FYI, I’ll be celebrating the New Year in Memphis this evening.

Things are going fairly well here, although as you can see, the weather’s a bit dingy. I’m writing from the pictured Starbucks, the one at White Station and Poplar. This location has significance for me because my wife worked in this very building back when we were in college. No, it wasn’t a Starbucks then; it was a Pancho’s taco outlet (a local Memphis chain).

As I boasted on Twitter, I had Corky’s BBQ last night, which is the best. Sorry y’all didn’t get any.

Here’s a weird coincidence, by the way: The other day when I went to Hobby Lobby to paint my masterwork, I noticed that the building on Forest in Columbia that was once, briefly, a Corky’s (not a very good one, though — not up to Memphis standards), I saw that it is now a Pancho’s Mexican food place. It’s like there’s a wormhole between Memphis and that one spot in Colatown…

Meanwhile, based on e-mails I’ve received from the two Steves running for mayor, Columbia is trying to emulate Memphis-style racial tensions. Not cool.

For its part, Memphis is pinning its hopes for a bright 2010 partly on the fact that, 32 years after his “death,” Elvis’ appeal remains unrivaled. Really. Hey, you make do with the assets you have…

Maybe the economy hasn’t recovered yet, and maybe some of us don’t quite have jobs yet, and maybe I haven’t sold my house yet (buyers are just too picky, or decision-challenged, or something), but at least I know I’m on my way to a healthy old age, if not immortality.

Check out the good news in the WSJ today:

This month alone, an analysis in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who drink three to four cups of java a day are 25% less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who drink fewer than two cups. And a study presented at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting found that men who drink at least six cups a day have a 60% lower risk of developing advanced prostate cancer than those who didn’t drink any.

Earlier studies also linked coffee consumption with a lower risk of getting colon, mouth, throat, esophageal and endometrial cancers. People who drink coffee are also less likely to have cavities, gallstones, cirrhosis of the liver, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, or to commit suicide, studies have found. Last year, researchers at Harvard University and the University of Madrid assessed data on more than 100,000 people over 20 years and concluded that the more coffee they drank, the less likely they were to die during that period from any cause.

Excellent. And while my income stream isn’t quite what it should be yet, for Christmas I got three pounds of Starbucks beans (two of them from my man Mike Fitts, as reliable a crew member as Preserved Killick), and a new Starbucks card with $20 on it.

See you at Starbucks.

Lately, I’ve been using the term “jobby-job” to describe what I am forced to seek since I live in the one advanced country that hasn’t figured out health care.

This is distinguished from “work.” “Work,” while not as plentiful as in better economic times, is not as hard to find as a Jobby-Job. Work describes what I’m doing for ADCO, or what I did for The New York Post and other clients in the last few months. Actually, I enjoy doing this kind of work, far more than I ever thought I would in my regular-paycheck days. (Which is an interesting thing to learn about oneself.) And it has started to be apparent to me that this sort of work could be pretty lucrative once the economy warms back up, putting me in a position to maybe make more money than I did at the paper. If I can get myself fully established as a consultant while the economy is crawling, I’ll be ready to catch the wave when it comes, or so my more optimistic thought trains run.

The trouble is, I gotta have benefits. And that means a jobby-job. Which means I’m a distracted consultant, because I’m constantly looking to find me one of them. There are some intriguing possibilities in that area, including one or two positions that would promise to be very satisfying work, along with paying the bills. I would be very happy to land one of those. At the same time, there are other jobs (mostly stuff I find on the Internet) that I’m going after purely for the bennies. Oh, and if you are one of the prospective employers to whom I’ve applied, your position of course is one of those that I would find intensely rewarding…

And yes, I derived the term “jobby-job” from the classic video imbedded above, in which a crotchety character says to our protagonist:

And this one — Snoop Doggy Dogg — need to get a Jobby-Job…

One more thing to share… when Snoop Doggy Dogg first came on the scene it cracked me up, because a friend of mine had long used the term “doggy-dog world” to describe our Hobbesian state, based on what a linguistically challenged friend had mistakenly said once to her. It always brings a smile to me, as it did to Eve way back when.

And speaking of Hobbes, for those in this country without health coverage, life can indeed be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

With my mind on my money and my money on my mind, I am, yr most hmbl & obdnt srvnt…

Speaking of stuff in the NYT today, Kathryn brings my attention to this piece:

States that have already broadly expanded health care coverage are pushing back against the Senate overhaul bill, arguing that it unfairly penalizes them in favor of states that have done little or nothing to extend benefits to the uninsured.

With tax revenues down and budgets breaking, the states — including Arizona, California, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin — say they cannot afford to essentially subsidize other states’ expansion of health care….

Of course, the state that has done the most for its citizens’ health care is South Carolina…

OK, OK, now that we’ve all split our sides laughing, we turn to the cold reality, which is that, as one of the last states that would ever consider going out of its way to ensure its citizens have adequate health care (because doing so would involve the — shudder — gummint), South Carolina is one of those most likely to suffer if those folks from Up North get their way.

Any time anybody is plotting to screw over “states that have done little or nothing to extend benefits to the uninsured,” we should holler, HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!…

There they go again, those Yankees, trying to mess things up for us. I’ll bet a lot of them have names ending in “i,” too. (Sorry, couldn’t resist, seeing as how it’s Kathryn who brought this up.)

Will newspapers — or rather, institutions that once were “newspapers” — ever figure out the new business model? Or will their plunge toward extinction run its course, leaving it to others to chart the new course?

As near as I can tell, the full-service, general-circulation local daily is already dead. Dead to me, anyway. It’s certainly not what I signed on to work for all those years ago. I didn’t just lose a job in 2009, I had my horse shot out from under me. It would be bad enough to see someone else doing a job I loved; it’s something else altogether to see no one doing it. And I’m talking industrywide, not just my old paper. What’s sad is to see the poor creature writhing on the ground, with no one yet having put it out of its misery.

And I lost my horse because the horse lost that which sustained it — the advertising business model. It wasn’t about a transaction between journalist and reader. That relationship was always underwritten by a third party — the advertiser. That’s what went away. Over the last few years, publishing a newspaper ceased to be like having a license to print money. And the business-side folks who came up in those fat days have not figured out how to support newsrooms and editorial page editors (and, more importantly to readers, world-class editorial cartoonists).

Ironically, the market for news and commentary is as vibrant as ever. People are hungry for what we do. Trouble is, no one has figured out how to make it pay. Least of all the people who run newspapers.

There’s a piece in the NYT today that initially seems to say that this year, finally, newspapers are going to start paying for their content. Over the past few years, one sees a story like this every few months, but nothing happens. That’s because, after working themselves into a state over how foolish they’ve been giving away their content for the past decade and a half, newspapers buck each other up enough to say, “Dammit, we’re going to start charging for it!” But then, they all watch each other to see who’s going to step out first, and when no one does, they collapse like jelly, and resume quivering and moaning over their plight until the next time they almost get up the nerve to take the plunge.

Here’s the latest such story. As you’ll see, it starts out full of bluster:

Over more than a decade, consumers became accustomed to the sweet, steady flow of free news, pictures, videos and music on the Internet. Paying was for suckers and old fogeys. Content, like wild horses, wanted to be free.

Now, however, there are growing signs that this free ride is drawing to a close.

Newspapers, including this one, are weighing whether to ask online readers to pay for at least some of what they offer…

Before collapsing, jellylike:

So will future consumers look back on 2010 as the year they finally had to reach into their own pockets?

Industry experts have their doubts, saying that pay systems might work, but in limited ways and only for some sites. Publishers who sounded early this year as though they were raring to go have not yet taken the leap, and the executives who advocate change tend to range from vague to cautious in making any predictions about fundamentally changing the finances of their battered businesses.

Although is still maintains that A Line Has Been Crossed:

But one thing clearly has shifted already, in a year rife with magazine closures and newspaper bankruptcies: conventional wisdom among media companies has swung hard from the belief that pay walls would only curb traffic and stifle ad revenue, to the view that media businesses need to try something new, because the current path appears to lead to extinction.

Like you’re not extinct already.

By the way, I’m not saying newspapers have to charge for their content, although I suspect that in some way either they, or the entities that inherit their role of keeping the republic informed, will do so. The trick is how. And if I knew the answer, I’d be making millions as a consultant. Which I’m not.

So while I may scoff at the fecklessness of my former industry, I really don’t know more than they do. But maybe, being on the outside, I’m in a better position to figure it out, even though I can’t tell yet.

One thing I will say, though: I was wrong to say that no one is doing what I used to do. Actually, I’m still doing it. At least, I’m doing the blogging part, which for the last four years I was at the paper was the one thing I was doing that was forward-looking. Other people who once made newspapers what they were are still doing it in their ways. Jeffrey Day has gone beyond me and started selling ads on his blog (although not to the extent of the Shop Tart), and Robert Ariail is out there winning major international awards for what he is still doing.

So maybe those industry-watchers who are still watching the industry are looking in the wrong place…

Last week I experienced a different sort of Christmas party. And I had a great time.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been working on becoming a Mad Man, hanging out at a local advertising agency. It started with the president of the company letting me use an empty office to blog and work on my job search, and has gradually morphed into my helping out with some business development, consulting and PR work — and a little writing, as well — all while I keep up the job hunt.

Not to continue being coy, that company is ADCO, here on Pickens Street just off of Gervais. (And that’s my ADCO office you see in the background of such recent videos as this one and this one.) The president, Lanier Jones, is also president of my Rotary. If you don’t know Lanier, you may remember him from a column I wrote about going with him to give blood for the first time.

Anyway, Lanier and his partners Brian Murrell and Lora Prill and all the folks — including my son’s mother-in-law, Ginny Herring, with whom I now share a precious grandchild — have all been wonderfully welcoming, and we’ve had some good times together so far. Such as the Christmas party Friday.

It was an unusual party. We had it at Hobby Lobby, and, once the refreshments were cleared away, Brian handed out blank canvases and urged us to create some artwork for the walls of ADCO. He provided some guidance, fortunately — he wanted something in the style of Mark Rothko (he particularly held out the one at right as an example), and in colors that would work well in the office.

Unfortunately, I did my painting over in a corner without much reference to what everybody else was doing, and my painting came out a little … different. I did the rectangles of color, but then I couldn’t resist the urge to have something going on in each of my rectangles. And I ended up in a weird place. Anyway, I proudly took my painting home to show off, and I have the feeling that it would be OK with Brian if it stayed there. Nor, I notice, has my wife hung it on the refrigerator. Of course, it’s almost as big as the refrigerator…

If Brian decides it doesn’t pass muster and I get to keep it, it’s for sale — for, um, $100 … I mean,$10,000 (out of which I’ll happily reimburse Brian for the canvas and paints). Unless you think I should ask for more.

Actually, you’re probably thinking something else… in which case keep it to yourself. Sheesh. Everybody’s gotta be a critic… Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll have you know I’m a freakin’ ARTIST, man, and I will not be contained by your petit bourgeois standards…

A warning: Some of you will find this disturbing, or at least inappropriate for this forum. That was the reaction I got the last time I shared a dream — a long, rambling thing in which I ran for governor, back in 2006. Since then I’ve sort of held back on the workings of my unconscious, deciding that that goes just a little bit farther into my thinking than my readers want to go.

But I wrote out this one with the intention of posting it, and now, after about 90 days delay, I figure I might as well post it. I wrote it out on Sept. 21, and it refers to the dream having occurred “last week,” so that places it about mid-September. The good news is that the weird after-effects of the dream are long gone now, but it really bothered me there for a couple of days.

This being the season in which we celebrate dreams — from Joseph‘s to Scrooge‘s — I’ll go ahead and get it completely out of my system by posting it here.

Several things to note before you read it: First, the title is a bit of a misnomer. I wasn’t actually a “terrorist” in the dream. I had just gotten mixed up with armed revolutionaries. I say this not to excuse this imaginary cabal. The distinction I wish to draw is more semantic than moral. “Revolutionaries” is closer to the mark than “terrorists,” although the effect is often the same, and sometimes the tactics are indistinguishable. The odd thing is that I am no more a revolutionary than I am a terrorist, which underlines the weirdness of the dream. To fully understand just how uncomfortable, how alarmed, how disturbed to my very core I was in this dream situation, you have to understand that engaging in armed insurrection is pretty much unimaginable to me. I don’t even much like peaceful demonstrations in the street. Even a “good revolution” such as our own in 1775 leaves me uncomfortable. I don’t think I could have justified standing at Lexington and Concord and firing on those redcoats, long before the Declaration was signed. Once we had declared ourselves a separate nation, fine. But firing on the duly constituted authority without such a declaration… that bothers me. I have such a respect for the rule of law that it really, really bothers me. Yet I like to think of myself as a patriot, which is why I like reading about John Adams so much — he had so much respect for the rule of law that he defended the soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre (successfully), yet he took a backseat to no one in his zeal for independence. I’ve always been a John Adams guy, not a Sam Adams. John was my kind of revolutionary.

Yet in this dream I had fallen in with some Samuel Adams types. And the weirdest thing was that, while I wanted nothing to do with their violence, they had actually been inspired by something I had written.

And that seems to be the core of the dream, if you want to give it the Sigmund treatment. Over the years, I’ve taken a lot of strong stands on innumerable issues. At the time, people often praised me for my “courage” or excoriated me for my presumption, but I brushed all that off at the time, saying taking such stands — provoking thought and conversation about important issues — was my job, and I was just doing it as well as I could. But there may have been a strain of anxiety behind that insouciance, a suppressed worry that there could be consequences from taking these positions. And indeed, such consequences began to be apparent once I started job-hunting. From the prospective employers who speak of my “baggage” to the lucrative jobs I can’t even consider applying for (say, that $170,000 communications director job at the state lottery), consequences have been felt, although usually not overtly.

And that’s what I think this dream was about. Anyway, here it is:

Terrorist dream

This was an unusually vivid dream I had last week. It went on and on, and was very detailed and nuanced. It affected my mood the rest of the day. See if you can make any sense of it.

I was trapped in a very bad situation. At the earliest point in the dream that I can remember, I was about to take a fateful drive. For some reason, I associate the route I was about to take with one I took many times during the years when I lived in Jackson, TN – between Jackson and Memphis, roughly 80 miles. Not that it’s relevant where I was, but I think I was driving from Memphis to Jackson.

The problem was that I fully expected to be arrested at the other end of my trip. But for some reason I couldn’t just not go. I was definitely going to go, and I was definitely going to be arrested when I got there.

The charge? Near as I could make out, armed insurrection. Sound unlikely? Well, let’s hope so. But how I had gotten into this situation was neither here nor there. The problem was that I was in it, and it was really bad. I expected to be imprisoned for life.

All I could do about it was try to reduce the aggravating circumstances. For instance, it occurred to me that it would be a really good idea to ditch the weapons before being arrested. (What weapons? Apparently, a lot of weapons, including automatic ones, were involved.) Make sense? It did to me. Trouble was, when I suggested it to my co-conspirators, they really resisted it, and got very resentful and suspicious of me. Why was I backing out on them at THIS stage of the game, they wanted to know? Me, I was thinking that this was one dangerously crazy bunch of people I had somehow fallen in with.

The plan, as I understood it, was that we would make the drive in several vehicles, with several conspirators in each one. The idea was that we would be making our Big Move at the other end of the trip. The authorities knew that, and were planning their bust at that very moment. It was going to be quite a production, with lots of heavily armed cops coming down on us from all sides with those nylon jackets with their agency initials emblazoned on the back. I kept having premonitions of exactly what it would be like, and I was convinced that the very best thing would be if we looked entirely innocent when that happened.

Things started working out better than I expected, because when I started out on the drive, I was alone. Good. I was better off without those nut jobs. So all I needed to do was make sure there was nothing incriminating in the vehicle.

Trouble was, I couldn’t just stop and tear the car apart, because I was being followed. It was a discreet tail – the authorities didn’t want me to know I was being followed, but I knew; it wasn’t that hard to spot. Basically, they weren’t taking any chances. Although they knew where I was going, they were following to make sure I went there. So I took evasive action. I had to be cool about it so as not to make the tail aware that I knew he was following me. (Interestingly, the part of the tail was played by an acquaintance of mine here in Columbia – a very nice guy, a businessman with nothing menacing about him.) I had to ditch him without seeming to try.

So I went to a community breakfast – one of those fund-raiser type events with hundreds of people seated at tables in a banquet hall. In the middle of it, I rose from my seat and wove my way among the tables quickly toward an exit, as though I were headed to the men’s room. The tail was at first uncertain whether to make himself conspicuous by following me. But hesitantly, he rose and started after me, slowly at first, and then starting to trip over people in his hurry to catch up.

But I had gotten well ahead of him, and ducked out of the building by a back way, taking a couple of unlikely turns down alleys, across a parking lot, down a dead-end before hopping over a fence at a point where he couldn’t see me. By the time I was walking to my vehicle, he couldn’t possibly catch up without making it obvious to the world that he was chasing me. The best bet for him was to let me go and hope someone else along the route would pick me up, which I assumed would happen (this was a full, grand-slam Toby Esterhase type of surveillance operation).

But I had a few minutes. I had to keep driving, but while I did, I felt in the glove compartment and on and around the seats for anything incriminating. Thank goodness there were no weapons. I guess the others had taken them with them. And the car seemed pretty clean otherwise. I did pick up one worrisome document from the seat. I recognized it immediately as I glanced at it while driving. It was a copy of my original proposal that had led to all this madness. But on its face, it was innocent. It was a particularly legitimate, nonviolent political proposition – the kind of thing I write all the time. How it had gotten out of hand, I don’t know.

But I was thinking, rather than incriminating me, this could be helpful. If the only thing linking me to this plot was this document that did NOT propose violence or anything crazy, it would support a plea that my only connection was having made an innocent proposal, whatever others may have extrapolated from it later.

My only worry was that a college professor had written some comments on the document questioning whether the proposal didn’t go a bit too far. That worried me; a prosecutor could say, “Look, even this college professor – a person who should favor the free exchange of ideas – thinks this proposal was too radical.” But I could handle that, because I knew that what the professor meant was that my proposal that the university undertake the project I was proposing was simply beyond its purview. He was saying, it’s all very fine to discuss such things in the academy, but it’s not the academy’s job to act upon such ideas.

So I felt like I could defend myself, but I wasn’t sure. The professor’s comments might cast the document in a light that could do me in. Maybe it was better not to have the document at all. But there was nothing I could do about it now; I had to keep driving. I had no way of knowing whether the surveillance had picked me back up; perhaps I was being followed by someone better at it than the other guy. I just had to keep going, knowing I’d be arrested with whatever I had on me, on me.

I started visualizing the moment of the arrest, which would be dramatic. I’d be treated as armed and dangerous – pushed to the ground, a knee in the back, cuffed in the back before being dragged off.

And I really started to stress about it. I imagined the horror of knowing I was trapped, being locked up, helpless, knowing I’d likely never get out. I was anticipating the worst panic attack imaginable, without relief. It would go on and on.

It hadn’t happened yet. For the moment, I was free. But it was Going To Happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. This was my future, and I was just fully realizing what it meant….

Then I woke up. And for a few moments, I was really grateful that it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t this guy who was about to be thrown into prison for the rest of his life.

But then I remembered that I WAS this guy who was unemployed, and was quickly running out of money with which to pay the bills. And somehow, the anxiety from the dream attached to that. And even though it’s been several days since the dream, that feeling hasn’t gone away…

As I said above, it’s gone away now, which is a good thing. Actually, I was pretty much over it before I wrote the account. But I suppose the roots of the dream are still buried in there somewhere…

Now, having issued that challenge — based more on the play on words than anything else (I find the neuter “person” designation off-putting, and am therefore compelled to mock it; once you settle on a man and not a woman, TIME, why can’t you say “Man of the Year?” You saying he’s not a man?) — I’m not quite ready with mine. Mainly because I just started thinking about it a minute ago.

One thing’s for sure, though. I’ll not be going with Frank Rich’s pick, Tiger Woods, which was based in the kind of jaded smirkiness and contempt for the world that helps explain why I don’t read his stuff (this was brought to my attention by Kathryn):

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).

As of Friday, the Tiger saga had appeared on 20 consecutive New York Post covers. For The Post, his calamity has become as big a story as 9/11. And the paper may well have it right. We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating.

Being the conventional sort, I’d be more likely to go with the pick Rich scoffs at, Ben Bernanke.

More likely, but not quite. Although I like the way TIME is thinking, picking a South Carolinian. It’s interesting how many South Carolinians would make a national list of most embarrassing men (why “men?” because women have more sense than to make the list). Rich’s mention of The New York Post reminds me that that paper employed me for two days of the past year, which in turn reminds us of You Know Who. And once you start thinking along the lines of most embarrassing, you find several South Carolinians who coulda been contenders (as opposed to a bum, which is, let’s face it, what I am), such as:

• Our gov, who got the ball rolling with his adamant refusal to take stimulus funds for his state AFTER Congress had appropriated them, and then went on to… well, you know the rest, even if all you read is The New York Post.
• Joe Wilson, whose willingness to cash in on his “You lie!” outburst showed us to be the most nekulturny of states. Look it up, you non-Clancy readers.
• Jim DeMint, who set a new standard for partisan cynicism by seeing health care reform not as a chance to help America, but as an opportunity to bring the President to his “Waterloo.”
• Robert Ford — no, not the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard, but the state senator, who between advocating Confederate Memorial Day and calling for the return of video poker seemed determined to keep the Democratic Party in the game against all those embarrassing Republicans. If you check out the Jon Stewart video below, you’ll see he’s right up there — or down there — with the aforementioned GOPpers. And Michael Phelps, whom I had forgotten…
• My fellow Rotarian Rusty DePass, who perhaps should be disqualified for being the only one on this list to have apologized, repeatedly and consistently, for his behavior.

Then, if we turn away from South Carolinians, there are other possibilities — such as my old buddy Joe Lieberman, who seems to have pretty much killed health care reform all by himself (and folks, there’s really no point in passing what the Senate came up with instead of health care reform).

But actually, you know what? Inspired by an old gag of current U.S. Senator Al Franken, I may have a candidate in mind who tops them all. This candidate spent the last nine months without a job, which helps him personify the times. He has at one time or another endorsed Mark Sanford, Joe Wilson and Joe Lieberman, making him sorta kinda responsible for all of them. In fact, probably no one in the country has personally been let down more by Sen. Lieberman’s antics this year. And he’s really good-looking, so choosing him should please the ladies. Hmmm….

Mayor Bob sent this note over the weekend, inspired by Adam Beam’s story noting that the city has turned its finances around, saving its bond rating, and as a result will suspend its search for a city manager and stick with interim Steve Gantt for at least a year.

Here’s what Mayor Bob had to add to that:

I am attaching an article from The State about the City’s budget surplus. Steve
Gantt, staff and City Council have worked together to get the budget in line. Some
key points on the City’s General Fund:

1. The current budget is projected to have about a $6 million surplus-$4 million
currently.

2. Columbia’s accounting systems and books are in order. We have hired a new team in
Accounting and Treasury. Financial statements are current and are online. Our 2008
Audit is complete and the 2009 Audit will be on time.

3. As of 10-31-09 the City had $18 million in reserves and Bill Ellen expects $20-22
million by end of the budget year.

The City’s Water and Sewer Fund is in great shape. We will issue a total of nearly
$200 million in bonds for water and sewer projects.

We have taken steps to insure that the City’s books are never out of order again.
The City has hired an internal auditing firm and created an Audit Committee. The
City has adopted an Investment Policy.

Thanks!

Of course, it would be fine with me if they never hire another city manager. Columbia needs to ditch this form of government and hold the mayor accountable for the executive functions of city government. The fiscal ditch that the city’s been in for several years is attributable to the fact that there is no one voters can hold accountable now.

I find that this Advent I am becoming a way I thought I’d never be.

All my life, I’ve heard about how people gain weight during the holidays. I never did, partly because I’m not the kind who puts on weight easily (eat your hearts out), but also because I’m allergic to most of the things that fatten people up during the season. For instance, I can’t eat bakery goods — cake, pie, cookies, and the like. I’m slightly allergic — just enough to make it worthy avoiding — to wheat, and deathly so to the eggs and dairy products those things often contain.

But then I was unusually blessed with special baked goods I COULD eat on Thanksgiving. And my sister-in-law actually baked me a couple of extra loaves, which she froze, of the special banana and pumpkin breads she made for me, so I’m still eating those. Also, at about that same time I discovered a really good new way to make corn bread I could eat, and I’ve been baking and eating that pretty constantly. My wife would probably say it’s the beer, but I’m not drinking any more of that than usual. It’s the corn bread. I just had three pieces of it with my dinner.

The result? I’m not as svelte as usual.

And usually, I’m pretty fit, you know. In fact, ever since I learned on an episode of “24” that Jack Bauer is the same height and weight as I am normally (5’11”, 160 lbs.), I’ve summarized my genteel figger by saying I’m built just like Jack Bauer, only harder and tougher.

But now, I’ve put on a few pounds. How many? Well I can no longer wrestle Shute. If you’ve ever seen “Vision Quest,” you know what that means. I love that flick. I was a high school wrestler, so I really identify with the protagonist. He’s his school’s top wrestler at 190 lbs., with a chance of becoming state champion in that division. But he gets it into his head that he wants to take on the toughest wrestler in the state, a seemingly superhuman monster named Shute, and to do that he has to lose weight down to 168, which is quite a challenge. In fact, he threatens his health doing it.

I knew guys who did that in high school. My junior year, this kid named Jeter who was pretty scrawny to start with — 115 pounds — decided to wrestle at 98 pounds. So he starved and sweated to where the night of the match, he sat on the bench looking like a survivor (just barely) of the Bataan Death March. You wouldn’t have thought he could stand up, much less wrestle. He had a bag with several burgers from McDonald’s on the bench next to him. His time came, he went in and beat the little 98-lb. kid from the other team, came back and inhaled the burgers.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I weighed myself a couple of days back, and I was 171.6 lbs. So I’ve got to cut back, and work out some. Maybe I’ll get me one of those rubber suits like Loudon wore in the movie.

So if I make the weight, do you think Coach will let me wrestle Shute? Or have I missed my chance forever?