Grandpa Charlie, A True Original BY- (Little) Charlie Spink

 

Charles "Grandpa Charlie" Michael Spink.

November 5, 1934 - September 23, 2015

    I can now tell you from personal experience that there is nothing in life as humbly horrifying as walking around a memorial service where your name has the top billing on the program. Last week I had to say goodbye to my Grandpa Charlie, who had been courageously battling kidney disease.  He was about to turn 81 years old.  

    While walking around the service I had to check my pulse every few minutes just to make sure that I was still alive and that there hadn't been some kind of mistake . I’m sure that most of us who were in attendance still had that feeling that this whole thing must have been some kind of mistake.

    You can call me biased, but I’ve always thought that “Charlie Spink” was the coolest name in the world. It’s strong, distinctive and not particularly hard to spell.  My favorite part of the name Charlie Spink is who I got it from, Grandpa Charlie: The Original Charlie Spink.

    They say that eventually people will forget your name, they’ll forget everything that you’ve ever said and  if you give them time, they’ll eventually forget everything that you’ve ever done...but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.  Well, I’m here to share with you the way that Grandpa made me feel: honored, respected and above all, loved.  

OLD SCHOOL MEETS GRADE SCHOOL-Grandpa Charlie, a handsome school boy in the early 1940's.

    Charles Michael Spink was the personification of the American Dream.  He was the son of a hard-working immigrant who through his tireless effort and undeniable brilliance was able to put himself through one of our nation’s greatest universities (“Go Cal Golden Bears”) serve our country as a decorated member of the Army’s Core of Engineers and later on become the head of many exotic engineering projects all over the world (from Boston and Barcelona, from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia). 

    These projects improved the quality of life for people the whole world over and by the time he was done, this first-generation American boy from the streets of San Francisco was a Vice President of the World’s largest and most influential engineering firm.   

    I didn’t know Charlie Spink, the world-renowned engineering mastermind that helped to mold the foundation of dozens of cities and train the next generation of Civil Engineers.  Or the dependable Executive who helped turn his local firm into the Global Super power in their field. 

    The man I knew was simply Grandpa Charlie...and he was far more impressive.

    Grandpa Charlie had a well-documented love of knowledge.  Us grandkids used to make fun of the fact that when he met Grandma (aka his lovely wife of over 60 years, Jacquelyn) at a party, that their first conversation was about an advanced algebra class that he was taking.  For some guys that approach wouldn’t have worked but for Grandpa Charlie he used the equation: Impressive intellect PLUS devilish handsomess EQUALS a loving faithful marriage that spanned 7 decades and spawned two of the most-successful, intelligent, well-adjusted and loving men that I know Dad (Chuck Spink) and Uncle Ken.  

A MATCH MADE IN MATH HEAVEN- Grandpa Charlie & Grandma Jackie on their wedding day.

    I was honored to have shared 31 years with this man as my grandfather.  Here are a few of my favorite highlights. 

    Over the years Grandpa shared many of his great loves with me: the City of San Francisco, black olives and Bud Light (which could very well be the title of my own autobiography at this point).

    Grandpa has always had a chair in his house (no matter where the house was) called “The Charlie Chair” it was named that way because only Grandpa Charlie could sit in it.  The Charlie chair was where Grandpa used to sit and read his newspapers, crime novels and issues of Time magazine (as well as the Bible and bedtime stories for the Grandkids who were lucky enough to sleep over at his house).

    It was firm, yet comfortable and had a name that was the polar opposite of the man who sat in it (the Lazy Boy). The chair had well-worn cushions that were probably brown at some point but now have a color similar to that of strained carrots, it’s wooden arm-rests looked old enough to have been planks on Noah’s Ark and the reclining mechanism is closer to the technology that you’d see on a mid-evil catapult than anything you’d see down at a Modern Furniture store.  But it was dependable, always there for you after a long day to help you take a load off and listen to your body’s problems. That chair always had your back, that chair was a lot like it’s owner.  

    Then I came along, and I was also named Charlie, or “Little Charlie” as Grandma calls me.  It’s funny a bunch of girls in College started referring to me as “Little Charlie” (usually with some amount of pointing and laughing involved). My first question to them was always “How do you know my Grandmother?” Apparently, they had never met my grandmother...it's a long story...okay it's a short story...hey, it's a perfectly normal and decent-sized story (it was often very cold in the dorms). 

    Being that Grandpa Charlie was my Grandfather (and that my name was Charlie) I was Grandfathered-into being allowed to sit in the chair. Then when I was a teenager Grandpa Charlie moved on to a different chair, and when he got rid of the original Charlie chair he asked me if I wanted the old one and I said “Heck yeah.”

    I took the "Charlie Chair"  with me to college and back and it now sits in my office (I'm sitting in it as I write this right now) and it is the only piece of furniture that I really ever felt like I owned.  And I guarantee that if my wife Kristina and I ever get separated it will be the only piece of furniture that she wouldn’t want in the settlement. Not just because she knows that I have a strong emotional attachment to the chair, but also because she’s never really been a fan of the strained carrot colored upholstery. 

    Anybody who knew Grandpa, knew that he was a man who loved to build things and tinker around the house.  No project was too big and no fix was too small for grandpa to dust off his trusty tool-belt and go to work.

    When I was three years old I remember that Grandpa wanted to buy me a race car bed for my birthday. But when he went to the furniture store he was thoroughly unimpressed by the quality of what they had in-stock. He realized that all of the race-car beds seemed poorly-made and over-priced. So being the resourceful "Bob the Builder" type man that he was, he told me “Charlie I can make you a race car bed for half the cost that’ll be twice as nice."  And he did. 
  
    My candy-apple red race-car bed had a sweet paint-job and real reflective head and tail lights. The bed also had a two-toned bumper and a custom racing stripe down the side of it. Forget the bedroom, this thing looked like it was ready for the Indy 500. I got that bed when I was three and I slept in it until I was seventeen (really I did).  The first time that I brought a girl up to my bedroom she took one look at my race-car bed and said (in a dead-pan voice) “Wow.” Just like that.  I could tell that she was also impressed by Grandpa’s handiwork and painstaking attention to detail. 

    The building of the race-car bed really speaks to who Grandpa was, somebody who put others first and was willing to put in hard-work and utilize his talents to make sure that his loved ones could sleep comfortably at night. 

THE ENGINEER, THE DRIVER & THE PIT CREW-(Left to Right) Grandma Jackie, Mom, Grandpa Charlie and I getting ready to take the race-car bed for a spin. 

    At this point Grandpa just sounds like a great maker and trader of custom furniture but he was so much more than that.

    Here’s another great example of how prolific his mind was. When I was about 12 I was over at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and the Kevin Costner movie “Water-World” was on TV.  For those of you who don’t remember it: good. It was a terrible movie (no need to Netflix it). "Water-World" was a futuristic Action/Adventure Movie that took place in a reality in which the Polar Ice Caps had melted and the world was covered in Water (Al Gore made a way less exciting sequel about 10 years ago).  

    After the first ten minutes of the movie Grandpa told me “Charlie, that’s not the way that real water displacement in the ocean works.” And then he changed the topic. I was like “Whatever you say grandpa, there are guys on Jetski’s shooting bazookas at each other so were watching this movie.”

    The next time that I came over Grandpa had cut a block of ice (1 foot by 2 feet) and put it in his bath-tub with a ruler, a wooden block that represented land and sea-level and a small heater to melt the ice...just so he could show me how “water world’s” premise was all washed up.  Grandpa had a beautiful mind, he understood so much about how the world (even a fictional, futuristic one) worked and he loved nothing more than sharing that gift with loved ones. Grandpa Charlie always respected me and had enough faith in people to tell them the truth (even when it hurt). He was an incredibly honest man. 

    Grandpa Charlie was a man of great faith.  On top of being my grandfather he was also my confirmation sponsor and my math tutor.  Some of you may be thinking “Being a math tutor doesn’t involve a lot of faith.” Well anybody who would say that obviously hadn’t seen my test scores.  I needed both prayer and study time to pass trigonometry at De La Salle and Grandpa was there to support me with plenty of both. Let's just say that I didn't have the type of math skills that would help me pick-up on a pretty lady at a party.

    Grandpa Charlie was always there for me even when he wasn’t actually there.  Grandpa was a big part of my marriage proposal to my wife Kristina, because I made up a story about me and Grandpa to add legitimacy to the back-drop of my proposal. I asked Kristina to be my wife on the Golden Gate Bridge. That way if she said no I could jump off and that'd be the end of things (talk about a pretty solid back-up plan).  

    Anyways, while we were standing on the bridge I gave Kristina a penny and told her that Grandpa Charlie used to take me to the bridge when I was little (which he did) and right when we’d get over the water he would hand me a penny and say “Make a wish.” So I gave Kristina a penny, I told her to make a wish and after she threw the penny into the water, she turned around and saw me down on one knee with an open ring-box. That's right, I proposed to Kristina on the Golden Gate Bridge as the September sunset danced it's way across the choppy waters of the bay.  

    Spoiler alert, she said yes.  Now all of us who knew Grandpa would know that that was a cockamamie story. Grandpa would never have told me to throw a penny into the bay and “Make a Wish” because that would literally be “Throwing money away.” Grandpa was a strong believer in saving your money and using it in conjunction with hard work and dedication in order to make your dreams come true.  

    Speaking of pennies, Grandpa came from very humble beginnings and became a self-made man of great wealth but he never sacrificed his morality to build his financial fortune. In fact he used his strong moral compass to build the friendships that were represented at his service. No matter how much money he had in the bank, he always knew that his most valuable asset was the love and respect that he had accumulated from his peers, throughout a life of generosity and kindness.  It was in this sense that Grandpa was a very rich man.   

    If I was on the Golden Gate Bridge with a penny right now I would wish to have the same type of impact on the world that Grandpa had.

    Grandpa was there to see me get married and have children.  He had always been a "great" grandfather and I am proud that through my reproductive ways that I officially made him a Great-grandfather. 

    One of the last long-talks that I had with Grandpa was when he was in the hospital about a month before his passing and he was telling me about his and Grandma’s favorite show “NCIS” (Which stands for "Naval Criminal Investigation Service" it's on CBS. Check it out, it's way better than "Water-world"). 

    Even in his final painful days he was able to find humor in the world.  He told me “One of the better parts of being as old as I am, is that I can watch an episode of NCIS with your Grandma and figure out who the killer is early in the episode.  I feel pretty good about the whole thing until Jackie points out that it’s a re-run and we’ve seen it before.”

    Grandpa told me “NCIS was great when it was just in New York.  You’d think that there’d be enough crimes to solve in New York to keep the show going forever.  But then they came up with NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: Las Vegas and so on and so fourth, but none of them are as good as the original.  Charlie, there’s nothing like the original.”

    Looking back on the man who had set the bar so high on being a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather in this life all I can say is...thank you mom and dad for naming me after this guy.  Grandpa Charlie, I am honored to have shared your name and I will do everything I can to bring the type of honor to it that you did throughout your life.  

    Now I am also a Charlie Spink...but Grandpa you were THE CHARLIE SPINK.  You were a true original ...and there’s nothing like an original.

I Love You Grandpa. 

Your Proud Grandson.            

Little Charlie

TWO CHARLIES ARE BETTER THAN ONE- Grandpa Charlie (left), Little Charlie (me, right) boarding a plane together a couple of years ago. As always Grandpa was a step ahead of me, and now he's in a place high above  where the planes fly. 

"Straight Outta ...Creative Ideas" A Lost Blog About Dr. Dre - By Charlie Spink

Right now Dr. Dre is probably the busiest that he's been since he graduated Musical Medical School.

With the movie "Straight Outta Compton" continuing it's dominant run at the box office, Dr. Dre's new album "Compton" having such a strong debut and the rehashed controversy of Dre beating up on women when Chris Brown was still in diapers,  I thought that this is would be the perfect time to honor Dr. Dre's unreleased album "Detox" by posting an unreleased column that I wrote a year ago about Dr. Dre becoming hip-hop's 1st billionaire.

This column is my "Detox." I know that by the end of reading it you'll probably be thinking "Charlie, this column was nowhere near as good as Detox would have been." Well, then just imagine if this column featured guest appearances by Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar and just rest assured that those would have been the best parts (just like a real Dr. Dre Album). 

Enjoy.

PS: I don't mean to make fun of the women that have been assaulted by Dr. Dre, but we shouldn't feel bad for those ladies because I hear that they are going to start their own new line of women's only protective headphones called "Beaten by Dre." (Get it? Instead of "Beats by Dre"?  Damn, that's one hard-hitting play on words).

“It Aint Nothing But a B-Thing, Baby” (The B is for Billionaire)

By Charlie Spink

                In the wake of Dr. Dre becoming hip-hop's first billionaire, the City of Compton is bestowing it’s highest honor on the Good Doctor.

                For those of you who haven’t heard the news, last week the Apple Corporation bought the Beats by Dre headphone line for $3.2 billion dollars. It was the largest corporate purchase that Apple has ever made and with Dr. Dre owning about one third of the Beats by Dre-brand, Dre proclaimed via Twitter that he was now “At Billionaire Status” #ballin!

                Now personally I don’t see why Apple would be spending so much on Beats by Dre headphones. $3.2 billion dollars? That’s a whole lot of money man! For a pair of headphones at $3.2 billion dollars, that’s $1.6 billion per ear. Damn, I thought that they were over-priced when I saw them at Best Buy for $499. Apparently $499 is a few billion dollars under market value for a pair of premium studio quality headphones.

                Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled story. So after the announcement that their favorite son has achieved billionaire status the mayor of Compton has decided to award Andre “Dr. Dre” Young a Key to the City of Compton. 

                I think that giving Dr. Dre a key to the City of Compton is a terrible idea!

                Not because I feel that Dre is a bad example for the youth of Compton, or that I suggest that the City had “Forgot About Dre” until hearing that he had resurfaced with Billionaire Status. I just don’t think that a Key to the City of Compton makes much sense because nobody in the City of Compton uses keys to open things.

                Compton has a notoriously small-town sized population, paired with a nationally recognized big city crime rate. I think that instead of giving Dre a “Key to the City of Compton” they should give him an award that’s more appropriate for the Compton life style.

                Like instead of giving Dr. Dre a Key to the City of Compton, they should give him a “Crowbar to the City of Compton” or “A Slim Jim to the City of Compton” or better yet “A brick through the windshield to the City of Compton.” That would be perfect!

                What is it that all of these Comptonians are trying to steal? Probably pairs of Beats by Dre headphones. Those things are expensive man I hear that they go for like Billions of Dollars. If the City of Compton, where they allegedly keep it rockin’ (due to friction caused by making sweet California Love) can get their act together and change their award to something more appropriate, then I’d love to be there for the ceremony to celebrate “Dre Day” in person. Forget being “Nothing But a G Thang” Dre has shown us that with enough dedication that hip-hop can be “sumthang like a B Thang…Baby!” In this case the B is for Billion.

                The chronic has blossomed and the After math is that Compton will be celebrating the only billionaire that’s ever come straight out of Compton.

                So if any of you NWA’s out there were planning on attending the Dr. Dre ceremonies in person, I have one question for you… can you “Let Me Ride?” (And as a follow-up question "Can I get a Hell Yeah?)

"Don't Go Break(Dancing) My Heart" Xavier's Talent Show and Solving All of America's Problems. By-Charlie Spink

 

Xavier (right) and I (left) before the school Talent Show, clearly stressing-out over all of America's problems.

         It seems like there’s an awful lot of really serious stuff going on right now in the news. Gay marriage is finally legal everywhere in the United States (which is great) and being black in America  is apparently illegal in the eyes of most police officers (which honestly,  isn’t so great).  

Bruce Jenner has officially become my favorite Kardashian sister, and through his new persona Caitlyn he/she is changing our definition of gender identity (yes as a nation our gender status update went from being “Single” as in we identify with one single gender to being “It’s Complicated”).

 

A tragic race/religion-related mass murder in South Carolina raised a lot of questions about gun control and people who raise Confederate Flags.  In my opinion the problem with guns is that you can’t control the people who have them and therefore you should make them harder to get a hold of than a Confederate Flag was this week at a Wal-Mart.  Oh yeah, and for the people who still want to waive the Confederate Flag I don’t get it, you’re supporting the losing team.  There’s a reason that we don’t wear Buffalo Bill Super Bowl Champion T-shirts from the early 90’s, because they were the losers and their jerseys belong in the history books and not waiving on-top of the flagpole in some racists’ front-yard.

Donald Trump (the patron Saint of both American greed and narcissistic douchebaggery) was able to completely destroy his Presidential  hopes and dreams less than a full calendar week into his campaign by referring to “most Mexicans” as “thieves and rapists.”  In response, Latin American television channel Univision dissolved it’s contract with Mr. Trump to produce this year’s Ms. Universe pageant.  Now I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Univision but they must really think that Donald is awful to pull him from television, because their tele novellas are over-dramatic, brightly-lit to the point of being nauseating  and confusing beyond all belief (all of which could also be said about Mr. Trump’s hair piece) and yet they keep them on the air.  

Let’s face it, Mr. Trump you say that you’ve “built” some of the world’s most impressive buildings, but you haven’t built diddily squat (“Diddily Squat ironically enough is the name of Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ toilet, speaking of which he’s also in the news for doing some crazy crap, but we’ll save that story until next time).  

Mr. Trump you’ve merely brokered and co-designed a series of buildings that are as bloated and self-important as their “builder”.  You’re merely a run-of-the mill Real Estate Agent who was born into a family of Billionaires. So instead of putting your face on bus stop benches as shopping carts you’re putting your chubby mug on billboards and television commercials.  You know what, you’re not even a common Real Estate Agent, because anybody who would be smart enough to get a Real Estate License, would also be smart enough not to alienate the only voting minority block that a Republican Party had a shot at carrying in the upcoming election.  Even if you were put on the ticket, you’re an arrogant ass-hole who can’t relate to the everyman. Therefore, you wouldn’t stand a chance.  It’s the hands of the everyman that actually built your buildings and it’s the vote of the everyman that you just kissed goodbye.  If the Republican Party was stupid enough to endorse you, they’d lose the general election faster than you lost your credibility.     

So with all of these issues weighing heavily on the shoulders of our great nation, I thought that I’d take it upon myself to discuss the most important issue that’s facing the nation right now…which of course is how well my son’s performance at his school talent show went this year. 

Yes my oldest son Xavier (pictured with me both above and below) just wrapped-up his first year of grade school and the highlight of the year for me was watching young Mr. Spink perform at the Queen of All Saints (K-8) Talent Show.   

Now as a stand-up comedian, when I heard that my son wanted to perform at the school talent show I naturally assumed that he’d want to follow in the foot-steps of his old-man and tell some jokes.  I remember when Xavier told me at the dinner table “Daddy, Guess what? This year I’m going to be in the Talent Show.”

I lit-up like a stoner at one of the Grateful Dead’s Farewell Concerts. I said “That’s great Buddy, what are you going to do for your talent?”

That was a question that I was hoping he would answer by saying something like “Oh Father, I want to tell jokes like you.  I want to follow in your funny foot-steps and leave my classmates in stitches like a forgetful surgeon. My performance will be a tribute to your greatness as both a social commentator and fine parent.” That was the answer that I was hoping for.

The answer that I got was… “Breakdancing.”

I get it, Xavier is half-Filipino, so he was practically born into being a member of a hip-hop dance crew. However, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t initially a little disappointed in his choice of talent.

I’ve always prided myself on being a pretty great dancer.  We all have that one family member who steals the spot-light on the dance floor at every wedding, bar mitzvah and funeral with his killer impression of Michael Jackson whenever the song “Billie Jean” comes on.  

Well, in my family I’m that guy.  So even though I would have preferred it if Xavier chose stand-up I felt like I could still help him out quite a bit in his preparation for the big show.  

 I asked Xavier “Do you want me to help you plan your moves?”

He replied “No thank you Daddy, I can do it.”

Then I asked him “Are you sure that you don’t want to do stand-up instead?”

To which he replied “No thank you Daddy, I want to try breakdancing.  I can do it.”

I asked him which song he wanted to dance to and he said “Michael Jackson…” to which I was instantly delighted, until he followed it up by getting more specific “…Bad by Michael Jackson.”  

Now I’m a huge MJ fan, but I’ve always felt like as a song the song “Bad” had lived up to it’s name: it’s terrible.  “Bad” was the title track to Michael’s album that followed-up “Thriller” and “Thriller” was at the time the most-successful album in the history of the music industry.  While “Bad” did become the first album in history to record five different Number 1 Pop Singles, it was largely seen as an artistic and commercial let-down (selling less than half the number of albums that Thriller sold in the US).  And the track “Bad” itself perfectly embodies that feeling of being let down.  The song is sonically confused, it doesn’t known if it wants to be a pop song, an R&B track, a hip-hop cut or a New Wave work-out (you could say it has genre identity issues).

Nevertheless, I was proud that my little boy was feeling grown-up enough to do what is probably the scariest thing in the world at 6 years old, to get up in-front of your peers and dance.  So a week goes by between Xavier’s big announcement and the Talent Show Audition itself and Xavier has conducted nothing but closed door rehearsals. He has never taken a dance class or been in a formal school-yard breakdance battle (those are pretty rare in the halls of his private catholic kindergarten class) but after a week of rehearsals he tells my wife and I that he is ready for the audition, but that he doesn’t want us to go to the audition. 

He said (and I quote) “I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you guys.”

When Xavier came home from the audition he was pretty happy with how it went and all he told us was “I’m going to be in the show.” 

Two more  weeks go by and it’s the day of the big show.  We went out and bought Xavier a Fedora just for the occasion and both my wife and I skipped out of work a bit early to catch our son’s debut on the big stage. 

And what did he do? He killed it. 

Xavier chose to stand still for the first 12 counts of the song in order to make himself look too nervous to perform, but then when the vocals kicked in he tossed his Fedora off of the stage and broke into dance.  At 6 years old my boy knows how to fool a crowd by creating false tension and then exceeding all expectations by bringing an unbridled swagger to the stage.

Xavier’s moves were strong yet graceful, masculine and yet still in touch with his feminine side (like Caitlyn Jenner’s stride). Xavier was spinning on the floor like he was the son of a draddle that had a one night stand with a disco ball.

He was a bigger star than any of the Stars on the Confederate Flag, and he let the rhythm of the song be the wind that blew through his tassels.  Xavier has all the confidence of Donald Trump onstage but he actually had the talent and stage presence to back it up and his moves were bringing people together instead of alienating them and tearing them apart. And letting Xavier dance to a song that I didn’t really understand was like the legalization of gay marriage, hard to understand at first, but in the end it’s a beautiful thing based on love and understanding.

The show’s DJ was only supposed to play the first 90 seconds of the song, but Xavier was getting such a strong reaction from the crowd that they let the whole song play through.  The only problem is that Xavier really had only choreographed and paced himself for 90 seconds of dance…so by the 4 minute mark he was just about ready to pass out. 

At first I had thought that he picked the wrong song, but it just would have been the wrong song for me.  Xavier’s on-stage swagger embodied the boastful brilliance of “Bad’s” inexplicable self-confidence.  After watching Xavier get down I have a whole new appreciation for the track (and maybe, in the end it’s not so “Bad”).

At the end of the performance Xavier took a bow and got a standing-ovation.  When he made his way over to his mother and I, I gave him a great big hug and told him “You did it! I’m so proud of you.”

Then he told me between heavy breaths “I told you I can do it.”

“You can and YOU DID!” I told him and I hugged him again.

That’s when he dropped the funny bomb on me “Daddy, I’m tired.  Next year I think I’m just going to do comedy instead.” And that was music to my ears.  Talk about timing, this kid was born to be a comedian (if that’s what he wants).  

In the end, breakdancing might not solve all of the world’s problems, but there is a lesson in there somewhere between the back-spins, record scratches and B-Boy stances.  If we as a people can look at the problems in our society and really strive to improve them by making our own way (by dancing to our own song) and by learning from our Father’s mistakes of intolerance (racial violence, bigotry & sexism) we can learn to choose the right song for us.

 If we can make these changes, then when it comes to making our world the type of wonderfully safe and tolerant place that we all know that it has the potential to be we can.. AND will DO IT. 

Xavier and I after the Talent Show, very pleased with ourselves for solving our nation's problems through dance.