Jamie is a kleptomaniac, albeit a very selective one. She won’t steal just anything. Only small, inexpensive teaspoons.

There are, I’m sure, dozens of hotels and restaurants around the world wondering why they are one teaspoon short of a full set. Come to our house, open almost any kitchen drawer, and you’ll find it overflowing with foreign teaspoons. Our luggage is always considerably heavier at the end of a trip than it was at the beginning.

John and Margaret had heard this sordid side of my wife’s history, so they showed great wisdom when they purchased a birthday present for her. She ripped open the wrapping and found a souvenir South Australia teaspoon inside.

Good thinking, guys. A brilliant self-defense strategy if I’ve ever heard one.

Nevertheless, if I were you I’d count your silverware. I swear I heard something clinking in her pocket as we walked home.

Jamie’s birthday is on June 12, but the Doctors were kind enough to organize a dinner party to celebrate it a week early. Their daughter Mandy and husband Mark drove up from Adelaide.

Dinner was delicious, lots of big belly laughs were had, some of the Barossa’s best reds were consumed, and perhaps a sip or two of Drambuie may have slipped past our lips.

Thanks, John and Margaret and Mark and Mandy. You made it one of Jamie’s best birthdays celebrations ever.

This blue Tommy Bahama sweater has accompanied me on three trips around the world. It’s been by my side and on my back in dozens of countries and has traveled hundreds of thousand of miles. It’s kept me warm as far north as Iceland and as far south as Ushuaia.

Sadly, it has reached the end of the road. This threadbare knitwear has become tattered and torn. Faded and frayed. Ratty and ragged. Shapeless and shabby.

We were forced to put it down today. But rest assured, we were with it at the end, holding it closely, and making sure it knew that it was loved.

Farewell, my friend. We know you’re in a better place now.

If the Salvation Army can be considered a better place.

I told you that Lila Michaels, the contestant coordinator for Tic Tac Dough, was a ball of fire. Here’s how her son, legendary sports announcer Al Michaels, described her:

“She was a combination of Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers … She was hysterical and did things other mothers didn’t. She told dirty jokes. The other mothers weren’t like my mom.”

That was clearly true. After I unwittingly said that her son was my second favorite baseball announcer, Lila forgot all about protocol and procedure and told me she wanted me to appear on the next episode of Tic Tac Dough.

It was a very simple game based on tic tac toe. Each of the nine squares in the grid contained a different trivia category. Players took turns choosing a square and attempting to answer a question from the category found in that square. If he answered it correctly, that square was filled with his X. If the other player answered it, the square was filled with her O. The categories shuffled after each answer and changed positions on the grid. Just like tic tac toe, you had to answer three questions “in a row” to win the game.

Let’s say one of the categories was “History.” When the categories shuffled, that category might end up in the upper right hand corner of the grid. But when the categories were shuffled again, it might show up in the lower left hand corner. Or anywhere else on the grid. But as the contestants answer questions and X’s and O’s are added to the grid, there wouldn’t be enough squares left for all nine categories. Some of them were eliminated. You never knew which of the categories would remain on the grid after squares were eliminated and categories were shuffled.

I won the first two games I played. I didn’t just win, I freakin’ dominated. Kicked some game show butt. I was the Tic Tac Terminator.

Then came game number three. The one I had to win to walk away with the big money.

The worst thing that could possibly happen happened. One of the categories was “Baseball.” Now I just happened to know everything about baseball. I could tell you who won the American League batting title in 1929 and what his average was. I could tell you the starting line-up of the 1962 San Francisco Giants and how many games they won that season. Clearly, I would have been far more successful in life if my brain had been filled with useful information instead of meaningless baseball trivia and stats.

You may wonder why it’s a bad thing that my favorite category came up.

Because I completely forgot about the simple strategy of winning tic tac toe. Instead of trying to get a full row of X’s, I chose “Baseball” wherever it landed on the grid.

At one point I had two squares in row and could have easily won the game and the big bucks simply by getting the third one. But when they shuffled the trivia categories around the grid, “Baseball” ended up where another X wouldn’t help me. Didn’t matter. I went for it.

Wink Martindale, the host of the program, gave me a very quizzical look and said, “Interesting strategy, Jim. Let’s see if it pays off for you.”

Of course, it didn’t. It was the strategy of an idiot. The method of a moron. It gave my opponent the opening he needed and he eventually got three squares in a row while I was off chasing “Baseball” no matter where it went. It was like pursuing a beautiful woman when you know she will eventually ruin your life. (Call me a slow learner, because I’ve also been guilty of that a few times.)

Was it stupid?

Tic Tac Duh.

Although I didn’t win any money on The Joker’s Wild, I apparently made an impression. A few months later my phone rang and I was invited to try out for another TV game show called Tic Tac Dough.

“It’s another Jack Barry production,” the contestant coordinator told me. “And I was told that you are the perfect game show contestant. You know a lot of worthless shit and you’re very enthusiastic.”

Well, ok then. I don’t know if that was quite the reputation I wanted, but… what’s that? You offer cash prizes?

I went down to visit the offices of Barry-Enright Productions in Hollywood where a roomful of other potential players gathered. We all took the requisite trivia test and those of us who passed were asked to stay. The contestant coordinator was a wacky, outgoing fifty-ish year old woman named Lila Michaels. She did as contestant coordinators do and went around the room asking questions to get a sense of which of us would make good TV game show contestants.

Lila finally worked her way around to the guy sitting next to me and said, “Stand up. Tell us your name, what you do for a living, and what your favorite hobby is.”

“My name is Joe,” he said. “I’m a landscape architect and I love baseball.”

“You love baseball, huh,” she snapped. “Who’s your favorite announcer?”

“Vin Scully.”

“Well, of course, it’s Vin Scully,” Lila scoffed. “He’s the best in the world. Who’s your second favorite?”

Poor Joe stuttered and stammered and couldn’t come up with another name. Eventually, desperation setting in, he spit out, “Howard Cosell.” (Howard, of course, excelled at virtually every sport except baseball.)

“Thank you very much,” Lila said contemptuously. “Next.”

I stood up and said, “My name is Jim, I’m in advertising, and I’m also a big baseball fan.”

“Then you get the same question,” she said. “Who’s your favorite announcer other than Vin Scully?”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a young guy up in San Francisco who does the Giants games. His name is Al Michaels.”

Lila turned back to Joe and said, “And that, Joe, is why Jim is going to be on the show and you’re not. He thinks my son is the second best baseball announcer in the world.”

Seriously. Out of all the baseball announcers in the world, I just happened to name the contestant coordinator’s son.

Americans reading this will know that Al Michaels has become one of the greatest announcers in the history of American sports. He’s gone on to broadcast the baseball World Series. Monday Night Football. The Super Bowl. You name it, Al’s done it.

But his most famous moment came when the American ice hockey team upended the invincible Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Olympics. As the clock ticked down to zero, Al said the words that made him famous: “Do you believe in miracles?”

I was prescient in calling out his name before he became famous. Do you believe in miracles?

But let me just tell you something:

It was the only question I answered correctly on Tic Tac Dough.

TO BE CONTINUED…

I’ve done a number of JimandJamie.com blog posts that refer to a mysterious character I always call The Godfather. For example, here and here and here.

Maybe I should tell you who he is and how we met, because it leads up to one of my favorite stories. A couple of my favorite stories, actually.

About forty years ago, I was a minority partner in an ad agency that specialized in boring high technology accounts. We did great, award-winning, creative work for those clients, but floppy disc drives just weren’t as much fun as hamburgers or tourism or guitars would have been. I owned so little of the company that my name wasn’t even on the door. The guy who owned most of the agency also did most of the talking. In fact, you may find this hard to believe, but at that point I was about seven years into my career yet I had never spoken in a client meeting nor attended a new business presentation. Not once.

Late one Friday morning our receptionist buzzed me and said, “There’s a guy on the phone who’s looking for an ad agency. Can you talk to him?”

Sure, I thought, I can set up an appointment for him to speak to the senior partner. That potential client turned out to be the man who would soon be dubbed The Godfather.

Our phone conversation went something like this:

Godfather: I’m the marketing director of a big restaurant chain. Your ad agency comes highly recommended.
Jim: Great. How about if we meet next week?
Godfather: Impossible. My boss is coming out to California from New York next week and I need to have an ad agency in place by Monday, so I need to meet with you today.
Jim: But my partner who does all the new business pitches doesn’t get back until Monday.
Godfather: Do you want our account or not?

This guy insisted that I, who had never spoken in a client meeting and who had never participated in a new business pitch, should meet with him immediately to pitch our wares. Solo. I would have been scared to death, but I didn’t have time to be scared because he had already hung up the phone and was on his way over to our office.

A few minutes later the receptionist buzzed me to say that two gentlemen from Far West Services were downstairs in the lobby to see me.

It was only then that I realized that I was wearing a worn out T-shirt, scruffy jeans, and a pair of Mexican hurachi sandals. I may have been a rookie at new business pitches, but I knew enough to know that I was underdressed.

Oh, well, there was nothing I could do about it at that point. I had to swallow my fear and do the best I could.

I walked The Godfather and Norman, his young assistant, around the interior perimeter of our offices where our most successful ad campaigns were mounted and displayed on the walls. That gave me a chance to tell them about the kind of work we did and introduce them to the band of lunatics who worked for us.

Eventually we worked our way around to my office where the three of us sat down and talked in more depth. (Of course, I was already far out of my depth, but I did the best I could.) The Godfather made me feel so relaxed that I did something I often did in the privacy of my own office — I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk and stretched my hurachi-clad feet across it as if it were an ottoman.

When we finally wrapped up the meeting The Godfather said he liked what he had heard and that he would tell his boss in New York that we were his new ad agency. We shook hands, said our goodbyes, and The Godfather and young Norman walked out the front door. It was the beginning of a great business and personal relationship that has now lasted nearly 40 years.

Many months later, The Godfather told me about the conversation he and Norman had as they left the building:

Godfather: What did you think, Norman?
Norman: That guy wasn’t wearing any shoes.
Godfather: That’s what I liked about him.

The Godfather took an enormous leap of faith and gave his mid-sized restaurant account to this little ad agency that specialized in high technology clients. We did a good job for him and eventually parlayed it into handling major restaurant chains like Pizza Hut and Burger King and El Pollo Loco. If it weren’t for The Godfather, we never would have been able to make the transition from boring high technology accounts to fun consumer accounts.

I nicknamed him The Godfather not just because he was Italian, but because he knew everyone in every business and could call in favors from all of them.

Let’s say we got a call from a prospective client and needed to educate ourselves on that industry before our first meeting. We would call an internal meeting to discuss the upcoming new business pitch. Someone in that meeting would invariably ask, “Does anybody know anyone we can talk to in that industry?”

No matter what kind of account we were pitching, and no matter what kind of information we were looking for, someone in the meeting just as invariably said, “Jim, can you call the Godfather and see if he knows anyone in that business?” The Godfather always, and I mean always, had a close relationship with someone who could help us. I had dozens of conversations like the following:

“Godfather, do you know anyone in the guitar industry?”

“Of course. I used to work with the guy who’s now president of the world’s largest pick company. Let me give him a call for you.”

“Godfather, do you know anyone in the fertilizer business?”

“Certainly. My best friend is editor of Manure News, the biggest trade magazine in that industry. I’ll introduce you.”

“Godfather, do you know anyone in the North Atlantic cod fishing business?”

“This is your lucky day. My next door neighbor happens to be president of the North Atlantic Cod Fishing Association. I’ll set up a lunch.”

Everyone who knows the Godfather has their own favorite story about him, but this is mine:

He eventually left the restaurant company and opened his own public relations firm. Our ad agency landed a very well-known advertising client and we brought in The Godfather’s firm to do their PR work. It didn’t work out for us and we eventually got fired, but The Godfather continued to handle their public relations for many years.

Soon after my first retirement from the ad agency business, The Godfather called to pass on a message from that client. Turns out he felt badly that he had fired our agency because he had always liked me personally, and he wanted to know if I would be willing to come back and create their advertising on a freelance basis. I agreed and the relationship flourished and we did a lot of work together over the next few years.

One day The Godfather called me and said, “Hey, don’t you think you should pay me a finder’s fee for getting you all this business?”

“Godfather,” I said, “you’re crazy if you think I’m going to pay you a finder’s fee for finding an account for me that I originally found for you.”

Even The Godfather had to laugh at his own audacity.

Glad you’re doing well, Godfather. Keep in touch.

The Godfather now does business as The Travel Curmudgeon. You can find him on Facebook at https://m.facebook.com/travelcurmudgeon/ or his travel blog at http://travelcurmudgeon.com.

I was once a very bad disc jockey. I’m not saying I was average or that I had an occasional bad night. I was terrible. Don’t know how I got hired nor why I didn’t get fired.

During the week I worked from 6-9 p.m. but on Sunday nights I drew the unenviable 6 pm-midnight shift. Eugene, Oregon was a relatively small college town and I knew no one was listening by the time midnight rolled around. So by about 10 p.m. I stopped talking and played one long record after another — the longest ones I could find in the music library.

One of those songs was Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home. In an era of two minute pop songs it rolled on for nearly six glorious minutes.

It seems appropriate to play it again now because we received an email yesterday from Virgin Australia airlines telling us that our flight from Adelaide to Sydney has been cancelled.

So what’s the problem, you may ask. Just make reservations with a different airline.

Easier said than done.

There are now only two flights scheduled each day. Both with airlines other than Virgin. One leaves at 4:45 pm and the other leaves at 8:00 pm. In other words, if we made reservations on either of those flights and it got cancelled at the last minute, there would be no way for us to get to Sydney in time to catch our flight back to the United States.

I spent two hours on the phone trying to figure out our options.

The first call was to Virgin. They told me they would not return our airfare because we had cancelled our flight.

”We didn’t cancel it,” I accurately pointed out. “You cancelled it. And you’ve cancelled all flights between the two cities.”

After a bit of a debate, the agent said she would “put us in the queue for a refund,” but would not guarantee that we will get our money back.

As soon as that call ended, I got on the phone with my credit card company to dispute the Virgin charge. Thanks to the Kung Flu, its customer service department was closed, so I went online to dispute the charge. After inputting all the pertinent information and clicking “Submit,” I was notified that this part of the website is currently unavailable.

Sigh.

I tried to find out if it would be possible to drive instead. Unfortunately, each state has different Kung Flu rules and regulations and the drive will entail crossing from South Australia to Victoria and then from Victoria to New South Wales, so it’s very confusing.

One government department tells you to call another government department because they will surely know, but they don’t. So the second department tells you to call yet a third government department, but they don’t know either.

Jamie came up with the idea of calling the auto club. They kept me on hold for thirty minutes before I finally gave up.

I contacted our rental car company. Surely they would have the latest info. Here’s what they told me:

Nobody appears confident in giving me any solid confirmation that crossing interstate borders is going to be drama free. The common comment is that the rules are continuously changing. I have however heard further talks on the relaxing of restrictions which makes me think that you would be ok to drive interstate although this is only an assumption. I was really hoping that you’d be able to obtain far more clarity from the police. It looks like even the police are being careful what they say. 

If you do end up embarking on the road trip, be sure to keep me updated via email!

Bottom line: All we can do is hope for more clarity before our departure date arrives. Otherwise we’ll take off for Sydney without knowing if we’ll actually be allowed to get there.

I‘ve just started reading the doctoral dissertation written by my Aussie psychologist friend Mark. It’s about the “teachings” of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, an obscure, early-20th century mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer.

Never heard of him? Don’t feel bad. Neither has anyone else.

Here’s how Mark described Gurdjieff’s seminal work in his dissertation:

“Most disinterested critics see it as something more akin to indigestible, obscure and unintelligible gibberish.”

Kind of like JimandJamie.com.

Texans are naturally friendly folks. When we moved from California to the Lone Star State we were absolutely shocked by their welcoming natures. Couldn’t believe it. It was just too good to be true. We were constantly on guard waiting for the moment when we would finally figure out the scam they seemed to be perpetrating on us.

But those moments never arrived. Texans are just as friendly as we feared they were pretending to be.

Let me explain in my typical way — with a long, overly-wordy story that seems completely unrelated, but really isn’t.

On our first day in Beijing, China we got a little lost while walking from our hotel to the Forbidden City, so we stopped on the sidewalk and looked around for a someone who looked likely to help. We spotted a young Chinese woman standing nearby and I said, “I think a younger person would be more likely to speak English, so let’s ask her.”

Jamie approached her and asked if she spoke English. “Yes,” she said. “Are you Americans?”

She told us she was headed in the direction of the Forbidden City, and asked if she could tag along with us and practice her English. We said we would be delighted to have her company.

She quickly told us that she was an artist. “My art is being shown in an art gallery today,” she told us. “I would be honored if you would come to see my work.”

We didn’t really want to, but she had been kind enough to lead us toward the Forbidden City and we didn’t want to be rude, so we agreed to accompany her.

We entered the gallery and the young woman introduced us to her “art teacher,” and then disappeared into a back room. He immediately began a high pressure sales pitch, telling us how much we could help this poor student if only we would just purchase one of her paintings at an exorbitant price.

It was clearly a scam. As soon as we looked disinclined to make a purchase, she emerged from the back room into which she had disappeared. We quickly realized that she was a shill and had probably painted nothing in the gallery. So we thanked her very much, told her that her work was beautiful, but that none of it would really work in our brand new house in Texas, and made our escape.

The next day we were walking in the same neighborhood when I asked a young Chinese man for directions. He immediately said, “Are you Americans?”

For some reason, maybe it was just the way he said it, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I knew that we were seeing an instant replay of the previous day’s scam.

Without giving him a chance to go into his spiel, I went on offense and said, “Are you an artist?”

“Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Because I’m also an artist. I’m a writer. And I always know another artist when I see one. I could just tell that you are an artist.”

He was blown away. So was Jamie, but in a different way. I could see her giving me that what-the-hell-are-you-doing? glare.

Since I was on a roll, I kept going. “Yes, you’re an artist. I think maybe you’re a painter.”

He was officially freaked out by this.

“Yes. Yes. I’m a painter.”

“Of course, you are,” I said, “I can always recognize another artist. Is there somewhere nearby, maybe a gallery, where we can see your art?”

He was dumbfounded. He must have thought he had just reeled in the biggest suckers of the year.

“Yes. My art is in a gallery just around the corner.”

“Oh, I wish we could see your work today, but we’re just so very busy. Could we come and see it tomorrow?”

“Yes, you can. It’s just around the corner. I will give you the address.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “We will be there tomorrow at eleven o’clock. Will you be there? Yes? Oh, good. Very good. We can’t wait to see your work.”

I pulled out a pen and a piece of paper, handed it to him, and asked him to write down his name and the address of the gallery — which, of course, was exactly the same gallery we had been in the day before — and promised him we would be there the following day.

Of course, we did not show up.

The point of all this? The Chinese were all exceptionally friendly, but always seemed to be selling something.

But Texans are completely different. They’re happy. Friendly. Smiling. Cheerful. Eager to do anything they can to help you and expect absolutely nothing in return.

I am, I admit, a cynical son of a bitch and it’s unlike me to gush needlessly. But after six years in Texas, I think I’m safe in saying that the state is beautiful, but the people are even more beautiful.

We’ll be home on June 19. See y’all.

We’re supposed to fly home on June 19, but we just received an email from Virgin Australia announcing that our flight from Adelaide to Sydney has been cancelled. In fact, they’ve cancelled ALL their flights between the two cities.

So now we have to figure out our next step. Do we (1) Fly from Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney and risk that one of those flights get cancelled? (2) Just say, “What the hell” and take the two-day drive from Angaston to Sydney?

Driving comes with its own set of problems. No one seems to know what the regulations are when crossing state lines. I stopped at the police station in Nuriootpa assuming that they’d know the rules. Not a chance. They actually told me, “We know what the regulations are when you’re coming into South Australia, but we don’t know what Victoria’s regulations are when you’re leaving South Australia.”

Gulp.