On Buddhism and "bad habits"
Recently, midway through a long jog/walk to the end of Golden Gate Park and up through Lands' End, I decided on the spur of the moment to have a solo brunch of eggs benedict and a mimosa at Louis', a family-owned diner set on a perch overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Mid-meal (when I started to take the ocean view and small talk with fellow diners for granted) I picked up an old leftover USA Weekend and read a pretty fun interview with the now 63-year-old actor Patrick Duffy.
He was being interviewed because there is a new revival of Dallas, the iconic show that made him super famous (although I am somewhat shamefully more familiar with his work on the sitcom Step By Step than anything else.)
He was being interviewed because there is a new revival of Dallas, the iconic show that made him super famous (although I am somewhat shamefully more familiar with his work on the sitcom Step By Step than anything else.)
Anyway, all I know now after reading this random USA Weekend interview is I would absolutely love to be a weekend guest at his rural Oregon ranch for a dinner or two. What an interesting guy. Below I've excerpted some fun bits (the interview was short overall but this is even shorter.)
On being a patriarch:
"My 5-year-old and my 3-year-old [grandkids] can’t get enough of me. I’m the hero because I teach them how to fish and let them drive the tractor with me [at Duffy’s ranch in Oregon]."
On what led him to Buddhism:
On how that religion plays into his now 40-year-long marriage (he's 63 years old):
"I did it to try to get in bed with this woman, who became my wife. She told me about it. I thought, 'Any opportunity I have to sit next to her, I'm taking it.'"
“I had to learn that acquiescence doesn’t mean giving up. Once I threw away my debit sheet in my head of who owed whom what, everything changed. [My wife and I] haven’t had a cross word or a misunderstanding in the last 15 years, 20 years. A large part of that I will say is that we both practiced Buddhism."
"I'm a very good carpenter. I can build a house from the ground up... My dad was a really talented carpenter. That's how I learned."
When asked if he has any "bad habits":
"Not that I wish I would give up. I cut out all distilled alcohol, but I drink a minimum of a bottle of [red] wine a day. I have done it for 35, 40 years. I think it's actually beneficial. I drink a bottle at dinner every night. I never get buzzed."
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