, is what keeps men from marrying the wrong women. Hence, the blame for these failed marriages in my past rests with the friends of my ex-wives who failed to save her from me. A man's friends don't try to talk him out of marrying--that's something you only see in bad movies.

I've never seen Jon & Kate Plus Eight or whatever they call it, but this kind of thing sounds exactly like what happened to me at least twice:

Jon and Kate Gosselin arrived separately for their sextuplets' fifth birthday party. During the party, the spouses barely spoke to each other.

Clearly, the Gosselin marriage was under a strain as the fifth season started for the TLC series, "Jon & Kate Plus 8" with a two-hour show.

No wonder. The daily challenges of a super-size family with eight kids in the house have recently been overshadowed by recurring reports that Jon and Kate have cheated on each other and that their marriage is dysfunctional. Both deny the cheating allegations.

But on Monday's premiere (along with scenes from the party), Kate and Jon addressed the media firestorm that has engulfed them from beyond the carefully-tended boundaries of their own reality show.

"Did I ever think I'd see myself on the front of the tabloids?" said Kate indignantly. "Or see those words that are there? No. It kills me!"

And Jon, who insisted he was "being innocent and hanging out" despite reports of an affair with a 23-year-old schoolteacher, said, "I never read a tabloid magazine until I was in one. And the first one I bought was the last one I bought."

"I never cheated on Kate, and that's the way it is," he said bluntly. " ... I take full blame. I just didn't think it would escalate into what it's become."

"They had very little interaction between them" on the show Monday night, Dr. Lillian Glass, a psychologist and body language expert, told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Tuesday. "It was very sad to see. So sad. When you looked at Jon, he was very depressed looking, and he was leaning toward -- away from where the camera was. He was just so sad. And Kate was a bit defensive. When he was around her, she didn't acknowledge him. It was just so sad to see this couple."

Let me see if I can comprehend what is really going on here.

They needed to "promote" the upcoming FIFTH SEASON of their show. What better way to do that than to introduce some fake drama? I would be willing to bet a rather small amount of money that this is all staged and faked, top to bottom.

This couple is beginning the FIFTH SEASON of a television program that looks at how they raise their children in a "super-sized" family.

Most programs never make it out of their THIRD season, but this couple is starring in what is going to be their fifth season--that's the equivalent of being a sensation in the television industry. Anyone who spends five years on television, and then sells the episodes in places like Target and Wal-Mart to the hoi polloi, should expect tabloid interest in their affairs.

Really, who's advising these people? American society is an unregulated, bloodthirsty freakshow. There are people out there who want to tear you limb from limb if you so much as pretend to enjoy having a little bit of wealth and fame--I should know. Jon & Kate didn't think this through, apparently. In any creative endeavor, the first thing that goes are your friends, family and assorted hangers-on. They thought they could make money from their situation and not attract the unwanted attention of the snoops and the gossips?

Please.

My first marriage ended because my wife refused to move while sunbathing after taking sleeping pills and some beavers made a beaver dam nearby, drowning her by accident. Another of my marriages ended because I married a woman due, in large part, to the fact that I forgot I was already married. Another one of my marriages ended because I became a musical sensation throughout Asia and Europe. Father drove off one of my wives, or prospective wives, because she had the devil in her, whatever that means. I think one of my marriages ended because I went to prison. I don't recall.

One day she was there, I went away for 16 months plus good behavior, I came back, there's Miranda with a note stuck to her forehead, and all it said was RAISE ME.

I complied. As to the woman in the marriage showing visible signs of loathing towards the man, well, that's called being married. It's called living with someone who is hell to live with.

That loathing is normal and healthy. The "lack of interaction" could be body odor or hygiene related. It could be because he likes to eat things that are disgusting with his mouth open. It could be because she likes to pick her nose when she thinks no one is looking, but she's lacking in self-awareness so she thinks no one around her is noticing that she has a finger buried up to the knuckle inside of her nose. Really, that's all it could be. Her failure to take regular showers could be a sign that she's decided to let herself go.

His failure to adopt rigorous grooming standards could be a sign that he's thinking about joining the military or the merchant marine. Let me introduce you to an old girlfriend of mine, her name is Rita Rotten-Crotch. Let me introduce you to her new boyfriend, Jack Herpes-Sore-on-His-Face. No one knows what goes on in a marriage.

Most of the time, even the people in the marriage are completely ignorant of what's going on. It's called being medicated. That being said, the man, Jon, needs to cowboy up. You do NOT associate with a 23 year-old woman for anything other than crazy, bounce-off-the-headboard sex. I don't care who, what, where, when, how, or why--it's nothing but sex for a 23 year-old. And the funny thing is, they have no idea what they're doing.

They just flop around and moan and try to not touch anything icky. You can't enjoy yourself with someone who is self-consciously looking at her own rear end in the mirror all of the time.

Believe me when I tell you this--find a woman who's about 38 years old and has a tattoo on her lower back. Good, now find three 20 year-old girls who like to kiss each other and pretend they're not doing anything wrong. Sample one, then the group of three.

Do it a few times if you don't believe me. What you will find is that the 38 year-old is far more exciting and satisfying than waiting for three dippy girls to figure out where their lip gloss went.

I'm glad I was able to explain this all to you. The situation with Jon & Kate is nothing to get spun up about. This is not sad. They have money! That's all you need. Everything else is just something you can pawn off on the help.

The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton

When I was a boy, I was pretty frisky.

I don't know why that word triggers the reaction that it does.

It's always been a fairly simple and straightforward word that describes a healthy boy, somewhat husky but not overtly so, who likes to bounce around and have fun. That was me. I wore the knees out of dress pants fairly quickly by being so frisky. There were more than a few times when I would get so frisky, I would split my pants open and not even know it (I am not certain, but this may have led to improvements in children's clothing, such as reinforced knees in pants and reinforced seats in husky boy pants). 

Father would comment on my friskiness and look on with disapproval, but the excitement and interests that I had were paramount for me. I had to know what was in that cabinet, under that table, over that hedge, concealed in that locked facility, behind that barn, under that car, in that public toilet or beneath the folds of that rather diaphanous skirt.

I had to burst in and investigate and jump on chairs and tables and run around and knock things over. I had to climb every ladder that I saw and slide down ever pole that I saw. I had to jump over every reasonably jumpable gap and I had to see the bottom of every hole. Drainage pipes were a huge problem for me.

When I was 11, I got lost in the downtown Groton sewer system for about two days. I fancied myself living underground and becoming a kind of mole-rat person with super-sensitive eyesight and the ability to digest stolen food from a pizza restaurant that had a loose manhole cover behind it. I should write about my time as the Mole Boy of Groton. Technically, I wasn't a mole--I was a mole rat. I didn't do any digging. I subsisted off stolen or discarded food in tunnels someone else had installed. But I solved a few bank robberies, fell in love, and invented a curved stick that allowed me to run through sewer pipes while carrying pizza without falling. It was ingenious.

Even when I was a Mole Boy, I was dressed nattily and smartly. I wore a tie, suit coat, and either long or short pants, depending on the season. I had my hair done up in a pageboy cut with black ribbons to hold it out of my eyes on either side of my head.

This was not because I wanted to look like a rather foppish little twerp. This was because of how unreasonably wealthy we were. It was not because I liked to wear such clothing. It was expected that I would wear such clothing. When you're the son of a rich man, you have to dress the part. This reinforces the class distinctions which have made this such a great country. I must confess that I have never worn jeans or sneakers. I did wear cleats when I played football, but they were brown leather cleats, the best that money could buy.

I have owned sturdy walking shoes. In prison, they gave us flip flops or canvas shoes that could have been considered sneakers, but I was somehow able to convince them to let me wear leather boat shoes instead, no socks. I hear tell that my homies are dropping some coin on sneakers:

OutKast's Big Boi is a junkie, has been for years.

The multiplatinum rap star got his first shoe fix back when he was better known as Antwan Patton, a busboy at Steak and Ale. He saved up his paychecks and rushed to a dealer to cop the only thing that could cure his jones -- a pair of British Knights tennis shoes.

"I've actually been into sneakers since I was a little kid," Big Boi, 34, said backstage before his concert this month at the Sneaker Pimps exhibition in Atlanta. "You can really tell a lot about a person through the shoes, so I always like to keep me a fresh pair."

Sneaker culture has thrived for decades, but shoe companies have increasingly capitalized on the demand for one-of-a-kind kicks. Collectors, known as sneakerheads, have lined up to pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to ensure few people are wearing the same shoes.

"Coming up, my mom got five kids so there wasn't a whole lot of stylish tennis shoes around the house, so I used to want a lot of sneakers," Big Boi said, explaining that he started making up for lost time -- and shoes -- long before OutKast's 1994 debut, "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik."

I feel left out.

Have I missed an important aspect of American culture?

Probably not.

I have worn the khaki or duck pants for years, with the optional grey t-shirt under a loosely buttoned blue dress shirt. I never wear socks; I'm always barefoot or in leather boat shoes. I never wear a watch, a hat, a necklace or a ring. No bling for me. I buy everything online because I can't seem to stop getting into fights with smart-mouthed retail clerks. Months and months of being on the water have made me tan and looking very much like a salty dog. I do not like the look of jeans on a lady, and I'm not down with the stretch pants look, either.

Ladies, please note--jeans and stretch pants are fine if you've given up. Good for you. The rest of us haven't given up just yet. Fashion? Well, it's important if you're trying to get laid. Otherwise, fashion can go hang.

Prison 

Now that Bernie Madoff has been sentenced to spend 150 years in prison for helping his greedy customers ignore the law and make unreasonable profits from a known Ponzi Scheme, it is only fitting to look at how I was treated when I was accused of, and wrongly convicted of, insider trading.

Real men engage in insider trading; only housewives and little men engage in Ponzi Schemes. You remember Herbalife, don't you? Herbalife is money for nothing, designed to operate in a similar way to a Ponzi Scheme in that you have to find ten friends who you don't want to stay friends with to sell Herbalife for you so you can bail out of the scheme and get your life back.

I believe Madoff is guilty of being a co-conspirator in a vast criminal enterprise, and he should have offered to drop a dime on all of the customers who knew about his activities. In my case, it was Father who dropped a dime on me, getting his revenge upon me.

For you see, only a Father and a son can go to war with one another in this life; all else is a contractual dispute.

Father's decision to notify the government and have me investigated, arrested, indicted, tried and convicted was the culmination of my gentle and rightful efforts to have him removed as Chairman of the family firm, the Rogers Defence Industries Corporation. This was because Father was insisting on a losing proposition--making lethal riot control vehicles and dangerous chemical weapons for dictators in a time when the United States Government was discouraging such activity. I wanted to take RDI in the direction of the future--domestic surveillance vehicles and forming a NASCAR racing team. Ultimately, I ended up in a minimum security prison for a term of about 14 months.

Prison life was good for me. I was able to sort out my personal affairs and settle into a comfortable routine. I wrote several large pieces, on of which, "Rampage of the Innocents," is being trancribed from the old Macintosh Classic II that I used to write it. I took up a number of hobbies, one of which, throwing burning wads of hardened toilet paper, aftershave and toothpaste at authority figures, is still with me to this day.

Prison life can also be good for Bernie Madoff. The thing is, the first duty of the prisoner is to try to escape. I crafted a plan of escape, and had I been incarcerated for an extra seven or eight years, my plan would have come to fruition. Instead, I was released before I could establish a co-dependent, control-oriented sexual relationship with the warden's wife. The second duty is to secure prominence in the prison pecking order. I was an investment banker and a Princeton man; that made me quite the badass. I had to adopt the personality of a tough guy--my basic presence said, mess with me and I'll go junkyard dog on your behind, sir. Third, you have to get easy jobs or you'll be tired during scream at the newbies time.

One duty I rather enjoyed while in prison was trash pick-up duty. I got to get outside and pick up trash along the highway and get some sun. I got some fantastic exercise. Hotties would fly by and flash their fronts at us all of the time. I would sometimes wander out into traffic and cause accidents--call me crazy, but it wasn't my fault. I would do such a stellar job of picking up trash that I would get bored and start wandering around in circles--the heat contributed to it, as well as the fact that they gave us Gatorade spiked with prison wine to drink.

What people don't understand is this--because of the fact that prisoners pick up trash by the side of the road, motorists throw MORE trash out of their windows. Invariably, we would be picking up trash and see cars whizz past and then their windows would dip, hands would appear, and streams of trash would fly into the air, landing in the ditch for us to retrieve as we moved along.

Bum Scuffle

There used to be a man who paraded up and down the street where I worked. I called him Mr. Insane Homeless Person. He wore an orange sweatshirt and garbage bags--fifty or sixty garbage bags--and he threw urine at people who didn't give him change. He bit a man on the ankle who worked in our client services department and the man had to have a rabies shot in his abdomen. Or was it tetanus? I’m certain Peej would remember, were he around to tell me the answer.

Then there was this fellow called Mr. Phlegm. He was constantly spitting and clearing his throat and swinging a bag full of old, broken calculators around. He was usually dressed in coveralls and a poncho--does anyone remember seeing him? They say he was an accountant with Arthur Andersen back in the days when AA was actually a choice place to work. Some say he lost his mind working on a client that had ties to the movie business--movie business accounting is more of a leap of faith into the unknown than it is a matter of actually tracking numbers and making them add up.

Mr. Phlegm had a "bumfight" one day with a man who wore two orange roadcones on his shoulders and called himself "No Parking Zone." I invented the term "bum scuffle" and I always thought that what we were seeing was more of a scuffle, not a fight, but I digress.

They commenced to fighting one day as I was walking to lunch with several of my slap-happy and useless junior partners. This was in the days when, as I have pointed out, unattended bodies were abundant, helicopters were shooting at people who tried to swim in the Hudson River and there were no cops on the streets. Mr. Phlegm blinded "No Parking Zone" and threw one of his road cones onto a passing garbage truck. They grappled for a while, threw weak punches that drew catcalls from those of us who can appreciate a decent bumfight and then scrambled into an alley after the Chinese restaurant threw out their morning trash. I wish I had had the foresight to film these daily brawls in the streets of New Jack City, as it was once known. I could have made millions marketing these delightful bumfights-type videos that people love so much. Whatever happened to those? I wish I could lay my hands on some.

The ideal video contains violence, screaming, blood and an abundance of cheering from people who instinctively cover their face any time the camera swings around towards them. If I have time, I will go into the editing bay and help with the editorial decisions that go into structuring a good video. I will add sound effects, like cracking stalks of celery and smacking a big slab of ham with a wooden spoon each time a combatant hits their opponent. I’ve heard bones break in real life, and they make a distinctive sound. Unfortunately, most Americans have never been involved in lethal hand to hand fighting and don’t understand what things really sound like. Take it from a badass like me--it sounds like something from another planet.

Another excellent sound effect is the sound a frying pan full of hot grease makes when it hits a saucepan full of marbles. The underlying soundtrack is also important. Rather than use classical music or showtunes, I use a pre-recorded loop of heavy metal songs, sped up and distorted with a Q-tip placed on the tape machine rollers. It does not sound bad, actually. Disturbing, of course. But bad?

Not really, not really.

One of the most gripping and audacious bumscuffles I ever saw was in Times Square. Never mind why I was there. Grubs McGee and Wheelchair Sam faced off against each other for a full half an hour before one of those rent-a-cops on a horse broke it up. Grubs used a pliers, a shoe and a trash bag to knock Wheelchair Sam off his game. Wheelchair Sam, for those of you who haven't been to New York City, was an iconic fixture in the neighborhood. He claimed to have had his legs taken off by a sadistic interrogator in a North Korean prison camp.

Actually, he was a forgetful diabetic. I do not relish the days of watching bumscuffles and placing small wagers on the outcome with complete strangers. I do not miss the days of weirdos and freaks being in charge of who could walk on whatever part of the sidewalk. There is no nostalgia for the days of wondering whether to shoot someone in the leg and run for the nearest brightly lit bodega. New York City is now a liveable place, and Rudy made it so. I used to relish the thought of Rudy being President.

Finally, let me address the issue of wagering on a bumscuffle. Wagering on bumscuffles is not a crime per se, at least, not if the two parties engaged in said transaction do so without intent to profit outrageously and then work behind the scenes to encourage the bumscuffle or to affect its outcome. I have been known to toss pieces of plywood, detached rebar or heavy stones towards combatants and yell at them to ‘cowboy up’ but I did so only because I believe in the spirit of competition.

I claim the mantle of having invented the word and the term "bumscuffle," even though it really wasn't that original. I just liked the term, because it sounded gritty without being frightening. Two bums, scuffling for petty cash, harmless, really. I went so far as to trademark the name, the rights in perpetuity, and the licensing of the term. I wanted "bumscuffle" to be another "Just Do It."

Sadly, it never took off.

I'm Afraid The Rabbits Were My Idea

A lifetime of snap decisions and rage has come back to haunt me, I am afraid.

When you read this, please remember. It was the 1970s. We did things differently back then. People actually thought Jimmy Page worshipped the devil and was handed inspiration simply by saying a backwards anti-prayer. People thought Kiss were a real band.

If you told someone that you had a magic crystal in your pants that kept Catholics from seeing into your aura, they'd believe you and want to know where they could get one. People believed that UFOs, magicians and clairvoyants were the real McCoy--as in, dude, that's totally the truth and my cousin Rufus, he was doing a magic trick, and the aliens took him into their spaceship and made him tell them that, in the future, we're all going to live in mansions on the moon.

Truckers were king, as evidenced by that song I can't remember. Television jiggled. It was all just a badly dressed, nylon catsuit sort of hazy nightmare. One of my jobs back then was to help deliver riot control vehicles to less-than-savory regimes.

Father entrusted me to go with this fellow that he put in charge of the program, named Peej, I believe, and I used to really despise those trips. Father's other ship at the time, the cargo transport vessel The Captain Pepperkorn, was boring and slow.

It sunk in 1981--deliberately. I sold it to help make a coral reef where there didn't need to be one. Anyway, we took twenty riot control scooper vehicles--that is, a basic bread truck-style riot control vehicle with the basic armor package and the patented Rogers Defence Corporation Protester Scooper cage mounted on the front--to the regime of one Ferdinand Marcos. I believe he was the president for life of Thailand, or perhaps Borneo. Philippines? Not sure.

We sailed into port one rainy afternoon and offloaded our cargo. It was then that I decided to venture into the cutthroat world of rabbit's foot trading.

In the 1970s, every single, solitary American citizen carried a rabbit's foot and kept two or three at home for good luck.

Show up with one nowadays and someone will charge you with a hate crime. It's no secret--the Democratic Party set out to destroy the rabbit's foot manufacturing industry because of dirty money that was being spent by the makers of those stupid and annoying little troll dolls. Ugh! No one cool had one of those! If you had a troll dangling from your GTO key, people would either think you had your chick's car or you were a major asswipe, in the vernacular.

This charming practice was a given, though. A given. You had your GTO car key, with your lucky rabbit's foot and your picture of your girl, and they were fastened together with a carabiner clip. That was how everyone knew you were cool, you see. Lame-o's carried a flashlight and their mommy's picture. You had to be cool, otherwise, you were a turd or an asswipe, or, even worse, a femmy little fucking asswipe turdball. You could be a jerkwad, provided you had money. Being a jerkwad was okay then, but if your dad lost all of his money, that made you a douchebag and a wimpass, and you didn't want that to happen.

Pardon my French, I'm just telling you how it was.

Anyway, we were empty of our cargo, we were getting ready to sail back to Long Beach and wait for the next shipment to go out, and someone struck up a conversation with a very agitated fellow. It seemed that the owner of a large rabbit farm was bankrupt, and wished to sell his flocks or whatever of rabbits to a fellow in Argentina for a fairly steep price.

Argentina was going through a rough time, and the beef industry was suffering. The average Argentine loved meat, couldn't afford beef, but would definitely eat rabbit meat. Peej thought it was a terrible idea, but what the hell? I wasn't about to sail back home empty handed.

This was a great way to pocket a little loot, ship some rabbits to Argentina, and still make it back to Long Beach, California. What I didn't know was that the Strait of Magellan is largely impassable at certain times of the year, so we had to abandon our attempts to sail to Argentina.

And, what I also didn't know, was that it would take a month and a half to even accomplish this task, and we only had two weeks to get back to Long Beach. And what I really, really didn't know was that forty thousand rabbits will drive you out of your mind after fifteen minutes on a ship.

The chattering and the eating and the rattling of the cages drove us all batty within a week. We struggled to get to the Strait and then, when we turned back, we were beside ourselves. We were running low on staples, I was running out of earplugs, and the crew was miserable. When we turned back to head towards the nearest land, we realized that we had to get rid of the rabbits somehow. If we sailed due north from where we were stopped, we could have dumped the rabbits in the Galapogos Islands.

However, that would have landed us in a bit of trouble. Plus, we didn't think we could make it.

Peej went to the nautical maps, and came up with a stunning choice. Macquarie Island. So, in just a little more than a week, we turned back from the Strait of Magellan and sailed to Macquarie Island. This was at full speed, mind you. What reassured us, was that it was green, it was covered with all kinds of animal life, and forty thousand rabbits? Perfect fit.

Perfect fit.

Sadly, this has turned out to be a bit of a problem:

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology. But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday. Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars (US$16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the "Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement. The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem - even with the best of intentions, the study said.

I did not know that the Aussies put kitty cats there to eat all of my abandoned rabbits.

It's not like forty thousand caged rabbits would adversely affect the biosphere of an isolated island in the south Pacific ocean, right? Someone must have had a gripe about it, hence the cats. It probably made sense at the time, but I'll let you in on a little secret--the Australians are the stupidest people on the planet. Everything they do is stupid. They would use a shotgun and a bolo knife to open a can of tuna and would lose three fingers in the process. They really are that dumb.

Plus, they're drunk all the time. The only thing that sustains the population of Australia is beer. Otherwise, those nincompoops would be humping dingoes behind dumpsters. Had I bonded with any of the rabbits, or realized that I was abandoning a small fortune in rabbit's foot trinkets, I probably would have been sad on the day when we broke open the cages and threw the rabbits onto the shore from the extended gangplank of  The Captain Pepperkorn.

Have you ever seen a grown man throw a rabbit with one hand and drink Schlitz out of a bottle with the other? That's me! The truth was, you had to be drunk in order to stand the smell. It was a fateful day.

I think Jimmy Carter got elected President on that day. I don't know. I've never understood the International Date Line. Why should I? I have people to take care of that crap for me.

How I Inspired the Song "Holding Out For a Hero" 

When you live in New York City, as I did for many years, and work in the business world, you tend to overlap into what some might call "the entertainment industry" and what others might call "the playground of whores."

I was never a man-whore, but I came awfully close on occasion. I won't bore you with the details. There are prudes out there, of course. Let me just say that I practically invented the practice of running around naked on the roof of a building in which I did not live. 

My life was fast-paced, furious, and full of energy. I needed a town to thrive in, and New York City was that kind of a town in the 1980s. I would get up at three a.m. and go to work, and work until seven p.m., sometimes on a Sunday. I would eat lunch or go to a nightclub and dance all night.

It was not unusual for my days to melt and blend into one another and last 48 hours--with ninety minutes of sleep in the middle. I didn't care. The moon held no rules for me--I didn't care what a lunar day was. I was able to work, dance, party, and eat on a clock entirely of my own making. Forget the clock--I threw clocks in the trash all of the time. I threw things a lot in those days--clocks, trash cans at buses, people who were slow, small bags of food, groceries, basketballs that rolled up to my feet, even expensive jewelry.  I would walk right in to the office, rip something from the wall, and hurl it into a waste-paper-basket. Sometimes, I even did this to my own things and my own jewelry. The problem with that is, after you do that a few times, you miss dental appointments, rings, and you don't have anything in the house for the kids to eat.

I had to keep a handful of strategically placed clocks around so that I could remember to be on time for getting my teeth cleaned. Hence, the world famous "ceiling clocks" and "ceiling valuables" of Norman Rogers. Have you heard of them?

A song that I inspired because of how I lived my life, at least in part, was this song:

Do you see that manic frenzy? That dedication to dancing and having a good time, above all else? And those beautiful clothes and hair? That's me, in a nutshell.

Imagine me in my spats and tuxedo, mink coat and top hat, dancing and having a fabulous time.

Now, to set the record straight, I did not inspire the writingof the song, but I had a hand in bringing it to the public. I knew the singer, who was named Bonnie Tyler. Her real name, was, in fact, Bonnie Tyler, but she had changed it from something or other to something I don't recall. We had great times, but I recall that we did not see eye to eye on her attire--I always favored a woman who was more understated in her dress, more Coco Chanel than Bartertown Tramp.

Bonnie wore a lot of wristbands, and she didn't even own a watch! Oh, it was a crazy time. In the 1980s--and I could write books about this--women were free to wear whatever they wanted. They could wear headbands and not even need to keep hair or perspiration out of their eyes. They could cut the sleeves off of old sweaters and wear them on their legs to keep themselves from getting cold while dancing. They could wear beads and bangles and hoops and danglies and doodlies and wingdings and it was all about fashion, okay?

She did not like the tuxedo look, which was my trademark, before I shifted to the blue shirt, tan chinos, and brown leather boat shoes, sansthe socks. Well, because of the fashion of the day, I wore my tuxedo pants pretty tight. I split a few of them open, I will admit. In show business, of course, when one is relaxing in the dressing room or in a neutral area, the pants come off so that there won't be a crease worn into them by sitting down. By 1988 or so I relaxed the fit and stopped wearing them so tight. I even wore the bowties that were tied, rather than just draped around the collar of my shirt. I believe I had a bowtie that had piano keys on it, but I ended up losing that tie when I had to administer first aid during a bum scuffle and help splint a man's leg after he had been thrown from a loading dock onto a pile of pallets. Or was it the tie that hung straight down, that was square on the end? Did I wear that with a tuxedo? I would be willing to bet you that I looked foolish if I did. I have a hard time remembering--the kids were always complaining about being home alone and hungry, and I kept having to hire housekeepers that would get me drunk in order to secure raises. What a weird time.

It was also a confrontational time. When someone asked you what you were doing, you would immediately strike a dramatic pose and say, "that's for me to know and you to find out!" We would do things like stay up for days, start fights with people in fake leather clothing, burn down the lavatory in a nightclub, and--this is sort of how we bonded--we would ride around Midtown Manhattan sticking up through the sunroof of a limousine, throwing champagne glasses at the homeless. You didn't shake hands--you flipped people off. You didn't wave goodbye--you waved someone away from your face. You didn't air kiss--you blew someone a kiss when they were falling down the stairs backwards.

Did you know that, just before I became an international pop star, for about six frantic weeks in the summer of 1984, I had a small part on Days of Our Lives?

[The song, "Holding Out For a Hero"] It was also used in the background of a famous scene in the 1984 episode of the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives, where anti-hero Bo Brady races to stop the love of his life, Hope Williams, from marrying the despicable Larry Welch.

I played a businessman with shadowy presence who handed envelopes of money to various characters, and then I would say gruff things like "make it happen!" and "that's none of your business!" and "get out of here, you fool!" My character was supposed to be revealed as a powerful businessman whose face was disfigured by acid thrown at him by a jilted lover--played by a woman on the show whose name I forget. She had the heaving bosoms as her trademark--she would rush into a room out of breath, chest heaving, and say things like, "how could you betray me?"

NO--you will not find me on that site called "IMDB." I was not a SAG actor, nor did I consent to join the union because I abhor unions and I abhor being tracked on the Internet. Removing this sort of information has become a full-time job for Mr. Peej, my new assistant. Thus, my work is credited on the original episodes, but I was paid a gentleman's salary, not a SAG scale salary for my work--I was the investment advisor to a husband and wife who produced the show in New York City.

Anyway, during the conclusion of that song and my time on the show, I was chased into an alley and shot behind the church where the obligatory happy wedding was being held, and my hand fell to the pavement, allowing a cassette tape to spill out of it. This would dramatically conclude a story arc that had some people worked up in a tizzy--on the tape was proof that one of the characters was possessed by the devil! Pretty heady stuff for 1984! Ah, it was a grand time. The ratings were terrible, and the story arc was eventually abandoned and left hanging.

Admittedly, acting was not my strong suit, although I am told that the old tapes hold up pretty well. Miranda has plans to put some of them on a compilation DVD that she wants to show her therapist.