I’ve been a heavy coffee drinker for, oh, at least the past 20 years. Anyone who’s known me for any length of time has noticed my strong, um, attachment to the divine nectar of the almighty bean. Some have called it “addiction,” but that’s such an ugly word, isn’t it?

I like to think that I’ve not been a total snob about coffee, though. While I always stayed away from foul Robusta bean bilge like Folger’s and Maxwell House, I never copped an attitude. I never looked down my nose at Starbucks, and I learned early on that supposedly “hip” indie coffeeshops sometimes have really bad coffee.

It was never a lifestyle thing with me, I was just a fan of the drink itself. A good cup of coffee is a good cup of coffee.

Well, for the past several months I’ve been fighting some weird pancreas thing. The GI doc says I may have had a bout with viral pancreatitis, which caused the various pains and discomfort I’ve been feeling.

He’s never asked if I was a big coffee drinker — and I never volunteered the information — but I do have to wonder if all that coffee drinking could have had something to do with it. (Gee, ya think?)

During my various treatments for this ailment, I recently came down with a particularly nasty stomach flu. I mean nasty. So I figured, hey, since I’m basically going cold turkey from all food and drink for 48 hours — not to mention that my system is, err, completely flushed clean — why not take advantage of the hiatus and stop drinking coffee altogether?

Just quit, then and there, and see if that helps with the pancreas thingie? Since, you know, I can live without coffee but I can’t live without a functioning pancreas.

So I did it. I just stopped drinking coffee. That was nearly two weeks ago. I haven’t had a drop of coffee — not a taste, not a sip — since March 21.

Now, I’m not entirely crazy. I am drinking tea now, which I never did before. Some Earl Grey, a little green tea, some mate here and there. But no coffee at all.

Funny thing — I don’t miss it. Don’t miss it one bit. I do feel the tiniest whiff of desire when I smell freshly ground beans, but otherwise I have no craving for coffee at all. Which is just weird, considering my total dependence on it for the past two decades. But I have to say, I do feel fantastic, and much, much healthier since quitting.

I’m not drinking coffee, but I tell you what I am doing, is eating. Eating all the time, constantly, everything I can get my hands on and wrap my mouth around.

Simply put, I have gone from being obsessed with coffee to being obsessed with food.

I’ve always been one of these types that can eat whatever they want, as much as they want and never gain any weight. I have to wonder if that was due less to genetics than to the fact that I was basically mainlining a heavy appetite suppressant for many years.

Hopefully this pancreas thing is behind me now — Prevacid is also involved, and it works like a charm — so I can get into my new incarnation as an epicurean gourmand. And hopefully my wife will still find me attractive if I end up gaining 20 pounds.

(0) Comments  |  Permalink  |  Email Article

In ten years of doing this job I’ve been called pretty much every name in the book and accused of just about every perfidy and act of corruption, both grand and petty, under the sun.

I’ve been called a communist liberal Democrat who hates America and supports the terrorists. I’ve been called a right-wing racist Republican and a mouthpiece for the big-money downtown elite.

I’ve been accused of pushing the “Gay Rights Agenda.” I’ve been called a homophobic redneck.

I’ve been blamed for single-handedly wrecking mayoral bids. I’ve been told no one reads what I write.

Some say I have a vendetta against SCAD. Some say I’m SCAD’s stooge in the media.

I’ve been accused of being an undercover CIA plant secretly on the federal payroll.

I’ve been accused of encouraging child abuse and pedophilia.

And I literally cannot remember all the times someone, somewhere has demanded that I be fired for the above imaginary transgressions.

In short, there’s literally nothing you can say to me that I, a) haven’t heard before, and b) will be flustered by. Go ahead. Try it. Yawn.

And so we come to the latest “outrage” I’ve committed, in the form of this week’s “Toothpaste for Dinner” cartoon. Some guy named Jeff Dudys is mounting an all-out e-mail blast PR offensive against Connect Savannah, targeting our advertisers and enlisting the aid of City Council. Needless to say, he’s demanding my immediate resignation as well.

Because I’m constantly accused of censoring criticicism — ironic considering that I almost always publish everyone’s personal attacks on me verbatim with little or no editing — I will once again bend over backwards to give one of my detractors the benefit of the doubt. Here is one of the several e-mails I (and everybody else in town) have received from Mr. Dudys in the course of the last 12 hours, with all spelling and grammatical errors intact:


“Yesterday a free publication well know in Savannah with a very high readership sent to the streets of Savannah the instructions for our elementary students to take a step to drug abuse. How can this local business be so irresponsible

“Flyer’s with this information are being given out to businesses throughout the city at this time. Also encouraging the removal the the issue if they distribute at there location

“Attached is a comic that is in the February 27Th issue of “The Connect”. I do not have to make any explanation about the comic. It is step by step takes a child to possible death.

“I am calling for a boycott of this publication by the advertisers, distributors, and people of Savannah GA until the below steps are followed.

“All February 27Th copies be removed from the streets of Savannah.
An apology be printed in the local newspaper
The resignation of editor Jim Morekis and anyone else associated with comic
A refund to advertisers to that issue
That “The Connect” inform our elem entry school and middle schools of this comic
The City Council and local media have also been informed.

“If you support this boycott or just want to express your concerns, and wish to contact”The Connect” The Editor in chief is Jim Morekis. email or calling 721-4384."


Yeah, that would be me. I'll be a nice guy and not include Mr. Dudys' phone number, which he appended to the e-mail.

Suffice it to say that the cartoon in question is almost unbelievably tame and inoffensive. In all candor, it's actually fairly boring and not especially funny. As someone said today, "It's just there."

Go ahead, look at it for yourself, page 12 of this week's issue. And if you agree with Mr. Dudys that I should immediately lose my job over it, hey, copy me on your angry e-mail to the whole world.

It'll be one more for my collection.

(0) Comments  |  Permalink  |  Email Article

My birthday is February 19, one of the strangest times of the year in which to be born. It is truly a dark hole on the calendar, so much so that George Carlin referred to the third week in February as one of “A Few Things I Like” in his book Brain Droppings . (Also on that list: “Guys who say ‘cock-a-roach,’” and “A permanently disfigured gun collector.”)

Even the holiday associated with it, President’s Day, is vague, amorphous, and little noted. I bet not two out of ten Americans could tell you which presidents are honored that day and why.

Here’s how unremarkable a time of year it is: Under a previous ownership of this newspaper, at each monthly staff meeting the publisher insisted on serving cake and giving a shoutout to all the staffers with birthdays in that month. For example, “Hey, here’s to John and Jane, our August birthday people! Yay, John and Jane!”

So check it out: Each February for three frickin’ years, everyone forgot my birthday. Seriously. Three years. I kid you not. Three years running, no cake for me, not a word, nothing.

The greenest sales rep would get a mention. The meekest part-time designer would get a mention. The longtime editor of the freakin’ paper? Bupkus, zip, nada, zilch.

You might be tempted to say, well, that’s because no one likes you, Jim. Which could easily be true. But if I were really that unpopular one would think I’d have been let go at some point, yes? Anyway, I prefer to blame the time of year, thank you very much.

I have met one other person who shares my birthday, the young son of a friend of mine. As far as I can tell, only two famous people were born on Feb. 19: Smokey Robinson and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. Interestingly, I was a big fan of the music of both those gentlemen long before I found out their birthday, so perhaps there’s something to the whole astrology thing.

Speaking of astrology, even that’s all murky and weirded out on my birthday. Feb. 19 falls exactly on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, and its sun sign actually shifts over time. For example, Feb. 19 is firmly in Pisces these days, but when I was born 43 years ago it was only in Pisces by — get this — eight hours. Literally, I’m a Pisces by eight hours.

Perhaps my birthday and its attendant isolation and weirdness explains why I’ve always felt like a man without a country, a voice in the wilderness, a contrarian without a cause.

Anyway, I enjoy my birthday even if no one else does. I regard it as a character-builder.

(1) Comments  |  Permalink  |  Email Article

At the beginning of the summer — oh, it seems so very long ago now — I contracted with Avalon Travel Publishing to write the next Moon Handbook on Charleston and Savannah. They needed the 400-page manuscript with photos from me by last week in order to meet their publication date of Fall ‘08. Amazingly, they got it.

Basically what this means is that for the last six months I did my regular job here at the paper during the week and spent nights and weekends working on this book, at the exclusion of pretty much all else in my life other than occasionally eating and sleeping. This was a huge step forward for me professionally and I don’t regret it for a second. But I did learn a few things along the way that I want to pass on to you:

1) Have a support network: To a certain extent, writing a travel guide lends itself to a short deadline. It’s very detail-oriented, dense work, dependent less on sudden bursts of creativity than on getting into a steady, slogging groove and really working it. This means if you’re a good time manager, which I am, you can crank out big chunks of copy. The flip side is, be prepared to trade away much of your personal life. Had I not had the unflinching support of my family, the thing would not have gotten done on time. Not anywhere near on time.

2) Watch your health: This may sound silly to anyone who does physical labor for a living, but writing a book can take an enormous toll on you physically. This effect was doubled because I already spent my regular work week staring at a computer monitor, only to continue staring at the computer for another several hours a day after a short dinner break. Over the last six months my vision has gone all wacky, I’m stiff all over, and just sadly out of shape. The easiest answer is to just have more time in which to write the book, but barring that, for God’s sake try to work in some exercise.

3) Keep your eyes on the prize: I haven’t done the math, but I fully suspect that if I factored in all the hours I’ve spent on this book, I wrote it for less than minimum wage. Honestly, probably far less than minimum wage. This became abundantly clear very early in the process. But what kept me going was the image of going into most any Barnes and Noble in the country one day and being able to find a couple of copies of my book on the shelves, with my little name on the cover. Bottom line: Even though Samuel Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money” — I’m telling you, write for something other than money.

(1) Comments  |  Permalink  |  Email Article

OK, I had to take a hiatus from the blog thing. Way too much going on in my life, and well… it ain’t like I’m getting paid extra for it.

So…. what’s new? I kid, I kid.

Connect Savannah has started 2008 with renewed energy. The obvious example is Jim Reed’s vigorous take on the Locos/Van Johnson thing. I just got an e-mail in response from Alderman Johnson that I’ll be posting shortly, and putting in the print edition next week. (Hint: He disagrees with our reporting.)

Johnson’s wrong when he says we’re not objective — if two plus two equals four, then we have a duty to say it doesn’t equal five. Because it just doesn’t.

But Johnson’s certainly right when he says it’s a multilayered issue. I have heard on the QT from other food-and-bev people in town who say Locos was asking for trouble and is spoiling things for everyone else by needlessly attracting attention to the whole issue.

I’ve noticed two things about the City of Savannah and the way it does business. Well, actually a lot more than two things, but two that are particularly relevant to this situation:

1) There are some excellent public servants employed by the city who do great work and do not get nearly enough credit.

2) The city tends to do things in an all-or-nothing fashion, i.e., they either completely ignore you or you become their total center of attention. This of course can work in good or bad ways, depending on the motivation.

Perhaps the big-picture message out of all this is similarly twofold:

1) Pick your battles with the City of Savannah very carefully; and

2) City elected officials and staff should strive for more consistency, a broader outlook, and more even-handed treatment of citizens.

(2) Comments  |  Permalink  |  Email Article