Over the Hill Without a Paddle

In this wonderful collection of short, funny pieces, Richard Cutler covers the gamut from nostalgia to conjecture on such topics as clowns, cholesterol and calling in sick to the supervisory voice mail. Along the way he sharpens his wit on exercise, politicians, road rage, souvenir shopping while traveling light and women's attraction to hand-held power tools. He reports on place and people names, profanity-free TV, holiday traditions, guy things and old fashioned etiquette. And he offers his experiences with gene pool backup, old wives' tales, women's fashions (and the storage thereof), following RV's and flying steerage class. The careful reader will discover such incidental insights as his theory of why Eskimos gave up kissing for rubbing noses and what the young Marquis de Sade's nanny said that may have suggested all those weird ideas. But the casual reader will learn something too. And not just that the author has entirely too much time on his hands. Interspersed among these views of the passing scene are subtle indications that--paddles or not--we may all of us be headed up the creek. So to speak.