Vince Pravato Blog

Golden T t-shirts When you buy new clothes, you don’t throw out the old ones. Why not? How many times do I have to see you in your favorite Lulu Lemon shirt? If you buy a new shirt, one shirt must be given away. That is a requirement. I was going to write “given away to charity,” but that is too broad a spectrum. Trump had a charity, until a couple weeks ago.  Without better direction, you could buy a new, over priced, $128 t-shirt from Lulu Lemon and then donate an older Under Armour $18 t-shirt to Trump Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity. Trump’s charity would take your old, worn out UA shirt and they would re-tool, putting a giant golden “T” on the chest. This “new” golden T t-shirt would then be given as a uniform to an illegal alien cutting the grass on a Trump golf course. The employee would later see a $30 deduction in their pay check for the uniform. That’s not the charity I’m talking about. I want to help you. I want to help all of us to find a path to make a dif...

Being Made I was sitting in my car waiting and watching the front door. The summer sun in Florida kept my black car at a constant oven ready-to-bake temperature. The parking lot had no trees or shade to hide from the scorch. It was lunch time and I was in the only car in an oversized parking lot for Cafe Romano’s.  I found it strange that there was this supposedly tremendous Italian restaurant in down town Fort Lauderdale that I never heard of. I took pride in knowing all of the Italian spots. Runway 84, Mateo’s, Casa D’Anelgo’s, Frank & Dino’s. I even knew the shitty ones. Somehow, I missed this one. Frankie told me to meet him at 12 sharp at Romano’s. When I said that I never heard of it, he said, “What? Youz don’t know Romano’s, you fuck’en kid’en me, Romano’s! Youz ain’t heard of it? Deah ain’t nuttin betta in all Flarida kid.” He sounded exactly like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas ; exactly. But I never told him that. He said, “it’s right deah, as Sunrise Bou-li-var...

Chins I recently noticed that my under chin is a little saggy. It looks like I have a bit of a pelican pouch hanging there. How the fuck did that happen? If I pull it up to the side with my thumb, it disappears, but I can’t walk around like that all the time. Sometimes, when necessary, I can lean on my hand and secretly pull the extra skin up with my thumb. I only use this when I want to impress someone, who probably isn’t looking at me anyway. This “thinker pose” only feels natural when I'm sitting. I tried to do it walking around; holding one hand to my chin as if I was just casually walking and really thinking hard. I studied the look in the the bathroom mirror and realized it was off, way off.  But it looked ok when I used my other arm as a support for the elbow. The “walking thinker” I call it. I figure I can walk around as if I’m studying a building’s architecture or I’m pondering Middle East peace or how did Trump win the election. How often can I really do this? ...

Too Much When my daughter Jordan was in kindergarten, out of no where she decided to try and play basketball. I knew nothing about the game. I played baseball, football and tennis. I introduced Jordan to multiple sports and she played all of them well. Basketball was not on my radar. When your 6 year old asks to play basketball, you lean in and say, "sure thing, let me find out where to sign you up." Luckily, our local JCC ran a fairly large girls league and we started right away. Her first team was the Seattle Storm and a young high school girl, Charlotte, was her coach. Jordan had never dribbled nor shot a basketball before and I could quickly tell that her entire team was comprised of non-players. The ideas of defense and offense made no sense to them. The one girl who could dribble 10 feet without losing control of the ball was quickly identified as the point guard. It was funny and cute as hell.  After only three practices, the games started. I was enthusi...

If You Don’t Know, Now You Know Three months ago, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. It metastasized from her lungs to her spine. Wow, that sounds pretty bad.  Hold on, don’t click away just yet. This isn’t your normal “my _________ has cancer” sob story, so stay with me for a bit. One careless doctor told me over the phone, while he was clearly driving in a convertible, that my mom was flush with cancer and had just weeks to live. He delivered this information with the same tone my wife’s discount decorator told us we should change our kitchen counter tops from granite to quartz. I describe the doctor as careless, not as a criticism, but as a factual statement. For an oncologist, who watches all of their patients die, being careless must be an incredible asset. I imagine that the continuing education courses for Oncology have two categories: 1-maximizing profit through Kemo and 2-Muting emotions/surviving when none of your patients can. Three months in, m...

Getting Testy What makes a man a man? This thought can easily go in way too many directions. For example, I’m not talking about being a good father shit or treating a woman right. I’m talking physically. And I'm also not talking the obvious penis and balls stuff. I’m thinking chemically; Testosterone - the man juice. Without it, men morph into women. And after menopause, women lose their girl juice and they morph into men. Old men and women are only distinguishable by wardrobe choices. With one foot in a boot and holding myself up on crutches, I was in the gym waiting for my brother to arrive. I may have been non-weight bearing, but I was in the gym bearing weights. After a couple weeks of howling around, I was accustomed to spontaneuous small talk and questions about my injury and surgery, especially in the gym.  As I had a couple quick one liners ready that were smart and funny, and were certain not to lead to more dialogue, some guy standing behind as table said, “Want ...

Crutches for Dummies I was drugged up in the recovery room when a nurse told me it was time to go home. The doctor popped in and said the surgery went great, even better than expected. That translated into the doctor telling me that he was even more amazing than he thought he was. He said that he was able to re-attach my Achilles to my heel bone without a cadaver tendon, but that this particular surgery had a super high risk of post-surgical blood clots. I needed to inject myself with a syringe every morning or I’d die. He smiled and handed my wife, Deb, a large box of pre-filled syringes. In my post-surgical Michael Jackson near comma state of mind, that’s what I heard him say. Inject or die. A sumo wrestler dressed like an orderly wheeled me down hallway after hallway, out the side doors and into my wife’s car. As Deb put the car in drive, the sumo orderly knocked on the window and then opened the rear door. He pushed a pair of aluminum crutches into the back seat and said, “...