{"id":718,"date":"2007-06-03T12:23:51","date_gmt":"2007-06-03T16:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/about\/"},"modified":"2008-03-25T08:34:55","modified_gmt":"2008-03-25T12:34:55","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/about","title":{"rendered":"About Uncle John"},"content":{"rendered":"

Within a nine month period, Uncle John had a niece and two nephews named Jerusha, Brendan, and Joshua, but that’s not how he got his name. Kristi or Rachel was probably the first person to call him that. He was already a stepfather, by virtue of Terie<\/a> and Bruce<\/a>, but was never called Stepfather John, thank goodness. Lots of exceptional young people now call him Uncle John on a regular basis and he likes it that way. Marty<\/a> calls him GrandyJohn, and he likes that even more. Nobody ever called him Daddy, and that makes him sad at times, but that’s just the way things work out.\n<\/p>\n

The best way to know more about Uncle John is to frequent this log, but if you want to go to school on the guy, you can learn something from what he likes and what he doesn’t like.\n<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014 \u2014\n<\/p>\n

UNCLE JOHN LIKES\u2014\n<\/p>\n

Dana<\/a>
\nIn fact, he likes her a lot.\n<\/p>\n

Family<\/a>
\nEspecially his Mombo<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Exercise<\/a>
\nBecause his ticker came from his Dadbo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Art<\/a>
\nNot Uncle Art, who he also liked a lot, but the other kind\u2014paintings by Paulo Veronese, Maurice Utrillo, Carl Rungius, Paul Klee, Andrew Wyeth, or Sheldon Tapley. He’ll always take time to appreciate a D\u00fcrer<\/a> print, a Blake<\/a> watercolor, a Mucha<\/a> poster, a Stickley<\/a> chair, a Rockwell<\/a> cover, a Schwitters<\/a> collage, a Patterson<\/a> woodblock, a Wright<\/a> interior, a Cassandre<\/a> litho, a Kent<\/a> engraving, a Link<\/a> image, a Watterson<\/a> strip, or a Glaser<\/a> design.<\/p>\n

Pirates<\/a>
\nFor good or ill, they’ve always been lurking nearby, outside, underneath, and inside.\n<\/p>\n

Television<\/a>
\nHe thinks Mission: Impossible<\/a> was the pinnacle of series television. In addition to great vintage shows like The Rifleman<\/a>, Combat!<\/a> and The Wild, Wild West<\/a>; animated classics like The Adventures of Jonny Quest<\/a> and Rocky and His Friends<\/a>; and obscure gems like The New Breed<\/a>, The Rogues<\/a>, Tenspeed & Brownshoe<\/a>, and The Yellow Rose<\/a>, he also thoroughly enjoyed The Prisoner<\/a>, Kung Fu<\/a>, thirtysomething<\/a>, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.<\/a>, and Firefly<\/a>. He still hasn\u2019t gotten over the cancellation of Eyes<\/a>, Day Break<\/a>, or The Nine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Words<\/a>
\nHis favorite living writers are Allan W. Eckert<\/a>, Paul Watkins<\/a>, Tom Wolfe<\/a>, Peggy Noonan<\/a>, Sebastian Junger<\/a>, and Brendan Adkins<\/a>. He also likes Homer, Tolstoy, Emerson, Kipling, Twain, Hemingway, and Clavell, but, unfortunately, they’re dead. In all seriousness, at different points in life, he’s found significance in the creative insights of Michel de Montaigne, Carl Jung, Alfred Korzybski, Ayn Rand, Morihei Ueshiba, Koichi Tohei, Gyorgy Kepes, Ann Wigmore, Mark Prophet, Juno Jordan, Ralph Ellison, Irwin Shaw, Twyla Tharp, Deepak Chopra, and Harlan Hubbard.\n<\/p>\n

Motion Pictures<\/a>
\nAt the top of Uncle John’s list are movies like this: Forbidden Planet, The Great Escape, Silverado, The Big Country, Out of Africa, The Player, Groundhog Day, The Pale Rider, Braveheart, The Sting, Will Penny, The Conversation, Gorky Park, The Cowboys, Spirited Away, Indian Summer, Master and Commander, The Princess Bride, Fitzcarraldo, Nothing in Common, The Last of the Mohicans, Amadeus, Five-Man Army, The Rounders, Blazing Saddles, Open Range, The Verdict, Red Sun, The Hustler, Quigley Down Under, The Great Santini, Z, The Man Who Would Be King, Hell in the Pacific, The Razor\u2019s Edge, Sneakers, My Dinner with Andre, A Clockwork Orange, and It\u2019s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. (Like hell he’s gonna provide links for all those!)\n<\/p>\n

Uncle John has a very likable business with Dana<\/a> in Danville, Kentucky. He also likes to make greeting cards<\/a>, collect vintage plastic toys<\/a>, catch fish<\/a> from Lake Huron, listen to music<\/a>, shoot all types of firearms<\/a>, and, like everybody, spend time with his friends<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014 \u2014\n<\/p>\n

UNCLE JOHN DOES NOT LIKE\u2014\n<\/p>\n

Coyotes, opossums, cormorants, and snapping turtles.
\nIdiots who yell at cyclists and runners.
\nCon artists who aren’t in the movies.
\nComputers that won’t cooperate.
\nSloppy or incompetent work of any kind.
\nManipulation (except advertising and politics, of course).
\nSquandered potential (especially when it’s his own).
\nLies (that includes advertising and politics).
\nThe absurdities of safety-net health care.
\nLeaf blowers, hydrogenated fat, do-it-yourself junkyards.
\nLitterbugs, deprogrammers, identity thieves.
\nIdeological elites.
\nMeth pushers.
\nAbortionists.\n<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014 \u2014\n<\/p>\n

Some other things you may want to know about Uncle John:\n<\/p>\n

He normally doesn’t write about himself in the third person. He wishes he could still be a gardener, teacher, and practitioner of Aikido (and perhaps someday he will). He’d like to run a half-marathon in under two hours. He hopes to visit Alaska, Chile, Norway, Slovakia, South Africa, and Japan. He looks forward to documenting all the details of his lifelong “Legend” project before he heads to that big playset in the sky. He wants to build a studio in The Knobs and live to see each of his nieces and nephews become grandparents, unless he or she is destined to bequeath only influence, rather than genes\u2014like him\u2014and in that case will always be welcome to stop by the Valley Retreat for a visit with an old man, taste some Amarula<\/a>, and listen to the Blue Bank Farm<\/a> whippoorwills…\n<\/p>\n

\n\u2014 \u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within a nine month period, Uncle John had a niece and two nephews named Jerusha, Brendan, and Joshua, but that’s not how he got his name. Kristi or Rachel was probably the first person to call him that. He was already a stepfather, by virtue of Terie and Bruce, but was never called Stepfather John, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}