Memorial day is one of my favorite holidays, and not just because it is one of the first excuses of the new summer season to dress up in shorts, tank tops and flip flops for our ritual orgy of brats and beer in the back yard.

For one thing, it was a pretty darned fine weekend for those of us who like to look at race cars and girls in skimpy outfits. This year, it all started with the Grand Prix of Monaco on Sunday at 8:00 AM (3:00 AM if you prefer not to see your effete European superstars rocketing past the yacht club on tape delay).

One by one they came in to find their seats for our concert.

Some of them were leaning on walkers, shuffling carefully along in those little mobile cages, with the two wheels in front and hand brakes. Some of the walkers even had baskets, although I didn't see any with little bells or squeezey horns. In a sense, they were back to relying a sort of bicycle, like they probably did so many years ago. Only these bikes are (hopefully) a whole lot slower.

A few of them where in powered wheel chairs, gliding silently and triumphantly through the door and down the aisle, driving with their little joysticks and a look of satisfaction. Others were in the old style wheel chairs, this one helped by a uniformed assistant and that one by a younger relative there for a weekend visit.

I just got home from a quick trip to Utah. The journey involved riding four hours each way packed into an airplane full of adults coughing like chain smokers on brand new exercise bikes, babies screaming between sneezes, and Japanese tourists wearing surgical masks and looking frightened. It's a good thing I had my little bottle of hand sanitizer with me.

In Utah I went to a ski resort called Snowbird, to speak and do some music for a conference. You know, about the only thing I can think of that is more fun than going to a ski resort in the Rocky Mountains in May is being paid to be there, without being a fifty-seven year old bus boy in a Ski Bunny Sushi Bar.

Sunday is Mother's day. This is a holiday in which the men of America team up with their children to treat Mom to a sumptuous breakfast in bed, featuring chocolate chip waffles and grapefruit juice. Having no idea where Mom keeps the coffee beans, Dad and the kids run Hamster Kibbles through the coffee grinder, figuring "What the heck, how bad could it be?"

After breakfast the family watches excitedly as Mom unwraps the 21-piece non-stick skillet set they bought her from Costco, laboring under the assumption that non-stick skillets are exactly what she dreams about all day, every day, in her office at the law firm.

Of course there are the commercial Mother's Day cards, with pictures of flowers and heartfelt messages like:

Mom, you're beautiful and fragrant;
You've helped us grow from boys to men.
Without you, Dad would be a vagrant;
Oops, the cat puked in the Den.

First published April 16, 2006

Well, it's Easter. This weekend commemorates the sacrifice that Jesus made for all of us when he was crucified, suffered, and died for the sins of all mankind, then rose and ascended into heaven. So how do Americans celebrate the holiest event in the Christian calendar?

With Peeps.