Musings of a Warped Mind

Christmas 2011

2011-12-15T14:54:00.002-07:00

Back in 1935, an Austrian physicist named Schrödinger devised a way to explain quantum physics and impress chicks by placing a cat inside a sealed box with a vial of poisonous gas that could break at any moment and kill the unwitting feline. The crux of this exercise was this: until one opened the box to see if Mr. Finickypants was still upright, the cat could be considered both alive and dead. (Who says physicists are boring?) This annual report from the Greene family may be considered a bit of a modern-day Schrödinger’s Cat conundrum: until you read it, you won’t know if it will please you or cause a psychotic episode. On with the fun!

Sam is now in sixth grade, and he’s quite the reader. While he has yet to tackle the likes of War and Peace or Catcher in the Rye (and who can blame him – I’ve never cracked open the former, and I’m STILL waiting for Salinger to finish the latter and make his point), he’s become a sort of “point man” on his Battle of the Books team. At one of his “battles” back in March, each time they were asked a question, the other two members of his team would immediately look to him expecting him to know the answer – kind of the same way the dumb jocks expect the Asian kid to be good at math. Nevertheless, he didn’t let them down. He also made the “Million Word Club” at school. (I’m not going to push the issue, but are they REALLY sure he actually read EVERY word in EVERY book? I know I skim – much like you’re doing right now with this Christmas letter.) Also, another year has passed in which Sam has tenaciously limited his exposure to trying new foods – deep down, I believe he’s proud of such an achievement. Whenever we go to a dinner at a relative’s home, Sam immediately disappears into another part of the house or out into the backyard in the hopes that he won’t be forced to eat something really disgusting like roast beef or mashed potatoes or ham – I’m waiting for him to learn about the Geneva Convention and/or Amnesty International and having him trot out the threat that he’s going to report us for cruel and unusual punishment. As his friend, Buddy the Elf, sticks with the four food groups of Candy, Candy Corn, Candy Canes, and Syrup, Sam’s dietary daring doesn’t go too much farther afield from that. We’re thinking about hypnotizing him and pumping him full of proteins and fiber on a weekly basis.

As the year began, we found ourselves packed into a smallish auditorium with a lot of screaming, grunting, and Spandex. No, I’m not talking about a reunion concert for an ‘80s hair band – it was a junior high school wrestling match, and Jack was in the thick of it. Just before his first match, Jack came home from school and immediately disappeared into the bathroom. If his school’s cafeteria served similar offerings to those I remember from my youth, and the bathrooms at his school resembled the ones from mine, it made perfect sense that he had a heightened sense of urgency to get into the bathroom. A few moments later, he walked up to me as I was standing in the kitchen, and he was wearing a singlet (if you don’t know what a singlet is, I’m not sure if you’d be more glad that I satisfied your curiosity by describing one or that I sufficed by saying, it’s something that’s tight in all the wrong places). Beaming with pride, Jack said to me, “Dad, take a picture of me.” Quelling a fit of laughter that was fighting to bubble up and explode from mouth, I looked at Jack and said, “You’ll thank me when you’re older if I don’t.” (And all of you will thank us that we didn’t make that our family holiday photo!) This summer, Jack started high school – and I believe most of his teachers are young enough that they probably still get carded at bars. At “Back to School” night, I swear I saw two of his teachers get dropped off by their parents. Jack has also become quite the entrepreneur by hiring himself out as a dog sitter for a number of people in our neighborhood. If you ever see a Labrador running down the street while wearing a singlet, Jack’s probably not too far behind.

When I’m not busy saving the world by texting a daily trivia question, I like going to the gym and asking the guys who are all ‘roided out and about to bench 950 lbs. if they need me to spot them. When she’s not busy finding ways to keep a delinquent Elf occupied, Erin enjoys making scale models of celebrities out of tofu and selling them on eBay. Drop us a line or come and stay with us – we would love to hear from and see you. Just leave the cat at home – it’ll be safer for him. Happy holidays!

Blown Away

2011-09-26T16:38:00.001-07:00

It’s never a good thing when your wife or significant other (it’s one or the other) asks you to “put your hand in the fridge” – not because she’s about to slam your hand in the door or there’s an evil gnome living inside your refrigerator waiting to pull you in and suffocate you. (While it’s probable you have gnomes living in your refrigerator, I have it on good authority that they don’t have homicidal tendencies as they know the people on the outside of the refrigerator are generally the ones who are replenishing the gnomes’ supply of sticks of butter and black olives – gnomes are the reason you’re always running out of these two items.) At any rate, the true reason your being asked to “feel” the inside of the fridge is that it’s obviously not as cold as it should be.

Despite what I’ve heard about friendly gnomes (it’s just my luck I would have one of those rogue gnomes who was grumpy and on a hunger strike), I warily got off the couch, walked over to the refrigerator, opened it suddenly (the element of surprise is your friend), and felt the interior air. While it wasn’t hot enough knock me over with heat blast, the air wasn’t exactly arctic crisp either.

Since I audited “Refrigerator Maintenance 115” back in college (meaning: I intended on at least attending the lecture on how to make the ultimate popsicle but never went to class), I was never licensed to possess those gauges and thingamajigs with dials and coils all over them that help one diagnose the possible reason or reasons the fridge isn’t delivering its optimal bravura performance. So, I decided to wing it: I’m betting that’s what they teach in “Refrigerator Maintenance 116”.

Removing the grille at the base of the refrigerator in the front, I noticed that the coils were “furry” – you know, the fur of millions of dead dust bunnies. Using the vacuum cleaner hose, I cleaned off as much of the fur from the coils but noticed that I could only reach the front portion. The coils were in a horizontal-V configuration, so I couldn’t access the back portion. No worries, I’ve been working out – I can pull the refrigerator out from the wall to attack the problem from that side (and there are wheels on the fridge that make it easy enough for a three year old to move around as if it’s as light as a tricycle). Problem: after climbing back behind the refrigerator and removing a cardboard panel (yes, it’s made of cardboard, and it’s lined with a thin layer of insulation that looks like cotton candy – take my word for it, though; it tastes nothing like cotton candy), I found that a lot of “machinery” with a nasty fan blade that took umbrage to my finger being in its personal space stood between me and my successful fur eradication on the back half of the coil. A real poser!

Undeterred, I returned to the front of the fridge and pondered my options. The heart of the problem was simple: I needed something to produce sufficient “suckage” (that’s a technical term I learned from my college roommate who actually attended “RM 115”) to pull the accumulated dust off of the back coil, through the open spaces of the now-clean front portion of the coil, and gather the detritus into the vacuum hose. I’m a genius! However, my celebration was short lived. I quickly remembered that I had loaned out my one and only flux capacitor so I couldn’t rig up our vacuum cleaner to produce enough jigawatts to maintain the sufficient level of suckage – a story as old as time, of course.

The first option I then considered was squatting down and lifting the refrigerator vertically, but that clearly wasn’t going to work: I was by myself, and our dog has no opposable thumbs with which to hold the vacuum hose AND flip the “on” switch. I blame Darwin for this – this Theory of Evolution of his has some serious holes, in my opinion. Then the stroke of genius hit me: if I can’t vacuum it out, I’ll blow it out. With what, you may ask? One might think a hair dryer would be sufficient, but I didn’t want to take the chance that the power would still be too weak or the underside of the refrigerator might develop split ends without proper conditioning. Some of you probably see where I’m going with this, and you would be right: I am a genius. I went out to my garage and returned with . . . the leaf blower. In less than four seconds after strategically positioning the leaf blower and firing it up, all traces of dust bunnies were but a memory.

As my wife and son were cleaning a fine layer of what appeared to be volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens that had settled on every surface of the kitchen, I could tell they were completely blown away by my genius. In fact, I heard my wife say “unbelievable” numerous times.

Believe it or not, though, this is not the first time I’ve employed the leaf blower as a means to solve a non-leaf-related problem. One holiday season a few years back, we loaded our Christmas tree into the family minivan to haul it off to the dump. Upon my return, I found that the tree had decided to leave 95% of its needles behind in my minivan. I could have pulled out the old shop vac and spent the next two hours scouring every inch of the minivan’s interior, but I had things to do: in this case, I probably had a nap to take or a book to read. At any rate, I whipped out the leaf blower, opened every door of the minivan, and my work was done in about 30 seconds. My neighbor across the street watched me a bit quizzically, so as I turned off the leaf blower, I shouted over to him, “They laughed at Einstein, too.” I thought that summed it up; my neighbor was probably wondering “when did Einstein have time to invent the leaf blower?”

About an hour after cleaning the coils and pushing the fridge back into place, I opened it up to find the air noticeably cooler, the gnome was putting his parka back on, and all was well in the Greene house. No rest for the weary, though: I needed to run to the store for more butter and olives.

Sizing up the Year - Greene Family Christmas Letter 2010

2010-12-10T14:22:00.002-07:00

Have you ever tried to type anything over, say, 50 words in length on one of these fancy-schmancy new “Netbooks”? The keyboard’s slightly larger than a microchip but smaller than a deck of cards. Who invented these things? And you can’t say elves, because I’ve seen their fingers – they’re like little sausages. Speaking of fingers, let’s just say I wasn’t born to play the piano or palm a Nerf basketball, but even with my girlie digits, this isn’t the easiest task in the world. Granted, giving birth and passing kidney stones still rank higher on the list of difficult tasks – you will have known that if either you’ve read some of our past Christmas letters or you’ve given birth (to a human being or a kidney stone – I wouldn’t recommend both at the same time, although reading this letter may feel like that). Take a Percocet, sit back, and enjoy!

Sam has become quite philosophical this year. As the date approached for our church’s annual children’s program, one of the women helping put it together asked Sam if he would prepare a short speech. His topic: Jesus and His miracles. Erin and I knew that Sam had reached the age that he needed to put the majority of the effort into preparing this speech, so we adopted a “hands off” approach to be sure he only came to us if he REALLY needed help. The “hands off” approach worked perfectly – we completely forgot about it until the night before the program when we came home from a date (with each other – it’s too complicated any other way) and he announced that he had already written his speech. He handed us his copy and asked us to read it. My favorite part – and I believe Erin concurs – was when he wrote, “To me, Jesus is like a superhero; just he doesn’t have a secret identity. That’s one of the things I love about Jesus; and about miracles.” Later, as the mid-term elections and all the attendant rhetoric were raging, Sam was watching the news with Erin when he turned to her and said, "So Republicans are like your friends, they don't really care what you do and you can do whatever you want. Democrats are like your parents. They want to boss you around and tell you everything you have to do." Take that, McLaughlin Group!

This was the year that Jack became a teenager. As a way of appropriately ushering in this new chapter of his life, Jack and Erin organized an “Amazing Race” themed birthday party. While I can assure you no yaks were harmed in the ensuing melee and the naked flamingos were a bit unnerving, everyone had a great time. Even Colonel Sanders made an appearance (and you all thought he was dead – yes, it was THAT good of a party)! With the teen years has come a keen interest in rocket-propelled flying objects, setting fire to anything that we will allow him to burn, and cooking. Honestly, the cooking thing has been with him for quite some time, but he’s really spreading his wings and taking on new and interesting challenges – and in the process, he’s become very good at it. Now, if he could find a way to cook a chicken by engulfing it in flames and shooting it into the first layer of the stratosphere and cooling it on its descent, he’d be in heaven! There’s probably a Discovery Channel show in there somewhere. In those odd moments when he hasn’t been filling his time with culinary terrorism, Jack’s been actively involved with Boy Scouts (where I believe the campfire was the origin of his fascination with burning things) and is within a hair’s breadth of getting his Eagle (fortunately that particular bird is both revered and protected by law so Jack can’t subject it to his proclivities). If any of you may be wondering how much a hair’s breadth equals, it’s exactly halfway between a skosh and a tad – see, this is both fun AND educational!

As for Erin and myself, when we’re not busy fighting crime in our secret identities (don’t tell Sam) as Carpoolio and Hairboy (you can guess who’s who), we fill our time raising pygmy goats that resemble reality TV stars for state fairs across the country – it’s extremely rewarding.

As I’ve written in the past: our door is always open for you (I made sure of that just recently by replacing the dead bolt that had us trapped in the house for four days – fortunately, we didn’t have to resort to eating each other). The weather’s great here (for about three more months), so come on by and sit a spell – that’s an ephemeral amount of time really, but it’s longer than a moment but shorter than a coon’s age. Happy holidays!

Gettin' 'Up In' Religion

2010-09-27T16:57:00.003-07:00

I'm "monitoring" Sam's getting-dressed-for-church progress yesterday morning. I note that he's wearing black suit pants (that he inherited from his older brother, Jack) and a white shirt (not my choice). I tell him it's time for us to leave for church, and Sam jukes over to his closet for what I presume is going to be a tie - while he's only 10 years old, he's started to have a fascination with wearing "the noose". At any rate, as he comes around the corner I see him shrugging on the matching black suit jacket, no tie. This prompted a bit of an argument as Sam REALLY wanted to wear the jacket - crazy kid, it's 105 degrees outside. I finally "won" the argument with this little gem: "Sam, you can't wear a suit without a tie to church. It's either what you're wearing now - no jacket, no tie - or you have to wear a tie if you're going to wear the jacket. If you were going to go out and hit a couple of night clubs, wearing the jacket without the tie would be fine."

Fast forward to our drive home from church:

Dad: "What did you learn about in Primary today?"

Sam: "We learned about the afterlife."

Dad: "So tell me about the afterlife."

Sam: "In the afterlife, cheetahs and lambs will hang out and run around together."

Dad: "I think you mean that the lamb and the lion will lie down together - it's a prophecy from the book of Isaiah."

Sam: "No. The lions will be someplace else eating straw. And guess what: in the afterlife, a kid will be able to put his hand 'up in' a serpent and not get hurt."

Dad: "I think you mean that a child will be able to place his hand in a snake's den and not be bitten."

The son's patience is wearing thin at this point with the father's complete lack of understanding of all things Biblical.

Sam: "No, I mean a kid will be able to put his hand 'up in' a serpent."

Dad: "'Up in'? What exactly do you mean by 'up in'?"

Sam: "The kid will be able to stick his hand up a snake's butt and not get hurt."

My thought, while making sure I don't crash my car, was I'm not too sure the snake would agree with that.

Pregnant Woman (NOT ERIN) with a Sense of Humor

2010-07-06T20:10:00.006-07:00

You can believe this or not, but I was at the gym tonight lifting weights. I'm not going to tell you how much weight I was lifting for fear you might think this thing is total fiction.

At any rate, near the end of my workout, I approached the free weights area and happened upon a pregnant woman doing dumbbell curls. Given her dimensions and proportions, there was NO question that she was pregnant - take my word for it on this one.

As I passed her, she had just finished the set she was doing and let the weights and her arms hang down on each side. I looked at the weights in her hands and then said, gesturing to her belly, "I think you're lifting those dumbbells wrong."

She paused for a moment, got a funny look on her face, and then she laughed - fortunately.

The Porcelain Year

2010-05-02T20:43:00.003-07:00

While chatting it up with a couple of people at work the other day, I announced that my wife and I were about to celebrate 18 years of marriage – with each other. The discussion turned to what each anniversary represented. The easy answers, of course, were 25 years is the Silver anniversary; 50 is Gold; and 75 is Diamond. What was 18? The first thing that leapt to mind was “origami” (most likely something in the shape of either a gnu or a 1964 Chevy Impala), but one of the members of this discussion quickly reminded me that paper – origami’s material of choice – was the first anniversary. Paper? Clearly that doesn’t mean “get her a card and call it good” because then there would be no second anniversary. I honestly don’t remember what I gave my wife for our first anniversary – all I know is that I’ve been lucky enough to have 17 more.

At any rate, Paper Person proceeded to Google the question on her BlackBerry (I believe this very moment was the single reason God invented both Google and the BlackBerry – everything else we do with those two pieces of technology are just gravy) and found that “porcelain” is the traditional gift for an 18th wedding anniversary. I mulled this over quite extensively: do I buy my wife a toilet or a sink? Which one says “I love you” and “Happy 18th, Foxy Mama” more than the other? Given the fact I had already established the Divine origin for Google and BlackBerry, I decided not to chance it by seeking help in answering these questions using those avenues. So, I decided on my own: I booked a room at a local hotel for an evening.

The gentleman at the hotel seemed a little bewildered when I asked if our room would have both a porcelain sink and toilet, but before I let him get too worked up over it, I reminded him this was for our 18th anniversary. Silence on the other end of the phone – obviously the import of my question was suddenly crystal clear.

Fast forward to yesterday: After checking into our room (and confirming that both the toilet and sink were porcelain – I played it smart and didn’t make a big deal of it as I was sure my wife would make the connection and see me for the die-hard romantic that I am), we made our way to dinner. Here’s the problem with going to a fancy restaurant when you don’t drink alcohol: When the server asks you which wine you would like to begin your meal, you say, “May I have a Coke, please?” At that point, I would imagine, most servers are tempted to card you to see if you’re really a 13-year-old kid with premature gray hair and the unfortunate beginnings of a double chin. Although the server knows that since you’re not ordering alcohol and her tip will be relatively lower due to the smaller tab for the meal, she takes solace in hoping that you truly are 13 years old because your bedtime is 9:00 p.m. so you won’t be sticking around too long – more time to bring in a patron who will order enough booze to float a small navy.

As we took a short walk on the hotel grounds after dinner, we passed a wedding party. These kids were JUST staring their lives together – the seven years they lived together before “getting serious” don’t count – and here we were celebrating 18 wonderful years. These kids have the paper anniversary next year, along with cotton and leather after that, respectively. Who in their right mind came up with these gift ideas, Eli Whitney and the Marquis de Sade? All I know is that I truly look forward to our 19th and 20th anniversaries. I believe they are, respectively, “world domination” and “kittens” – and I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else. I love you, Erin!

Thank You, Kanye!

2009-09-15T20:15:00.001-07:00

Hear me out! I don’t hate Taylor Swift – I don’t think Kanye did a good thing by grabbing the microphone from her during her acceptance speech at the Video Music Awards. Believe it or not, I agree with President Obama’s outlook on his actions: Kanye is a jackass.

However, what Kanye did – inadvertently, I’m sure – was give the holier-than-thou media the chance to jump off their high horses and show their true colors. It must have been extremely cathartic for so many of the media! With this incident, they proved that they and the paparazzi are one in the same. The main dude at TMZ.com must have been interviewed by thousands of media outlets yesterday and today to get the “inside scoop” on Kanye’s behavior. You read that right: their “expert” is a cat who runs an outfit who spends most of its time tracking down the celebrity du jour to find out if she ate more than 200 calories that day and to snap pictures of said celebrity when she forgot to wear underwear (most likely because she’s not getting enough food to the brain).

The mainstream media want us to believe that they’re a step ahead of us at all times and that they keep themselves above the fray to assure we’re getting the “whole story”. First of all, by spending more than five seconds on the Kanye West story shows that they’re not above the fray at all – they’re down in the gutters, too. Secondly, if they wanted to make this into some type of life-lesson story or an exposure of what celebrity does to a man’s head, they shouldn’t be going to the guy who salivates over catching on video the ramblings of someone famous who has drunk enough Jack Daniels to float a small yacht. While there’s probably not a whole lot of “jackassologists” thick on the ground to dissect Kanye’s behavior for the morning news, there is a whole host of accredited professionals who could give the viewing public a little better insight into the whole affair – but that wouldn’t really be that interesting, truth be told.

So, Kanye, thanks for screwing up so magnificently! You gave the mainstream media the chance to let their hair down and show us they’re just a bunch of schlubs like us. Because of you, I’m inviting Matt Lauer to my next outdoor barbecue, and I won’t be ashamed to ask him to bring a beanie weenie casserole.

Start (Don't Stop) Making Sense

2009-09-10T18:31:00.003-07:00

Let’s go back to a simpler time when our “politicians” made a little more sense: the American Revolution. Specifically, let’s focus on the night before the pivotal crossing of the Delaware.

Aide to General Washington (avoiding eye contact with his superior): “Sir, I have a gentleman outside your tent we caught snooping around and listening in on the meetings with your officers.”

General Washington (stops writing in his journal and puts his quill down – all he’s been able to write is “Lord Cornwallis is a tool.”) “Why has he been listening in on our meetings? Is he a spy?”

Aide (clearly not enjoying this task, he blows out a deep breath and continues to avoid eye contact): “No, worse. He says he’s a member of the press and insists that he’s exercising one of the rights – Freedom of the Press to be specific – for which this war is being fought.”

Washington (giving his aide that Are you completely bonkers? look – aide simply closes his eyes and makes an almost imperceptible shake of the head): “I’m a fairly intelligent man – at least my mother thinks so – but I’m having trouble understanding why this chap feels it necessary to listen in on my strategic planning meetings with my officers the night before one of the most important events of this war. Throw me a bone here, man.”

Aide (throwing back a look of Don’t shoot the messenger and looking up at the ceiling, hands behind his back, clearing his throat): “Sir, he claims that his readers have a right to know what’s going on at the front and that this right supersedes the safety and security of our men who are fighting this war.” (Aide holds up both hands, palms outward, in an it sounds even dumber hearing myself say it manner and rolls his eyes.)

Washington (looking at his aide with a sideways glance): “Are you absolutely sure he’s not a British spy sent here to kill us with laughter? They’re famous for their dry wit, you know, but this is absolutely ridiculous.” (Washington notices a very pained look on his aide’s face and turns to look him straight in the eye.) “What? You’re serious? Is there something more?”

Aide (hands behind his back again, staring up into the corner of the tent just over Washington’s shoulder): “Um, well, yes, there is one other teeny tiny thing. He’s insisting on being embedded in one of the front-line infantry units tomorrow morning and wants your personal assurance on his safety.” (Aide casts his eyes immediately to the floor and shuffles his feet.)

Washington (laughing hysterically and trying to keep himself from wetting his pants, he’s amazed his aide is able to keep a straight face – this is one phenomenal joke, perfectly delivered!): “Wait. You’re not kidding are you?” (He regains his composure, tugs at the hem of his coat and smooths down his lapels.) “Right. Take the bugger and his rights (Washington makes air quotes with his fingers) out back and give him the Thomas Paine treatment – beat some common sense into him. If that doesn’t work, dress him up as a woman and set him free in the British camp – most of those men haven’t seen their wives or girlfriends for months, and it’s cold. He’ll quickly learn the meaning of being embedded in an infantry unit!”

Fast forward to today: if someone in Washington’s position making a similar suggestion were overheard by the wrong person or videotaped and played on YouTube, the madding crowd would be clamoring for his resignation, his evisceration, and/or his castration. I can’t pinpoint where in the ensuing centuries we, the American People, decided to fill our collective wheel barrow with stupid bricks and get everything turned around, but it’s obviously happened!

I was watching the morning news recently when the talking head read a story about the liberation of a member of the press who had been taken hostage in the Middle East. The newscaster – one of the hostage’s kindred spirits – blithely announced the happy news that the man was now free but then quickly breezed through the part of the story that a British commando was killed in the operation. Warning: I’m going to capitalize this next part so you can clearly hear me. A MAN WHO HAS BEEN PAINSTAKINGLY TRAINED TO DEFEND HIS COUNTRYMEN AND WOMEN AND TO BRING HOME HIS FALLEN COMRADES UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WAS KILLED SO A MEMBER OF THE PRESS – SOMEONE WHO WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF HELL VOLUNTARILY, SOMEONE WHO WAS BRINGING ABSOLUTELY NO END TO THE CONFLICT OR PEACE TO THE REGION – COULD COME HOME IN THE PASSENGER CABIN OF AN AIRCRAFT WHILE THE DEFENDER CAN COME HOME IN A BODY BAG. That’s A LOT of stupid bricks for the wheel barrow, kids!

A Man and His Pets

2009-03-25T20:58:00.008-07:00

Little did you know, but the day you were born into this world, you made an implicit promise with the rest of the world that you were going to accept some things just as they are and keep moving along. Parts of this compact include motorists who drive 35 mph in the fast lane on the freeway, your seventh-grade English teacher’s bad breath, and the inexplicable fame and success of hair bands in the 80s – you just file them away as givens and try not to let them ruin your day (or your decade for that matter).

Back when I used to have to travel a lot, I would stay in a mid-level hotel chain, and I was generally pleased with the accommodations. The two things I did do on a regular basis that still give my wife the heebie-jeebies was walk around my room barefoot and leave the bedspread on the bed when I went to sleep each night. Sure, I’ve heard all about the funky foot fungi that are ever present on hotel floors and what a hotel bedspread looks like under a black light, but I’ve chosen to exercise my birthright and just not think about it. I stayed in hotels regularly for over four years – I wasn’t about to let myself go neurotic.

Another aspect of my life in which I refuse to think beyond the moment is when I go to a convenience store and get a fountain drink. The lids to the cups are always arranged in such a way that it’s good odds that another ungloved human hand has touched the inside of the very lid you’re about to place atop your cup and allow who-knows-what to mingle with your thirst-quenching drink. But I can’t think about that! I have a Coke to swig.

Recently, I noticed our pool sweep wasn’t working properly, so I reeled it in and brought the head up out of the water only to notice that a small rat had become lodged in the intake valve – if the look frozen on its face conveyed its last thoughts before succumbing to the depths of our pool, I’m pretty sure he was ticked! While I dismantled the sweep’s head and pushed the rat’s body out of the opening with a screwdriver (that went immediately in the trash can afterwards), I made sure I didn’t touch the vermin with either of my hands. Nevertheless, the rest of that evening, I kept having to wash my hands with HOT water and plenty of soap. Before I went to bed, I forced myself to stop thinking about the whole incident so I could get some rest. Fortunately, I didn’t have any nightmares that night of Chuck E. Cheese chasing me with a pool sweep.

Although I feel to pat myself on the back for my ability to let things slide the way I do, I have three pet peeves that I just can’t shake:

1. Using Chopsticks to Eat Asian Food (IF YOU’RE NOT ASIAN AND/OR LIVING IN ASIA WHILE DOING THE EATING!): you’re not impressing anyone with your manual dexterity. The only person who MIGHT think you’re cool is the dishwasher at the restaurant because your chopsticks are made of cheap wood, and they’re going to throw them away after you leave rather than washing them.

2. People Who Say, “I Never Watch TV. There’s never anything good to watch.”: Liar, liar, pants on FIRE!!!!!!! So you pay $100/month for high-definition cable so your dogs have something to do while you’re gone instead of chewing up the sofa leg and/or playing “Guess Which Shoe I Peed in Today”?

3. People Who Make a Big Deal that They NEVER Sleep More Than Four Hours Each Night: Come on!! I have yet to eavesdrop on a conversation among a group of women who say, “That Steve is a hunk! Don’t you just love what sleep deprivation does to his eyes?” Even if you’re some freak of nature who revels in such a behavior, keep your weirdness to yourself and let me get some shuteye – Chuck E. Cheese isn’t going to be patient forever, so I might as well face him sooner than later.

Television's Healing Power

2009-02-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I’ve tried to deliver wise advice and insights that might help you navigate your daily journey through life. My columns have ranged from the inner workings of the English language and air travel to the virtues of the public education system and the Theory of Evolution. If for nothing else, this stuff will at least come in handy during a spirited game of Trivial Pursuit. Sure, you could argue that my columns aren’t exactly on par with Nietzsche (which is perfectly fine with me because I gather he’d be a real downer at a party) and are light on what some people would call “facts”. Today’s column, though, turns its back on frivolity and mirth to serve a higher purpose by announcing I’ve decided to become a medical expert and warn you of a dangerous and potentially lethal malady that is reaching epidemic proportions. What formal medical training have I undergone, you ask? We needn’t dwell on such trivial matters when lives are at stake, people!

The disease to which I’m referring is HPV! There are a lot of commercials these days talking about being tested for HPV, but that’s a whole other issue. The HPV of which I speak doesn’t have any fancy commercials or public service announcements aimed at educating the public about its dangers because those who catch it are, quite frankly, not exactly smart enough to catch on. This HPV is He-Man Pamplona Virus: an infectious neurological disorder that mutates the brains of the male portion of the species causing them to do all sorts of stupid things. It’s named after the mindset of those men who run with the bulls through very tight alleys and narrow streets in Pamplona, Spain, each year, but this affliction knows no international borders, cultural boundaries, or specific age range.

This tragic disease manifests itself in so many ugly ways! Here’s a list of just a few: getting a double hernia from refusing to lift with your legs, running for political office, wearing Spandex at ANYTIME, posting a video on YouTube of yourself lip-synching an AC/DC song, being an actual member of AC/DC and STILL touring, NASCAR, cage fighting, the creation of MySpace, running an Ironman Triathlon, karaoke, the wearing of pants so low that even a midget pickpocket has to reach down, etc. (Although I don’t have conclusive evidence, I have it on pretty good authority that HPV was at the root of both the automotive designs and market launches for the AMC Gremlin and Dodge K Car, respectively.) We haven’t even scratched the surface, and you can already see how pervasive a reach and tenacious a hold this disease has.

Even I have not been able to avoid HPV’s insidious coils. I have consented to be a part of a relay team that will require me to run, jog, walk, and/or crawl over seventeen miles on rather uneven terrain. Why? Is the purpose of the race to raise awareness for breast cancer or autism? No. Am I doing this to honor the life of a great man or woman who has helped me be a better person? No. Pretty sure I’ve never undergone a lobotomy, so there’s only one good reason I allowed myself to get caught up in this madness: HPV-induced stupidity!

Although there may be no hope for me, I believe I have come across a cure for those for whom it’s not too late. Where, pray tell, did I find it? From watching TV. I saw a commercial for Miralax, a medication originally designed for constipation, while I was jogging on the treadmill the other day, and the two things that stood out to me were the words “No Sudden Urgency” and “No Grit”. For the impulsive male mind, this is certainly a step in the right direction and a blow to HPV! As soon as you’re finished reading this, I urge you to go out to the store immediately and get a bottle of Miralax. In addition to fighting off the contagion of He-Man Pamplona Virus, you’ll feel more regular within twenty-four hours. However, if you actually go to Pamplona to run with the bulls, and something seems to be stuck where it shouldn’t, no amount of Miralax is going to help that.

Toilet Humor

2009-01-05T22:45:00.003-07:00

While hiking up Camelback Mountain with my almost-twelve-year-old son the other day he asked me how I got this gig writing a humor column. Between attempts to draw air into my lungs with what seemed to be a male elephant with a thyroid disorder sitting on my chest and his less-than-fit girlfriend sitting on his lap, I began to explain to him the laborious process of sending out thousands upon thousands of e-mails begging people to read my work and asking them if they would be kind enough to pay me in a currency recognized by the US Government – the market for beaver pelts and beads is way too volatile for my comfort level – for running my humorous little anecdotes on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Thinking I made a fairly reasoned explanation, I left him to ponder this wisdom and began to ascend a portion of the trail that required the use of handholds and carefully choosing where to place my feet to assure I would live long enough to write a couple more columns. By the time I reached the top of that stretch, Jack had already scampered up some other way – I swear he has mountain goat blood in him, which may not be too hard to imagine because both my wife and I have relatives from the South – and he awaited my arrival with a follow-up question: he wasn’t so much concerned about the ins and outs of how one goes about getting a job writing a humor column; he was more bewildered by the fact someone actually thought I was funny enough to pay me in something OTHER THAN beaver pelts and beads AND publish my musings in a newspaper – a vanguard of truth dedicated to keeping the public informed and up to date on what’s happening in the world (when the cable is out).

Rather than trying to reason with him (and in the interest of preserving what little breathing capacity I had left), I just looked at him and said, “It’s just one of the great mysteries of our time. It ranks up there with Stonehenge and why the French are so enamored with Jerry Lewis.” He began to ponder on that, and I’m not quite sure to this day if it was the natural phenomenon of Stonehenge or the absolute absurdity of the French’s love that caused his pensive nature.

As we were completing our ascent, I tried to see it from my son’s perspective. I’m the guy who marches him and his brother to bed on school nights – no humor there. I’m the guy who broke it to him that there’s a difference between boys and girls – definitely no humor there; that was just cruel! I’m the guy who demanded silence when trying to fix the toilet and then proceeded to break that silence with a few choice words directed at the fixture in question in a tone that seemed to be begging a response from an inanimate object – that’s not funny, that’s nuts!

Do you think people’s children see them the way the world sees them? Did Abraham Lincoln’s son see a true statesman when he looked at his old man or was he thinking, “What’s with the hat, dad? You’re tall. We get it.” Did Marie Curie’s kids see a pioneer in radioactivity or were they saying to each other, “Do you think mom will ever make a meatloaf that ISN’T burned to a crisp?” Did Socrates' kids recognize him as one of the founders of Western philosophy (which is contrary to the popular belief that it was John Wayne), or were they saying, “Enough with the questions. Yes, I want you to pass the salt NOW.”

The next time one of your kids gives you that look that can be interpreted as “was I adopted”, don’t bother breaking out a DNA test. Just wait until they get ready to go on their first date and break out the volumes of naked baby pictures of them when their date shows up, and they’ll wish they were adopted.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-05T21:20:00.003-07:00

I believe you’ll all agree it’s been an odd year, and many of you look at this letter as the full stop, the period, at the end of that sentence of insanity. Happy to help!

Speaking of it being a strange year, just recently we went to purchase our Christmas tree at Home Depot and found the outside nursery entrance closed. The guy in lumber explained this was because they were anticipating a higher theft rate this year. While our sons almost ripped Erin’s arms off to get back to the nursery because she just wasn’t running at the speed of light, I followed behind musing on this little twig of information snapped off and offered up by this loquacious lumberman: did someone really go to the trouble to research a report on Christmas tree theft – is there big money in this – or was the guy just making stuff up? (If it’s the latter, he’s my kind of guy!)

Not finding anything earth shattering, we made our way to Target to peruse their selection. Surprisingly quickly, Erin found THE ONE and we were ready. Slight snag, though, they didn’t have any twine to tie the tree to the top of our Urban Assault Vehicle – our Honda Odyssey, Hugo. This was all part of their fiendish plan to force us to purchase some rope, which we did. I found the rope held far better than the twine ever did. With twine, I always drove home very gingerly to assure the tree’s safe arrival. This year, though, I had ROPE! So, we covered the five miles between Target and home in three minutes flat. On the turn into our neighborhood, we got Hugo up on two wheels. A group of kids on skateboards and BMX bikes applauded as we passed them – one of them saluted. We pulled into our driveway with the tree still affixed to the top of the van and all the needles on the tree still intact. (Be sure to purchase a fresh tree – with one that’s too dry, the drive home turns it into a replica of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.)

Sam turned 8 this year and was baptized. We’ve learned that he has a penchant for 80s music that’s “funky and fresh”, and he’s fascinated with afros. Soccer is fast becoming his favorite sport, and he’s still in the fundamentals stage of learning the difference between a fullback and a sweeper and how to kick the ball directly into the face of your opponent – that’s coming to him quite naturally, though. Given enough time, we hope he’ll learn how to start soccer riots at the level you see in Britain. Dare to dream!

At 11, Jack’s choice for this year’s Halloween costume epitomized his two loves: creativity and building stuff. Constructing it completely out of cardboard, he was a human traffic cone. At the beginning of his summer vacation, he underwent a tonsillectomy and did fairly well in the recovery process. However, on Day 10 – the day you’re supposed to be determined “better” – he started coughing up blood and had to be rushed to the hospital to have that area re-cauterized. And then he had 10 more days of recovery. That was one riveting “What I Did Over Summer Vacation” essay!

Although another year has gone by and Erin still hasn’t realized her dream of traversing the globe in a lawn chair tied to one thousand helium balloons, she’s still feeling fulfilled through her work at school and church. A few months ago, we decided to get some of our tax money back, so Erin went to work part time at the boys’ school as an aide. She came home after her first day and said, “What a glorious scam! I just got paid today to do the same stuff I used to do when I volunteered for free!” From that point on, you know she secretly sneers at those other parents at the school who are still volunteering: “Suckers!”

As for myself, I’ve recently learned that it’s hilarious to put clothes on a dog. Seriously! I’m not talking about the whack jobs who dress up their pets and take family photos with them because they think they’re cute. Put a sweater that has a big puffy collar on a dog, and you can’t help but laugh – what’s even funnier is the look on the dog’s face because she knows on some level that she looks ridiculous and that the other dogs are going to make fun of her. Earlier this year, before discovering the hilarity of dog dressing, I left the sexy world of selling crumpled-up Kraft paper, thus giving up a life of intrigue and travel to exotic locales like Fernley, Nevada, and Beaver, Utah. Now I work for a packaging company in Arizona, so I’m home practically every night. The dog’s not altogether happy about that, I’m imagining.

If there’s six feet of snow on the ground where you are, come visit us. Here in Arizona, around Christmas time, we walk around all day in t-shirts and thongs – you can decide if I mean sandals or not.

Thursday, 4:32 p.m., at the Greene Home

2008-11-13T17:22:00.001-07:00

Sam: Dad, I got a yellow card today.

Dad: What happened?

Sam: I was talking.

Dad: Well, you need to work on that don’t you?

Sam: But the kid I enjoy chatting with sits in front of me. (His choice of words here was about to put me in stitches. First off, he didn’t use the word “like” – “enjoy” expresses such a wider spread of positive emotions. Then, he didn’t use “talking” or “joking around” to describe the action from which he derives such pleasure – no, he suddenly turns into a 67-year-old British spinster who, when she’s not chatting, she’s nattering around her flat.)

Dad: That’s when you need to work especially hard not to talk. You need to tell him that you both need to keep quiet.

Sam: But, dad, he’s really funny. (At that, I had exactly ten seconds to make it to the bathroom before I wet my pants.)

Santa Needs a More Ergonomic Chair

2008-11-04T21:07:00.002-07:00

With less than a million days before December 25th, Christmas was heavy on both my sons’ minds as we were driving home from Wal-Mart this evening. My younger son, Sam, asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I certainly felt put on the spot, so I had to think fast. I told them I wanted a Slip-N-Slide. Both of my boys perked up at that, and you could read their minds like a book: “Cool! That’ll be like a bonus present for me!”

Perhaps wanting to continue the wet-and-wild theme, Sam announced he was going to ask Santa for this enormous inflatable waterslide that’s about as big as our house – he saw one on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on Sunday night. Careful not to spoil any illusions he may still be holding onto, I told him that I was reasonably sure Santa would not be bringing such an item to our house this or any other year. It’s not so much the cost – I’m looking out for Santa’s logistical constraints with so many stops and such limited space in his sleigh.

A momentary silence fell over the car as the suburban landscape rushed by our windows. Sam’s not one to let such a mood remain too long, and coupling that with his constant concern for his fellow man, he felt constrained to make public those inner thoughts that were ruminating about his head at that very moment: “You know, I feel kind of sorry for Santa having to go all over the world to deliver toys.” A quick glance over at Sam revealed he was really worried about the big guy making his rounds on that one magical night each year.

At that very moment, it was as if I could see what was taking place before his mind’s eye:

The scene: a squalid jail cell with inadequate lighting and a musty smell from a dripping faucet in the corner. In walks a skinny, pugnacious stub of a man wearing a khaki uniform, a belt hanging just below his armpits, and a silver badge that says “The Man.” Santa’s sleeping fitfully in the corner of the cell on a bench that needs a good varnishing.

The Man: “Wake up, fat boy! It’s time.”

Santa’s jarred awake, his eyes are bloodshot and worry is painted on his face.

Santa: “But I don’t want to go. It’s too cold outside, the reindeer have really bad gas because someone always seems to feed them a beef log and/or a can of Slim Jims just before we take off, and my Sciatica always acts up about two hours into the trip – that beaded seat cover some of those New York cabbies use doesn’t do squat for me.”

The Man: “A deal’s a deal, chump. Every year you make the same bet with the Easter Bunny, and he always wins and gets to vacation down in Boca while you have to stay at the North Pole and fly around the world delivering toys. He hides eggs – that’s what he does, and he’s good at it. You’ll never be able to find them all in a half an hour. I don’t care if you have your elves on the lookout when he’s hiding them – that’s cheating by the way, which’ll get you on your own naughty list. What irony! Now get up, and get dressed!”

Dejected, Santa stands up and walks to the door of the cell. The Man shoves the key home and turns the lock, swinging the door open and taking a step back to size up his ward.

Santa: “Alright. But have you ever been downwind when Rudolph gets a sinus infection? How do you think he gets a red nose? Ugh! Fine, tell the elves to get everything ready. We’ll be leaving in ten minutes. But first, I need to use the john and take a Percocet.”

Looking to snap Sam out of his reverie, I turned the radio on and heard the final seconds of “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd. Which is funny because that’s exactly how Santa’s going to feel if he mixes that Percocet with a little bit of spiked eggnog.

Oprah Explained

2008-11-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tried to learn a new language? Sure, you go through all the grammar lessons, verb conjugation, learning the proper gender of certain words (you think I’m kidding), syntax, etc., but when it comes to being conversational, you have to display more than a textbook grasp of the language itself – you have to learn the idioms, the catchy sayings that identify you as a native speaker. In light of that, have you ever stopped to think of all the idioms we use in the American dialect of the English language that either make no sense or cause someone learning our language for the first time to say (in their own language, of course), “With minds that work like that, how is it possible that they became a superpower? That’s embarrassing to the rest of the world!”

Here’s just a sampling:

Beat a Dead Horse: Is there some part of the country in which it’s legal to beat a live horse? Is the purpose of this saying to convey the sheer uselessness of beating a dead one because there’s a whole paddock full of naughty horses just waiting their turn to take a lickin’?

Can’t Cut the Mustard: Has there ever been a time in human history when someone has needed the help of someone else to slice through a dollop of mustard? If so, can a person REALLY fail to do that?

Dropping Like Flies: Now, I could certainly see a group adopting the saying “Buzzing Around Like Flies” or “Landing All Over my Potato Salad Like Flies”, but I have in all my time on the face of this planet never seen a fly just drop from out of the sky. Sure, if it hits a bug zapper, it’s taking a dive, but so would you if you decided to walk right into something that delivers a gajillion volts of electricity through your entire body. If you’re wont to do that, perhaps they should change the saying to “Dropping Like Phyllis (or whatever your name may be)”.

Cock and Bull Story: Think back to the last ten or twenty tall tales or outright lies you’ve heard someone tell and ask yourself one simple question: Did a single one of them involve either a rooster or a male cow, or both of them for that matter? Do either of these animals have a tendency to stretch the truth more than the rest of the animal kingdom? Perhaps that’s why Oprah doesn’t eat beef!

Going to Hell in a Handbasket: I can understand the first part of this idiom – things are going from bad to worse – but the phrase “in a handbasket” has me over a barrel (I couldn’t resist). Is there something less than dignified about being carried somewhere in a handbasket as opposed to a bucket from Home Depot? Are we to assume Little Red Riding Hood was an emissary from the Underworld because of her devilish choice of conveyance for her grandmother’s goodies?

No Room to Swing a Cat: This certainly has to have a similar origin to the whole horses-who-like-the-beatdown thing. Was it during the Industrial Revolution when there was a shortage of tape measures that some carpenter’s aide said, “Wait, I got this one. If I can swing old Fang in a circle without hitting his head on anything, we should have enough space to install an elevator right here.”

I can picture the beleaguered foreign student leaving his English class one evening and deciding to strike up a conversation with the first person he sees on the street: “I learned about a mustard cutter who failed to swing his cat in a small room. He was so upset by this that he went to beat on his horse but found it was already dead and covered by flies.” His conversational companion undoubtedly is going to give him a very strange look, which will elicit something else from the student: “If you think that’s a cocky bull story, you and your handbasket can take a trip to hell.”

As he sits in the local precinct adjacent to a diner to fill out an assault report, he’ll say to the officer, “Do I smell bacon?”

Hillbilly Holiday

2008-10-07T20:10:00.002-07:00

Recently, we took our kids on a cruise. We chose to go with the company whose name rhymes with Fisney. The cruise itself met and exceeded all of our expectations – except that the Coke was less than carbonated – and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a pulse. But as I look back on our cruise experience, I can’t help but think it wasn’t quite what television and movies have portrayed cruises to be – and a lot of that is my own fault.

Hollywood usually shows the happy cruise goers ascending into a spacious jumbo jet with plush seats and leg room to rival the expanse of the Louisiana Purchase where they’re greeted by a stunning, blonde flight attendant and served filet mignon and drinks with little umbrellas in them. Instead, we crammed into a Boeing 737 with all coach seats and a guy who spent the four-hour flight eating an entire block of cheese. The woman sitting across the aisle from my wife, about halfway into the flight, reached under her seat and pulled out a Styrofoam clamshell box full of Chinese food. You do the math: four-hour flight, halfway through the flight, that’s two hours. Sure, there are enough preservatives in that stuff to keep anything “edible” until Haley’s Comet comes back around, but they do nothing for the smell.

When we arrived in Orlando, we caught the shuttle and proceeded to drive halfway back to Phoenix to retrieve our rental car. Such travels make a family hungry. So, after checking into our hotel and dumping our bags in our room, we went off in search of sustenance. One would think that being in a new city, one would seek out a local favorite featuring fare somewhat exclusive to that region and unleash one’s inner gourmand (that’s a fancy word for “chow hound”). No, we chose to unleash our inner Jethro Clampett and eat at the Cracker Barrel just up the street from our hotel. And for a hillbilly nightcap, I took the boys miniature golfing at a place with a marquee that read “Come feed our live baby gators”. I assumed they meant with your unruly children – that’s pretty good advertising.

The other thing movies and television don’t show you is the broad range of people you’ll see and meet on a cruise. And although you want to think you’re one of the beautiful people, you’re just as freaky as the rest. Despite the fact it was a family-oriented cruise, you still encountered the guy wearing a Speedo who really shouldn’t. (In all honesty, no man should wear a Speedo, but you know what I’m talking about. A friend of mine has come to call that a Spee-Don’t.) There was one woman who had enough extra skin on her back that she had cleavage coming and going. Ouch! But my particular favorite was the 60 year-old bald man wearing a t-shirt that read “Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta” – did I mention that he was whiter than Michael Jackson? I’m sure there’s a blog out there written by one of our fellow cruisers that talks about a middle-aged man with a less-than-stellar physique who ate his weight in soft-serve chocolate ice cream covered in Hershey’s chocolate syrup – that freak would be me.

Lastly, what Hollywood fails to show you is the true disembarkation process. In the movies and on television, everyone’s dressed to the nines and the Captain and his inner circle are there to speak to every single guest to assure they had the time of their lives, that all unfulfilled dreams have been realized, that they’ve found a cure for cancer, etc. In reality, no one’s around as you waddle off the ship in the only pair of clean clothes you have left (you’re not even worried if they match) hoping that the ten pounds you gained on the eat-24-hours-a-day diet you’ve had over the last seven days aren’t going to cause the button on your shorts to pop off and hit your own child in the back of the head with a force sufficient to cause brain damage, or at the very least knock them out cold. Not that they’d notice anyway because they just loaded up on four chocolate doughnuts and two and a half pounds of bacon for breakfast. They think they’re seeing Mickey & Minnie waving goodbye to them – they’re really just carb-induced hallucinations, the things dreams are made of!

Moving the Merchandise

2008-09-02T21:43:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday I opened my garage to pull my car out and run an errand when I saw my neighbors across the street holding a garage sale. No big deal. They do this about once every two or three months – I swear they have a warehouse full of this stuff because it always seems like they have at least one television set, a telephone, some type of hutch, and a table for sale at each one, and they’re not the same ones if you know what I mean. At any rate, in the time it took me to walk around my car and climb into the driver’s seat, I believe I saw between seven and eight vehicles pull up to my neighbors’ home and what seemed like hundreds of people come piling out of them like clowns out of a VW Bug at the circus. Of those seven or eight vehicles, I believe more than half sported bumper stickers for one or more Mexican soccer teams. Obviously, my neighbors had run an ad either on Univision or Telemundo – apparently, it’s not that expensive, and the reach those networks have is pretty vast.

By the time I had returned from my errand, all of the merchandise had moved except for the hutch. Have no fear, within another twenty minutes a woman pulled up in a station wagon and brokered some type of deal with my neighbors to take the hutch off their hands. With this extra money in hand, they could go buy more telephones and tables to be sold at a garage sale at a later date. Ah, the Circle of Life!

This year, we get to have a National Garage Sale – some of you more persnickety people out there choose to call it an Election – and move out some of the stuff that’s cluttering up our home and replace it with some other stuff we’ll invariably tire of in a matter of time. Come on, you see the similarities don’t you? Stiff, boxy accessories that just seem to be taking up space, gathering dust, and costing us far more than we should have paid in the first place – and there are the pieces of home décor, too.

Regardless of political affiliation, your choices in the National Garage Sale are all used products – some have a wobbly leg, others have a slightly scarred face, while others look pretty fresh but are rotting on the inside. In some instances, it’s a state giving up its Governor for a national position or a city surrendering one of their “greats” to run for a county or state seat. Sure, they stand there and tell you how wonderful he or she is as a leader. We never think to ask, “If they’re so nifty, why don’t you want to keep them?” Instead, we eat it up and tuck them under our collective arm and carry them to a new calling, all the while the city or state is standing there thinking, “Sucker!”

Nevertheless, vote with conviction! That’s your right and responsibility as an American citizen, for sure. (And if you’re like me, be sure to write yourself in for at least one position like Justice of the Peace – somewhere, there has to be a record showing that I got a vote.) But if you find yourself standing there at that flimsy plastic table with cardboard walls designed to be a voting booth (nothing says “Big Adult Patriotic Duty” like something that looks like a prop out of a third-grade school play), and you feel like you’re facing a moral dilemma by having to choose between candidates, just remember you can always put him or her up for sale at the next National Garage Sale. It’s one of the great constants in our universe: gravity will always keep us from floating away, water will always be wet, my mother will continue to buy the same style underwear for me at every birthday, and there’ll be another sucker willing to take the politicians off your hands the next time around.

The Virtue of the Five-Second Rule

2008-08-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Lately, it seems like every time I turn on the television, there’s a news report about the grave concern we should all have about childhood obesity. Of course, accompanying those reports are videos of prepubescent boys and girls walking around in less-than-flattering bathing suits and ill-fitted clothing. (Wow, sounds like some old 8mm home movies I’ve seen of our family reunions!) One could take the view that all children are evil and, like vampires, they can’t see themselves in mirrors so this fashion gaffe is excusable. However, that one doesn’t wash because you see these children out in public when the sun is up (usually sitting in a food court at a mall). At this point, you want to yell back at the television reporter something in this vein: “Put childhood obesity aside for a moment, sister! What about this rash of completely moronic, if not insane, behavior displayed by these parents who allow a pudgy girl to walk out of the house wearing a bikini?”

While I’m still waiting on my online degree from Dr. Phil in psychology (three box tops from Raisin Bran and $5.95 for shipping and handling), I’m afraid I’m not qualified to touch on the reasoning/motivation behind this parental behavior. However, having been a pudgy young man at one point in my life (I’ve come full circle back to being a pudgy adult-like man) I feel I am more than qualified to explore the question of obesity. I blame the Olympics!

Before I explain, a little history lesson is in order: in 1785, Antoine Lavoisier put forth the Law of Conservation of Mass, which states “matter is neither created nor destroyed.” Not to be outdone by some Frenchy, the German physician and physicist and co-founder of thermodynamics, Julius Robert von Meyer (he later dropped the “von” because it made his business cards look too “stuffy”), put his own spin on it in 1842 with “energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” (Scientific genius aside, I’m impressed that both of these gentlemen were able to speak English with such facility and proper grammar.) And then in 1907, Al Einstein (“The Steiner” to his friends – I can’t tell you without blushing what his tenth-grade girlfriend called him) wrapped his arms around the whole thing with “the total amount of mass and energy in the universe is constant.”

With the Olympics upon us, these athletes have been losing weight and trimming down to be at their peak performance levels. Great, but where does all that mass (a kinder word for “fat”) go? Some of you smartypants out there would say it’s converted to energy and burned off. Ha! I didn’t have to go to college and major in something completely unrelated to science or physics to know that’s totally wrong! Look around you: whenever a friend or loved one loses weight, another friend or loved one gains the equal amount – it’s The Law, and you can’t break The Law. These Olympians are shedding the pounds, and that mass is descending on the waistlines and thighs of our children like Paparazi on a C-list celebrity walking out of rehab.

Why have the Olympics? The Cold War wasn’t won because of the West’s dominance in kayaking. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t averted with the shotput. As far as I know, we haven’t found a cure for cancer with beach volleyball. Ironically, we sit around and watch people with freakishly perfect bodies do things that have no practical application. Take the Decathlon, for example: running incredibly fast for certain distances, jumping over obstacles, and throwing odd-shaped objects as far as you can. The only practical application I can find for that would be a life of crime.

If we really wanted to bring the Olympics down to a level of reality, we should have events like “how fast can you put a flyer for the local dentist on 200 windshields without provoking the ire of the car owner” and “escaping the boss’s notice for an entire morning, an entire afternoon, or the whole day” (that one could be broken down into heats, for sure). Other events could be “how much food can be eaten off the floor using the five-second rule” and “talking your way out of a speeding ticket.” Useful stuff, you know.

Oddly enough, the path to becoming a humor columnist never ran parallel to that of a world-class athlete. Hard to believe, I know. With that said, though, many of you may say my lack of understanding the appeal of the Olympics is rooted in my inability to master a pommel horse. That’s fair. But see how long it’ll take a pommel horse to get you to the grocery store to pick up dinner for the family.

Democracy on Aisle Ten (second try)

2008-07-08T17:30:00.002-07:00

Not too long ago, I found myself in line at a convenience store getting ready to purchase “breakfast”, which consisted of a 32-ounce Coke and a pack of Ho-Hos. I realize my eating habits mirror those of a thirteen-year-old whose parents have left him home alone for the weekend for the first time, but what I did next would have made my parents proud. As I made the front of the line, I noticed a soldier standing a few paces back preparing to buy his breakfast – I can assure you, it was far more healthful than mine. When the clerk went to ring up my purchase, I motioned to the guy and said, “This and whatever the soldier’s having.” The young man walked up to me with his hand out and said, “Thank you, sir.” I could hardly look him in the eye – seeing a man with Ho-Hos crying is just what the terrorists want – and I said, “Thank you for our freedom!”

What makes us “Americans”? After a lot of soul searching (and a couple more Ho-Hos), I came to the conclusion that what makes the American culture so uniquely “American” has its roots in or association with the South. You go to the Northeast, and they have deep ties to Italian and Irish culture. In the Midwest, you have a lot of Polish and German influence. Latin America weaves itself solidly through the Southwest. And the West (read: California) has its origins from another planet. But the South gave us NASCAR and Elvis, Wal-Mart and Kentucky Fried Chicken – that’s America!

Do you want to know the real reason Abraham Lincoln was so adamant about not allowing the Southern states to secede? He knew that without the South, the country would have no identity – the resulting country would be known as “those ninnies who have no national identity”, or something like that.

In the wake of Sherman’s March to the Sea, the land was scorched and flattened. Popular belief is that Sherman’s plan in doing this was to assure the Confederate Army didn’t have anywhere to fall back and gain shelter and provisions. That was only a by-product of the March to the Sea. The real reason was to pave the way for Ted Turner (a northerner!) to start up CNN and open his cable superstation, TBS, bringing the world an endless supply of re-runs. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Coke’s headquarters are in Atlanta? Don’t be naïve!

Now, admittedly we have a rather kooky outlook on the rest of the world that doesn’t make a lot of sense. For example, we don’t think twice when our fellow citizens from one part of the country add an “r” to all words that end in “a” and drop the “r” at the end of other words and replace it with an “a” (example: Linder instead of Linda, Lobsta instead of Lobster), but when we hear some foreign tongues being spoken we think it all sounds like gibberish or a bunch of people who are really ticked off at each other all the time.

Also, we as Americans are very selective about what we deem as quality and how we talk about it. If something’s from France or Germany, it’s “imported”. That’s code for “classy”, which if my Latin serves me correctly is another word for “ridiculously overpriced”, or something like that. If it’s from somewhere else, we call it “offshore” and deem it as sub-standard. Using that line of reasoning, are we to assume the consumers living in those “offshore” countries are okay with buying crap?

Speaking of France and Germany, we really should be careful how we “value” their imports to us. There’s something off with both of them. Even today, the French just love Jerry Lewis – yes, he’s the same guy who has the telethon over Labor Day weekend who can’t ever seem to get his bow tie on his tuxedo clasped properly around his neck. And the Germans are absolutely ga-ga over David Hassselhoff’s music – he sings?

Another odd thing about our country is that the side that “won” the Civil War is known as the Yankees. In today’s vernacular, that means absolutely nothing because the only Yankees we know are a bunch of overpaid guys in pinstriped tights and black mascara (they say it keeps the sun’s glare down – ha!), and most of them aren’t even from this country and don’t speak English. Pass the fried chicken, the race is about to start!

Democracy on Aisle Ten

2008-07-03T23:22:00.001-07:00

Once the Fourth of July has come and gone, will our patriotism have lessened in any way? Will our fervor, passion, and love for democracy and freedom reach a crescendo as the last firework pops in the sky and fades as the black of night descends over us in its place? Heck no! We’re happy to be Americans, warts and all, year round!

I have not travelled abroad extensively – Canada, Mexico, and Hong Kong are the three places I have visited – but I’m willing to bet we have a unique perspective of the world. That’s not to say that it’s better or worse than, say, a Belgian’s view but unique.

For example, when you watch the business portion of the evening news or read that section of the paper, you continually come across reports about “offshore” or “overseas” materials and technologies flooding the US market. You never see the reporter dancing a jig over this news; it’s always with a very stern face akin to that of someone who just wolfed down a box of prunes thinking it was a Whitman’s chocolates sampler. And when they speak of these “offshore” or “overseas” items, they’re always from a third-world country or China. Those terms are code for “inferior”.

By these news media’s standards, basically everything outside of the United States is “offshore” and/or “overseas” even if we’re connected by land. So, does that mean that the rest of the world just settles for crap? Does the guy from a Taiwanese factory that produces “offshore” lighting fixtures just go home and sit in the dark because he’s not going to be caught dead using the flop his company turns out? Does that thought ever cross our minds?

We as Americans are very selective about what we deem as quality and how we talk about it. If something’s from France or Germany, it’s “imported”. That’s code for “classy”, which if my Latin serves me correctly is another word for “ridiculously overpriced”, or something like that. Conversely, if I buy a dress shirt that’s made in Indonesia – I own my share – I’m not wont to tell people it’s made from imported cotton.

Speaking of France and Germany, we really should be careful how we “value” their imports to us. There’s something off with both of them. Even today, the French just love Jerry Lewis – yes, it’s the same guy who has the telethon over Labor Day weekend who can’t ever seem to get his bow tie on his tuxedo clasped properly around his neck. And the Germans are absolutely ga-ga over David Hassselhoff’s music, which is even worse than his acting.

The ironic thing about what makes us different is that most of those things that make the American culture so uniquely “American” have their roots in or association with the South. You go to the Northeast, and they have deep ties to Italian and Irish culture. In the Midwest, you have a lot of Polish and German influence. The Southwest is predominantly Hispanic. And the West (read: California) has its origins from another planet. But the South gave us NASCAR and Elvis, Wal-Mart and deep-fried everything.

Fortunately, David Hasselhoff was born in Baltimore, Maryland, which is north of the Mason-Dixon line, so for all intents and purposes we don’t have to claim him as part of our culture and can let the Germans have him to keep. The Belgian guy would agree.

We Don't Need Nine Lives

2008-07-03T18:58:00.001-07:00

Our oldest son had undergone a tonsillectomy recently but had some complications and needed another surgery. This development threw a major monkey wrench into our vacation plans, but what could we do? I didn’t go to medical school, and my humor column credentials don’t necessarily qualify me to override the surgeon’s admonitions, so we ended up staying home. As a consolation prize for our son (and for my wife’s sanity), we bought the “Rock Band” game for Wii.

I would highly recommend everyone who reads this column run right out and purchase this game for their family. I don’t own stock in any of the gaming companies, and I can’t say I particularly fell in love with the game. No. My reasons for this recommendation is it’s a harmless but necessary reality check: after playing it for about two minutes, you’ll quickly realize you were never destined to be a rock star and your parents were right when they told you to go to college or trade school. Suffice it to say, my fantasy of being a drummer was crushed, and I can safely say my wife isn’t the next Nelly Furtado or Gwen Stefani. In other words, all the years of my life leading up to this moment weren’t wasted.

Listening to the radio the other day, the host of the program read a statistic that the average life span for American males is now 78 years. I didn’t think much of it until I realized that I’m going to turn 39 later this year – for all of you who don’t like to do math that requires more than taking your shoes off to count higher than ten, that’s exactly half. Rather than look at this in the classic half-empty/half-full manner, I care to look at it like a roller coaster ride.

As the great chain-driven Roller Coaster of Life chinks its way to the top of the hill, it’s nice to look around and take in the view that only such heights afford. You look around at your fellow passengers: some are peeing their pants with excitement even though nothing’s happened yet (there’s a huge metaphor in that alone, but we don’t have time), some are trying to look indifferent but you know they’d rather be giving a bath to a cat with a multiple-personalities disorder, and some have no reservations at all – they are screaming at the top of their lungs begging any deity or pagan god to deliver them from this evil.

Not me. I’ve enjoyed the ride up so far, but I’m certain my plunge through Middle Age will be an incomparable experience with the upcoming corkscrew of Paying for Braces and the double loop of College Tuition. Next will be the double humps of the Twilight Years that make you feel like you’re going to be thrown out of your seat, which produces that sensation that you’re going to involuntarily lose bladder control at any moment.

Before I know it, I’ll be climbing another hill with my hair a little mussed up, and a small dab of spittle starting to drip from the right side of my mouth. Yeah, who cares? I’m not trying to impress anyone! I crest this hill and proceed downward into a tight spiral of the Home Stretch, teeth (or dentures) rattling and my vision slightly blurred. I’ll take the last corner and know that I’m about to enter the Great Wheelhouse in the Sky. The Grim Reaper will pass his scythe to his left hand and reach out to me with his right slowly shaking his head when I try to get out on the wrong side of the car – one way only. I won’t argue but only ask if my wife has already arrived or if I can wait around for her. The ride wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.

Thanks, Oddballs

2008-06-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Quite honestly, I had some pretty bad teachers during my pre-college (that is to say “free”) educational career. In second grade, I had Mrs. Harold who, I swear, was Mr. Magoo in drag only with bigger, rounder glasses. My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Payne, would prance around the room like Lawrence Welk on lithium and then scream at the top of his lungs when he wanted our attention. It worked. Sixth grade brought Mrs. Fontaine who always wore these gigantic fake fingernails that she inadvertently flicked into Sam Haymon’s hot lunch one day. He almost ate the thing, and I don’t believe he would have noticed if Christy Schlotski hadn’t flipped out and run from the room as if a giant booger had landed on one of her puffy sweaters – Sam’s love for all things gastronomical was surpassed only by his unrequited love for Christy.

Fast forward to high school: I’m fairly certain that my Geometry teacher drank . . . a great deal. Based on having to deal with just a handful of the kids in my class alone, I can’t say I blame her, but that’s another discussion for another day. While she never showed up for school wearing her underwear on the outside of one of her three polyester pant suits (burnt orange, pastel blue, and earth brown), she displayed the classic behaviors of slurred speech (which is probably what kept her from teaching English also), mood swings, and the avoidance of bright lights. My Economics teacher’s idea of giving us proper instruction on the inner workings of the New York Stock Exchange was to show us the movie “Trading Places” from start to finish. Isn’t tenure a wonderful thing!

While we would all prefer to decry the shortcomings of tax-payer-funded institutions – especially when we’re waiting in line for two hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles – we all have to give a nod to the public school system and say, “Well done!” Despite the fact these learning experiences don’t quite live up to sitting at the feet of Socrates and Aristotle, I believe I survived and came out of “the system” prepared to face the world. Why? Because that’s REAL LIFE. These experiences, good or bad, prepare you to deal with all sorts of oddballs that come across or even completely block your path in life – and I’m not just talking about your college professors.

When your refrigerator’s ice maker stops working, or you need to replace the muffler on your 1987 Honda Civic, you go to someone who probably didn’t attend an east-coast prep school or aced the SAT’s math and verbal sections. But you can probably bet good money that they were smart enough to NOT let a public education stop them. Further, you’re not likely to see a group of men and women gathered around a table at a technical school reviewing applications and saying, “Gosh, this kid looks like he could be a promising BMW master mechanic, but either his English teacher was ineffective in teaching him the subtleties of Beowulf or he’s just not smart enough to get it. Either way, I think he’s too big a risk.” Free education has value!

The next time you’re driving down the highway behind someone who’s driving an SUV the size of a third-world country, talking on a cell phone with the attitude that he’s the center of the universe, and traveling at least fifteen miles an hour below the speed limit in the fast lane, the first thought that’s going to come to mind is, “What’s this cat’s deal? He’s driving like he owns the road!” Truth is, he probably has enough money to own it, and he probably paid way too much for his education – you can’t buy IQ!

Dim Your IQ for Takeoff

2008-05-03T11:01:00.001-07:00

In our day-to-day lives, I believe it’s safe to say that most of us are reasonable, semi-intelligent human beings. Send us through the metal detector at the airport, however, and I believe we act as though we just underwent a temporary frontal lobotomy. In other words, from the moment we walk into the secured area of an airport until we exit at the baggage claim, we’re complete morons who blissfully go on with life as if everything’s normal. Follow me through this process.

After gathering up all of our clothing following the strip search, here’s one of the first things we hear coming over the intercom: “In the interest of aviation security, please maintain your personal property in your possession.” You find yourself thinking, “That’s good advice. I totally want to maintain aviation security.” Others around you are sporting similar nods of agreement as the disembodied voice of reason drones on and on. In the interest of “aviation security”? How about in the interest of common sense? Is there an assumption here that once we’re outside of the airport, leaving personal articles lying about willy-nilly is perfectly acceptable? So, we clutch our bags a little tighter and go wait in line to spend $78.94 on the latest issues of Time and People magazine, a pack of gum, a roll of Lifesavers, and a bottle of water. That’s smart.

In between the “aviation security” announcement and the constant intercom paging of one Michael Wisterbean to report to gate D1 immediately (for the last thirty minutes – leave the guy already!), you hear this little piece of wisdom: “If anyone unknown has asked you to carry a foreign object, please contact airport security immediately.” First of all, DUH! Secondly, why all the fancy wording? Foreign object? Seriously, do we anticipate someone approaching us and asking us to carry a Frigidaire refrigerator on the flight to Sioux Falls? On second thought, though, stocked properly, that could make for a much better selection for in-flight meals. At any rate, admit it: you’ve found yourself pausing for a brief moment to review the last few hours to MAKE SURE a stranger hasn’t asked you to carry a foreign object on your flight – and Aunt Mildred’s fruitcake doesn’t qualify.

When we finally get on the plane (which is a humongous chunk of metal far heavier than your 6-year-old self who tried and failed to fly by jumping off the roof of your house with an umbrella), we settle into our seats and dutifully listen to the flight attendant’s announcements and admonitions. Most of this stuff is pretty innocuous and seemingly unnecessary (like showing us how to buckle our seatbelts “tight and low across the hips”), but the one thing every flight attendant says that no one ever questions is, “We’re going to dim the cabin lights for takeoff.” The cockpit is sealed off, so it’s not like driving a car at night where internal lights make it hard for the driver to see outside of the car. So why dim the lights? Are the engines’ electrical needs so great that more than five or six passengers simultaneously turning on their overhead reading lights will cause a complete shutdown and make us crash? You don’t read about THAT in the safety brochure.

This “lobotomizing” of the flying general public does help explain why some people try fitting the luggage equivalent of a stuffed alligator in the overhead bin and the reason some airline pilots have been caught flying naked, but this has to stop for the simple reason that the intercom system in all major airports should be used exclusively for the paging of fictitious persons like Amanda Hugandkiss, Al Coholic, and the crowd favorite, Seymour Butz. We must return to simpler times!

Ben The Jokester

2008-04-03T18:02:00.002-07:00

One recent morning found my oldest son and me sitting at the breakfast table together and chatting about this and that. Out of the blue, he begins explaining to me the mechanics behind building a dry-ice bomb. I believe he garnered this little nugget of newfound “wisdom” from a kid at school – we seriously need to screen his friends better – and the intimacy of our conversation naturally coaxed it out of him. For an eleven-year-old boy, you can’t find a better bonding moment.

Nevertheless, as he finished his explanation of this phenomenon of fun, I pointed out that he had a couple of holes in his understanding of this matter and filled them in for him. This didn’t produce the “thanks, Dad” I was expecting; instead, he looked at me squarely with an eager look of curiosity and asked, “Dad, have you ever built a dry-ice bomb?” At the very moment the last syllable came out of his mouth, the world stopped spinning on its axis – you might have sensed it, too – and everything froze in mid air. It felt as if I was in the middle of The Matrix, and I wasn’t sure how long this was going to last. (The only other time this happened was when the last syllable came out of MY mouth when I was explaining the facts of life to my son, and what seemed like an eternity was really only a nanosecond.) So I did what any normal approaching-middle-age dad would do: I grabbed a Sharpie, drew an Abe Lincoln beard on my son, got back in my chair, and waited for time to start up again. And when it did, I screwed up my courage, looked my son right in the eye, and got up from the table without answering the question. Never lie to your children, people.

Many of you are probably wondering how old I am and when am I going to grow out of pranks. Granted, the ALLEGED dry-ice incident was over twenty years ago back in college, but the Abe Lincoln beard was recent. (I’ll admit that the beard was a bit immature, but you have to know your audience.) At any rate, I’m not that old, and I don’t believe there is an age limit. I’m willing to bet the whole thing with Benjamin Franklin with the key on the kite string had absolutely nothing to do with electricity experiments – one of his buddies was probably locked in his bedroom on the second floor of a neighboring building because they had been caught mooning the town pastor. Obviously, they didn’t adhere to the maxim of “know your audience”. I digress – but that’s probably why most of you are reading this in the first place.

In that vein, I recently changed jobs, and in the process of moving on, I needed to return some equipment including a cell phone. The company acknowledged receipt of the equipment, and about a week later I was curious if they had disconnected the service for my old cell phone. Alas, they hadn’t, and I still have the password to access the outgoing voicemail greeting. When the great gods of pranks smile upon you and hand you an opportunity like this, you don’t pass it up. As of the writing of this column, if you call my old cell number, this is what you’ll hear:

“Hi, you’ve reached the now-defunct cell phone voicemail of Grant Greene with the XYZ Corporation. While rumors that I am a member of a cult or that I joined a cabaret troop under the name of Lydia Johnson are totally untrue, I am no longer with the XYZ Corporation. If you’re calling about a matter related to the XYZ Corporation, you’re going to want to hang up and . . . actually, you’re going to want to listen to this part first and then hang up and call XXX-XXX-XXXX and ask for customer service. If you’re just now learning that I’m no longer with the XYZ Corporation, rest assured I’m not a member of a cult or traveling with a cabaret troop under the name of Lydia Johnson, but you’ll need to call me at . . .”

Whether I’m an approaching-middle-age dad or a feral teenager, some of you may find no humor at all in the idea of having a little fun with corporate America. As for myself, I have to admit to some degree of satisfaction knowing people are either laughing or scratching their heads when they call my old cell number. However, if campus security from my old college starts calling around about some dry-ice bombs twenty years ago, Grant Greene is dead and Lydia Johnson is in Brazil on an extended engagement with the cast of “Moulin Rouge”.

Spell it Out

2008-03-06T20:41:00.001-07:00

Driving home from a long business trip the other night, my wife called to inform me that the family dog had escaped from the backyard. “Escaped” is probably too strong a word as that evokes Hollywood images of someone who was wrongly convicted fashioning a shovel out of a toothbrush and digging his way to freedom to prove his innocence by catching the real killer or a prisoner of war outsmarting the Nazis by timing the spotlight passes and making it under the wire undetected. While there may be times when our two sons may see us as evil prison wardens who punish on a whim, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t go so far as to equate us with Hitler’s minions. With that said, though, the predicament in question here was the result of a gate left open – by whom I’m not allowed to say – and a very curious dog with enough Terrier blood in her to follow a scent.

Arriving home, I immediately began walking through the neighborhood in the hopes of finding our stray, bearing her on my shoulders, and returning home to a hero’s welcome. Ha! I roamed through the neighborhood calling the dog by name in a loud but caring voice, of course. Although I was feeling a little downtrodden by the thought that I may never see our dog again, I felt an immediate wave of relief that we gave her a normal name – Lola. I couldn’t imagine myself wandering about the neighborhood in the dark of the night and calling out “Here Mrs. Finkeltoots” or “Sir Stinksalot, where are you?” I agreed right then and there that had we done something like that, I would have abandoned my search immediately and said to myself, “Well, it was a good run while it lasted. The kids can’t say we never let them have a dog.”

Although we ultimately found Lola at a friend’s house, this experience caused me to think in bigger terms.

I admit that it’s rather childish of me to feel I would have been embarrassed going around looking for a dog with a silly name; nevertheless, had I found myself calling out for Mrs. Finkletoots, and my neighbor laughed at me, I could have saved face a little bit by explaining it was a dog and the kids had named her. However, has anyone stopped to think that the Democratic Party, in the presidential nomination process, has the potential of making us the laughing stock of North America, if not the world? It’s all in the names.

Should the young, sharp politico from Chicago gain the nomination and win the general election, he’s going to spend the first two years in office interrupting every press conference with, “Okay, for the last time, I don’t care how you pronounce my name. Just make sure you spell it correctly. Now, can we discuss my economic stimulus plan?”

As an alternative, the other candidate shares the same first name with 40% of high school cheerleaders. At State dinners, she’ll be forced to make it clear in her opening comments that she and the other “Ovalettes” will not be performing a half-time show. Might I add, the German Chancellor and the French Prime Minister will both breathe a sigh of relief.

Inasmuch as the presidential election involves humans (for the most part), and only adults are allowed to vote, how do we explain this to Mrs. Canada and Señor Mexico, our neighbors?

Fun but Risky

2008-02-02T20:44:00.002-07:00

I’ve been in a lot of crowded places in my life: Times Square on New Year’s Eve, the Hong Kong Subway at rush hour, and a Wal-Mart at 5:00 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. Each of these situations offers an opportunity to watch people and see them at their most primal. However, you haven’t really availed yourself of a truly great people-watching opportunity until you’ve mixed and jostled with the crowds at the FBR Open in Scottsdale, AZ.

As I was driving up to the golf course, my oldest son asked me what FBR stood for, and I had to tell him I wasn’t really sure. However, after no more than five minutes of being in just the parking area where a charter bus picks you up to take you over to the event, it’s obvious that FBR stands for Fake Breast Rendezvous – and I’m guessing that “Open” alludes to the plunging necklines. These women were wearing four-inch heels that certainly wouldn’t be allowed on any putting surface, and I’m fairly certain that if you asked what they thought of Aaron Baddelely’s or Rory Sabbatini’s chances in today’s field they would probably say “I’m more partial to Dolce & Gabana and Vera Wang, but I guess there’s always room for more on the runway.” There were plenty of women in attendance at today’s round, I’m sure, that could certainly take me to school on the golf course, but the ones that seemed to be in greater numbers were obviously not there to watch golf.

As many of you know, the 16^th Hole is famous for being “lively”. Imagine attending an Oakland Raiders football game where the gridiron has been replaced with a 162-yard par three. Since this is not an official NFL event, there don’t seem to be as many limitations on the amount of beer the spectators are allowed to drink. Sitting among the crowd on the 16^th, it was obvious that FBR stands for Full Beer Ruckus. While I was convinced that many of my fellow onlookers had started drinking at 9:00 a.m., my wife thought I was grossly underestimating them and said they probably started last night.

With the Super Bowl in town this weekend there was another group of persons in attendance at today’s round who were lost. They were wandering around aimlessly with a look on their faces that said, “This is the worst NFL Experience I have ever seen in my life!” Those who found their way into the bleachers on the 16^th hole were granted a small portion of solace, though.

Although I have never attended any other PGA events, I’m going to go out on a limb here and bet that there were three times as many Port-a-Potties at the FBR Open than at, say, the Masters. With as much beer flowing at this event, you have another possibility for the letters FBR: Full Bladder Release.

800-lb Ninja

2008-01-25T21:48:00.001-07:00

Author's note: This will appear in the newspaper in a shorter version. However, for the sake of those co-workers of mine who went to the spa with me, I'm including full detail here. Holly especially might be interested.

When you think of the word “massage” your body should instantly relax, and other words like “soothing” and “restful” should come to mind. But that would be before you actually receive a massage. Once you’ve undergone one, words like “breezy”, “flab”, and “pile driver” are more likely to leap to mind. My first time was certainly an eye opener for me.

After changing into my plush robe and sitting in the “meditation room” – that’s massage talk for a place to read a magazine while making sure your legs are crossed and the robe is wrapped tightly about your body because you’re basically hanging out (no pun intended) with a bunch of strangers in the same state of undress – my masseuse calls my name and introduces herself. Berta, a slight Panamanian woman who could not have been more than 4’8” and 100 lbs. soaking wet, shows me to our massage room and explains that she will wait outside the door while I disrobe, slide myself between the sheets on the table, and lie on my stomach with my face resting on a padded horseshoe – once I place my face in the horseshoe, I am happy to learn that it didn’t appear to have ever been actually used on a horse. Here’s where the fun begins.

Berta calls to me from outside the door to assure I’m ready, and I presume she enters. The reason I presume is that I have my face firmly implanted in the padded horseshoe and can see absolutely nothing but a small spot on the tiled floor below me. (What I forgot to tell you is that the table is completely covered so you can’t see its legs – this is vitally important to the experience, as you will see.) Berta asks me which scented massage oil I would prefer. As I can see the choices don’t include “Stinking Rich” or “Smell of Victory”, I defer to her. Berta recommends lavender, and we’re off.

After sufficiently coating my neck, shoulders, and back in enough massage oil to rainproof me, Berta takes a hot stone and begins to rub it over the aforementioned body parts. I must admit that feels pretty good. However, the temperature of the rock is high enough that if she just lets it sit in one place it can cause third-degree burns, so there’s that unspoken understanding that I not complain lest she duct tape it directly above my third and fourth lumbar vertebrae and walk away. Needless to say, the wonderfully soothing quality of the heated rock moving about my back is immediately cancelled out by the knowledge that this same rock could cripple me – that wouldn’t be one of the selling points you would see on the spa’s brochure.

Next, Berta begins working on the muscles in my back – this is where the table’s legs being covered comes into play. I swear an 800-lb ninja has been secreted below the table and when given the signal, he stealthily slips out of his hiding place and climbs atop my back and begins jumping with precision on specific muscles. There is no way that little Berta has the leverage to push that hard on my back and render me completely without oxygen in my lungs. All the while, of course, I’m staring down at a spot on the ground that’s no more than a cubic foot. For all I know, a whole team of ninjas could have been hiding under that table – sort of the massage world’s equivalent to a clown car at the circus – and they all got on one guy’s shoulders to perform the Pile Driver on my back. Occasionally Berta says something to me just to preserve the illusion that we are alone in the room.

Once the ninja or ninjas go back under the table, Berta begins kneading my skin like bread dough. And as she does this, the less-than-flattering term Doughboy comes to mind. Unless you’re an underwear model and have zero-percent body fat, good Ol’ Berta’s going to find every inch of flab on your body and shamefully remind you of each and every Twinkie and Ho Ho you’ve consumed in your life.

Near the end of the massage session, Berta discreetly reconfigures the sheet lying atop my body to expose my legs, which she does one at a time by tucking the sheet under my midsection and wrapping it around and under my leg. The first leg goes just fine, but as she covers it up and repeats the process with my other leg, she’s a little overzealous and ends up giving me a major wedgie. If that’s not bad enough, in her haste to proceed with this portion of the treatment, let’s just say she comes up a little high – I can feel a cool southern breeze coming across the poop deck, if you will. At this point, I’m truly not too worried that Berta’s ogling me because (1) I don’t hear any laughter, and (2) she keeps her lunch down.

To top off the experience, Berta gives me a scalp massage with, yes you guessed it, the same hands that are covered in massage oil. So, to sum up, this is an experience that people pay for so they can be potentially burned, have the wind knocked out of them, have all their physical flaws indelibly pointed out to them, be given a wedgie, and walk out of the room with hair that looks like Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd. Wouldn’t it just be easier and cheaper to go back to high school for a day?

In a Fix

2008-01-05T22:46:00.001-07:00

If what I write in this column has the same effect/power as those things that come out of my mouth, the likelihood that my kids will read this by choice ranks up there with the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series or woolly mammoths roaming the Arizona desert. With that said, however, if anybody out there chooses to tell my kids what I’m writing about today, I won’t be responsible for what I do next – atomic wedgies and wet Willies come to mind, though.

Our dog Lola is dying. A few months ago, we took her to the vet to have her “fixed” (what a euphemism!) and the vet ran some type of blood panel. The results came back, and the vet told us that there may be something wrong with her liver. She then told us that other factors may have been creating a false positive so we should bring her back in a month or two for an additional test. We did, and the results came back with even more severe indications that her liver isn’t even working. To look at Lola, said the vet, you’d never know she had anything wrong with her. She’s energetic and rambunctious; she eats well and sleeps well. With the results of the second test, the vet indicated that Lola’s condition is beyond the help of medication or even surgery. (I have to say here that surgery for an animal still seems a little kooky. “Sorry, son, we couldn’t send you to college because the dog needed surgery. Sure, the surgery was a success and all, but dogs only live so long.”) Erin and I haven’t told the boys yet about this development, and since learning about this it seems like Lola’s just a ticking time bomb. The reason we haven’t told the boys is Lola may be that exception – our fingers are crossed – that defies medical reason and lives to a ripe old age of 97 dog years. It’s a baseless hope, I’ll admit, but it’s what we’re holding onto.

I have to pause here a moment and make something clear. I may have given some people the impression that I don’t like dogs. That’s just not true. I was against the idea of getting a dog because of the costs associated with dog ownership and the slim possibility of something like this very thing happening. Although I freely admit that I find surgery on dogs a little kooky, I’m not a heartless person. It’s not my inclination that a dog should be put to sleep at the first hint of problems. For the very reason that I’m not a heartless person, I didn’t want to get a dog because I didn’t want to be placed in a position of needing to decide a life-or-death question for a small, furry animal.

With that said, I must make a further admission: I love this darn dog. I love the fact her tail wags like a juiced-up metronome when you walk into the room. I love the fact she’ll jump up onto the couch and do a face plant on the side of the cushion because she misjudged the height – and then she’ll try it again without a hint of embarrassment. I love the squinty-eyed look of contentment she gets when you scratch her in just the right place. I’ll admit it: I’m a nutball.

My sister has a cat, George, whom she adores. I’m not sure why because it always seems to be lying under the bed. My mom and dad have a dog, Gus, who goes everywhere with them. In fact, my mom will take Gus through the drive-thru at Jack in The Box when it’s raining to get him a sourdough bacon cheeseburger. Again, the reason my parents find so much joy in this dog eludes me because he mostly just lies around and emits strange smells – I can’t imagine the sourdough bacon cheeseburger helps with that. Nevertheless, these animals bring some of my loved ones unequaled joy. Who am I to question that?

My heart aches for Lola as I type this. Please let her be the exception! Please! Whether she will or won’t be remains to be seen. In the meantime, hug your kids a little longer and give Fido and Mr. Kibble an extra treat now and then. It’ll make YOU smile.

The Virtue of Amnesia

2008-01-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

Thomas Wolfe once wrote a book called You Can’t Go Home Again, the title alluding to a universal truth that you can’t recover the past. (Interesting side note: the book was published after Mr. Wolfe’s death so it might just as well have been titled I Can’t Go Home Ever.) This knowledge of an irrevocable past produces in us a degree of melancholy when we think back on particular happy moments that have long since passed. However, we quickly come to our senses and realize how liberating it is that we’ll never have to relive thousands upon thousands of experiences we suffered through originally in years gone by.

I would imagine my oldest brother is pretty happy that he’ll never have to wear a corduroy suit that our mom made for him for his graduation from Junior High School. (He’s not completely blameless in this matter – he willingly went along with mom’s foray into haute couture, which is French for “one arm of the suit is slightly longer than the other”.) Locking myself – on accident, of course – in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus at the age of four isn’t something that necessarily gets me misty eyed. Neither does having my other brother sitting on my chest and pinning my arms to the ground while he would let a big loogie drip from his mouth in a spider-web-like string and dangle over my face before sucking it back up. (Sometimes he’d just spit and let it spread over my face while I couldn’t move.)

My sister Kim, I would be willing to bet, isn’t rushing to relive the moment when she was learning to drive and my two brothers, along with their host of friends, sat in the backseat and laughed like hyenas each time she cut a corner too close or applied the brakes a tad too hard. (The braking would later be immortalized by the term “Kim stop”, which we still use today, and can be re-created by violently throwing your upper torso forward and hitting your head on your hand as if it’s the dashboard or seat in front of you.) Those were good times for us (the brothers), but I’m happy not to be sitting in the back of a 1975 Chevrolet Kingswood station wagon without a seat belt and my sister behind the wheel again.

This sanity-saving knowledge of the past is further enhanced by our ability to forget odds and ends that are either emotionally crippling or, more importantly, embarrassingly incriminating. The former is usually a result of the mind protecting itself, while the latter is the result of denial – a denial that you were once immature, foolish, and even carefree. When your son or daughter comes home with a note from the principal informing you that your child has been engaging in shenanigans frowned upon by civil society (i.e. lighting a girl’s ponytail on fire with a Bunsen burner in Chemistry class or pasting a photo of the Social Studies teacher’s head on the torso of a donkey), you conveniently forget that you laughed until you nearly peed your pants when you had devised and executed a plan to mix a laxative into the brownies in the Teachers’ Lounge and then put plastic wrap over the toilets in the Teachers’ Bathroom. You have to forget about that or else the world would go to Hell in a hand basket because rather than disciplining your child you’d be comparing notes and trying to figure out how to pull a better prank and not get caught the next time.

I’m sure you’ll agree with me: no good can come from reliving the past. It’s best that we look to the future and try to forget about those uglier moments of days gone by – like acid-wash jeans, leisure suits, and the Mullet.

Season's Bleatings (Christmas 2007)

2007-12-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

You may choose to think of this yearly dispatch from the Greene clan to be the holiday equivalent of an annual proctology exam. For some, you may look to this event as a necessary evil and take solace in the fact it’ll all be over in a few moments. Others may find it completely unnecessary and wonder what type of paperwork snafu got them on the list. It’s possible that there may even be a small minority who actually enjoys it, and all I can say is that there are support groups and therapy out there to help. Regardless of the category that may apply to you, I am willing to bet that you all share one happy thought about this: at least we have another year before the next one. With that said, happy reading!

It’s not been a good year for the Greenes, honestly. Sure, our house hasn’t burned to the ground, nor have I been fired from my job – keep your fingers crossed – but those of you who haven’t kept in contact with us through the year may be shocked to learn that Erin has gone completely insane. It’s an insanity stemming from bringing the newest member of our family, Lola, into our home. No, I’m not talking about postpartum depression (you’ve seriously lost contact with us if you thought Erin was pregnant); I’m talking about the fact not only did Erin relent and bring a dog into our home but she is barking mad (pun intended) over this dog. Lola is a Chihuahua/Terrier mix, and Erin has been seen nuzzling, kissing, and hugging this dog repeatedly. Fear not, it’s nothing shocking enough to make YouTube, but it’s completely wrong to all of us who have listened to Erin’s oft-stated dislike for dogs for so many years. I believe this vehemence is best summed up by a pre-Lola quote from Erin: “They lick their butts, then they lick your face.” Ladies and gentlemen, I present you Erin the Flip-Flopper. Be careful, she may run for President next year – she now has all the necessary qualifications.

Sam is now in second grade, and he’s becoming quite the writer. Recently, he was asked to write about the Pilgrims and the ordeal they faced crossing the Atlantic. Rather than taking the usual approach by describing the fetid, cramped living conditions or the long hours of ennui and facing harsh elements, he summed up their plight by writing that the Pilgrims were “always hurling” over the sides of the ship. Not putting too fine a point on it, he simply described the journey as “dreadful”. From the mouths of babes . . .

For those of you who have been doing their research, Jack turned ten this year and started the fifth grade. Jack excels in science and math at school, and this wouldn’t be troubling except for the fact he’s keen on putting this newfound knowledge to use at home. I fear the day I’ll come home from a trip and find Jack standing on the roof and holding the neighbor’s cat with a piece of buttered toast tied to its back. I’ll have to ask, but he’ll of course say, “Dad, come on. I’m trying to see which phenomenon is true: ‘cats always land on their feet’ or ‘toast always lands buttered side down.’” Whether it’s fatigue from being on the road or looking a perfectly reasoned scientific experiment in the face, I’m afraid I might just shrug my shoulders, wish him good luck, and go inside the house. Frankly, I just don’t want to void my roof’s warranty. I’ll keep you posted.

As for myself, I’m still trying to create a force field around the house that will allow our family and friends to pass freely but keep out kids selling magazine subscriptions, religious zealots, and people leaving flyers on our porch. I’m trying to do this by using the available cell phone towers in the area and triangulating their signals around the house. However, I can’t quite get the frequency right because I’m constantly finding the Verizon guy standing on my porch with his host of thousands surrounding him. I’m sure it would be pretty easy to hide a couple of magazine sales people and missionaries in that kind of crowd.

May this Yuletide yammering find you warm and happy – hopefully without the help of medication. Drop us a line when you get a chance.

P.S. Erin wants to go on record that she’s not altogether pleased with the proctology analogy at the opening of the letter. Just so you know.

Giving 'Til it Hurts

2007-12-01T14:13:00.001-07:00

I went down to the local church house and donated blood this morning. Evidently, there’s a great deal more peer pressure involved with donating blood than I had ever imagined. One would think that spur-of-the-moment cow tipping or Britney Spears impersonating would carry with it a stronger pull to be a part of the group – a pull with enough power for you to abandon your senses and do something you normally wouldn’t do sober or free of any prescribed medications. (Obviously, the sobriety or state of being drug-free might impede your ability to do a really good Britney impersonation.)

Before giving blood, one of the technicians takes you to a temporary cubicle away from prying eyes to ask you 348 health questions in 30 seconds to which you are supposed to answer “no” on each one. The “privacy” of this set up is what causes me to think there’s such a strong element of peer pressure. Sure, the questions they ask are mostly personal, but if you truly answer “yes” to any one of the majority, you have bigger fish to fry than taking the time out of your day to make it down to donate blood. “Have you had in the last six months or do you currently have bodily fluids that defy description with a standard pallet of primary and secondary colors freely flowing from any natural or recently created orifices?” (They read those suckers so fast – I think that was one of the questions.)

One would think that they could hand you a laminated card when you first check in that had all of these questions, and at the bottom of the questionnaire there would be a note saying: “If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the previous questions, you may not donate blood today – you have more important things to worry about.” Instead, they bring you back to the cubicle and grill you. Some of the technicians give you the evil eye if they think you’re lying. With all of this privacy, you’re waiting for the tech to lean across the little table, look you in the eye, and say, “Look. I understand you got caught up in the moment when everyone was signing up for the blood drive – you wanted to impress everyone with ‘Hey, look at me. I’m as selfless as any of you.’ But let’s be honest. You’re not eligible to donate, so I’m going to let you sit here for a couple more minutes and gather your wits about you. When you get up to leave, if anyone catches your eye and questions you, just tell them you have iron-poor blood. Do you understand? And don’t let me catch you back here again. Peer pressure’s tough, I’ll grant you. But the business end of my size eleven shoe up your keister is tougher.”

Peer pressure or not, I do find a great deal of personal satisfaction with donating blood. Sure, it’s nice to think about the people I’m helping, and that’s all fine and dandy, but what I really enjoy about the whole experience is watching how nervous people get with the whole ordeal. I feel beholden to feed that fear.

The son of a friend of ours walked up to me and said he accompanied his dad so he could understand the whole process. Noting a look of trepidation on his face I said, “Not a bad plan, Chet. But I’m surprised it’s so quiet here today. Usually you hear a lot of screaming and moaning. They must be using some pretty strong drugs today. Better make sure they don’t slip you something – you could end up with a needle in your arm, too.”

As the boy screamed and ran to find his dad, I noticed a lot of people were looking at me. I just told them, “Poor kid just found out he has iron-poor blood.”

The Theory of Relativity

2007-11-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

Sharing family stories carries with it a certain degree of responsibility, a sacred charge if you will. Granted, it’s not exactly the equivalent of Moses coming down from the mountain with stone tablets, but I need to mind my Ps and Qs or else I face an even greater wrath – my wife’s.

Some of you may recall that a little over a year ago I wrote a column about my side of the family and the personalities that populate that peanut gallery. It was my contention that when taken as a whole, the dysfunction and borderline insanity displayed by my kin represent probably 95% of the population – in other words, they’re normal. This weekend, I attended a reunion for a branch of my wife’s family tree and learned that they’re just as “normal” as my family, and probably yours. It’s all relative, certainly. More on that in a moment.

Last week we went to our oldest son’s very first band concert. He plays the trumpet. He’s no Herb Alpert or Dizzy Gillespie, and last week’s band concert demonstrated that he’s not a child prodigy either. But that’s okay. When the band finished their first song, we had a little trouble clapping because we were busy keeping our youngest son’s hands down in his lap and not covering his ears. It would be safe to say that our youngest lacked the wisdom to see that the band’s performance went relatively well – no windows were broken and the neighborhood dogs didn’t join in a communal howl. My wife’s father, I noticed, had a very big smile on his face at the end of the first song – I couldn’t tell if it was a result of Grandpa Pride or if he had just turned his hearing aid way down. It was no philharmonic offering by any stretch of the imagination, but the relative simplicity of the song had my wife and me bursting with pride to hear our son blowing that horn like mad and following the bandleader’s direction.

Relative simplicity can go a long way. Take Gary Glitter’s “Rock & Roll, Part II” (otherwise known as the “Hey Song” frequently heard at sporting events) as an example. In the three-minutes-eleven-seconds song, only four words are uttered along with a whole slew of inaudible “ughs” that sound like a tennis player lunging for the ball played out in front of a catchy guitar hook that just keeps repeating itself – it’s not Beethoven even on a good day. Nevertheless, that simple song, more often than not, will find you painting your chest, belting out those four words, and grunting like a Caveman. Do that alone, and you’re a freak. Do that in a stadium with 60,000 other fans, and you’re normal. It’s all relative.

Now, back to the family reunion. I heard one story about two couples (the two women were sisters) taking a trip down to Tijuana; one couple ended up leaving the other on the side of the road south of the border to hitchhike their way back to San Diego. I got the distinct impression that alcohol was involved. Another story involved the granddaddy of combovers that would have put Donald Trump to shame and given Bob’s Big Boy a run for his money in the styling department.

No one on my wife’s side of the family has ever been famous like Gary Glitter for penning and composing what has become known as a sports anthem, but I’m proud to have married into this “normal” family all the same. We can look at it in another way: neither has anyone on her side of the family been convicted and imprisoned like little Gary for doing naughty things with underage girls in Vietnam. Good thing, too, because it would be hell – relatively speaking – trying to get everyone together for another family reunion.

Giblets All Around

2007-11-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

With the prospect or specter of having thirty or so family members and/or friends jammed around a table designed to seat eight for Thanksgiving dinner, many of you have reached your wit’s end (a shorter trip for some than others). This is evidenced by the fact you have resorted to sending e-mails to me, a humor columnist, asking for advice on matters concerning the holiday ranging from the aforementioned seating question to proper menus. I’m guessing Martha Stewart hasn’t been returning your phone calls.

Wendy Wisnewski writes, “What should I do to entertain the children while I am finishing the last-minute preparations in the kitchen?”

I’m assuming the husband/father here is either in jail or he has already been tasked to keep Uncle Herb and Cousin Phil in opposite ends of the house. Clearly, hiring a clown to come in and perform a small magic show and make balloon animals for the kids is out of the question – not necessarily because getting a clown to work on a holiday may be difficult but because you may not be able to tell him apart from your Aunt Phyllis. If you’re not planning on taking a family photo sometime that day, a nice paintball war in the backyard would be a good activity – dress the kids up like Pilgrims. Get them all tuckered out running around and then fill them with turkey (Mother Nature’s sleeping pill, tryptophan), and they’ll zonk out for hours after dinner. If you are planning on a family photo, just substitute the paintball guns with BB guns – it’s really easy to airbrush out any red marks the BBs might make on the children’s skin.

Bradley Rykoff asks, “I woke up this morning with a tattoo of a Smurf on my chest and a message on my answering machine telling me that I agreed to have all the guys from my office over for Thanksgiving dinner. I just bought a turkey, and it’s got a bunch of strange things stuffed up inside it. What are they and what do I do with them?”

I can’t help you with the Smurf on your chest (although I would recommend forgoing that trip to the Bahamas with your buddies until you resolve that issue), but the turkey thing is something I can address. That bag of goodies inside the turkey is called the giblets: the heart, gizzard, liver, and other edible organs of the turkey. If you were going to stuff the bird – that’s not a euphemism – you would take the giblets and chop them up and mix them in with the stuffing. My recommendation, though, would be to find out who got your drunk enough to get you to have a Smurf tattooed on your chest and place them in his sock drawer or bed sheets along with a note that says, “Killer.”

Lastly, Kelly Chadwick poses the question, “With seating at my one and only dining room table limited, where should I seat the children?”

When I was a child, we were banished to the kids’ table, which was basically a folding card table with a white paint stain from a long-forgotten home-improvement project. And while one could make the argument that such an arrangement is good for children’s socialization skills, the reality is that you’re going to spend more time ferrying the kids back to their own seats because they want to sit at the adult table. If you don’t go with the paintball activity mentioned above, and you don’t anticipate an opportunity to get your kids completely exhausted, the best thing to do is seat the children at the big table and have the adults sit in the family room with TV trays to watch the football game. Believe me, you won’t hear any complaints about not sitting at the adult table. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Blue Shame

2007-10-24T22:22:00.000-07:00

There’s a saying about cars that goes something like this: “What’s the world’s fastest car? A rental car. What’s the second fastest car? A company car.” I have tested and proven both of these statements to be true, and I have come up with an addendum: “What’s the third fastest? Anything you are insane enough to give a teenager.”

When I was such a teenager, an old two-lane highway near my house had been widened and improved. And in between the time that it was finished and officially re-opened, it was used as a drag strip by the local kids because either the local sheriff’s office was unaware of this new development or they were turning a blind eye. Either way, I decided to take this opportunity and turn this strip of road into my own personal Bonneville Salt Flats.

My weapon of choice in my assault on the land speed record was the family grocery-getter, a baby blue 1985 Honda Civic – a car I had taken to calling Sid. The speedometer topped out at 120 mph, and I was intent on seeing that Sid reached his limits . . . or die trying.

After making a couple of cursory passes on the highway to check for Smokey (that’s 1970s trucker talk for “the law” for the uninitiated) hidden behind a billboard or hillock, I placed Sid in first gear, revved the engine (imagine how menacing those four cylinders of fury must have sounded!), and popped the clutch. (I want to say I had something really cool like The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” pumping on the factory-installed, two-speaker “stereo”, but it was probably something like Pet Shop Boys or Duran Duran.) At any rate, I took Sid through the motions and into fifth gear. When I reached 84 mph, the car started shaking. By the time I got to 92 mph, I could feel the fillings in my own mouth starting to loosen. But that didn’t stop me.

Funny thing here is that all those things I was taught in Drivers Ed – you know, the one about reaction times exponentially increasing for every mile an hour you are over the speed limit, the one about the likelihood of death should your car reach the speed of sound, etc. – didn’t suddenly leap to mind. While it was highly possible that the rivets and weldments holding my parents’ car together could fail at any moment due to the fact it was shaking like it was attempting re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and I would have to pull up to the house in only a car frame with four wheels and an engine, that concern didn’t cross my mind. The only thing I was thinking was, “Holy smokes, I can’t believe I didn’t bring my friend Craig as a witness. Who’s going to believe a factory-built 1985 Honda Civic is going 120 mph?”

Poor planning on my part, I admit. However, let us remember I was only a teenager. And had my parents found out at the time that I had done this, their reaction would have been something like, “Son, you could have killed yourself out there.” With my own experience as background and feeling as though I have learned something from my parents, I believe I would be able to take a more modern – if not more enlightened – approach to such a situation if I found out one of my own children participated in a re-creation of Death Race 2000. I would look my son squarely in the eye and say, “Son, do you realize gas costs $3.00 a gallon?” Kids!

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

2007-10-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

My oldest son has a good sense of adventure, and for the past two years he’s indulged me in the Halloween costume department. The year before last, I got a large cardboard box, cut armholes in it and mocked up one of those “Hello My Name is” stickers on the outside of the box. You see, his name’s Jack, which I wrote in below “Hello My Name is”, so he went as a Jack in the Box. For those in the neighborhood who already knew his name was Jack, they thought it was funny. For the balance who were seeing this young boy for the first time, however, I believe about half thought it was creative and the other half probably thought, “That kid’s got the laziest parents in the world.”

Last year, I took a plastic garbage can, cut out the bottom and sewed a T-shirt into it to fit over Jack’s head. I then took a long piece of Velcro and made a chin strap out of it and fastened it to the lid so Jack could wear it like a hat. The stroke of genius with the T-shirt, if I do say so myself, is that Jack didn’t have to carry around a bag for candy; people could just throw it in the can, and the T-shirt sealed off the bottom so the candy could just gather around Jack’s person. Judging by the mixed looks Jack got that night as he made his Trick-or-Treating rounds, people just weren’t appreciating the creative genius that gave birth to this unique costume. We creative geniuses suffer so for our art!

With that said, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority either wait until October 30th to come up with a costume, or they have children who have no vision (like my younger son who insisted on store-bought costumes like a ninja and Batman). Take the “ghost” costume for example. How many movies have you seen (excluding Abbott & Costello or “Beetlejuice”) where the ghosts look like your Queen bed’s flat sheet took flight and decided to start chasing people? In 1937’s “Topper”, Cary Grant plays a dashing ghost. Although the ubiquitous Internet wasn’t around yet to document it (perhaps because Al Gore hadn’t been born yet to invent the Internet), I’m willing to bet that Halloween didn’t see a bunch of 9-year-old boys running around in finely tailored gray wool suits and saying, “Look, I’m a ghost.” In 1937, most people would have said, “Oh, great. The kid’s dressed as the Angel of Death, a Union negotiator.” In 1990’s “Ghost”, Patrick Swayze plays a banker who is killed and hangs around his wife as a ghost to keep her safe. That year, you didn’t see kids running around in silk shirts and poofy, blown-dry hairdos saying “Look, I’m a ghost.” In 1990, most people would have said, “Look, honey, he’s a cocaine dealer.”

Parents, you need to take a little time (read: more than the ten minutes it takes to drive to your local Target or Wal-Mart) and give the costume question some thought. While you’re brainstorming, picture the following: Melissa and Joan Rivers are at the end of your street critiquing every child’s costume. As your child nears, you hear them say, “A witch was clearly the wrong choice for this little girl. She doesn’t have the hips for it. Wait, that’s a little boy, and I believe he’s trying to look like Gandolf. His parents should have known better. He needs a longer robe.”

Here are just two timely suggestions. (1) A plain, white T-shirt with a big, black asterisk: Barry Bonds’ 756th-home-run ball. (2) A crumpled car fender with the words “Lindsay Lohan was here.” Or, you could dress your child up as a fuel-efficient family car, and you’d hear people say, “Look, honey, it’s a ghost.”

Flea Collars Optional

2007-09-24T17:07:00.001-07:00

Dr. Spock, it is said, understood babies extremely well and helped a generation of parents in the raising of their infants. I’m not sure how he had the time to do this while cavorting around the galaxy in the Starship Enterprise, or why so many parents would trust a guy who looked like he cut his hair by placing a bowl over his head, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s clear he wasn’t so much the Dr. Smartypants as he would have us believe because he never came out with a best-selling book on how to raise children past those infant years. He, like all other parents, was completely baffled. As a public service, though, I’m here to fill the breach.

Rather than trying to read our children’s minds, let us look to the animal kingdom for help. Understanding the stages of development and comparing them to the attributes of specific species will grant us inner peace – we still won’t understand what the heck’s going through their brains, but we’ll at least know that we’re not insane when we think our kids are acting like animals.

When children are very young, they’re like dogs. Beside the fact they would poop wherever they felt like if they weren’t wearing a diaper, I’m willing to bet that they would chase cars and bite tires if we left them to their own devices. Be that as it may, children and dogs commonly share a huge lack of patience. When Kramer the family dog is waiting by the door to go out/come in, he’s feverishly hopping up and down. You might be dumb enough to believe that you can win this battle of wills by making absolutely no move toward the door – and at that moment, your IQ will be half of the canine’s in question. Displaying that severely stunted IQ, you talk to the dog and say something like “I’ll be there in a minute, Kramer” fully expecting the dog to look at you thoughtfully, sit down on the sofa next to you, cross its legs, and pick up a magazine. (And you know that’ll never happen because if he had opposable thumbs, he’d open the door himself, silly.)

In addition to the fact you’re not fully realizing that all he hears is “human human human human, Kramer”, you’re forgetting that everything to him is seven times slower. If one of our years is like seven to dogs, they’re bound to be extremely impatient with us. We must seem like glaciers to them when it comes to moving. We think they’re yapping and running circles around us in the backyard when, really, they’re just scoping the area out at a trot and telling us, “I’d like to play fetch with you, old boy, sometime this century.” Children are much the same, and our only hope is that with growing older will come the ability to reason with them, and a sidelining injury will slow them down, at least temporarily.

It may come at a different time for every child, but they will eventually leave the “dog phase” of their lives and enter their feline years. Cats, it is believed, have nine lives. Not necessarily because of their inherent ability to cheat death or avoid crippling credit card debt – it’s all in their attitude. The reason cats couldn’t care less what you think about them, make no effort to come to you when beckoned, or find any reason to be your friend unless you have food is they believe they’ll outlive you – thus the “nine lives” phenomenon. With that said, many of you are telling me, “You just described my prepubescent son and/or teenage daughter.” Exactly. I can’t explain the reasons, only point out the similarities. Be warned, though, many of these children will adopt other attributes of other species while still living in the feline years.

Some will adopt the elusive Unicorn behaviors and disappear when household chores are afoot. This association with the Unicorn in the teenage years also holds true when they get that huge zit on their nose that feels like a singular horn protruding from their face; this will cause them to disappear in social situations, too.

Although it won’t apply to important matters like the things they’re taught in school or the fact you asked them to put gas in the car, they will employ the memory skills of elephants when it’s the most inconvenient for you. And they’ll use that information as slyly as a fox.

At some point, and this will be the true testament to their maturity, your children start to care about more than cleaning themselves and finding ways to sleep as much as possible. They get married, take on a mortgage, pay taxes, and start to have offspring of their own. And somewhere along that path, they will become one of us: the tortoise who can’t get anywhere fast enough.

Rules of Engagement

2007-09-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

Although I have never resorted to putting them in writing, my wife and I have certain expectations of behavior for our two boys. Some of them are oft-repeated phrases like “No burping at the dinner table (unless Mom lets one fly)” and “No yelling at your brother (unless the house is on fire)”. Other expectations, though, we seem to take for granted and assume them to be understood.

However, because these seemingly “understood” expectations are not engraved on a plaque and hung on the family room wall, our sons will sometimes veer off into taboo territory and act shocked when we bust them. “Do you mean to say that the hardwood floor ISN’T a good chipping surface for golf practice AND I shouldn’t be doing it in the house anyway? It’s like I don’t even know who you people are!” Those may not be their exact words, but that’s pretty much what the looks on their faces tell us.

In that vein, I have compiled a list of “rules” that should be etched in stone (or at least carved into a warm piece of burled walnut) and affixed to a prominent place in the home where the children are sure to see it on a regular basis. (In my house, I’m thinking of engraving the toilet seat because they never lift that thing up.) With that said, I give you the list:

No spitting on the floor or in your brother/sister’s mouth even if he/she dares you
Making holes in the wall without prior written consent by both parents is forbidden
You will wear underwear
Any change found under the couch cushions is the sole property of Mom or Dad
Gun play is to be confined to the den and the den only (this might be more regional in application)
The law of gravity will be strictly observed and heeded in and on this house
We have indoor plumbing; it will be used exclusively
The family pets are not to be spray painted or set on fire – EVER (younger siblings, unfortunately, aren’t usually covered by this proviso no matter how hard you try)
This is a nuclear-weapons-free zone

Looking back on my childhood, these were all rules that governed my home, and quite successfully I might add. We all made it to adulthood able to bring children into the world – so we could take our turn on imposing our rule on them. Following those rules, we made it through childhood with all ten fingers and ten toes intact and functioning (despite the fact I once let my older brother run my hand over with a Chevy utility van – oddly enough, Mom wasn’t altogether shocked).

Now, if you’re hoping to raise the next X Games gold medalist, career politician, performance artist, or Hollywood starlet, throw those rules right out or through the window. If that’s your plan, though, be warned that if they aren’t successful in reaching those goals and are unable to support you in your retirement, you could find yourself in a wheelchair without any underwear and being set on fire by your grandchildren. Good luck with that!

Don't Call a Rose "Red"

2007-08-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

After having a flat tire repaired at the local garage recently, I opened my car door to find a largish sheet of paper set over the floor mat of the driver’s side. No surprise. At first blush, one would think that this is the garage’s way of saying, “Hey, we realize we’re pretty messy – it’s sort of your car’s fault – but we didn’t want to get your car dirty and have to pay for a carpet cleaning.” Good form. What was actually written on the paper is what made me laugh: in big letters right smack in the middle were the words “Eco Barrier”. Eco barrier? Are they trying to tell me that the guys out in the bays are wearing haz-mat suits and walking through toxic waste and biological ooze that would best be kept from making contact with the carpet in my car? If that’s the case, is a piece of bleached white paper really going to act as a “barrier” against such an eventuality? One word: marketing.

Someone in the corporate office was sitting there thinking, “There will be people stepping into their car, reading the words ‘Eco Barrier’, and saying, ‘Thank all that is holy that they spared my car from possible toxic contamination.’ I should get a healthy raise for that little piece of brilliant word play. That’s way better than Bob’s idea of writing ‘Stain Stopper’ on the paper mat. Way too pedestrian!”

The marketing folks’ job is to make us feel good about our purchases and spur us on to make more purchases. Right now, there’s a commercial running on TV for a feminine pad in which you see the product on an animated roller coaster doing loops and dives. Seeing how much fun that pad was having made me wish I could wear one. It’s like having a roller coaster in your pants – that could be a great slogan!

Speaking of slogans, marketing makes sure just the right word or words are used to paint an enticing picture. Quite often, marketing has to put this valuable word play into just the name, so they choose their words very carefully. For example, that gas-guzzling, blind-spot-the-size-of-Texas vehicle that is so ever present on the road isn’t called an OSW (Overgrown Station Wagon) or a 2T2S (Truck that Seats Seven). It’s called an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle). Although the name may be completely off the mark, we want to feel like it perfectly defines our tastes and who we are. But seriously, whom are we kidding? If going to the grocery store and taking up two parking spots – because you can – is an NCAA-sanctioned sport, then okay. Or, if driving around the block by yourself to a Pilates class is classified as a utility, fine.

Clothing companies employ armies of wordsmiths to come up with thirty-seven different names for the color red. They’re not about to tell you that the shirt is “orangeish red” – if they did, they could only charge you a mere fraction of the price they’re trotting out there. The shirt you are considering is “heather cayenne”. “Heather cayenne? That color could only come from blind monks who dye each yarn by hand high up in the Andalusian mountains and carry them by mule down to the nearby town to sell in the market square. At $274, this T-shirt is steal. I’ll take two.” That may not happen with anyone you or I may know outside of Hollywood, but it’s the stuff of marketing folks’ dreams.

Here’s the rub, though: even when the marketing people have their lapses in judgment, we blindly follow them down the primrose path of post-industrial purchasing. What do I mean? Two words: Leisure suit (a.k.a. the Iron Man). There was so much polyester in those puppies, you wouldn’t have to worry about haz-mat suits or Eco barriers.

Suburban Madness

2007-08-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

I’m either pregnant or I have reached a point of total and utter gastronomic abandon. Tonight, while sitting in my hotel room, I felt the need to go out and get some dinner. As I mentally ran through a list of possibilities ranging from pasta or pizza to fajitas or fish, I was suddenly overcome by an insatiable craving for – are you ready for this – a gas-station burrito. Technically, that’s not true: I was craving TWO gas-station burritos. Adding to the lost-my-mind-hell-bent quest for my dinner is the fact I went to three separate gas stations to find my quarry.

Sure, we’ve all been on road trips where we’ve eaten our body weight in yellow peeps and cheese log. That’s largely because you’re in the middle of nowhere and that’s the only thing you can get at the gas station. (It makes you wonder what the people working at those out-of-the-way gas stations eat on a regular basis – and judging by some of the ones I’ve met in my travels, yellow peeps and cheese log pretty much sum it up.) However, I’m in a very suburban setting with full-service grocery stores and every restaurant imaginable – my culinary options are limitless. Regardless of the bounty that surrounds me, though, I’m single-mindedly after gas-station burritos.

After failing to find what is to the food pyramid as The National Enquirer is to newspapers, I left the first store, got into my car, and proceeded to the next gas station. (I would imagine the people working the counter at a mini-mart aren’t used to people strolling in just to browse.) The second location produced the same result as the first, and I must say that I was weakening. For a couple of seconds, I was strongly considering two Polish hot dogs with off-color sauerkraut. Is it possible I grew up in a house full of lead paint?

At this point, I’m getting a little loopy (too late, some of you might say). I honestly can’t remember driving from the second gas station to the third gas station, or Shangri-La as I have come to call it. It’s quite possible that I ran over a line of traffic cones and caused a group of nuns crossing the street to scatter because I ran the red light – it was all a blur. I didn’t quite come to full consciousness until I was inside the store and standing before the heated case in which the burritos were awaiting my retrieval. The attendant either cleared his throat or barked like a dog to arouse me from my fugue state. I can’t remember.

Suffice it to say, the burritos did not disappoint. I’m not sure if every gas-station burrito is prepared and cooked in one location by one company or if there’s a universal recipe that all purveyors of gas-station cuisine share with one another out of professional courtesy, but they taste the same whether you’re in Bangor, Maine or Bakersfield, California.

I’m hoping a good night’s sleep will bring me back to my senses and tomorrow will see me eating a more healthful fare like salads and lean meats. Failing that, I might make a midnight run back to Shangri-La. I just hope it’s not too late in the season to get yellow peeps.

Indignity Knows New Lows

2007-08-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

There’s no beating around the bush: cargo pants/shorts are men’s equivalent to women’s purses but worse – I’ll get to that in a moment. (I’ll pause here for all the men reading this to make that funny face that communicates the absurdity of such a statement and do something singularly masculine like spit a giant loogie across the room or pick up a sofa with one hand.) Sure, one can make the argument that cargo pants/shorts are pretty straightforward and remain uncorrupted by the likes of Kate Spade and Louis Vuitton, but the reality is that we men stuff the ever-living crap out of those extra pockets just as a woman does her purse. If you don’t believe me, stop any man you see in public wearing the apparel in question and ask him.

I wouldn’t recommend phrasing the question thusly: “What do you have in your pants?” That’s just asking for trouble, especially if you’re in a place like West Hollywood. Nevertheless, when you ask to see the contents of their cargo pockets, some may give you an odd look. If this happens, the best way to get around their consternation is to lie to them by pointing to a tree or shrub somewhere over your shoulder and telling them you’re a television host and they’re on hidden camera. More often than not, you’ll get their full cooperation.

As they empty their pockets you’ll see everything ranging from a bus map and short umbrella to a half-empty pack of chewing gum and pen advertising a local real estate agent. You might think the only things separating a man’s cargo pockets from a woman’s purse would be a tube of lipstick and a compact, but if the guy’s married, and he’s strolling with his wife, you’ll find those items, too. No lie!

The makers of cargo pants/shorts think they’re geniuses (especially those women who have figured out this is the best way for them to get men to “hold my purse”), but they’ve obviously never stood behind a man wearing the diabolically designed apparel at the airport security screening. A woman instinctively places her purse (which holds all of her personal effects) up on the belt of the x-ray machine; the business traveler places his/her briefcase in a similar manner. The dude in the cargoes, however, forgets he’s carrying the equivalent of the inventory of a small business and tries to walk through the metal detector. He’s turned back and asked if he is wearing a belt or a watch. He shakes his head and tries the pass through one more time. Beep! He’s asked if he has an artificial hip made of titanium or a plate in his head. Nope. Beep! All the while, the line is piling up as long as opening night of the latest Harry Potter movie. Scratching his head, the benighted TSA agent starts to ask if the man is wearing a necklace or a large ring. Before Mr. Cargoes can answer, you scream out, “For the love of all that is pure and Disney-licensed, have him empty out his cargo pockets!”

You would do well at this point to turn around and change your travel plans while your fellow travelers hale and applaud you, but you have to make that meeting in Des Moines come hell or high water so you march on to the security checkpoint. However, you know full well that you are now a marked man on TSA’s list of “agitators”. You’ll get the extra screening from now on, and you’ll be lucky if the agent checking you out is only wearing rubber gloves because of an aversion to touching the paper stock used for airline tickets.

From now on, when your wife or significant other asks you to hold her purse, don’t delay. But make sure it matches your shoes. That would be embarrassing!

The Horror!

2007-08-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

My wife is shamelessly corrupting our children. When we married over 15 years ago I had about $500 in savings, a baseball card collection, and a 1985 Honda Civic with well over 100,000 miles on it, so it didn’t even cross my mind that a prenuptial agreement would be needed. I should have had more foresight. Obviously, I was captivated by her beauty and the fact she would be a college graduate before our wedding date – I still had a year left in school, so I was going to need a Sugar Mama to take care of me and support my Big-Gulp-a-day lifestyle. But that’s neither here nor there. I had no idea she was going to melt the minds of my children by subjecting them to Country music and getting them to like it.

One would think that half the blood coursing through my sons’ veins – a blood suffused with a love for music ranging from U2 and Led Zeppelin to Elvis Costello and The Clash, along with a deep-seated loathing for all things Country music – would at the very least give my sons the strength to resist the guitar’s twang and the lyric’s longing to bring the girl back (along with the singer’s pickup truck). The young mind is a mercurial thing. Getting my sons to see the logic behind the need to take a bath/shower on a regular basis (read more often than once in a lunar cycle) is apparently on par with astrophysics, but getting them to like a musical genre that sounds like a cat undergoing a wax treatment and the singer is actually singing about it is like breathing or picking their noses.

The little minx (that’s what I’ve taken to calling my wife) has extended her evil to the kids in carpool. How do I know this? One morning, I was filling in on carpool and the youngest of the group squeaked from the backseat, “Grant, can we listen to _________?” (I don’t even dare mention the name of the band.) Before I could steer this youngster right by lying to him (the only proper thing to do in the face of this miscarriage of musical justice) that my radio didn’t receive Country stations, my oldest son reached over and slid in the CD in question and selected number 13. Now my own children are complicit in this crime! I’m not sure how to broach this subject with the carpool parents.

I can assure you I’m not taking this lying down – it would make the driving all the more difficult. The only way to fight this cancerous cacophony of Country is head on. Whenever I have the boys with me in the car, I’m flying around the radio dial in search of examples to which I can both expose them and teach them to recognize what they should appreciate in good music. The opening to “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin, the mesmerizing stylized guitar in “How Soon is Now” by The Smiths, the angst-filled lyrics of “Baba O’Riley” by The Who, and the passion of “Lust for Life” by Iggy Pop – these are just a few of the arrows with which I am hoping to fill their quivers against this insidious foe coyly masqueraded as Good Old Boys just having a good time. However, the ranks of the opposition are filling, and I think I’m fighting a losing battle.

In many ways, it feels like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Good, close friends of mine – friends with whom I’ve rocked out to White Stripes – have declared to me that they like, say, Garth Brooks or Toby Keith (it hurts just to write that). And they say it like it’s the most natural thing in the world! I don’t dare challenge them on this for fear they’ll let out that blood-curdling scream and expose me for one who is not like them. I’m not sure if my wife is one of them or if she’s just independently evil. Either way, it’s clear I don’t stand a chance – she spends way more time with my sons doing things like teaching them to say their prayers, helping them with their homework, baking them cookies, etc. It’s absolutely shameless the depths to which she will go!

Darwin's Mistake

2007-08-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

This may come as quite a surprise to most of you, given the lengths I have gone to decry my objection to such a thing, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it: we now have a dog. Funny thing is, though, that for the first little while when I would admit my lapse in judgment to a friend and tell them not only about the dog’s existence but what type of dog it is, many would reply, “I thought you said you got a dog.” See, the animal in question is a Chihuahua/Terrier mix. Her name is Lola, but she’s not a showgirl nor is she a cross-dressing man who likes to go to clubs in Soho and pick up on other men. She’s still growing; however, at present, she’s bigger than your average rat but still much smaller than a rat you would find roaming the New York City subway system.

Another common response I get is, “My dog could eat your dog for breakfast.” While many of you may be wondering why I’m hanging out with Michael Vick, suffice it to say that I’m not, but I have a number of acquaintances who have canines of a much larger variety like a Boxer or German Shepherd. These are what they like to refer to as “a man’s dog”. I’ve never pinned my proof of masculinity on the pedigree of a dog, but I guess it’s cheaper than buying a Corvette.

Living with a dog has given me a glimpse into the behaviors of that species and caused me to reflect on how we, as humans, have come to accept those behaviors as normal. For example, when Fifi or Baxter is unhappy with something, the dog in question will quite often choose to display his/her dissatisfaction by dropping a steamer on the imported area rug in the living room – no, not the cheap one from Ikea in the family room. We’re none too happy with this “outburst”, but we quickly shrug it off by cursing (a singularly human behavior) and muttering under our breath, “What do you expect? It’s a dog.” Nor do we find it altogether odd that the family dog goes around the perimeter of the house and pees everywhere to mark their territory. (This one may be less due to our simply accepting this canine proclivity as a given and more because we’ve had young boys full of orange juice and soda – far beyond potty-training years – let it fly all over the bathroom and hit everything but the water in the bowl. Maybe that’s just my house.) At any rate, we believe these behaviors are what separate us from dogs.

Unfortunately, these are not the things that separate us but point to our similarities. For example, when a politician gets caught breaking the law, he or she does the same thing to the nation’s area rug, the Constitution, by getting off with a mere slap on the wrist. And we wring our hands, curse a little, and mutter under our breath, “What do you expect? It’s a politician.” Some sports stars, rather than for the love of the game but for the love of the glory, get full of juice and then let it fly all over the field of play to leave their mark. More often than not, we just want to watch.

My wife tells me that we need to take Lola to Obedience School to break her of some of her nasty habits. I’m all for that, but I’m a little sketchy on the cost of this whole affair and just exactly what it will yield. Having our dog learn how to sit, stay, and roll over is fine and dandy, but it would be more worthwhile if we could teach her how to mow the lawn and take over the driving on long road trips. On second thought, driving seems to bring out the cursing and we want to preserve that trait for us humans – perhaps the only thing truly separating us from dogs.

Inspiring a Felony

2007-08-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

I was having writer’s block with the deadline for this column looming over me, so I did what any normal person would do: I looked for any and every excuse to walk away from the keyboard and do something else. This is not a new habit of mine.

Among the many things I learned in college (business management, communications, statistics, humanities, the proper manufacture of a dry-ice bomb, etc.), perhaps the most useful skill I acquired in my collegiate career was Procrastination. Sure, I had an entire semester to absorb the material and make it a part of my consciousness so I could not only recall the pertinent points for the final exam but use my new knowledge throughout my life whether I was in a business setting or auditioning for Jeopardy. That was the plan. However, the reality was I would wait until two days (or two hours) before the exam and start memorizing as much as possible. I would then approach the test in the hopes that I could, figuratively, unlatch the upper part of my skull and pour out the answers onto the paper before me. Although it’s a reality that many have trouble understanding (much like Stonehenge or the Electoral College), I somehow graduated and got a degree, so it worked.

I’m the youngest of four children, and there were a lot of things that my other siblings were better at doing. However, I excelled at complaining about having to perform any type of manual labor. It wasn’t that I thought such work was beneath me – I was just lazy! With that said, my well-developed talent of Procrastination helped me overcome that childhood tendency yesterday. I saw my neighbor had just begun the chore of moving six tons of decorative rock from the street to his backyard, and I made a beeline to my garage to grab a shovel and help. Deliverance from having to think about the looming deadline!

However, after about the third or fourth shovel full of rock, I quickly realized that the beautiful Siren song of Procrastination had lured me in and crashed me into the very rocks I was scooping. (Oh, the irony!) At any rate, I was stuck until we were done with the pile. Noting that we only had one wheelbarrow between us, it was obvious that we needed a second one to move things along. While some might say this new-found virtue of helping others through manual labor was quickly replaced by a vice (or a felony for that matter), I choose to look at my next move and say that Procrastination spurred me to think creatively: I hopped the fence of another neighbor who I knew was out of town and “borrowed” his wheelbarrow. The addition of this implement moved things along and helped me preserve just enough energy to handle some of the more pressing matters of the evening, namely hold the remote control in one hand and a Coke the size of Delaware in the other while I sat in my recliner (and continued to avoid finishing this column).

Between yesterday’s rock-moving experience and now, I have continued my efforts to avoid writing this column. I came up with a list of ten questions men should ask themselves at the end of each day (#6: Was it really wise to eat that?) and seven retirement options for Bob Barker (#4: Herbalife distributor). Benjamin Franklin is said to have “discovered” electricity by flying a kite in a lightning storm. Don’t you think he knew the dangers of this? Sure, but he was probably putting off writing another Poor Richard’s Almanac entry.

A Topless Communist

2007-07-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

All of us have a tendency to put certain people up on pedestals and think of them as better and worthy of being set apart. My children stopped doing that with me at about the age of three. (My “humanity” shocks them more each day, I’m sure, and their expectations of me and my abilities plummet with each birthday – my ratings should reach negative numbers around puberty.) Be that as it may, we need to gain proper perspective and realize that we’re all just human. You’ve heard the old saying “Just remember that he puts his pants on one leg at a time like everybody else”. That’s probably true, but a great deal of the people whom society places on a higher plain than us, the unwashed masses, probably have people that they pay to put their pants on for them. The way I see it, the great equalizer in the world is this: Navel lint. Everybody gets it, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. Some may say that our inability to avoid death is the great equalizer. To that I respond, no, that’s the great finalizer, but let’s not get too philosophical. This is a humor column for Pete’s sake.

For example, if you really want to make history come alive, create a mental image of the person or persons involved. Consider George Washington the night before crossing the Delaware to attack the British in Trenton. He’s in his tent and it’s colder than a . . . it’s cold, and he’s unfastening the thirty-eight buttons on his uniform as fast as he can so he can put on his jammies (whether they were a one-piece with the feet sewn in or not, that’s up to your imagination). As he lifts off his shirt, he looks down and sees a bit of fuzz lodged in his bellybutton. He pauses but for a moment and wonders what every man and woman since the dawn of time wonders, “Where did that come from?” (I suppose he could have saved it, put it in his journal, and someone could have sold it on eBay centuries later, but that’s beside the point.) Here’s a man, about to make history by accomplishing what many have declared extraordinary, and he’s dealing with navel lint. No one’s exempt.

Karl Marx, banging away on a cheap typewriter with no shirt on to complete his manuscript of the Communist Manifesto by the deadline given him by some capitalist pigdog, most likely paused at moments and looked down to find the fuzzy foreign matter gathered at the navel region. Frank Lloyd Wright, designing the engineering and architectural marvel known as Falling Waters, surely had to deal with it. An overabundance of navel lint may help explain some of Salvador Dali’s more surreal works. History’s most notable achievements and events were wrought by men and women who battled the fuzzy navel. The only person who may never have had to deal with this midriff detritus was my 9th-grade Health teacher, Mr. Delpippo, because I swear he was hatched from a pod – thus no bellybutton.

Recently, my wife informed me that she has never had navel lint in her life. While I worship the very ground that she walks on, and I would move heaven and earth to keep her on a pedestal, I knew her declaration was a bold-faced lie. I gave her the breakdown of notable people I just listed here and asked if she was better than all of them. She smiled and said, “Of course. They’re all men.” Exasperated, I did what any red-blooded American male would do in a case like this: I called her a Communist!

Shoe Wisdom

2007-07-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

Apparently, some high schools are more fortunate than others when it comes to speakers at the graduation ceremony. You’ll see a news story here and there about Bill Clinton or Barbra Streisand being the surprise speaker at a particular high school graduation. The reporter interviews a couple of the graduates, and you hear comments like “I was really inspired by the speech” or “Who’s Barbra Streisand?” At any rate, it’s all well and good at the moment, but if you were to ask those same graduates a week later to recall something that was particularly touching or inspiring, you would get comments like “I don’t really remember much about that night” or “Who’s Barbra Streisand?”

Quite honestly, I have no idea who spoke at my commencement twenty years ago, nor do I remember anything he/she said in the speech. I do remember Mike McGuire, our salutatorian (that’s Greek for “the warm-up act”), quoting a line from a Def Leppard song in his speech. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t quite fit the context of his message. (I still applaud his effort, though, to slip a little rock and roll into the affair.) Needless to say, the contents of a graduation speech are just words that are so easily forgotten.

With twenty years of hindsight as my guide, here’s a graduation speech that would have been memorable:

Starting today, most of the men will gain three pounds a year. However, you’ll only notice the weight gain when it’s too late: the night before a job interview when you’re trying on a suit, a week before a cruise when you realize you’ll be shirtless the whole time, the day your 20-year high school reunion announcement shows up in the mail, and so forth. It won’t matter if you become a doctor or an auto mechanic. The male-pattern migration of muscle from the chest southward to flab over the abs knows no occupational exceptions.

Starting today, most of the women will feel like they never have the perfect pair of shoes for the outfit they’re wearing at the moment. You may have Zen-like moments when you find those Ferragamo pumps in the perfect shade of gold to match your purse, but your occupational requirements will dictate otherwise. Only the lawyers on TV will wear stiletto heels all day to show off their gams and accent the thigh-high business suit to parade in front of a jury. Real-life attorneys wear comfortable shoes.

I’m going to tell you a little secret that many adults, possibly some of your parents, will want to kill me for revealing: We’re still winging it. Even at our ages, each new day presents new and unique challenges, and we’re still making our way. Over time, you just get better at faking it.

I could tell you a bunch of other stuff like “When facing life’s toughest challenges, never back down” or “Never settle”. That’s all fine and dandy, but what does it mean? That’s the whole reason you have your whole lives in front of you. You get to find out what it all means – and when you do, let me know. It might make a better graduation speech. With that said, I can promise you that when you get together for your twenty-year reunion and you ask each other what they remember about this speech, one of you will suck in his gut and look down at a killer pair of pumps that are strangling the feet of your Homecoming Queen and say, “I don’t know.”

Wedded Blitz

2007-07-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve been invited to a wedding this weekend. It’s a wedding for a friend/co-worker of mine. You can sort of tell the station in life you are by the type of wedding you attend. Right now, I’m young enough that I’m still being invited to people’s first weddings. I’ll know that the mid-life crisis is just around the corner when I get invited to someone’s second wedding – that’s for sure. And I’ll know that I’m getting really old when I start getting invited to the wedding of a friend’s kid.

If we’re lucky, places like Target will have kiosks stationed right next to the wedding registry where you can select your retirement community and even pick out your casket and burial site. (With cross marketing like that, Walmart may already have something like this!) Heck, if they attached one of those blood-pressure cuffs to the side of the kiosk, that might save even more time. Some of us might get a message popping up on the screen after the blood-pressure test saying, “Please skip Steps 3 & 4 (retirement options) and go straight to funeral preparations.” I could see the AARP backing something like that. But I digress.

After I received the invitation to this weekend’s wedding, I began thinking about the gift I was going to need to purchase for the couple. I’ve never met the bride to be – I’m sure she’s lovely – so I was truly on the horns of a dilemma in the gift department. You know, do I get them something simply based on my friend’s personality? But then I thought, perhaps a dozen hot dogs and a handful of beers at Angel Stadium might not quite send the right message. Or, do I try and guess at the personality of the woman he’s marrying and shop in that vein? That’s a Pandora’s box right there, too, and I don’t think I need to go into detail on the myriad reasons. Do I?

But wait, there’s the Wedding Registry! It’s a helpful list of a gajillion things, hand picked by the bride and groom (read: by the bride), that lets you know what items they will need to start a home and begin their new life together. The rub here, though, is that my friend is in his 40s, and both he and his fiancée own their own homes – and I’m fairly certain that neither’s home is necessarily lacking in the house wares and furniture departments. Oddly enough, when I went online to check out the several registries, house wares and furniture were exactly what they had on their lists. (I did notice that my friend had chosen some beer mugs from Crate & Barrel . . . but the @#$% quantities had already been purchased!) So, rather than trying to decide between the Casablanca Round Placemat and the Savoy Mocha Placemat (which, incidentally, is rectangular for all of those who are scoring at home) or between the Cookie Dough Scoop and the “Y” Peeler (yes, the letter Y was in quotations, and come to think of it, I’ve never had occasion to peel the letter Y or any other vowels for that matter), I decided to get them a crock pot. You laugh now (and they may think I’m a moron when they open the gift), but they’ll thank me when they’re looking to make a great chili to go with the hot dogs and beer. I’ll be their hero – I’m a patient man and can wait for the accolades from them.

I am curious to see what other gifts they’ll be receiving. You know, to see if other guests are as thoughtful as I am or if they’re lazy enough to get the couple something on their registry. More than that, I’m curious to see how you peel the letter Y.

American Idle

2007-06-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

Traveling on a regular basis finds me standing around a lot in airports waiting in line to board a plane or to order, perhaps, the world’s sorriest excuse for food – and pay money for it. I recall one winter evening ordering what I thought was a chilidog. It looked like a chilidog, and it even smelled like one. However, my taste buds warned me that it was, in fact, an impostor, but I plowed through it overtaken by hunger. My stomach later objected in an “I told you so” sort of manner all through my subsequent flight by sending gas bubbles back up my throat and out my mouth. I, of course, kept it as low key as possible, but be sure those sitting near me stealthily inched as far away from me as FAA regulations would allow. While the heartburn and subdued belching weren’t pleasant, I was successful in going through the entire flight without having to engage in small talk about how I look just like a Hollywood sex symbol or my seat mate’s take on aluminum foil versus Saran Wrap.

By no stretch of the imagination could I be called a “misanthrope”, which is a fancy word for someone who hates all mankind. There’s another name for such a person: Michael Moore. However, I must admit that traveling has caused me to be ever so wary of engaging practically anyone during my sojourns because on the outside a person could look like an easy-going, funny individual who in reality is the king of the take-no-breaths-run-on sentence or the queen of the never-ending story. There are others lurking about whom you would do well to avoid – do not make eye contact if at all possible:

Ms. Coincidence: The conversation will start out innocently enough, but if she senses (usually subconsciously) any lag she will start pointing out coincidences the two of you share. “I see you’re a big Yankees fan. I watched a Yankees game once in 1978.” This will go on forever. The only thing that will save you is a carefully planned diversion involving a herd of buffalo or cardiac arrest for either one of you.
TMI (Too Much Information) Tom: Within ten seconds, he will either start showing you diseased or scarred body parts normally cloaked by clothing or telling you about his time in jail and/or prison. Either way, it’s too late to book a different flight.
The Inquisitor: At the slightest hint of recognition, she will begin to ask you a thousand questions ranging from where you live to the name of your first pet to your favorite wallpaper pattern. Admittedly, there is the entertaining possibility of completely lying to this person and fabricating a totally new life history, but there are two possible pitfalls here: (1) she’ll circle back and ask you the same question – you better remember your previous answer because she will, and (2) you just might start wishing the life you made up were your real life. No good can come of this.
The Loud Talker: Now, he has a loud voice, and there’s nothing you can do about that – at least not until Congress passes that controversial bill allowing you to shoot them at will – but if you’re the one who gives him the slightest reason to open his bullhorn-level yapper, you can bet everyone around you is wishing your name specifically will be added to that Congressional bill.

Just like airport chilidogs, you can’t tell which of your fellow travelers is going to cause you mild to severe discomfort and regret. You’d do well to avoid them all – fellow travelers that is, because there are some really good chilidogs just waiting to be found.

Long Live El Cid!

2007-06-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

What possesses us to name our cars? For those of us who don’t own Herbie the Love Bug or KITT from Knight Rider, it’s not as if we can call them and have them come speeding over to us. Additionally, if we’re asked to come down to the impound yard to pick up our car, it’s a safe bet that the cops found us by using the Vehicle Identification Number rather than asking the car its name. Nevertheless, many of us – myself included – name our cars as if we were naming offspring.

When I was a boy, we had a maroon 1962 Ford Fairlane that my mom called Henrietta. Wanting to spruce up the old girl, I decided to give it a yellow racing stripe with a rather wide brush and interior house paint. (Back in 1974, they made house paint that stuck – believe me!) Sadly, I believe my parents sold that car (yellow stripe and all) for $250 when I was about ten years old.

My siblings tell me that my family had an old Chevy named Bessie that had a hole in the floorboard, and you could watch the roadway beneath speed past. The fact my parents got rid of this car before I was born only goes to show that I’m their favorite – they weren’t all that concerned about my two brothers and my sister and whether they fell through this gap at 60 miles per hour. But that’s another story for another day.

When I was twenty-one years old, I purchased my parents’ 1985 Honda Civic and made it my own. I gave him the name of Sid – short for Sid Vicious. (Honestly, I was never a big Sex Pistols fan, but the name always sounded kind of funny to me.) Four or five years later, while living in Southern California, my wife and I passed another Civic of the same vintage that was completely tricked out: lowered, shiny rims, neon running lights, and fat tires. The windows were tinted, and the bass from the stereo could recalibrate pace makers within a five-mile radius. My wife said that if we were to do that to our car, we could rename him El Cid. Although it was tempting, we figured both the historical and Hollywood references would be wasted on most people.

Since that time, we’ve owned a handful of other cars. We had a Saturn we named Pepe, and a Dodge Caravan named Gordo. Although we have since parted ways with the Caravan and replaced it with another one, we’ve kept the name Gordo – it’s a shame to let a good name like that go to waste. We currently have a Honda Accord that doesn’t have a name because the family can’t agree on one. My youngest son wants Wolverine, and my wife is to the point that she doesn’t care – imagine that – but I’m leaning toward Bruce or Spike.

Speaking of names, if you’re going to go to the trouble and expense of having personalized license plates, you should use whatever you named the car rather than the cutesy combinations some of you concoct in your heads. You know what I’m talking about: MYVETTE, 1KULBUG, 75PINTO, RADZ28, and so on. If you need to remind yourself and others on the road what type of car it is that you’re driving, you probably shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a large metal object that has the ability to exceed 120 mph and run over small animals. Failing that, the government should allow me to more obviously mark your car so we know you’re coming. I’m sure I could scare up a can of yellow house paint.

Feeling Fuzzy

2007-06-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

You’ll have to forgive me for another column about baseball, but it is summertime. Let’s look at it this way: it’s either this or some feeble attempt to make the latest escapade of Paris Hilton seem funny and not sad.

Professional baseball – in order for any of it to really make sense – must be looked at as strictly entertainment. We’re not saving the rainforest one home run at a time, nor are we helping fight illiteracy (I hope I spelled that right) with the designated hitter rule. It’s just fun to watch. The sooner we remember that the better we’ll all be – and if you’re not sold on this idea, allow me to demonstrate.

During the regular season, each team is allowed a roster of 25 players. Most teams have eleven or twelve pitchers of whom four or five are starters. The balance of the pitching staff sits in the bullpen with the number-one priority of “keeping warm”. Most often, this is accomplished by playing catch, having sunflower-seed-spitting contests, and finding other ways to amuse themselves and possibly the spectators within their immediate vicinity. If the bullpen is really staying on their toes, their antics will attract the notice of the camera crew and some part of their hilarious hijinks and merry mayhem will appear on Sports Center that night. Failing that, a couple of the guys might be needed to come into the game to help a failing pitcher.

Your remaining thirteen or fourteen players are scattered among the fielding positions, and most often those eight spots go to a fixed list of guys leaving five or six team members – known as Utility Players – to ride the pine at a MINIMUM of $380,000/year. In other words, they get paid AT LEAST $2,345.67/game to sit in premium seats (no having to fight over armrests) and watch a ballgame. (I would be willing to bet that if they wanted garlic fries they wouldn’t have to wait in line behind the guy who’s trying to decide if he’s hungry for a bratwurst or a Polish sausage.)

This is not reality, folks. I started my post-college working life at an insurance company as an adjuster. In all the time I was at that company, I never walked by a conference room filled with Utility Adjusters – all fully paid and suited up – just waiting for a co-worker to be brought down by a crippling case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and step in to complete the claims process. If I chose to spit sunflower seeds all over the floor of my work area, that was surprisingly frowned upon. And where were the camera crews when we found a way to lock Jim Stenowski in the women’s bathroom for two hours?

Also, how many workplaces do you know that have a guy in a fuzzy suit walking around rubbing the heads of bald men and dancing the funky chicken – I mean besides the weird dude in accounting who drinks too much at the Christmas party. (On a side note: How does one go about getting a mascot job? What types of things do you put on your resume? “I’m not averse to wearing oversized Papier-mâché caricatures on my head; nor do I object to the feel of felt-like material next to my skin.”)

Lastly, outside of “Paris Hilton Night” at a cross-dressers’ bar, where else do you see grown men wearing spiked heels and black eyeliner? That’s entertainment.

All the World's a Stage

2007-06-08T09:21:00.001-07:00

As a young man, I grew up as an Oakland A’s fan. The basis for my fandom was borne mostly out of geography and the fact my dad liked them. In the early 80s, the A’s brought Billy Martin on as the manager, and Pops was none too happy about that. I tried to ferret out the reason(s) for his strong dislike – “hate” is too strong a word as my dad reserved that for other more-important items like broccoli and chicken. However, all I could get out of him was Billy Martin argued too much with the umpire. I knew that my dad had done his fair share of umping for Little League through the years, and that was sure to inform his opinion of verbally belligerent coaches/managers, but dad’s view of Billy Martin seemed to have deeper roots than that.

To this day, I can’t figure it out. I did an Internet search the other day on Billy Martin, and I could find no such evidence of a criminal record, of Mr. Martin perhaps marching in an anti-war protest in the 60s (dad’s not much for the hippies), or of Billy killing innocent rabbits. I even went so far as to type in both Billy Martin’s and my dad’s names together, and the only thing I could come up with was a study for adult acne. (I didn’t read the study, but it’s funny that I never have noticed a single pimple on my dad’s face – or Billy’s for that matter.)

Admittedly, I do find it odd that a manager will argue with an umpire. I’ve yet to see an ump reverse his decision because the manager made a cogent, impassioned plea based on reason and pure logic – nor have I seen one reverse the call because the manager’s voice is louder than a Boeing 737 and his face is three deep shades of purple. Most die-hard baseball fans will argue that there’s a well-thought-out craftiness behind the manager’s meltdown. Some say it’s intended to fire up the players. Others argue that it’s the manager’s way of putting doubt in the ump’s mind so the next close call will go his way. Those are feeble attempts to justify the behavior of a grown man who’s being paid millions of dollars to sit around in tight pants and cleats. I think I’ve figured it out.

Is it simply a coincidence that a lot of the Big League managers are built like the fat lady at the opera? Come on, put a Viking helmet and a blonde wig with long braids on Lou Piniella, and you know the aria from “Flight of the Valkyries” is going to start playing in your head. Either that or you’re going to hear Elmer Fudd singing “Kill da Wabbit, Kill da Wabbit.” These middle-aged men in tights are performing for us, the fans! (It’s not as if they’re suited up and ready to fill in at shortstop at a moment’s notice. And although it seems odd that they wear cleats, they go better with the whole outfit – Wingtips or Penny Loafers would just look silly.)

As younger athletes, these managers were able to scale the wall in the outfield to rob a home run or dash across the infield to turn lightning-fast double plays. Although their bodies have since precluded them from these activities, the desire to perform never dies. Kicking dirt and tossing one of the bases into the outfield may seem like protest against the umpire’s call, but it’s really performance art. Why do you think “Dancing With the Stars” attracts athletes? The ranks of managers are full. It’s too bad, though, that the dancing takes place in a studio rather than on a ball field. I would love to see one of the judges take some dirt in the face or get a base thrown at them for a bad score. Now that’s entertainment!

Burning Questions

2007-06-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

Little-known fact about the Geneva Convention: It expressly forbids the use of children as soldiers in war. That doesn’t seem to be surprising given the fact Whitney Houston’s 1985 hit “Greatest Love of All” explains that “children are our future/teach them well and let them lead the way” – the conventioneers are big Whitney fans, although there’s a faction who believes Bobby Brown was treated unfairly in the divorce. At any rate, some of you who have children may have already guessed at the reasoning behind such a prohibition: employing a miniature militia would give you an unfair advantage, and we all know that war is so much better when everyone plays by the rules.

Imagine little Johnny captured by the enemy and taken to a remote area for questioning. Before they even get the blindfold off of his eyes, Johnny’s already on the offensive – not with any weapon involving flint or steel but his tireless 9-year-old curiosity, his Weapon of Mass Distraction.

“What kind of fabric is this blindfold made of? It feels scratchy. My mom says that I shouldn’t put anything sharp near my eyes. Have you ever been poked in the eye? My cousin Philip threw a Hot Wheel at me once – well it was an accident, he was pretending he was Evil Knievel jumping the Grand Canyon – and it hit me right here above my eye. I’m glad he didn’t hit me in the eye because it could have blinded me. Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? What kind of car were we riding in? Does it get good gas mileage? I hope it’s not making the hole in the ozone layer any bigger. Do you think the hole’s always been there and scientists are just noticing now?”

Although your average youngster could probably deliver the preceding soliloquy in about twenty seconds and in one breath, it would be just enough time for the enemies to lay their guns down and tie themselves up – but not before finding something to jam in their ears. It would seem to be a great idea to give a kid a microphone and broadcast his musings over a loud speaker on the field of battle – the other side would most certainly surrender without firing a shot. However – and this is what the conventioneers foresaw – if both sides were to use this ploy, war would never end!

Although I don’t remember it this way, I must have been hellishly inquisitive as a child, and my parents have found the ultimate revenge. I’m the fourth of four children. My sister, who is the oldest, used to work with lawyers all day and now she works with commercial real estate brokers – she’s bound to have thick skin after all that. My oldest brother is successfully self-employed, so he’s clearly demonstrated his ability to see tough times through. My other brother had the tenacity to make it through West Point and Harvard, and he and his wife are expecting their eighth child ON PURPOSE, so it goes without saying that he’s got grit. Me? I write a humor column and wear pants as infrequently as possible because they make me feel hot – and not in a sexy way. And yet my mom and dad have decided to make me responsible for pulling the plug if they’re ever on life support. Not the sister who works in a cutthroat environment day in and day out, nor the brother who went to West Point and learned to kill. No, apparently I’m the one who has ice water flowing through his veins.

All I know is that if it ever comes to that, I’m going to be asking a lot of questions

Turning on the Speed

2007-05-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

There are countless books on how to raise children, and yet you always find that the advice and guidance given in the book you’re reading don’t quite apply to your son or daughter. We could blame this on a conspiracy of booksellers and paper companies to sell more product – you know, keep you coming back to buy another book that you hope applies to your child – but I believe the Harry Potter series has taken care of that. Here’s one thing, though, that you won’t read in any fancy-shmancy child-rearing book that no one can deny and is universally applicable: the moment you strip a kid down to his birthday suit, he’s faster than the Flash and he’s got moves to rival any NFL running back – and in some cases, there’s a neighbor or friend ready to capture it on video for you to use as blackmail when your child reaches teenager.

When someone chooses to disrobe in public, they’re called a “streaker”. They’re not called an “idler”, a “layabout”, a “stroller”, or a “meanderer”. “Streaker” has a connotation of someone darting about with a higher-than-usual degree of speed. (Although, it might also have something to do with the fact society frowns on such public displays, and there’s an officer of the law chasing the fast-moving flasher.)

In that same vein, it’s now so abundantly clear why the original Olympians decided to participate in the buff. No, it wasn’t that the togas were necessarily slowing them down, they were just getting back to their inner child and turning up the speed. Obviously, though, the invention of lotion came immediately after the first race to help with the chafing.

Now, this begs the question: Would the adult film industry be a good place for the U.S. Olympics committee to recruit athletes? Of course not! They’re not exactly using their naked powers for the innocent pursuit of trying to avoid bath time. Not that I’ve seen much of this industry’s product, but I think it’s safe to say that the 100-yard dash and the hurdles are not a big story feature.

As an adult, why do you feel so rushed in the morning when you get in the shower? Sure, you can blame it on the fact your alarm didn’t go off or you have an early morning board meeting you just remembered. The truth is, though, that your inner child can’t wait to get out of the confined space of the shower and/or bathroom and just bolt down the street in nothing but what the Good Lord gave you at birth. (Just remember to wash the conditioner out of your hair or you’ll never get a comb through it.)

In the interest of keeping my lunch down and avoiding the need to burn out my eyes with acid, I’m not advocating that we all become nudists – and I’m especially talking about a couple of my neighbors. However, I believe we would live much less stressful lives if we would take a moment every once in a while and just take a couple of quick laps around the living room in the buff. If you’re really looking to get back to basics, try throwing your arms out like they’re holding onto handlebars and making motorcycle sounds with your mouth. Come on. You know you want to do it! Nevertheless, make sure that you have a fresh bottle of lotion handy. It’ll make sitting in that board meeting much more comfortable.

Wal-Mart was Founded by a Man

2007-05-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

Now that Mother’s Day has come and past, I wanted to take a moment and share with you something that I have come to realize over many years of both being married and being a father: Women are insane! This is not some watered-down Don-Imus-like chauvinistic rant. It’s truly a statement of fact supported by observations with which no one will be able to argue. Follow me here.

Observation #1: Women marry men. In days of yore, men were the protectors of the village, and women would marry as a means of defense. (Oddly enough, though, the village usually required protection from marauding bands of other men.) So, with that said, it’s obvious that women were making sound decisions back then based on practical need. However, fast forward to today – a day in which we’re not wont to see a lot of marauding – and women are still marrying men. One could argue that many women marry certain men because of their potential to be successful and rich (i.e. marrying doctors, young heirs to great fortunes, multi-millionaire octogenarians who have one foot in the grave, etc.). However, you have a lot of women who are marrying guys who are schoolteachers, park rangers, and – gasp! – humor columnists. Even after multiple generations of mothers and daughters discussing the disgusting habits of the men in their lives, women will still say, “But my husband will be different.” And they’ll say this on the heels of dropping by their guy’s apartment that could double as a petri dish.

Observation #2: Women bear children. With eons of anecdotal evidence pointing to the likelihood that their feet will swell to the size of watermelons and they will constantly experience heartburn on par with a competitive Hot Dog eater with only a glass of water, they still get pregnant. And then there’s no guarantee how these children will come out. For example, on Secretary’s Day – a Hallmark-created holiday to celebrate a person who makes our professional lives more efficient – we lighten the workload in the middle of the week for the person being honored and give them gifts that are considerably more expensive than a crayon rendition of a card. However, on Mother’s Day – a holiday created to celebrate the woman who gave us life –children come up with some rather unique (read: cheap) gifts made of Play-Doh. Also, we do it on a weekend when Mom should be able to sleep in rather than be assaulted by breakfast in bed comprised on runny eggs and pancakes with mysterious ingredients. And yet, women go on bringing children into the world.

This is not a condemnation of the female half of our species, nor is it meant to demonstrate that men are winning the sanity race – we aren’t by any stretch of the imagination. We marry women expecting them to look beyond our caveman behavior and are shocked when they don’t. We take the kids to the local Wal-Mart the day before Mother’s Day at 9:30 p.m. and tell them, “Just get something you think your Mom will like, and make sure it’s not more than five bucks. Meet me in Sporting Goods in fifteen minutes. I’m going to check out fishing rods.” Yeah, we’re just as nuts!

The truly insane thing in this world is that my Mom married my Dad, and that my wife married me. Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I say it’s insane to want it any other way. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! And Happy Mother’s Day from Jack and Sam to their Mom, my wife!

Pillow Talk

2007-05-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Just recently, my youngest son lost the second of his two upper front teeth. That evening, he placed the tooth beneath his pillow in anticipation of the Tooth Fairy’s visit. That same evening, however, the Tooth Fairy was too busy trying to find a replacement part on Ebay for a friend’s rear-projection 50” television screen that the child in question shattered with a flying baseball bat. Nevertheless, our son’s faith never wavered in the Tooth Fairy’s ability to deliver cold, hard cash. So, he placed the tooth back under his pillow to await the exchange of this lifeless enamel-covered body part that is useless to practically everyone but that spooky guy who lives down by the river and wears a necklace strung with children’s teeth. I believe his name is Alec Baldwin.

With no success on the Ebay project, I was able to turn my full attention to the dental duty at hand and retrieve the detached tooth and start for the front door to take it out to the trash. As I was doing this, I asked my wife for a reminder of how much I was supposed to give our son for his tooth. She quickly rattled off a strange sliding-scale “price list” that took tooth size, duration in the mouth, month in which it was lost, and I could have sworn she included some astrological symbols. This all seemed to make perfect sense to her. It was late, so I just asked her for a specific price: two bucks.

Nearing the trash, I pondered two questions.

(1) Who grabbed the Tooth Fairy by the collar and roughed him up to wring more cash out of the transaction? I got a quarter when I was a kid. Sure, inflation may be the culprit here, but my money is on Little Red Riding Hood. Ever since she beat up the Big Bad Wolf (although we all know it was really the beau-hunk woodsman), she’s been found starting a lot of barroom brawls with midgets and taking kids’ lunch money away from them. It’s not like a guy named the Tooth Fairy is going to be a huge challenge. Nevertheless, that woman needs help! But I digress.
(2) Why would my wife assign different “values” to the different teeth in our children’s heads? It’s not as though they had to plant and grow these things like bushels of corn in an arid desert or on a rocky plain. They fall out on their own accord, and sometimes their exit is helped by a bad landing off the monkey bars or by trying to parachute off the roof with an umbrella.

As I placed two dollar bills under my son’s pillow I was reminded of something a friend of mine does each time one of his children loses a tooth: he or his wife places a silver dollar under the pillow. With five children, I asked if he went to the bank to get a bucket of these coins for times like these. No, he uses the same coin each time. Genius!

Not having my friend’s foresight, but not as many mouths to account for, my wife and I have bankrolled a fair amount of tooth loss in the name of the Tooth Fairy. But now that I reflect on this and realize that we have thrown away all of our sons’ teeth, we’ve missed out on a wonderful opportunity to make some money off of all this. There has to be more than just the crazy guy down by the river looking for teeth. We could have sold these things on Ebay. Even if I couldn’t get a lot of money for them, maybe someone would be willing to trade a 50” television screen.

Aquaman's Hair Never Moves

2007-05-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

In only three instances in my adult life have I had long hair. Let’s be clear, though: I’ve never had a mullet or a pony tail – I don’t drive a car with a quarter panel that is gray and plastered with Bondo while the rest of the body is bright yellow, nor is my name Antonio or Fabio. Just long hair. This might strike you as odd as I’m a guy who has never owned a Harley Davidson, played in a rock band, flirted with writing non-rhyming poetry, or lived in the Haight in San Francisco.

There are the obvious stereotypes of “long hairs” in society, of course, and there are those who live up to them. My wife and I lived in an apartment below two of them early in our marriage. They drove a 1989 Chevy pick-up truck that they decided to re-paint one day in the apartment parking lot. No need for a booth to keep out dust and trap the vapors, they just used a couple of cans of black spray paint and called it good. Also, they lived on the third floor, and every two or three days, as we sat in our living room we would see a large bag being hoisted down by a rope to someone standing in the parking lot: it was full of empty beer bottles. Less walking to the Dumpster, and more drinking of the beer.

We never did catch their names; we just referred to them as Beavis & Butthead because you never saw them in anything but a Metallica or AC/DC shirt (if they were wearing shirts at all), and one was blonde and the other had brown hair. One of them (we never cared to know which) liked to open the window and scream like Tarzan when his girlfriend was spending the night. We always wondered how a game of Parcheesi would elicit such an action.

For some reason, though, men with short hair seem to get a free pass in the first-impressions department. There’s a concerted and subversive effort to maintain this image as evidenced by the fact all of our major male superheroes have short, well-coifed hair. Oddly enough, though, the obviously questionable wardrobe choices of skin-tight spandex, Speedos, and codpieces should cause you to wonder about their true intentions. Also, this short-hair phenomenon certainly goes against reason, as a proportionately larger number of the maniacs, dictators, and serial killers of our age have all been dudes with short hair. Just go to your favorite Internet search engine and type in evil men of the 20th century, and you’ll find photos of really bad guys with short hair . . . and some with really bad haircuts.

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? Sure, we’ve all had and joked about “bad hair days”, but these boogeymen had/have bad hair lives. Some of these guys just snap because they’re responsible for running an entire nation and deep down they know that their subjects are sniggering behind their backs about that goofy cowlick they can’t tame. Others, quite possibly, take a divergent path because they found out that their pet rabbit was used for shampoo testing, and Fluffy’s fur looks more vibrant and full-bodied than their own head of hair despite all efforts.

Before it’s too late, men, either let your hair grow or find a way to wear a hat at all times (shaving the head is only an option if you’re over 6’2” and your chest could double as a brick wall.) Why do you think Batman wears a mask and keeps his head covered? Court-ordered anger management.

The Slurpee Defense

2007-04-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

I am certainly not the smartest guy in the room. On occasion, I am the smart aleck in the room, but that’s a whole other topic. At any rate, in my time here on this planet I have come to learn a number of things that help me to know that the world is in balance, if only precariously. These little things are the constants in life that we can count on like gravity keeps us from floating up in the air and water is wet. Without them, we feel a certain uneasiness. Let me share them with you:

1. Asparagus will make your pee stink. Try as you might to dilute it with large quantities of alcohol or a cherry slurpee, that little green vegetable’s odiferous power will not be masked. You might as well just stop trying and move on.
2. If a man has a mustache – no other facial hair – it’s a 98.72% likelihood that he’s a cop or a firefighter . . . or it’s Tom Selleck reprising his role in Magnum P.I. Little known fact: Adolf Hitler went to his college career advisor to ask about how he could become a police officer and found that the waiting list was three years long, but there were immediate openings in the dictator department.
3. When you walk into a men’s public restroom, four out of the five seats in the stalls will be peed on – the one that’s not was last used by a married man but is most likely left in the “up” position. And three of the other four were most likely used by married men, too, who have been wed less than five years.
4. You will never become a millionaire, lose seventy-five pounds, or grow your hair back as a result of something you heard about through junk mail.
5. Regardless of your college major and the subsequent career field you pursue, the things you learn in your Political Science 202 class will only come in handy when watching or competing on Jeopardy.

I defy you to prove these universal constants wrong. Sure, you’ll come back and say things like, “I rather enjoy the effect asparagus has on my bodily fluids” and “Hall of Fame pitcher Rollie Fingers had a handlebar mustache, and he was never in law enforcement or public safety.” First off, on the asparagus issue, eeeewwww! (Please don’t invite me over to your home for Sunday dinner.) As for Mr. Fingers and others of his mustachioed ilk, they comprise the other 1.28% - I have statistics to back me up. What have you got?

As is true with all scientific truths, there will be exceptions that don’t so much as disprove but amuse or confuse. For example, you may be watching one of the upcoming presidential debates and one of the candidates will make sense. Or, you’ll be standing outside and the sun will be shining without a cloud in the sky, and you’ll suddenly feel rain drops falling. I can’t explain that one – nor can I explain how a candidate would make sense.

My recommendation is that you take comfort in these simple truths that I have outlined. Lay your head on your pillow at night and dream sweetly of a world that makes sense in its own weird way. And if in those dreams you suddenly find yourself on Jeopardy competing against Tom Selleck and Adolf Hitler, rest assured they won’t know Plato’s Theory of Forms either.

Breeding Contempt

2007-04-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

We spend our early years fighting to stay awake for fear we’re going to miss something and the rest of our lives looking for ways to get us to bed earlier to avoid as much as possible. So, the inability to sleep for an adult goes against all sense and reason. Sure, there are those moments in time when we have important deadlines to meet, serious agendas to ponder, and the ongoing plot twists/cliffhangers of Desperate Housewives or Lost that will occasionally keep us awake at night. However, just lying there in bed with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling is frustrating.

I had a recent bout of insomnia and went to see my doctor. He asked me the usual questions: Do you drink a lot of caffeine before bed? Are you worried about something? Are you going to bed at the same time every night? Will you be paying in cash today? Ultimately, he gave me a prescription for a sleep aid and told me it was something to help turn my mind off – apparently sleep aids aren’t designed to put you to sleep but enable you to put yourself in a mental state on par with most politicians. I thought the lack of concentration I was experiencing from sleepless nights had already gotten me to that point.

Nevertheless, while in my weakened state, which my sons could sense like coyotes sniffing out a wounded rabbit, they came to me begging for a dog. Although I was able to withstand their pleadings, my lovely wife caved. She didn’t necessarily get to the point of ultimately saying they could have a dog, but she told them that we would start exploring our options. The irony of this – as if you don’t already see it – is such a statement is the human equivalent of rolling over!

We went to the local pet store in the mall – first mistake, I know – to check out the different breeds and their personalities. And that’s the problem: we’re talking breeds, as in PURE breeds. They wanted $2500 for a Chihuahua and $3600 for a Corgi! For that kind of pound-for-pound price point, I’m hoping to get something that I can ride and run errands. In fact, a single Chihuahua cost more than what my wife and I paid for our first cars COMBINED! And we didn’t have to worry about our cars chewing on the furniture or needing to be potty trained (although my wife’s first car had a master cylinder that leaked like an excited puppy’s bladder).

What happened to the days when dogs were allowed to roam the countryside without a leash and seek out romantic interludes of their own choosing? In the ensuing months you would see a little boy or girl in front of the grocery store with a box that said “Puppees 4 sale”, and they would cost twenty bucks apiece. For some reason, though, society has deemed “free love” for dogs as inhumane – looks like the 60’s were just a big, fat waste of time for our canine friends. Aren’t we going backward as a society by handpicking dogs’ mates and making them selectively breed? Oh yeah, that sure has worked out well for British royalty!

Quite honestly, I don’t believe I have the strength to fight society on this one. I’m afraid I might take a sleep aid and wake up shaved and neutered. At least I’d still have a political career ahead of me!

An Ounce of Education

2007-04-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Just this week, a dear friend of the family passed away, and now arrangements are being made for his funeral and burial. My wife is helping organize and provide a luncheon for the family members after the funeral, and she’s been told to expect about 150 people. So, my wife and I took off to the local warehouse store to buy more shredded beef than you could pack in a small army’s collective colon – I’m guessing, of course.

In preparation for our shopping trip, my wife had determined the average portion sizes and such so we could be sure no one was left wanting. It all seemed so simple. However, as we’re standing in the shredded beef aisle, blocking all possible passage with our yacht-sized shopping cart, we find that it’s now important that we muster together our math skills to figure out the proper quantities. We must have spent twenty minutes alternately staring at each other and scratching our heads completely dumbfounded. Come on, we both graduated from college with four-year degrees, and we’re having trouble converting the number of ounces into pounds? Sadly, yes. All of the classes we were required to take on, say, the migratory patterns of three-toed sloths and the symbolism contained in The Iliad didn’t quite help.

A casual observer would have thought we were NASA engineers and the shelves before us were complicated charts and graphs detailing the pros and cons of re-entry with a disabled flux capacitor on the troubled spacecraft. “Houston, we have a problem. We’re morons!” At some point in our less-than-rocket-science moment, one of the clerks asked us if he could help. We, of course, declined. But for all we knew, he could have been Stephen Hawking in a really good disguise – we’ll never know now, will we? At long last we made the necessary computations and agreed we had the right quantities – but not without the help of the calculator function and web browser on my cell phone. Sad!

As you sit and reflect on this, some of you may ask, “Why on God’s green earth are you serving shredded beef at a funeral?” Fair question, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? I will tell you, though, that I had made some menu suggestions to my wife that were summarily vetoed: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (voted down for fear that we couldn’t pick a universally accepted flavor of jelly); pizza (voted down for fear that the dairy aspect of the cheese my cause “phlegminess”, which can’t be a good thing for people who have been weeping); and chicken nuggets (she just stared at me, no reason given). Oddly enough, I just listed the three main staples of my youngest son’s diet.

After lugging the ingredients we purchased into the house, I am confident we bought enough – my hernia will second that. As I sit and write this, my stumbling through a couple of simple math equations in the warehouse store is probably causing my pride to hurt slightly more than any discomfort in my back. Although I’m tempted to write a letter to my university asking for a partial refund – I won’t ask for it all back because I did meet my wife at their fine establishment – I’ll put that off for another day. Obviously, other things are more important right now. We’ll miss you, Frank!

Next Stop: Winnemuca!

2007-04-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

You might as well know it up front: this is a story about my dad. Sure, everyone has a story about their dad that they like to tell at cocktail parties and casual business functions. I’ve come to learn that this is one of the basic duties as a father: to provide your offspring with some form of comic relief. This is not to say that all fathers are stand-up comedians – I had a scoutmaster once who was a father of four with no sense of humor at all – and we don’t need to be. In the normal course of our days, we unwittingly provide our children with little chestnuts that will be shared later at our expense. That’s life!

At any rate, my story begins backwards: two days ago I visited a company that sells and ships everything from big-screen TVs on down to watch batteries – and most often they’re all shipped in the same cardboard box. As I was watching the young man place an order of products into one of these said boxes, I saw a parade of odd-sized items being rearranged and jostled to fit together into a confined space, and that’s when I thought of my dad.

Every family vacation involved the family car. Over the years, the vehicle was a Chevrolet Kingswood (station wagon), a Volkswagen bus, a Dodge Dart, and a Ford Granada. Now, the first two had a roof rack, so when it came time for my dad to perform the packing chore, this was a piece of cake. There were times when I believe my dad used enough rope to summit Everest – twice – to tie it all down, and he would occasionally tense up when passing under overpasses that Semis had no problem navigating. However, the Dart and the Granada presented my father with a challenge – and it was one I believe he secretly relished. We would get all of the suitcases and travel paraphernalia out to my dad at 3:30 a.m. (One would think that a vacation was about rest, and getting up that early would contradict that notion. In my house, it was all about making good time from point A to point B. Our “scenic” stops were gas station bathrooms in places like Winnemuca, Nevada.) Once everything was delivered out to dad standing before the trunk of the family car, we would stop and watch to see if he could get it all in there. At this point, you did not dare talk, and offering to help was like asking Michelangelo if you could take a couple of whacks with the chisel on David. My older brother wanted to start a pool the night before one of these ordeals to bet on not only whether dad could fit it all in but in how much time. Mom put a kibosh on that one, declaring it would give us bad luck on the journey – looking back, I just think mom knew that she’d lose her shirt. In my eighteen or so years of traveling with the family, dad never failed us. Everything always fit. There was something Zen-like in his approach to this.

Now, in some instances we would seriously pray that nothing would go wrong with the car, not because of our fear of having to face the elements across the desert but because the only spot dad could fit the toolbox was at the very back of the trunk. Forget about a flat tire – the spare was, of course, buried beneath it all.

I’m completely at a loss as to what my sons will find eccentric or humorously odd about their old man. But while I contemplate that, I think I’ll go eat a Miracle Whip sandwich.

Sleeping Dogs

2007-03-22T22:33:00.000-07:00

I’m currently sitting at my desk in my office. Mind you, my office is in the basement of our house, so one would think it’s a quiet, secluded nook from which I can escape the world but for a few moments. Whoever might think that has obviously never had a basement or children.

As I sit here trying to write this, my two sons (who weigh probably sixty pounds apiece) are fulfilling the requirements to maintain their professional status as kids by chasing each other around and wailing like banshees. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, when you’re sitting in the basement, these two sets of feet sound like a herd of elephants, and the acoustics in the floor below them/ceiling above me make the wailing sound like fire trucks on their way to a three-alarm fire. Even my wife, as slight as she is, walking around upstairs sounds like a hammer pounding nails into two-by-fours. And to answer your question: No, I don’t have a hangover.

I have become accustomed to the “sounds of domesticity,” so the banshees/fire trucks are part of the normal soundtrack in my head. (Fortunately, we haven’t had occasion to have the need for any real fire trucks – or banshees for that matter – up to this point in our home.) However, the things that seem to invade the soundtrack in my head like the Chipmunks singing a Bob Dylan protest song are the constant off-the-wall questions and statements coming out of my sons’ mouths. Just when I think my world of reason is in perfect balance, one or both of my sons seem to find a way to push me off the beam with a zinger. Here’s a sampling:

1. Sitting in the bathroom, holding private court if you will, my youngest son bursts in to ask me to explain how Vaseline is made.
2. I awoke at 3:00 one fine morning to find of one my sons (I’m still a bit hazy about which one it was) hovering above me only to tell me that I look like a German Shepherd when I sleep. (I’ve always fancied myself more of a Jack Russell Terrier, personally.)
3. There is definitely an inverse relationship between how much of a hurry I’m in to get to work and the length of my sons’ latest story about the kid down the street who looks like a horse. (Orthodontia is something we should all take seriously, folks.)
4. My oldest son saw me with my shirt off and asked if he could connect the moles on my back with a ballpoint pen because he thought it would make the perfect silhouette of Grover from Sesame Street – or maybe it was Grover Cleveland, I can’t remember.

In a little more than a decade of fatherhood, I have come to learn that there’s a reason for this: it’s in our hardwiring. Somewhere deep in the cerebral cortex of every human being, from birth, is the knowledge that childhood will be the only time we’ll really be allowed to let our minds explore the universe around us and tell those around us what’s on our minds. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this simple question: Would the boss be keen on you kicking in the bathroom stall to ask her to clarify the spreadsheet she just e-mailed you?

A Swing and a Miss

2007-03-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

By a show of hands, how many people want to see me naked? (Don’t think too much about it – vomiting and convulsions may develop.) Just as I thought, no one raised his or her hand – oddly enough, neither did I.

In the past week, I have seen a handful of news stories and read a number of articles about young actors choosing to go nude in their stage and film performances. (You may all be wondering why I’ve taken the time to watch or read these things – I wonder myself, quite honestly.) These stories contain quotes from fellow actors along these lines: “He is such a brave actor, truly dedicated to his craft.” Translation: “Taking his clothes off distracted us from the really lame storyline.” Of course, you hear/read quotes from the denuding actors themselves: “I felt like I would betray the character’s soul if I didn’t do this.” Translation: “The role’s not exactly Hamlet. Why not?” But here’s the one I hear a lot that has no sensible translation: “It was done very tastefully and professionally.” Last I checked, the “profession” – although perhaps the oldest known to humankind – that specializes in this type of activity is illegal in most states. Ask Hugh Grant.

When the media do these stories, the reporters seem to have this very serious look on their faces in the interviews. Now, it’s possible that the interviewer just has a really bad case of heartburn from lunch or he is, at that moment, trying to picture what the actor would look like dressed up as a hippopotamus or a walrus. However, the tones of these reports are to have us believe that the actor’s choice to disrobe is on par with Louis Pasteur’s decision to become a microbiologist.

Irony of ironies, I would be willing to say that 99% of us don’t sit around as adults and daydream about sitting in a laboratory infecting chickens in the hopes of finding a vaccine for the flu. However, back in high school, I would be willing to say that 99% of us didn’t idolize members of the Drama Club. Oddly enough, though, that’s where the icons of the American cinema made their start. And we, their fellow students, weren’t exactly falling all over ourselves to have them sit next to us in the lunchroom. Sure, they could memorize a soliloquy that took up four pages of single-spaced text, but their skills weren’t exactly going to help you get a date with a modern-day Juliet.

Now, back to Adulthood: Do me a favor the next time you’re watching Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood (or whatever) and an interview with an actor comes on. Turn the sound completely off, find an AM station on the radio that comes in without too much static (it doesn’t matter if it’s in English or another language), and watch the interview with the radio program as the soundtrack. After about twenty seconds, the actor’s mouth on TV will magically sync with what’s coming out of the radio – perhaps it will be Tobey Maguire along with the play-by-play for a Cubs game. I promise you this: it will make as much, or more, sense as what’s really being said in the interview. And you might find yourself wondering why Chicago didn’t get Spiderman to be their color man years ago!

Yonkers is a Funny Word

2007-03-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

Certain body functions seem to have a greater comedic effect than others. Evidence of this fact is the many movies and television shows that center on, basically, the passing of gas from both the upper and lower egresses in the human body. (I could tell you a story about an oblivious elderly gentleman who was hard of hearing and very gassy while walking through a quiet supermarket in Yonkers, NY. I laughed until I cried – mind you, I was 19 years old – and I must admit my side hurts a bit still when I think about it.) Be that as it may, it’s my contention that sneezing is highly underrated for its ability to produce a laugh or two.

Take my wife for example. As she feels a sneeze coming on, you see her head rear back in slow motion – all the while you’re waiting for her noggin to begin swelling to two or three times its size as you anticipate the build-up – and then she stops but for a split second and the head begins to come forward (which is not too dissimilar to a good golf swing). You’re expecting to see an oral explosion on the same scale as Mt. St. Helens, but at the moment of truth her mouth closes and all you hear is a muffled snort as a puff of air escapes her lips. After seeing this I can’t help but laugh for all the lead up and the less-than-mighty delivery. (When we were first married I would look down at her feet to see if the stifled pressure at her mouth was diverted elsewhere and perhaps blew off her shoes.)

I’m sure you all know someone who makes you laugh every time you see them sneeze. There’s the guy whose whole body shakes like he’s been hit by a shock wave. You have the woman who makes a high-pitched squeak that’s almost the right frequency to be heard only by dogs. And we mustn’t forget that friend or family member who sounds like a machine gun, letting six or seven sneezes come flying out one after the other. Come to think of it, a video montage of people sneezing would be a great thing to watch on YouTube.

Comedic potential aside, there’s something about sneezing that causes me to wonder if people ever listen to what they’re saying. Yes, I’m referring to the sneeze rejoinder, “God bless you.” This stems from the belief that each time you sneeze your heart momentarily stops beating and then starts back up. So, by virtue of the fact you’re even saying this phrase, you’re acknowledging the existence of a higher power, while in the same breath you’re calling the reliability of his workmanship into question. We’ve got it all wrong, folks.

We go through our day-to-day activities vesting far more trust in things that are far less worthy. When we wake up in the morning and turn the light on, we don’t act a little surprised that the bulb works, and say, “GE bless you.” We don’t look down at our watches, shocked that they’re still ticking, and say, “Timex bless you.” Rather than going around looking for people who are sneezing and thus endangering their lives so we can await their hearts’ miraculous restarting to say, “God bless you,” perhaps our time would be better spent watching what we eat and getting our exercise – and possibly having our hearing checked to avoid an embarrassing situation in the supermarket.

There Will be a Quiz Later

2007-02-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

We’ve all had those jobs from . . . well, you know. If you haven’t, you’re either very peculiar or the son/daughter of a politician – and in many cases, that could be both. At any rate, as I look back on my job history, I find that my mind goes to what I did to put up with the conditions to avoid running into the night stark, raving mad.

My first job out of college was working for an insurance company as an adjuster for workers’ compensation claims. I hate to break it to you, but as sexy as that might sound, it wasn’t. After I got over dealing with people who were slightly off center – claimants, clients, co-workers, bosses – I found that a Black Hole had formed near the base of my desk, and it was sucking the very desire to enjoy life itself out of me. And upon discovering this phenomenon, I looked around at others in the office and determined that they, too, had Black Holes at their desks. Be that as it may, I started looking for any and all chances to step away from my desk and reclaim my joie de vive – I believe that’s French for “white hole” – which still sounds creepy but far better than a black one.

Each morning, I would put together a three-question, multiple-choice quiz for my co-workers. It was just random bits of information I would pick up from the radio on my drive to work that morning or some other arcane reference I somehow remembered learning back in college. At first, I had about four people who humored me in this exploit, but before long, I had people walking up to me asking for the quiz if I didn’t have it “distributed” by 9:00 a.m. At the height of it all, I was passing out 40 or 50 quizzes each day – this was before e-mail was widespread (yes, I’m old), so the copy machine got a good workout. Had my immediate supervisor found out about this little endeavor of mine, I’m convinced that she would have chained me to my desk and increased the sucking capacity of my personal Black Hole – I believe she had the power to do that.

Leaving the exciting world of workers’ compensation insurance, I ventured into forklift sales. I know, I know. Sexy. But oddly enough, it wasn’t either. In this type of job, you were out of the office left to your own devices. In my case, I had a geographic territory about the size of a postage stamp with the potential for forklift sales slightly less bleak than a snowball’s chance in . . . a really hot place. Needless to say, when I wasn’t out looking for another job, I would go to a Barnes & Noble and take a nap in one of those really soft, oversized armchairs. My manager had the habit of roaming around and calling you out of the blue to see where you were, so I found the Barnes & Noble location ideal because it was in the center of my territory and the chances that he would walk in were, well, even bleaker than the aforementioned snowball’s prospects. I say this because I was fairly certain that his “reading material” was limited to magazines with lots of pictures in them – if you know what I mean – and those were delivered by mail to the office.

So, if you find yourself in a less-than-ideal work environment, you have two choices: find a new one or start fantasizing that you’re an undercover agent who is looking to expose the company’s use of motor oil as the secret ingredient for its special sauce. Failing that, there’s still time to run for President – most of those people have spent years avoiding a real job.

Expand the Mind, Empty the Wallet

2007-02-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

They say that art is in the eye of the beholder. I’m not sure when that phrase was first coined, but I would be willing to bet it was around the same time the first used-car salesman was born.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting a large art museum with my wife, and I saw some very famous pieces up close and personal. And I saw some real “pieces”, too.

One piece in the Modern wing was a polished fiberglass plank approximately seven feet long leaned up against the wall and painted bright red. Next to the plank was a small card detailing the name of the artist, when he painted it, the name of the piece, and a brief description of what stood before me. I’m not making this next part up: the card told me that this piece of art was “the archetypal example of the blurring of the line between traditional art and utility.” As I read this bit of hot air, I pictured a cravat-wearing balding man with a monocle and aristocratic English accent looking down his nose at me. And just as soon as that image vaporized, I had another materialize of a guy in a black leather trenchcoat and a porkpie hat with a toothpick cocked to the side of his mouth. “I swiped this from the bleachers at the high school football stadium, painted it red, and sold it to a snobby Brit for five large. Now that’s what I call art! I’m no Van Gogh, but I sure am good at shellacking, if you know what I mean.”

In the Early American wing, I noticed that all of the paintings of women looked like men in really bad wigs and ill-fitting dresses. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they looked like drag queens because drag queens try much harder to look like women. Either there was a movement afoot in those days to seek out and only paint extremely homely women, or cross-dressing had much earlier (and uglier) beginnings than I had originally thought. Failing those theories, the artists must have been much more talented at painting a picture with words than with oils: “My lord, I believe I have captured the strength of my lady’s character through the dominant and handsome lantern jaw. And if you will notice, I subdued my lady’s bosom to assure you do not attract the attention of ungentlemanly oglers.” Perhaps in that exchange, the patron might say, “Fine. But could you ‘subdue’ the Adam’s apple on her neck?”

Sculptures was another area that had me scratching my head. More than one of the female statues was dressed in a traditional robe slipping off one shoulder and exposing a breast. This isn’t like the Super Bowl and Janet Jackson’s split-second “wardrobe malfunction.” To the best of my knowledge, an artist will spend weeks if not months transforming a chunk of marble into a lifelike representation of the model – during that length of time, don’t you think the young lass is going to notice a draft and do a little adjusting?

As I was walking out the door of that revered institution, I felt inspired to go home and see if I have anything that I could, perhaps, blur the line between someone’s checking account and my own. Do you think there would be a market for a lawn chair painted black – I’d be willing to model in it . . . and let my bathrobe wander.

All Thumbs, and That's Cool

2007-01-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons we humans have opposable thumbs: opening doors, holding a pen or paint brush, gripping the steering wheel, and flipping through the channels on TV faster than a cheetah can close the distance between it and a three-legged warthog. These are but a few of the reasons, but they all boil down to the simple fact thumbs separate us from the animals. (True, monkeys and apes also have opposable thumbs, but until they can demonstrate that they can balance a checkbook and order a Led Zeppelin t-shirt off the internet, I’m keeping them in the “animal’ category.) Now, more than ever, is it important that I make this point because many of our fellow humans are blurring the line.

Thought to be a great convenience for a pet owner, the doggy door was merely the beginning of “humanification” of animals. Do you realize the message you’re sending to Fletcher or Fang (both names of a dog and a cat I had as a youth) by giving him free access to your abode? We make fun of the IQ of a caveman, but he was at least smart enough to understand the significance of the “Thumbed” v. the “Thumbless”. Although you don’t read about cave people having doors with twisting knobs, neither do you read about Thag coming home from the hunt one afternoon in search of a nice rock to sit down on and kick up his feet only to be gobbled up by a Tyrannosaurus Rex who let himself into the living room through the dog door.

I was on an airplane one day when two people behind me were talking and I heard one of them say, “So, I had the rest of the afternoon to argue with the cat.” The ensuing conversation confirmed that I had heard correctly. It took a great deal of restraint not to turn around and say, “In the name of all that is holy (and human), what are you talking about? It’s a CAT. What do you think Mr. Tinkles is going to do if he’s not happy with your decision – write a letter to his Senator or call Oprah? He has no thumbs with which to hold a pencil, he can’t talk, and – oh, yeah – HE’S A CAT!”

I’ve had people tell me that they get the impression that their animals think they’re superior to them. That statement in and of itself sends chills up and down my spine: these people are enabling an animal – the same animal who licks its butt, drinks out of a toilet, and eats its food with the same tongue – to impose an inferiority complex on them! All the while, they’re revealing this to you as they’re shopping for dog food that costs more per pound than the prime rib they fed their family for Sunday dinner.

The blurring of the line I mentioned earlier may be too late for some – have you seen the recent roster of “persons” running for President next year? Be that as it may, I have a solution that may seem to be completely contradictory. You’ve seen those misguided individuals who dress up their animals in human-like outfits and take them out in public or include them in family photos. Taking a cue from them, this is the answer to all our problems. Train your Shitzu to walk on her hind legs and make her wear three-inch heels all day; force your Tabby to wear a heavily starched collar and a tie from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. If everyone were to do this, the animal kingdom, in its own non-verbal and thumbless way, would beg us to allow them to be put outside and fed kibble – the politicians may not know that’s an option for them, too.

Plumbing the Depths of History

2007-01-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

Traveling on a regular basis presents certain challenges. In addition to the fact you’re hoping that the airplane will physically get you to your destination, you also hope that your luggage will arrive at or near the same time. Also, you’re always wondering who will be your seating companion and whether he/she used deodorant that morning and if he/she will be civil when it comes time to share the arm rest. But those challenges are minor in comparison to some of the other things that await you at home when you’re off “gallivanting” (it’s a word my mom always uses) about the country.

While it is distressing to be sitting in a remote hotel room that seems to get smaller each night you’re there and hear your spouse recount to you over the phone the rainbow of colors your son spewed all over the new carpet – four times – there’s nothing quite like coming home to a toilet that is mere centimeters from spilling over the brim with a substance that looks like only Hollywood special effects artists could create. And come to find out, it’s been like that for the last three days!

So, as I am delicately trying to insert and work the plunger without upsetting the “water” – I have to put that in quotation marks because I’m not exactly sure it can be called that – my two sons are standing behind me absolutely fascinated with the process. Of course, they want to help, and the first instinct is to shoo them away with a rubber-glove-clad hand. But that’s when it hits me. Not the malodorous muck brewing in the commode but an economic epiphany of the same magnitude as the inspiration for Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The money in our public school system would be far better spent teaching our kids plumbing skills than about the diverse cultures that dot the Saharan region of Africa.

Rather than paying a guy $75.00 just to show up at your house, plus materials, you could call one of your kids into the bathroom and say, “Have at it, champ.” They would love it, and they might even offer to pay you or waive future allowance for a crack at the next stopped-up toilet or the installation of a new garbage disposal. And all the while you have the peace in knowing that your kids are up to the task when they bring home their report cards.

“Mason, I see you got an A in pipe fitting, and an A- in septic systems. I know you can pull that up to an A, too, son. Just remember, it’s all about routine maintenance.”

Not only would such training in early childhood be an economic boon to us, the taxpaying adults, but I believe we would see a payoff later on down the line, too. For instance, had this training been instituted back in the early twentieth century, we wouldn’t have seen the rise of Communism or the aggression known as the Korean War. In both instances, they were just looking for the right to affordable indoor plumbing for the masses.

The Naked Truth

2007-01-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

At the age of three, my brother was outside one afternoon building a sand castle and fielding bids from developers to subdivide it into condos. In the midst of this flurry of activity, he spied the family cat, Sam, from the corner of his eye and noticed that the Siamese was in need of cleaning. (How he determined this “need” is still an open debate at family gatherings.) He scooped up the filthy feline beneath his arm and started toward the house. (Most cats choose the time and place that they’ll allow a human to pick them up, and this is usually done with both arms cradling them. So, being hooked under the midsection with a small and somewhat-less-sure arm was surely an affront to this cat’s dignity.) My brother entered the house and made for the bathroom.

Kicking open the bathroom door, he noticed the air was warm and steamy. Someone had already run a bath. Happy day! So, he slid open the glass door on the shower/bath and discovered my dad was already in the water with soap bubbles floating on the surface – someone to whom he could delegate the cleaning chore and get back to the sand castle! Gathering his wits about him, my dad greeted my brother and asked if there was something he needed. My brother simply looked at him, cat still squirming to get free from his captor’s devilishly tenacious grip, and said, “Sam needs a bath.” Before this could register in my dad’s brain, my brother flung the helpless feline into the water with my dad and summarily closed the glass door.

This little family vignette touches upon a number of issues: real estate development, early childhood education, animal rights, hygiene, the fact most grown men won’t admit to indulging themselves in the quiet and therapeutic pleasure of soaking in a tub – my dad will probably kill me for telling this story – and the need to have a fully stocked first-aid kit readily available when you have small children around. However, the most interesting thing about this story is what it tells you about yourself.

1. Concern for the cat: If your thoughts went immediately to what became of the cat after being tossed into the tub with a naked man, you like long walks on the beach by yourself (because you know your cat’s not coming close to the water), you prefer to work in a cubicle, and you tend to pick your toenails on the couch.
2. Concern for the dad: You fall into the category in which you and others like you like to watch sports on big-screen TVs, you’ll eat anything if it’s covered in Ranch dressing and/or cheese, and you will drive ten miles out of your way to get gas for $.01 cheaper.
3. Concern for the son: This indicates that you are most likely under the close supervision of a physician, you identify most with Batman (the only major superhero with no real super powers), and you have a proclivity for crème-filled treats.

Although you must agree that this analysis is dead on the numbers, I won’t be so cruel as to not tell you what happened to the parties involved in this little fiasco: the cat had to be brought down off the ceiling by two men wearing body armor and the gloves you see worn by people who handle hawks and eagles, my dad proved far more agile than we had ever seen him in the past or since, and my brother refused psychotherapy and went on to West Point and later to Harvard for an MBA – that explains why so many CEOs are just plain nuts!

Names: The Ultimate Birthmarks

2007-01-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

(Author's note: the idea of this was originally written and placed on my blog as "Hortence's Revenge", but I've changed it enough that it takes on a new life.)

I recently received an e-mail from a reader wondering if I was the same Grant Greene who attended school with her. My response to her was that, although I have always wondered what would possess someone to name a man-child "Grant", coupled with the fact I have met very few people who spell "Greene" with the "e" on the end, it's hard to believe that there is more than one Grant Greene out in the world – and some of my school teachers might be wishing that there wasn’t even one out there.

My first name, when employed by small children, is a disaster waiting to happen – but we’ll get to that in a moment. However, when you marry it up with the last name of “Greene”, it takes on a whole new dimension of bad choices. Take a moment and say “Grant” and “Greene” together with no pause in between. It’s the sound you would think a frog with indigestion would make, isn’t it?

My parents tell me they named me after a man they really respected - personally, I think my dad lost a bet of some sort. With a name like Grant, my adolescent years weren’t exactly easy. The cute girls would call me names such as "Granty", or they’d all get together (and I swear they had a choreographer help them with this) and dance this little jig as they chanted, "Grant, Grant, the big fat ant!" Some thirty years later, those chilling words still echo in my mind. Can you imagine what it was like live? I’m not even going to go into the things people did, and still do, with the extra (but silent) “e” at the end of my last name.

Looking to the dignity of generations to come, a government bureau should be put in charge of giving an OK on names. These offices should be located in convenience stores so while you wait, you can get a burrito and a slushie – wouldn’t the Motor Vehicle Department experience be better with that? The application paperwork would consist of the child’s name-to-be, the names of the parents (for obvious reasons), and an essay of 50 words or less about their choice of that particular name. Having quite a sense of humor and a very haunting laugh, a clerk reviews the paperwork and decides if the parents are allowed to give their child that name. For example, if the parents were trying to name their child "Hortence", they would need to include in their essay the fact she kicked a lot in the womb and the labor was 175 hours long – you know, justification. If approved, the clerk simply stamps OK on the application and the parents go on their merry way. However, here’s where the haunting laugh enters the picture (you know, the Vincent-Price-horror-movie laugh that makes the nipples on your chest quiver). If the name is found to be truly absurd or spelled in some needlessly exotic way, the clerk walks over to the parents, throws the application in their faces, and delivers “the laugh”. I suggest that people with pace makers and anxiety disorders have their spouses do the filing.

I have to admit it would be tempting to play with the names of your children. In my younger days, I always thought it would be cool to name my first son "Gang", and if I had a girl, "Salad." It would be interesting to see if "The Bureau" would pass them, but I don’t think my nipples could take it. E-mail me your unfortunate naming stories at grant.greene@gmail.com.

Silly Putty: The Eighth Wonder of the World

2007-01-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

Emily Post I am not. In addition to the fact I lack years and years of experience with manners and etiquette, I don’t have the hips to wear those high-brow society dresses either. Well, now that we have any and all identity (and perhaps gender) issues out of the way, we can move on with the matter at hand.

From some of your recent letters and e-mails, I find comfort in the fact I’m not the only one out there who finds the whole thank-you-note issue a bit confusing. One astute reader shared the phenomenon of having given a simple gift to someone and in return receiving a thank-you card that could rival War and Peace in the number of words employed. Me, too! I remember one such instance, and the whole time I was reading their literary litany, I kept wondering, “How can a container of Silly Putty bring so much joy to one person? It’s simply inhuman.” Conversely, that begs the question of when you’re the recipient of, say, a gift card from a local retail establishment, what more can you say than “thanks for the gift card”? You feel silly saying anything more than that, but the vast dead space on the thank-you note taunts and dares you to expound upon your gratitude.

Your letters have also indicated that there are some situations in which it either feels weird sending a thank-you note or you plain don’t know how to “thank” that certain someone. Although I’m still not going to try and put on one of Ms. Post’s dresses, I’ll wear her hat for a moment and give you some guidance in just two areas:

Gift from a boss: Regardless of the form of the gift, you feel a bit icky sending a thank-you note because you don’t want to be thought of as a suck-up, but you know that if you don’t you’ll be labeled as the office ingrate. Whether it’s a gift that seems to have an agenda – you’re in a customer-service-related business and your boss gives you a book titled How to Give Great Customer Service – or a loaf of banana nut bread that tastes like an armpit, you have to acknowledge it. And while you may be tempted to give him a book titled How to Stop Being a Crappy Boss, or give him a note saying that you’ve donated his gift to the local food bank, take gratitude to a new level and pen a short note that says, “Thanks for keeping me around long enough to receive your gift. Let’s do this again next year.” Ha ha!

Gift card from a store you never frequent: This is a tough one, no doubt! As it’s highly likely that you’ll never use the gift card for yourself or someone you love, the best use of this card is to turn it back on the giver of the gift. Let’s say the card is for Beads, Clogs & Pool Sticks. Given the fact you’re not dealing with a conventional person, there’s no need for a conventional thank-you note. Go all out and make an outfit for their cat (these people always have cats, take my word for it) using as many different colored beads as possible and send along a short note that says, “Your generosity was so inspiring, I made this for Chudwick. I can’t wait to see him in it.” Ask for photos.

Next week we’ll see how Ms. Post weighs in on what to wear to a jello wrestling match.

Reach Out and Touch Someone

2006-12-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Now that “the holidays” have passed, you find yourself in that strange limbo-like stage between the vacation mind set and the harsh reality of being back at work. While you float between fantasy and reality, your mind ponders whether you really did eat your body weight in Cheez Whiz – don’t deny it – and if there’s some way you can convince your neighbors that your Christmas lights are actually up in celebration of Ground Hog Day (so you’ve got until February to take them down). Inevitably, these musings – spurred on by heartburn and the anticipation of having to get back to work – cause us to look inwardly and decide we’re, by darn, gonna make some changes in our lives! And so begins the list of New Year’s resolutions.

Let’s be honest here: the vast majority of us aren’t going to try to scale Mount Everest or swim the English Channel (whether it’s for reasons of laziness or sanity). We are, for the most part, trying to kick a bad habit or get out of a rut into which we’ve let ourselves fall over the year. I’ve been there, and I’ve made my share of lists – that have gone, probably, 98% unfulfilled. But that’s not the point. The point here is that we all need to come up with resolutions that will enable us from forming bad habits in the first place. Here are but two resolutions that I promise to devote my full energies to throughout the year:

1. It never fails. Whenever I sit down in a doctor’s office or wait to board a plane with a good book or magazine to read, somebody in my general vicinity decides now is an excellent time to call someone on their cell phone and proceeds to speak at a volume that a 60-year-old fading rock star could hear. Mark my words: in all of 2007, I resolve not to begin reading my book aloud so I can drown out the caller and be sure I’m following the intricate plot. Although I might be confused about why Harry Potter’s been sent to detention again by Professor Snape, it would be rude of me to intrude on the caller’s peace.

2. Driving along the great highways of our nation, more often than I would like I find myself in the far left lane (some dare call it “the fast lane”) applying the brakes and then following a much slower car ahead of me. I follow closely in the hopes that the driver ahead of me will notice their error and get over. Oddly enough, they don’t. Flashing the lights doesn’t help because they’ve demonstrated that they’re either not looking in their rearview mirror, or they have a vitamin deficiency that precludes them from seeing my car. It is my resolution for the upcoming year that I will not affix a large metal plate to the front of my car to help me in pushing these people out of the way. Obviously, these metal plates are needed for these drivers’ heads.

I hope this helps you in coming up with your own list of resolutions. If you need further help in deciding what needs to be changed in your life, call a friend. Might I recommend you do so on your cell phone in the middle of a movie just when the plot twist is being revealed – you’ll get plenty of people telling you what to do.

These Stones Weren't Rolling

2006-12-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, I had the chance to spend a week with the Stones. For those who know me, it may be hard to believe that during that time I freely popped my fair share of pills and found myself seeking the sweet relief of a good puking more than once. It was an experience that few men my age get to have, and it’s certainly one that I won’t soon forget. Unfortunately, though, Mick and Keith won’t ever recall these events because they weren’t there – the Stones to which I’m referring were of the kidney variety, and the drugs were prescribed to me by a real doctor. No brush of fame here – just the need to brush my teeth each time my stomach decided to tell everyone to get out of the pool.

This wasn’t my first bout with these little buggers that cause so much pain and misery that kicking the neighbor’s dog – no matter how yappy it’s been in the past – won’t bring any satisfaction. When I first passed kidney stones about three and a half years ago, numerous people told me that the pain was equal to that which women experience during child birth. After careful consideration, I concluded that these people were (a) full of crap, (b) more highly medicated than I was – and perhaps not by anyone formally recognized by the American Medical Association, or (c) high school biology class dropouts. Let’s take a moment and review the mechanics involved in each process, shall we?

With kidney stones, you’re trying to push a small grain-of-sand-like object from your kidney to your bladder – yes, a little grain of sand. The pathway between these two bodily repositories is very narrow and lined with muscles, so the pour-some-acid-in-an-open-wound pain comes from the muscles trying to push the stone down a skinny tunnel. My doctor, in describing this process, took a rubber glove and stretched out one of the fingers while simulating trying to push a grain of sand through the glove finger. He was fortunate that he had previously pumped me full of some really great feel-good drugs, because the entire time he was going through this educational process with me, he had a huge smile on his face. In retrospect, he was either an unusually friendly human being (unlikely, because we were on a really bad HMO), or he was the Marquis de Sade – my mind was on other things so I didn’t check for a name tag.

I don’t believe I need to go into detail about the birthing process. Suffice it to say, in this scenario, the grain of sand is the size of a watermelon with arms and legs, and you don’t have to worry about how much it will cost to put the grain of sand through an Ivy League college or whether it will grow up to be the next Adolf Hitler once it’s out. Nor with kidney stones does one run the risk of having stretch marks that resemble a relief map of the Amazon.

It would seem reasonable to presume that women are far better equipped to handle a higher threshold of pain in all aspects of life, but the next time your wife or significant other starts to cry because of something you deem to be no big deal, I would caution against saying, “Come on, honey. You shouldn’t cry over this. You went through childbirth – this is nothing.” If you do find yourself making such a statement, heaven help you because the pain you’ll soon experience will be far worse than kidney stones!

Appetites of Destruction

2006-11-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

When our two sons get home from school each day, the first thing on their minds is food. With their ravenous appetites, one might think the boys attend a school with Ghandi as their principal. At any rate, the moment they walk in the door they make a beeline to the kitchen to rummage through the pantry and sack the refrigerator. And if something doesn’t tickle their fancy immediately, they turn to my wife with a look in their eyes that I could only describe as “wild”. They’re still young and considerably smaller than my wife, so she can handle them on her own at present. But in the back of her mind there’s a little voice saying, “Someday, they’re going to be bigger and taller than you – and there are two of them.” (At this point one might argue that we have bigger problems if my wife is hearing voices, but that’s another issue for another day.) At that very moment, she must find something that will satisfy them until their next feeding – because if she doesn’t act quickly, she’ll have to pick up a kitchen chair and keep them back with a whip while she finds large sides of beef to throw to them.

Quite often you see a story on the six o’clock news about a mountain lion taking a dip in someone’s pool and then walking off with some of the neighborhood pets (between its teeth or in its stomach). And every story seems to end the same way: “Well, Bob, Animal Control naturally had to put the creature down.” It had always seemed strange to me that this was the “natural” solution to the problem. That’s a bit of an extreme punishment for “trespassing” and “theft”, isn’t it?

Then, looking at my boys one afternoon as they were licking the chocolate frosting off their lips from an after-school snack, it dawned on me: Animal Control’s trying to “send a message” to the other animals out in the wild – you know, make an example out of these feral felons and put the fear of God in them. And if we don’t find a way to control our children’s appetites, we could be running into the same problem in our own homes.

I can see it now: a news story about a standoff in a quaint suburban town with helicopters buzzing overhead and police cars surrounding a modest three-bedroom house. With a very concerned look painted on her face (looking as though she’s either very serious or seriously constipated), the reporter will say, “The details are still coming in, but here’s what I’ve been able to piece together so far: an eight-year-old boy – who we believe lives three doors down – came home from school today to find his own pantry completely free of Twinkies, cup cakes, or any other snack food. It appears he eluded his mother who was trying to get him to eat a carrot and made his way into the home we’re standing in front of now. Preliminary reports have come in that the boy is currently into his second box of Pop Tarts, and he’s halfway through a two-liter bottle of soda – Mountain Dew, I believe. If the police can’t talk him out, we could be in for a long night – that sugar rush isn’t wearing off any time soon.”

I think we’re all beginning to see the enormity of the problem here: if this happens, we’ll have more than seemingly endless slow-motion car chases to interrupt our favorite television programs.

Race With the Devil

2006-11-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

The first time I ever saw a Rubik’s cube, I wasn’t that impressed. Somebody had slapped six distinct colors on as many sides of the cube – nothing a sixth-grade art student couldn’t accomplish. But when I saw someone mix up the colors and then put them back in order (without taking a hammer to it and reassembling it), I was convinced I was witness to the introduction of something so dark and evil, the Ouija board had nothing on it. Then, someone taught me how to solve the cube, and I saw it for what it was: a toy.

Sudoku, the number game from Japan, had the same effect on me. And when I learned how to play the game and solve the puzzles, I stopped cursing it and wishing it would return to the inner circle of Hell. I’m sure many of you out there could name similar experiences.

At this point, I’m going to recommend that the children leave the room because I’m going to tell you about something that seems, at first, innocent but quickly reveals its diabolical nature: pinewood derby. For the uninitiated, this is an annual activity in which Cub Scouts participate by taking a chunk of wood, four nails, and four plastic wheels and carve out a car to be raced down a track. I was involved in a handful of these “derbies” as a young boy, but my naiveté protected me from being sucked in by this ugly monster. Now, in my adult years, I have been subjected to two of these events, and I am prepared to expose its black underbelly.

As background, we blithely and innocently took on the task last year of building a car and preparing for the race. My son’s car came in dead last in every heat. He was awarded the “Sportsmanship” medal, and I was more than happy with that. My wife, however, apparently took a solemn oath at that moment that this would not happen again. So, in preparation for this year’s event, my wife insisted that we get some expert help. While I can’t tell you what advice/guidance we were given in the “building” of our son’s car, I will reveal that we consulted with an engineer from General Dynamics and a pharmacist. Our son’s car (which he named “Red Hot & Blue”) came in fourth this year – I tremble to learn who my wife will have us seek out next year: perhaps a ninja.

In the months leading up to this annual race, you interact with the parents and various adults associated with the Cub Scout program, and they all seem to be normal and sane. Not a single one of them, in my experience, has been featured in an episode of “Cops” or turned up on the evening news driving a white Ford Bronco. However, on derby night, you don’t want to get in their way or you might risk losing a limb.

As I entered the hall where the race was to be held, I noticed that each car but my son’s was being carried and cared for by an adult – an adult with a very determined and driven look etched on his/her face. Some were wiping down the bodies of the cars (no doubt to improve the aerodynamics) and others had a pocketful of assorted tools to make the necessary last-minute tweaks and adjustments to assure maximum performance. One father brought his laptop to enter every car into a spreadsheet and track the results of each heat!

As we awaited the start of the race, I couldn’t help hearing snippets of conversation buzzing around me like mosquitoes. One mother had admitted to her friend that she spent twelve hours on the internet searching for the perfect car design. Someone else rattled off the name of some place in Cuba where you could get a guaranteed winning car for only $500.00. The one item I overheard that keeps me awake at night was a man claiming he had to bite off another man’s ear to get the last “piece” for his son’s car.

Clearly, this would make for a far more simple psychiatric test than ink blots or word association. If you want to gauge a person’s mental stability, hand him a chunk of wood, a handful of nails, and some plastic wheels, and tell him he has three days to prepare for a pinewood derby – then cover your ears and run!

Season's Readings

2006-11-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

By a show of hands, how many of you send out a family holiday letter? Okay, put your hands down. By a show of groans, how many of you have been the recipients of those letters? That’s what I thought.

Not a year goes by that we don’t receive at least a dozen of these merry little missives, and about 90% of them are either outright lies (which isn’t all that bad – we’ll get to that later) or they make you want to curse your elementary school teachers for having taught you how to read. The end to this insanity begins with you.

I’m not against sending out the family letter. It’s great to keep in touch with those friends and family members you may have not heard from or spoken with over the year. And with that being the case, this is your one and only chance to reconnect with them. Do you want this little “reunion” to induce sleep or cause nausea?

For the sake of all your involuntary recipients out there, I’ve compiled a few guidelines for you to follow when you sit down to pen the family epistle:

1. Comedy is best employed by professionals. If you’re not getting regular gigs at The Improv, don’t take this moment to try out your material. This doesn’t mean you can’t employ some humor at your own expense – poke some fun at yourself. For example, if you bear a striking resemblance to Condoleezza Rice, you might want to open the letter with, “I tried to become a body double this year for the Secretary of State, but they thought it would be unwise to employ a man in that role.”

2. A little white lie can be very effective. One year, when our oldest son was about three, I wrote that he had found one of those hairless cats in the neighborhood and thought it looked cold. So, he took some shag carpet remnants and glued them all over the feline’s physique. I went on to finish the story by saying that sealing the pores on the hapless cat caused an unforeseen side effect: death. We received calls and letters from people we hadn’t heard from for years!

3. Save a tree. By all means, keep the family letter to one side of one page – 8 ½” X 11”. (If you have more than twelve children, then you may employ the back of the single page.) Even the Declaration of Independence was limited to one page – granted, it was slightly larger than letter-size, but it was written by hand in a really huge font, and John Hancock took up some major real estate with just his signature.

4. Don’t brag! One year, some friends of ours sent us their letter highlighting all of the wonderfully expensive items they were able to buy and exotic trips they took. Upping the gag factor by about three hundred points was the fact they tried to do this through rhymes. I didn’t think it was possible, but they found words to rhyme with Chevy Suburban and pearl necklace. These are the same folks who subsequently reported that their children were brainiacs – and yet those same tots sat next to mine in preschool eating paste and running into doors with their heads.

Please bear in mind that there’s only one person who’s qualified to call himself the Leader of the Western World, and best-selling authors make a lot of money because they do really well what we can’t. Have a safe and happy holiday, and keep the home fires burning – with all those family letters that really blow!

Political Cleansing

2006-11-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

Back in college I was required to take a couple of political science classes. Being the masochist that I am, I took them both from the same teacher (over two different semesters, mind you) – better the devil you know than the one you don’t was my thought process. At any rate, I remember two main things from this cat’s classes: (1) he liked to ramble on about the great price he got on some large ceramic pots at a flea market, and (2) he was always talking about how things affected the body politic. Now, allow me to digress for a moment.

I grew up with a guy named Dave who would move heaven and earth to make sure he didn’t throw up. He’s now 36 years old, and I believe he has only tossed his cookies once in that entire time. To make matters worse, whenever he hears someone talking about throwing up, he gets physically ill – but he won’t let himself do it. I remember a night when we all sat around taking turns peppering the conversation with one reference or another to the act of vacating one’s stomach just to watch him turn green. Truth be told, we were waiting for him to explode.

Personally, when I’m sick to my stomach, I welcome the opportunity to heave. The moments leading up to the act are not pleasant, and they seem to take an eternity, but once I’m through with it I feel one hundred percent better. It doesn’t mean that I’m no longer sick, but I’m feeling good at the moment.

I bring this up as a means of gaining some perspective on what happened here in our country this past Tuesday. The body politic felt sick so it decided to stick its finger down its throat and let lunch fly. The problems they perceive still exist, and the possibility that they could get sick again or sicker is very strong, but they’re feeling settled at the moment.

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the coming days and months. Will we seek out proper “medical” advice, or will we continue to “self diagnose” and become political bulimics?

Fate Takes a Holiday

2006-11-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been a huge fan of turkey – the food, that is (I can honestly say I’m pretty ambivalent on the country, but that’s neither here nor there). Whenever possible, we have a ham at our get-togethers with family and friends. However, for some strange reason, there’s a ginormous segment of the population that is either gaga over the almost taste-free fowl or feels it their patriotic duty to serve the bird on Thanksgiving Day.

One might ask how turkey came to be the centerpiece of the holiday meal, and that question bears one simple answer: the Pilgrims were from England. English cuisine has never been known for overwhelming the palette. When was the last time you watched Emeril and heard him say he was going to kick it up a notch by going British? Our English cousins may be known for their spicy wit and their saucy comebacks but not for culinary wonders. Also, why do you think it’s served with mashed potatoes, gravy, and yams? Very few people I know are clawing their way into the kitchen to get a mouthful of the naked bird. It’s very likely that the Native Americans who were invited to the first Thanksgiving feast could smell the turkey smell wafting through the air long before their arrival at the party – that’s why they brought some of their own food.

As many of you know, Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national symbol rather than using the bald eagle. In denying Mr. Franklin his wish for a federal emblem, fate dealt us a mixed hand: had he succeeded, we would most assuredly be free from having to eat turkey on Thanksgiving; however, with that success would have come the embarrassing specter of standing before the world with a turkey, perhaps one of the dumbest birds to walk the earth, as the face of our nation. Nothing says “tough” like a turkey.

Along with the culinary challenges presented by Thanksgiving, this holiday carries with it many different meanings and memories. And they usually depend on the age of the person. Generally speaking, when one is young, the holiday means the sheer exhilaration of seeing cousins and other relatives. For the teens, it means having to face all those same relatives who pepper you with about a thousand questions about your latest choice of hairstyle or clothing; this grilling continues on through the end of puberty and into young adulthood, but the questions turn on college choice, career path, marriage, etc. And then once you’re married and have children of your own, Thanksgiving means traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles to visit those same relatives you moved so far away to avoid – I mean, come on, it wouldn’t be fair (to you) for your kids to miss out on all the fun you had when you were their age.

It’s also odd that Thanksgiving conjures up so many memories – more so than many other holidays. For example, at the mere mention of the Thanksgiving holiday, someone in your immediate vicinity will suddenly break into a “I remember one year when . . .” story. However, you don’t get that same waxing of nostalgia for other holidays with statements like, “Hey, Phil, remember that wild Arbor Day back in 1986? Wow, the mayor’s cat was never the same since.”

Regardless of your memories of or feelings for the Thanksgiving holiday, I would recommend you reflect on one thing for which we should all feel grateful: Ben Franklin’s discovery of electricity – because without electricity, there would be no way to watch the football game from the comfort of your family room. And without the football game, you might be forced to make small talk with Aunt Fern about the removal of that hideous mole below her lip. Happy Thanksgiving!

Survival

2006-10-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

One might wonder at the origin of the term Smart Alec. I can’t speak to the specific reasoning behind that term nor do I know the identity of the particularly sarcastic man (or boy) who earned himself this nickname. However, I believe it’s safe to say that it was, in fact, a male member of the human species and not a representative of the fairer sex.

My brother-in-law, Mike, went on a hunting trip recently, so my wife’s sister came to stay with us for the night with her two children. We had a very pleasant visit, but that’s completely unrelated to the topic at hand. (Sorry.) Mike called to check in with his wife while she was staying with us, and in the "goodbye" phase of the conversation, my wife’s sister said, "Be careful." Mike’s reply, in classic Smart Alec form, was, "Don’t worry. I took the deer’s skin and draped it over my shoulders and placed the head on top of my hat." When my wife’s sister recounted this to us, my wife rolled her eyes along with her sister, and the two of them laughed at Mike’s Devil-may-care attitude.

As I reflected on this, I came to the conclusion that Smart Alec-hood is man’s defense against going criminally insane. This stems from the dawn of time. Picture Eve handing the tempting apple to Adam and just when he’s about to chomp down on the luscious fruit, she says instinctually, "Be careful." Caught off guard, Adam bites his lip and starts bleeding. "How’d she know that was going to happen?" he muses. From then on, men have been trying to stay one step ahead of "be careful", and sarcasm is the most effective mental diversion.

Speaking on behalf of the men in this world, the need to admonish us occasionally and remind us to keep safety in mind is well deserved in a lot of cases. Were it not for the general stupidity of the male gender throughout the ages, we wouldn’t have guys trying to take a kayak over a 200-foot waterfall "to see if he can." Come on. Who was the first person to climb Mt. Everest? A man. Why? Because it was there! Who was the first person to sail around the world when the general consensus was that the ship and its crew would most likely fall off the edge and plummet to their deaths? A man. This isn’t one of those "hey look how much cooler we are, and by the way, we can pee standing up and write our names in the snow" kinds of rants. It’s intended to demonstrate that men throughout history haven’t exactly done a great deal to prove they’re careful. So, from birth, females are hardwired to look out for the males of the species.

Now, back to combating the possible onset of criminal insanity: because of this hardwiring, many of us men have loving wives, girlfriends (not at the same time, of course), mothers, etc. who tell us to "be careful" regardless of the circumstances. When I’m departing for a business trip, I get the "be careful" just after the peck on the cheek. Men around the world, in similar circumstances, are getting the same directive from the women in their lives. With a constant diet of "be careful" – if we dwelt on it – we would begin to wonder, "Does she know something I don’t? Should I check under the car to see if brake fluid has pooled under it from a severed line?" Instead, we lapse into survival mode and become Smart Alec: "I haven’t had anything to drink; and besides, I won’t be the one flying the plane, honey." Ha ha!

But after the laughter has died and I drive off to the airport, I pump the brakes a couple of times just in case.

The Sounds of Insanity

2006-09-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

I have to start off by stating I’m not a very musical person. When I was about twelve years old, I wanted to learn to play the drums. My parents, with a combination of financial savvy and foresight, already had an upright piano and decided the best course of action would be to cut a deal with me: take two years of piano first, then I could take drum lessons. (As a friend of mine has said numerous times, I might have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.) I spotted the stall tactic a mile away, and I called my parents on it. They denied the stall and tried to convince me that the piano would better enable me to learn to read music and to develop an ear for melodies. Melodies, schmelodies! I wanted to bang on those drums and get the chicks. Of course, those weren’t my exact words to my parents, but I did try to convince them that the piano truly wasn’t necessary.

At the age of twelve, my business acumen wasn’t that well developed, and my negotiating prowess was – how shall I say – wanting. Mom and dad knew they were holding all the cards, so they stood firm. They signed me up for piano lessons with my brother’s girlfriend and dug in for the protracted battles to come: getting me to practice. Fortunately for everyone involved – especially my brother’s girlfriend whom he later married – it was a short campaign and I held up the white flag after two months. Peace and serenity were maintained in the Greene home, and drums were never purchased nor pounded.

With that said, despite my lack of musical talent, I was quite the singer as a young boy. I heartily belted out the classics either by myself or along with a group. Let’s see. “London Bridges” was one of my favorites – what a great tune to teach young, impressionable members of society. In the song, we bemoan the structural weaknesses of the bridges of London, but that’s okay because we have a good-looking woman (“my fair lady”) by our side. That had to be confusing for a lot of little girls. It also has to put nerves on edge for the citizens of and visitors to Lake Havasu, Arizona – taking the London Bridge apart, transporting it across the ocean, and reassembling it can’t exactly improve the strength of a relic of that size and magnitude.

“Ring Around the Rosie” was another oldie but a goodie. We would merrily chant away about how to take care of the body of someone who had fallen victim to the Bubonic Plague. Sunshine all around! Is it any wonder that so many of today’s adults are so heavily medicated?

I foresee children one hundred years from now singing about the fall of Enron with the same blithe and glee one feels when thinking about the arrival of Santa Claus.

Little Kenny was so clever
All had bought what he had to sell
Keeping the world hot and cold
He’d never see Graybar Hotel

Even farther in the future, after the world is taken over by cyborgs who are immune to disease and bad jokes, the young will sing about E.coli and wonder why spinach got such a bum wrap.

Bacteria, bacteria all wrapped up and bagged
Conveniently deadly, others just gagged
Pretty and green for Popeye’s delight
Gripping the world with terror and fright

You laugh now, but do you think our ancestors – two hundred, three hundred years ago – would have thought we’d pay for water in little plastic bottles?

The Sky's the Limit

2006-08-05T23:35:00.000-07:00

All told, I believe there are at least 764 shades of the color blue that are completely indistinguishable to my eyes, but my wife has the innate ability to differentiate each and every one. Stranger still, when I tell her that Cerulean and Celestial look identical to me, she’ll say things like, “Oh, come on. The Cerulean has way more red in it, and the Celestial tends to be more yellow.” How can “blue” be red or yellow? Aren’t we talking about the three primary colors, the basic building blocks of all other colors?

I would like to say that this truly shouldn’t matter to me, but I just spent my afternoon painting an entire wall Blue #429 – it has a name, I’m sure, but I dare not mention it for fear that one of you out there will send back to me a twelve-page thesis on the distinguishing characteristics of this particular shade of Blue. Exhaustion has overtaken me, and I just couldn’t take that. I’m not so exhausted from the physical labor involved; my arms are a bit fatigued, but that’s most likely due more to my personal lack of muscle. The exhaustion, quite honestly, stems from my watching a non-stop virtual tennis volley between my wife’s two minds on the subject of the color. “I think that will go really well with the couch and the black chairs.” “That’s way too nautical blue.” “It really softens up the room.” “I was going more for the color of that pillow.” Just when it seemed like one side had smashed it over the net to decide the match, the other would make an unexpected comeback that seemed just as devastating. Am I rooting for the side that likes the color as it is? Of course! More to the point, though: I just want it over. As I write this, I believe Erin’s in bed right now muttering pros and cons in her sleep.

Earlier today, before the paint was purchased and ushered into our home, I went on a hike with our oldest son, Jack. While we were out communing with nature and swatting at mosquitoes, I decided it was a good time to spring “the Birds & the Bees” talk on him. As I finished the short discourse, I asked him if it made sense, and he said, “Sort of.” I could tell from his befuddled response that I had taken him completely by surprise, and the topic of discussion was so far from his view of the world, he thought I had been out in the sun too long. I got that. So, I gave us both an easy out and said, “Well, when you start having questions along those lines, just ask me.” His response to this was calculated and well delivered: “You wanna throw rocks at that flower on top of that cactus?”

I can honestly say that the details of my explanation were pretty straightforward but limited to fit the audience. However, maybe the approach was all wrong. Granted, I don’t want my children getting their information from other kids at school, television, or a former President of the United States – so I do need to get them the facts. But while I’m preparing them to embrace the responsibilities of adulthood and married life, I should begin the discussion with the question: “How many shades of blue do you think there are in the world, son?”

Defining Normal

2006-07-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

I had dinner with my cousin and her husband recently, and the mealtime conversation invariably turned to family, both immediate and extended. The different points of discussion were usually kicked off by an innocent question: “Whatever happened to that girl he was dating?” “Didn’t you say he retired from that job a year ago?” “Was that wart really the shape of Abraham Lincoln’s head?” And with each topic came a flood of memories and interesting stories that caused me to sit back and look at my family and relatives with a bit of detached perspective.

Dysfunctional is probably too strong a term to use to describe them – that word carries with it way too much negative baggage. Connoting more of a whimsical and somewhat genius-based gallery of personalities, eccentric is a little off the mark, too. Putting it in proper context with the world and society in which we live, normal is perhaps most fitting.

I should place myself first under the microscope in the spirit of fairness. Had you told me at the age of five or six that thirty-something years later I would be working for a company that sells crumpled-up kraft paper, I would think you’re either insane or demonically possessed. Either way, in my mind, your powers of prognostication were way off: I was going to be a helicopter pilot or the next Bionic Man. Nevertheless, while in the process of veering off the aforementioned career paths on my way to today, I’ve developed a mildly manic compulsion of checking if my wallet is still in my pocket every ten minutes or so. I also have this weird habit of looking for and plucking out ingrown hairs from the stubble on my face. (A psychiatrist would probably have a field day with that.) So much for the self-disclosure. On to the cast of characters who populate the ranks of my genealogy.

One member of my family believes she saw her cat in a vision the night before she passed through the Navajo reservation when she found the stray feline. She gave the cat a Navajo name in honor of the circumstances of their meeting. I believe Peyote would have been a better name because that would explain the “vision” and the continued practice of taking her cat for walks in a stroller. Yes, you read that right: she takes her cat for walks in a stroller.

A late member of my family used to sit down at the family piano and play two songs over and over. Were the songs “Moonlight Sonata” and “Green Sleeves”, I might have had a better appreciation for the subtleties of musical composition. But no. They were “Sweet Georgia Brown” (perhaps better known as the Harlem Globetrotters theme) and a tune whose name I still don’t know today – we just referred to it as the Stripper Song. I will say this, though: when she played those two songs, she did it with flair and gusto!

Although not a particularly athletic individual, another relative was very fond of throwing things. When the family cat was trying to sharpen his claws on a lampshade, the “thrower” picked up the billiards cue stick that was close at hand and hurled it across two rooms missing the cat by mere inches – the cue stick embedded itself in the wall like a spear. Another incident involved our trying to seal up garbage cans filled with wheat for food storage when the lid wouldn’t quite fit; this prompted his hurling it across the garage like a giant metal Frisbee. The flight was impressive!

In addition to these personalities, I have a one-legged used-car salesman who can drive a golf ball a country mile, an exercise nut who eats only broiled chicken breasts and salmon, a self-proclaimed shopaholic who’s as regular at The Gap as Norm was at Cheers, a paranoid who thought Communist agents were following her, a lesbian who only eats vegetables that can be grown in the dark (or something like that), and a kleptomaniac.

By comparison, this slice of American Pie is representative of probably 95% of the population’s own backgrounds. The other 5% are either freakishly pristine, or they’re fresh off the boat and have no ties to the Kennedy family.

As you can see, the names have been withheld and their relation to me has not been specified for one main reason: to protect the innocent – me!

Carolina on my Mind

2006-06-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

Traveling with my family is never boring; add to that the fact we chose to go to “the South”, and you have the makings of a fairly entertaining sitcom episode.

We flew into Raleigh, NC, and made our way southward. As were heading down I-40 to Wilmington, NC, our youngest, Sam, announced he had a foreign white powder on his sandal. I was fairly certain that it wasn’t anthrax so I kept driving. My wife, however, turned in her seat with a duly cautious look on her face intent on helping Sam determine the nature of this substance. Before this alert could develop its full potential for panic, Sam declared, “Oh, I know what it is. It’s powered doughnut. I just tasted it.” That opened a whole new potential for disaster as I nearly ran off the road while I tried to contain my laughter. The oddest thing about the whole incident, in retrospect, is I don’t recall any one of us admonishing Sam’s free-wheeling willingness to taste something on his shoe. Oddly enough, about an hour later, as we were looking for a place to have lunch, Sam made it very clear that he didn’t want any of the suggestions we were throwing out – this coming from a kid who eats sandal doughnut.

Our ultimate destination was Hilton Head Island, SC, and we decided to take the scenic route (read: really long), which took us through Myrtle Beach. What amazed me about this seaside burg was that within a 12-mile stretch on Highway 17 (the main strip), I counted 32 miniature golf courses. Stranger still, passing through this surreal scene on a Monday evening, every single one of these places was packed! So, next time you’re playing Trivial Pursuit and you’re asked, “What’s the miniature golf capital of the world?” you heard it here first.

Just after passing through Charleston, I rolled my window down to take in the pleasantly cool evening. Much to my disappointment, I didn’t hear the sounds of dueling banjos emanating from the stands of trees just beyond the road’s borders. So, Erin (my wife) turned on the radio and found a rather format-free station. We began our journey through the musical spectrum with Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” Making the song “their own” Erin and Sam decided to whistle along with the opening guitar solo – unfortunately, both Erin’s and Sam’s whistling sounded more like someone with a tracheotomy was trying to sing along. Following Deep Purple was Milli Vanilli, Lady Marmalade, Grand Funk Railroad, and Eddie Rabbit.

After checking in at the resort, I dropped Erin and Sam off in our room and took Jack back to the car to retrieve our luggage. (Yes, you read that right: I was far too cheap to have the bellhop do this.) Upon returning to the room, Erin informed me that housekeeping was on its way up to change the sheets on the boys’ hide-a-bed – apparently, when Erin opened it up she discovered a liberal sprinkling of unidentifiable crumbs all over the bedspread. When housekeeping arrived (it was actually the bellhop I had shafted on the tip), Erin pulled back the bedspread to get to the sheets underneath and found a pair of young girl’s panties. Erin made a very interesting point at this juncture of our evening: “I don’t know if it’s better or worse that they were girl’s panties.” Jury’s still out on that one!

Our stay at the resort was very uneventful – just as we had planned – except for the shark sighting. As the boys were off making sand castles, Erin was reading, and I was eating Wheat Thins straight out of the box, I spied a small stir of activity directly in front of us where the sand and water met: it was a shark! I bolted up and made it down to the spot in seconds. A group of three young men from Australia were being menaced by this killer when I arrived. Not taking thought for my own safety, I grabbed the shark with one hand and threw him out into the depths – I’m not heartless. That shark wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon! As I made it back to my chair, Erin said, “It would have been more impressive if the shark were more than 12 inches long, and you had put down the box of Wheat Thins before you went out there.” Needless to say, I didn’t make the evening news.

On our last day, we decided to make a side trip to Savannah, GA, and then head back to Raleigh via I-95. As we were entering South Carolina from Georgia, the interstate was laid out like the gates of a high-end country club: beautifully manicured shrubbery setting off marble-capped brick pony walls and the South Carolina flag flying proudly in the median. Erin and I were extremely impressed. Only later did we learn that this display of Southern gentility was to belie the sights of “Café Risque” (a 24-hour adult diner/novelty store) and “South of the Border” (a garish, electricity-eating, neon-festooned amusement park/fireworks mall).

The capper to the trip was our Southwest Airlines flight crew. As we were taxiing toward the runway, one of the flight attendants sang the safety lecture to us to the tune of “Ice, Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. I couldn’t make any of this up, I swear!

The Boston (rhymes with Tea) Party

2006-05-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

Now that Tax Day has come and gone, enough time has passed to allow an objective view of our government’s revenue-collecting process. And tempers have cooled sufficiently so I won’t be accused of starting another tax payers’ uprising.

Not only do we get large chunks of money taken out of our checks, but the government goes to a lot of trouble of making sure you know how much they’re taking – they require your employer to print it right there on your pay stub. Adding insult to injury, you’re forced to “settle up” at the end of the year. It’s the government’s way of telling you how valuable you were to the American economy that particular year.

Before April 15, you gather up your W2 – although, you’re not quite sure whatever happened to the W1 – along with the other necessary documents (mortgage interest, business receipts, an IOU from your cousin Wilbur, etc.). You then trudge off to an accountant so you can have even more money taken away from you. After meeting with the accountant you’re told one of two things: you owe MORE or you paid TOO MUCH. The latter is always the preferred option, but that’s not the point. We’re forced to wait all year for the government to get back to us and let us know how valuable we were to them.

What are we smoking? How many of us would go to work for a company and freely accept the possibility that at the end of the year our boss could come to us and say, “You know, I think your work was a shade over mediocre. You need to write me a check for $11,769.52.”

That’s what’s happening with the government. One would think that our ever-changing tax burden is the direct result of our local and state representatives working hard on our behalf to “make a difference.” Ha ha ha! Now that’s funny.

Take the Big Dig in Boston as an example. This project started out as a tunnel to divert traffic beneath the city and remove the elevated roadways. After all was said and done, the Big Dig came in five years late and billions over budget. Yes, billions! Do you think the contractors ate that? Ha ha ha. That’s funny, too.

We blithely go throughout our days believing that our taxes are going to pay for schools, roads, the occasional geothermal energy plant, and so forth. And this would be fine if our politicians were professional contractors and project managers who understood what it meant to stick to a budget and keep their word. But what’s the number one profession of our politicians? Attorney. I have no qualms with men and women of the bar, but the last I checked, law school curriculum doesn’t include a single course on, say, managing multi-lingual construction crews.

Looking back on when I met with my accountant to prepare our 2005 taxes, the term “one hundred monkeys with typewriters” kept coming to mind. (I believe I may be using that out of context, but it seems to fit.) Despite Hollywood’s depictions of cute and cuddly monkeys, they really are vile creatures for the most part. I remember watching a monkey at the Bronx Zoo standing above another monkey in a tree and peeing on the one below. He had a knowing smirk on his face while doing this. I often get the same all-over icky feeling when a politician makes campaign promises. That being said, the point is clear: neither monkeys nor politicians should be allowed to write the tax code.

Patience Pays Off

2006-04-25T00:33:00.000-07:00

Living a life without cable television has its down sides, I’ll admit. But it does present a challenge that has an occasional priceless payoff. Sure, it’s easy if you have 659 channels to surf – you’re bound to find something completely bizarre on one of those channels. "Phil, you gotta come in here right now. There’s a show on the TV with a guy who’ll eat anything you’ll give him and throw it back up in the same shape and condition as it was before he ate it." When you only have five or six channels in your repertoire, you’re forced to employ a greater discipline and patience and wait out the zaniness.

Quite honestly, network TV usually won’t have anything that bizarre. The FCC and the Bland Television Act of 1968 make sure of that. So, you’re really relying on the independent stations and PBS.

Last Friday evening, PBS came through! First off, a "commercial" announcing an upcoming program came on, and it began with a pastoral scene of some cattle grazing and generally doing nothing. A little music plays in the background, and then you hear the voice of a man saying, "Choosing between beautiful cows is like choosing between two beautiful women." (At this point, I don’t even need to describe to you what this guy looked like because whatever mental image you have, it’s correct!) I honestly fell a bit into some sort of fugue and never truly learned the theme of the program being advertised. I was too bewildered to pay attention to anything more being said on the screen. Given the fact this was PBS, I believe it’s fair to guess it wasn’t a new game show in which lonely men interview three heifers behind a blind screen and try to determine which one would be the most fun on a date. Nor could I see how the looks of the cows in question could be a determining factor in the quality of the meat or milk they produce, so it wasn’t a new cooking show.

As I continued to turn that bedeviling statement over and over in my mind, another program came on about cats that compete in shows. Having grown up in a household in which the family pets were cats rather than dogs, I must admit that I was intrigued – that and the fact one of the cats being featured was named Nicole Kidman (who bore a striking resemblance to her namesake).

About ten minutes into the program, my interest was beginning to wane when suddenly the producers cut to an interview with a gentleman in which he said, "I have photographed over 50,000 cats in my lifetime." That’s right, he said 50,000. Now that’s one goal-oriented guy!
But the payoff comes just after the interview. The next thing you see on the screen is one of the judges reaching into one of the cages, extracting one of the feline contestants and hoisting it into the air for all so see. The judge doesn’t just hold up the cat, but she places one hand just behind the front legs of the cat and her other hand just in front of the back legs and stretches the cat out so everyone can see it in all its furry glory. (Obviously, these cats are heavily medicated because they don’t even flinch.) While you’re watching the judge walking around, cat aloft in the same position as a spear in the hands of a Zulu warrior, you hear someone say, "These cat shows are just like the Miss America pageant." Then, the judge places the cat on a small display platform and proceeds to hold up its tail and look at its hindquarters with a "probing" finger – all the while, the Prozac cat doesn’t bat an eye.

This got me to thinking: if the Miss America pageant were really run like these cat shows, the Nielsen rating system would have to be revamped to measure the gazillions of viewers it would draw. Now that would be the true test of beauty! Answering questions about world peace and wearing evening dresses are child’s play compared to keeping a straight face while being hoisted above Bob Barker’s head and . . .

Decision 2006

2006-03-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

Let us look back on the early days of our young Republic as a group of our forefathers is sitting around the local tavern complaining about the sorry condition of the road outside whenever it rained. (The reason none of the foremothers is at this little get-together is that they’re far too smart to go out to the tavern when it’s raining.) Although this is long before the days of Cole Hahn, Kenneth Cole, and Manolo Blahnik – so the issue of designer shoes being ruined by the elements hasn’t quite become a concern on par with cholera, being eaten by a bear, or witch hunts – human pride burned strong in the bosoms of the people, and frankly they were tired of looking like complete boobs when they slipped and fell face first as the tavern crowd looked on. Someone needed to save them from this embarrassment.

One from the crowd, listening to the debate as it raged on, stood upon the table and said, “Forsooth, be it a most diabolical quandary in which ye . . .”, but before he could launch into his proposal, someone from the back cut him off and said, “Talk like a normal dude or we’ll all take turns kicking you in the teeth.” Not shrinking from his cause, our brave spokesman goes on to explain that they needed someone to go to Washington to represent their local needs and concerns. He further proposed that, in exchange for doing this, they would all pay him a salary and put him up in a stately home in suburban Virginia (so he wouldn’t have to actually live among them). The crowd erupted into laughter; and some even wet themselves for they had never laughed harder in their lives – these were Colonial times, and stand-up comedy hadn’t yet hit its stride.

As the laughter died down, he began buying drinks for everyone. And once he got them sufficiently drunk, he tried his idea with them once more. At this point, they unanimously demanded that he take the job at twice the amount of money he had originally proposed, along with an expense account and the insistence that he go immediately out on a fact-finding mission to the Bahamas. Later that evening, when the tab came due, he told the barkeep that, he “appreciated the tavern’s support in this all-important endeavor of representative government” and spirited himself out the door. Thus the American Politician was born!

A couple of hundred years have passed since then, so it’s time to go in a new direction. In that spirit, I have the perfect candidate: the stay-at-home mom. Allow me to share a brief sampling of her qualifications:

1. Time Management: Congressional sessions would take all of about an hour instead of weeks on end. Say, for instance, there was an item on the agenda concerning road improvements. Rather than a whole storm of blustering and bluffery, she would stand up and say, “Look, is this going to make it easier for me to go and pick up my kids from baseball practice and ballet, or are we just talking about planting a couple of bushes along the roadway? Either way, let’s just take the vote. I’ve got kids to shuttle around!”

2. Selfless Service: She already does her job without complaint despite little spontaneous praise/positive feedback from her constituency (the family) all the while standing by their side in both defeat and triumph, and she doesn’t rest until they’re all home safely. Clearly, she’s not looking for the pat on the back from a civic group or a handout from a lobbyist.

3. Budgeting: She has no problem saying, “No. We don’t have the money for that. You can throw a tantrum all day, and it’s not going to change.” However, she’ll always find a way to provide a good education, keep clothes on your back, and put food in your mouth.

The impressive resume, of course, could go on and on. However, despite her unequaled qualifications, there’s only one problem with this entire scenario: every stay-at-home mom I know is far too smart to ever run for public office!

Let's Think About This

2006-03-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t close to being the valedictorian at my high school graduation, but I pulled down fairly good grades and went on to a reputable university to earn a BA. (I could have said Bachelor of Arts, but it sounds funnier to say BA.) While in high school, my grades and other school-related activities were not a big enough deal to warrant a scholarship from a college, state or federal agency, or civic group. Not that it was by design, but I pretty much flew under the radar with the aforementioned entities. (It might have even come as a bit of a surprise to my college when I graduated: "Who’s Grant Greene? Did he really earn a BA from this institution?")

Scholarships are a funny thing. When I think of the word "scholar" I think of some old cat with shock-white hair and a cheesy mustache wearing a tweed sportcoat with leather patches on the elbows being asked by the PBS series Nova why ladybugs have such dreadful manners. And yet, we give scholarships to individuals who’ve shown they’re really good at playing something. Granted, not everyone can "read" a blitz or fully understand the mechanics behind a home-run swing. But I certainly don’t foresee a group of executives gathered around a conference table when the head of the group turns to the hulking mass of a man to his right and says, "Blutarski, you were a full-ride defensive lineman for Notre Dame, and I’m not even sure if you graduated. But what the heck, why don’t we leave it up to you to decide what percentage of mezzanine debt we want to include in this deal?"

I have no illusions as to the reason colleges offer these incentives to athletes: making money for the school! This may lead you to ask, then, "If making money is the motivation behind the giving of scholarships, then how do you explain their giving them for sports like archery and platform diving?" It’s a fair question, but I don’t have a clue as to the reason. (When’s the last time you saw a packed house at a badminton tournament?) To the extent that I believe calling these incentives "scholarships" is somewhat demeaning to the educational process, I’m all for keeping college sports (read: football and basketball) alive and well because they do make a boatload of cash for the schools.

Quite honestly, it would make more sense to recruit athletes as faculty members rather than as students. In the lion’s share of my college courses, the class was taught by a grad student while the professor was off writing a book in the name of the university. Athletes could "represent" the school in much the same way. Instead of writing books, they could, perhaps, be rewriting the record books with the most touchdowns or three-point shots in a regular season – all in the school’s name. Everybody wins: the school makes the money off of the sport, the athletes don’t have to bother with that pesky Algebra homework, the students get a first-rate team to root for, the boosters can stop skulking around in the dark shadows with the keys to a new SUV, and the IRS knows who’s getting paid what.

On the actual scholastic side of things, the awarding of scholarships to the extremely intelligent also seems to fly in the face of reason. Universities whose yearly tuition, per student, rivals the GNP of most third-world countries are courting the Übergeniuses to come to their school for free. First of all, the universities are complete morons for turning away a paying customer in favor of a really smart freeloader. Secondly, if these kids are so smart, is sitting in a room designed by the same person who did the local women’s penitentiary and listening to an octogenarian who’s spent his entire life ensconced within the campus confines really going to make them smarter? Heck, most of these kids have already built their own nuclear particle accelerator or they’re destined to invent the next Google – school’s not going to get them any farther.

What’s the colleges’ motivation? Are they looking to be named "School with the Most Brainiacs" by Smart People Magazine? That would look good on the university letterhead, sure, and it might even get a bachelor dean more dates, but what else are they looking to get out of it? Plus, it’s really sort of lazy for the colleges to recruit the really smart kids. Isn’t that a big part of the reason colleges exist? To show that they can help improve the mind? And unlike sports, there’s no television market or spectator draw (read: money) for filling your ranks with the educational Wunderkind. "Hey, Steve, flip it over to PBS. I want to watch the smart kids at Stanford outthink Harvard. They’re the underdogs, but I like the odds."

Signs of the Apocalypse

2006-03-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

This may be very hard to believe, but someone is actually going to pay me money (not in beaver pelts or boxes of salted pork) to write a newspaper column about whatever I want. I’m not lying. You can check for yourself in next month’s Hot Spot Journal. I believe the web address is http://www.hotspotjournal.com/ (I'm on page 18 of the current issue). The editor of said monthly newspaper sat down with me at a local Jack in the Box restaurant recently (she even offered to buy me breakfast, so put that in your pipe and smoke it), and she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: the chance to reach 12,000 subscribers with my maniacal drivel and get paid to do it. This obviously means that the end of the world will quickly be upon us.

This impending finale of the Big Blue Marble on which we live didn’t just pop up on us suddenly. It’s been creeping up for lo these many years. For your review, I have put together a brief smattering of items/events that were designed to take our eyes off the ball:

1. The Schick Quattro: The goal with shaving, obviously, is to get your face and/or other hirsute body parts feeling like the surface of a baby’s bottom (preferably not after the child in question just consumed a lot of leafy green vegetables). But why the furor over four blades? Since the dawn of time, man (at the insistence of woman) has been quite able to remove the stubble from his face with a single-edged tool of some sort. Has the hair on our bodies become “smarter” over time much in the same way a flu strain builds up a resistance to a particular vaccine?

2. American Idol: Do you think it’s mere coincidence that this show is sponsored by Pop Tarts?

3. The Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinsky Debacle: When he finally admitted to lying to the American people, he was figuratively lifted atop the shoulders of the masses as if he just scored the game-winning goal in the 1980 Olympics. This is the same guy who swore to uphold the ethics of our highest office, and people are high-fiving him for scoring in the Oval Office. For some strange reason, I didn’t see those same people hanging around the court house to congratulate Mary Jo Laterno on sweet talking a younger man into her embrace. O Celebrity, Fickle is thy name!

4. Ronco: This is the company that brings you those can’t-live-without items you see featured on Saturday afternoon infomercials either because you’re too lazy to change the channel or you don’t have cable. Ronco has brought us “Great Looking Hair” Formula Number 9 Hair System, which is basically spray paint for bald spots. (I’m not quite sure what happened to the first eight formulas, but they obviously aren’t as effective as old Number 9.) Of note, too, are the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler for the pathologically lazy omelet lover and the Bagel Cutter for the epileptic epicurean.

5. Oprah: Do I need to elaborate?

6. Bobblehead Dolls: Our affinity for these figurines isn’t borne solely out of a quaint adoration for the real person whom the doll represents but our unconscious acceptance that these people’s heads are, in fact, getting bigger by the day. Take Barry Bonds, for example: measure his proportions from news footage ten years ago and compare them to his dimensions today. They’re obviously askew. Our current gravitational field will quickly be knocked off kilter by these gargantuan noggins.

I’m no seer, but I believe these signs are pretty obvious. You’ll see my wisdom when you turn on the Super Bowl and find a 30-second commercial with Oprah Winfrey giving Bill Clinton the shave of a lifetime with a Schick Quattro while he scrambles eggs and cuts bagels. Obviously, you’ll need the wide screen TV so their heads will fit.

Heroes

2006-01-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

It’s usually around the age of three or four when a young man’s mind begins to turn over the concept of heroes. Invariably, these thoughts center on men – I’m not being sexist – who seem to possess superhuman qualities. Even if the individual we choose to be the center of our universe is, in some strange turn of events, an actual non-fictional being, we endow him with abilities and powers beyond the reaches of man. For example, I went through a period when my kindergarten teacher, Mr. Drork, was my hero, and I would have estimated him to be somewhere near 9’6”. He was tall – he didn’t have a problem with our calling him Mr. Stork because of his height – but looking back, he was probably somewhere around 6’4” and the rest of us were all about the right height to bite his ankles. However, in all the time I was in his class, I never saw a pack of NBA scouts hovering around the monkey bars waiting for the moment to get him alone and steal him away to play center or power forward.

Throughout my youth, the list of my heroes was broad: John from CHiPs (never thought Ponch was all that cool), Shazam, Indiana Jones, Hank Aaron, Shaft (“he’s a bad – watch your mouth”), Murdock the helicopter pilot from the A-Team, Lee Majors (because he was married to Farrah Fawcett and because he played both “The Bionic Man” and “The Fall Guy”), James Bond (as played by Sean Connery), Aquaman, Richard Nixon, Cary Grant (no one cooler with the chicks), Han Solo, David Letterman, and Mr. Peabody (the time-traveling dog who had a pet boy named Sherman). Depending on the stage of life in which I found myself, or the circumstances I was facing, my “hero worship” would vary.

Now that I’m officially old (I have a 401k, attended parent/teacher conferences at school, passed kidney stones, found a certain degree of relaxation in turning off the TV and reading a book, etc.), my fascination with these many people whom I venerated for so long has waned. The “real” people I still respect for their accomplishments, and the fictional ones still give me reason to smile and/or laugh. However, I can now safely say I have chosen heroes far more worthy of my esteem and their popularity with me will never fade: my sons Jack and Sam.

Allow me to list their heroic qualities:

1. Faith – this may be hard to imagine (as it is especially so for me), they believe I know what I’m doing. Their faith in my abilities to put a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food in their mouths is steady.
2. Humility – they defer to me when they don’t know the answer to a question. They’ll readily admit they don’t have the knowledge and then display their first heroic quality and believe I do.
3. Strength – they ably bear the burden of putting up with my shortcomings and never falter in supporting me.
4. Honesty – more often than I would like to admit, they’ll make statements like, “Dad, you’re weird” or “that shirt makes your belly look too big”. No hidden meanings there.

To sum it all up, they have the superhuman ability to see beyond reality and to move on to the higher plain of accepting me for who I am and loving me for being their dad. That’s what I want to be like when I grow up!

Sappy Holidays 2005

2006-01-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

Original and creative thought takes a little effort, for sure. For example, when you meet someone who has a pet, and you learn that they’ve defaulted to using descriptions in the naming process (e.g. “Midnight” for a black cat, “Chocolate” for a brown dog, “Snowball” for a white bunny, etc.), you wish there was some type of incentive out there that would force them to put a little more thought into the naming chore – perhaps they face the prospect of being spayed or neutered if they don’t. With that specter in mind, it is our sincere hope that you enjoy the “effort” we’ve undergone for this year’s letter.

Sam turned five this past February, thus reaching the magical age when he’s able to do all the things he’s been forced to watch from the sidelines. He began 2005 on the soccer field – however, one would be hard pressed to say he actually “played” soccer; his actions on the field would be better classified as chasing imaginary squirrels. The spring brought tee-ball, which could have been a continuation of squirrel chasing but for the prospect of swinging a large metal bat with virtual impunity: a five-year-old’s dream. And this fall (actually, it was late July), Sam started kindergarten. I swear I witnessed the birth of this child, so I can attest to the fact he’s our son, but body snatchers must have pulled a switcharoo sometime between birth and kindergarten because on the first day of class his teacher reported that Sam was asking for homework. That’s just not right!

For those who are keeping track, Jack turned eight in January. This means he’s still ten years away from his federally sanctioned right to vote – much to his chagrin – but upon turning eight he had the chance to be baptized. Although we were unable to play “Which Vegetable Would You Rather Be?” for the after-party (time constraints), it was a great experience. As Jack began third grade this year, his new teacher gave his class a writing assignment. Jack decided to write about being on the Magic School Bus and traveling through the digestive system of a boy’s body and ending the journey in the toilet. Although she didn’t want to encourage potty humor by giving Jack a good grade on his essay, she reported to us that she was constrained to commend him on his proper usage of the term “digestive system”.

Erin’s latest project has been to roam the neighborhood in search of dogs that look like celebrities. So far, she’s found a St. Bernard that looks uncannily like Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond, a Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Dog that bears a strong resemblance to James Carville, an Italian Greyhound that could be Sting’s twin, and a Corgi that looks like Kevin Bacon. She thought she found a Chihuahua that looked like Paris Hilton, but it turned out to be Paris without her makeup. Well, when Erin’s not engaged in her hunt for the hounds, she’s busy working at Jack and Sam’s new school, presiding over the women’s service organization at church, and keeping order at home.

This past year has given me the chance to confirm a long-held belief: people are nuts! Dozing on a flight to Reno recently, I was wrenched from the ethereal mists between unconscious stupor and wide-awake alertness when I heard the woman behind me tell her seatmate, “So I had the rest of the afternoon to argue with the cat.” Oh, I was awake. I swear. Walking through the Costco parking lot a few months back, I found myself beside two men when one said, “I saw that movie Sahara on the plane the other day.” Not yet having seen the movie I was mildly interested in hearing more, but my curiosity was not to be satisfied – the movie-watcher’s friend made sure of that as he asked, “Is that the one in the desert?” Are these the same people who program the gas pumps to tell you to “replace nozzle when finished”? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t drive around with a spare nozzle in my car for these events – I’ve always operated under the assumption that these items were capable of being used numerous times.

It’s been a great year for us! We hope this finds you warm and well. For your own personal amusement, ask your children, nieces, nephews, or random children while walking through the mall to name Santa’s reindeer. We did this recently and learned that Santa’s made some changes. Not only has he whittled the team down to four, there’s been quite a shakeup: he’s riding now with Rudolph, Tootoff, Shotoff, and Dixon. There’s bound to be a new claymation TV show on this by next year – I’m guessing the title will be something like Santa’s Posse. Until then, we wish you a very Merry Christmas, a wonderfully Happy New Year, and a fair to moderately exciting Ground Hog Day!

Intelligent Decline

2005-11-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

I found myself ironing a tablecloth this evening. You heard me right: ironing a tablecloth. A friend of ours is pregnant – yes, we know who the father is – and my wife is throwing a shower for her tomorrow morning. So, on Shower Eve, our home is aflutter with activity in anticipation of 30 or so women to parade through here and wonder, “What possessed these people to paint their living room that color? The husband is either a confirmed psychotic or the wife forgot to read Martha’s latest treatise on ‘the calming hues’.”

Amid that flurry, I am standing beside an ironing board with a Rowenta in hand trying to press out manufacturer-induced wrinkles. Mind you, the tablecloth is something like 75 feet long by 12 feet wide, and the ironing board is . . . well, it’s an ironing board, and I’m supposed to keep this tablecloth off the floor and in pristine shape while I perform this seemingly Sisyphean task. (For the uninitiated, Sisyphus was a Greek lad who lost a drinking game at a frat party and had to choose between playing the sixteenth hole at St. Andrews with his pants down around his ankles or pushing an enormous rock up a hill. He chose the latter because the bunkers around the sixteenth green at St. Andrews are bigger and more distracting than the beaches of Rio de Janeiro during Carnival – regardless of the position of your pants, for playing golf that is.)

As I spread the tablecloth, a warm chocolate pastel, over the table and evened it out on the sides and ends, I looked at my work and saw that I had done nothing more than really “soften” the wrinkles. After pointing this out to my wife, she confided in me that this was really the best I could do because the material was merely cotton and not linen. This is either the truth or it’s code for “I didn’t marry you for your ironing skills, honey.” Either way, I was ready to call it good and go to bed.

However, I stood there for another minute or so and reflected on the situation and began to think about the current debate of “Evolution versus Intelligent Design”. (Is it really that big of a jump?) Let me sum up both sides here, for comparison’s sake: the former wishes to “prove” that, basically, our ancestors at some point decided they were tired of living like their parents so they moved out of the jungle and into the suburbs to get better-paying jobs and join the Rotary Club; the latter wishes to “encourage” the general populace to release themselves from the strictures of cold science and accept a higher power that guides the universe – and I’m not talking about the IRS.

Fueling the debate is a mutually shared desire to wholly discredit the other side; in essence, the Evolutioners want the Designers to look like they have no intelligence at all, and the Designers want to make the Evolutioners look like utter monkeys. After carefully considering the merits of each party’s arguments, I’ve come to a profound conclusion: WHO CARES?!

Would the Unabomber have turned out to be a florist if Intelligent Design had been part of his biology curriculum his junior year in high school? Would the Pope be “soft on sin” if the nuns at his high school incorporated Evolution in their lesson plans? Is your accountant going to tell you she can no longer prepare your taxes for you because your opinions on the Origins of the Human Species conflict?

Following that line of reasoning, I’m confident that at the end of the shower tomorrow none of the women will say, “The quiche was heavenly, and the frozen beverage was delightful, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that @#$! softly wrinkled tablecloth.”

Under Pressure

2005-10-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

I read the other day that David Letterman, long before his “Late Night” times, was fired from his job as a weatherman for congratulating a tropical depression on being upgraded to a hurricane. (The people who fired him are probably the same people who thought parachute pants were a good look for the American fashion plate – but that’s for another time.) You can’t seriously think your local weather person sat with her/his high school guidance counselor and plotted a career path to become a weather person. (What kinds of classes would the counselor recommend? Guessing 101? Looking Good in Galloshes 253?) Sure, there’s the occasional visionary out there who figures it would be a cake walk to “forecast” the weather on one of the local stations in San Diego. “Today, it will be a high of 75 and a low of 60. Tomorrow, it will be more of that, and the next day will be more . . .” Besides my mother-in-law, who truly digs the weather, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone with weather in their veins. (I seriously wrote that last sentence with absolutely no intentional play on words – but you gotta admit, it was pretty funny.) Using my mother-in-law as an example, no matter how questionably grooved she gets on tracking barometric pressure, she has a real job.

Take, for example, the job title: Meteorologist. First off, I have never turned on the six o’clock news to find Ms. Shiny Smile telling me about a low-pressure system exacerbated (I’m not sure if they’re allowed to use that word before prime time) by a couple of errant meteors zeroing in on Ames, Iowa. Secondly, how many times have you watched a movie whose clever plot line details the efforts of the Global Village coming together, despite centuries-long differences of religion and regionality, to devise a plan to destroy an earth-shattering meteor, and the Lindsay Wagner character pipes up and says, “You know, we’ve smoked enough cigarettes and downed enough anti-depressants to make this place look like the backstage of a fashion show. And we’ve gotten nowhere. We need to call a meteorologist.” And then she crushes the office chair next to her with one hand, in slow motion.

Think about the word “meteorologist”. The Latin root “logist” denotes someone who is absolutely powerless but thinks he’s a smarty pants (loose translation). A meteorologist has absolutely no control over the weather. With all the recent hurricanes, you have your local “meteorologist” giving you very specific detail: “As you can see from the radar image, Hurricane Chuck will proceed in a north by northeast direction for 17.2 miles. At that point it will stop at Key West for a few drinks at Margaritaville and then proceed due north to catch a Miami Heat game. He’ll be joined by Anna Nicole Smith courtside . . .” Come on, this is the same guy who can’t even tell you if it’s going to rain in Seattle tomorrow.

As I said, “logist” is society’s way of saying “Nice Try”. Think of some of the other “logists” out there: astrologist (oh, yeah, that’s a helpful line of work); psychologist (they didn’t quite make it to psychiatrist); and scientologist (heck, they can’t even control Tom Cruise’s zaniness).

Gettin' Limber

2005-08-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Driving west on Interstate 10 today, I came upon a navy blue Dodge Neon with a very large sticker in the rear window. Approximately 18 inches high by 12 inches wide, this sticker depicted a hand giving all who looked upon it the single-digit salute. On the left side of the car, from the front portion of the rear door to halfway through the rear quarter panel was a very large dent. Obviously, someone was deeply offended by this sticker . . . or someone like Martha Stewart was trying to get a closer look to see if the middle finger had bad cuticles.

Speaking of Martha, I heard a news story a few weeks ago that her probation may be extended because she went to a yoga class. I personally have never attended a yoga class, but I’ve seen yoga on television – the joys of multi-channel cable! (In my hotel room, of course. I’m too cheap to order cable for the house.) From what I have been able to gather by watching these exercises, the government’s got it all wrong: yoga should be the choice form of probation. Sure, the people on the program I watched seemed to be enjoying immensely bending body parts in directions God never intended, but we all know these people are genetic freaks whose DNA was mixed with melted rubber bands and slinkies.

Imagine the horror of Jimmy "Two Fingers" Figorelli at his sentencing hearing for whacking Vinnie "Bellybutton" Giacono when he’s told that he’s going to spend the next twenty years doing the Barking Sunrise. (Actually, he won’t be at all horrified because he’ll at first think that this means he’s been consigned to nightly keg parties, and he’s being promised the mornings after won’t be pretty. But then, his attorney will show him a picture of different yoga positions – Lotus Reclined, Chocolate Groinpull, etc. – and he’ll be reduced to tears and a snotty nose.) This would send shock waves throughout the criminal community. Gone would be the Hollywood glamorization with tough guy Colin Ferrell’s hardened character telling the interrogating officer, Dustin Diamond (Screech from "Saved by the Bell"), that his Bad Cop intimidation won’t work on him: "You aint gettin’ nothin’ out of me. No deal! I can stand on my head for twenty years in the joint if I gotta." Because with yoga, that may be exactly what they’d be doing – I believe that move is called the Hurling Kitten. Anyway, back to Martha.

I can see why the government is so keen on making an example out of Martha. A woman (or man) who can magically construct a Shaker-style end table out of coffee grounds and four popsicle sticks is a maniacal beast on par with the world-domination-obsessed villains from James Bond movies. Clearly, a person like this finds daily enjoyment at thumbing her nose at the justice system – and it’s a jaunty thumbing at that! But there must be more to the government’s hell-bent drive to keep Martha under their thumb.

Have you ever been on the golf course and hit a beautiful drive down the middle of the fairway, watching it come to rest – in plain view – about 250 yards away? However, when you drive up to the spot where you know you saw it stop, the ball is nowhere to be found. Your first thought is gophers, then the Keebler elves. But then reason takes over, and you realize gophers have no desire to take your golf ball – they’re too busy hunting down the Keebler elves and eating them. It’s Martha. The little minx stole your ball! The dimpled surface, in her opinion, is an affront to any respectable decorating genre or medium.

Ever opened your dryer to find only one sock missing? It’s Martha, I’m sure. She’s convinced that the sock that remains – the one with the hole in the big toe – will now be discarded.

Rafael Palmeiro, in response to Major League Baseball’s finding steroids in his urine, says that he never knowingly took such a substance – I’m talking about steroids, not urine. Again, it was Martha. Believe it or not, she’s a huge baseball nut. She wants to see as many homers jacked out of the park as the guy sitting next to you at the game who paints half his body blue and the other half lime green – even though the team colors are black and red.

Lastly, we all think the Berlin Wall came toppling down in the face of Reagan’s staunch opposition to Communism. Nope. It was Martha. She’s the one who really toppled the Berlin Wall – not out of some desire to liberate or unite but because she thought the brick created the wrong aesthetic for the Bauhaus-inspired neighborhood nearest to it.

I’m all for throwing her back in the slammer. I’ve "lost" my share of golf balls, and I’m sick of my pile of mate-free socks. Sentence her to twenty years of yoga – the Goat Kick to the Hindquarters would be an appropriate position to start off with.

People Are Strange

2005-07-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the sixth Harry Potter book (a great read). While in the midst of the story, an epiphany came over me (not to worry, I’ve been immunized). However, before I impart my morsel of insight to you, allow me to catch up the uninitiated.

The main story line woven through the novels is one young Harry Potter has the uncanny ability to pick the winner in every horse race at Aqueduct, Churchill Downs, and Santa Anita simply by smelling the jockeys’ riding crops. Lord Voldemort, owner of a stable full of spirited young fillies (no, this is not a metaphor for a bordello), wishes to thwart young Mr. Potter’s predictions by soaking all riding crops in a curious admixture of three parts cod liver oil, two parts shoe polish (Oxford black, by Kiwi), six parts cherry Kool Aid, and one part phlegm from either Jimmy Hoffa or Jim Henson – the key to obtaining this final substance is finding Jim Morrison alive and well somewhere in New Jersey. As those who have already read these books know – and those who haven’t may already be guessing – the race is on between Harry’s posse to assure they reach The Lizard King (Morrison’s cute nickname from birth) first to keep the phlegm from falling into the wrong hands (that phrase says so many things on so many levels) and Voldemort’s army of acne-ridden, slack-jawed hillbillies. (As with all great literature, this is the "true meaning" of the saga – the whole wizards and witches thing is merely a metaphor. You know, kind of like how Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books were really about Nazism and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was really about the evils of Weight Watchers.) Now to the earth-shattering insight.

As is true in the world in which we live, evil is always united in its designs: hate the do-gooders and destroy them by any means necessary; conversely, those wishing to do good and overcome evil can hardly agree amongst themselves on what is the most appropriate dress for a black tie affair at a country club. (We all should know that it’s the white dinner jacket with black tuxedo pants and matching cummerbund and bow tie – just like James Bond.)

This dissension among the "goodies" is bred from myriad questions so many force themselves to ask before acting:

1. How evil are they? Are they so evil that you pronounce the second syllable with decided emphasis on the letter "i" and lingering on the letter "l" as if there were two of them?
2. Are there extenuating circumstances? Didn’t they save a small animal from drowning when they were younger? (Yes, so they could put it on a leash tied to a stake and shoot at it with a BB gun.)
3. Shouldn’t we give them fair warning that we’re going to attack them? Wouldn’t that be a far more humane way of going about killing them?
4. What would I do if I found myself fully wrapped in explosives with an ignition switch in my hand in the middle of a shopping area?

All of this self-reflection goes nowhere. It only weakens the collective resolve of the "good guys" and leaves an even greater opening for the opposition.

Let’s sit in on a terrorist meeting for a moment:

"OK, let’s quit the chit chat and get this meeting started. First of all, whoever’s driving a white 1972 Ford Pinto: you’re lights are on."
"Now that we have that matter out of the way, our first and only item on the agenda is our hatred for the Western civilization. Are we all agreed on that? If yes, simply nod, click your tongue twice and pull on your left ear lobe, or let out a blood-curdling scream that violently shakes your uvula."
"OK, so we’re all agreed. Let’s get on with the refreshments. Who’s turn was it to bring the fondue tonight?"

So the next time you’re watching the news (and it’s not the Fox News Channel), rather than believing the "even handed" and "impartial" views of the media concerning the lack of progress being made in the war on terror, set aside your political leanings for just a moment, and ask yourself one simple question to which you can only answer "yes" or "no": Do I enjoy allowing a group of wackos – who falsely hide behind religion – to control my safety in the world? That’s all you need to ask!

Elder Abuse

2005-06-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

Grocery shopping is something that just about every person does, and not wanting to be labeled as a Heretic of Commerce, I do it, too. Now, the supermarket at which I regularly shop seems to be a bit particular as to who is allowed to shop there and bottleneck the checkout stands. This market allows ugly women with barbaric children, men named "Gordon", out-of-town fools who don’t know any better, and senior citizens. (My family and I were able to get an exemption.)

Before I proceed, I just wanted to say that I have nothing against senior citizens. I have many a family friend and relative who rank among the Seniors, and I will be one some day sooner than I think. My only objection is that they shouldn’t be allowed to congregate in one place in groups of three or more. They get dangerous and somewhat obstreperous.

Now, take my local supermarket as an example. You can be heading down the paper towel aisle without a care in the world, but once you round the corner into the dairy section, you can kiss the rest of your day goodbye. There are more senior citizens in that one tiny aisle than there are in an entire concert hall hosting a Frank Sinatra show. The reason I say they’re dangerous and somewhat obstreperous is that they think there is something written in the United States Constitution stating that it is their inalienable right to make the dairy section (and the tuna fish aisle) their homestead. And if you try to get around their cart or ask them to please move, forget about it or else you’re asking for the business end of an onslaught of canes and walkers. I saw it happen to one of those ugly women I was talking about earlier, and these people had no shame concerning her barbaric child. They just gagged him with a low-fat, no-cholesterol cheese and stuck him between the cottage cheese and sour cream.

Well, if you’re smart enough to avoid the dairy section and the tuna fish aisle altogether, you still have to face the checkout stands. I’ve seen more organization at a 10-car pile-up during rush hour in Los Angeles. This is not wholly the fault of the seniors. It doesn’t help when the cashiers don’t know the difference between produce and cat food or how to type "$2.19" into the cash register. Back to the seniors: It doesn’t help, though, when they’re in the middle of the line and suddenly remember that they need some Efferdent.

The reason I am so harsh on these people is that I think they plan it. They take turns staking out the dairy and tuna sections while the others stand in the lines continually forgetting something. They have community meetings for this. We all think they get together to plan trips to Atlantic City or Las Vegas. Wrong. They get together and schedule who’ll work what sections of the supermarket and at what time.

They group together and rally for more dairy sections and write letters to Bumble Bee and Starkist complaining that there’s not enough cans of tuna being produced. They do this. I saw it in a movie once.

People, beware! Keep your elderly loved ones as far away as possible from other elderly people. It’s like adding too much fiber to someone’s diet: things can get very messy.

I can see it now: "OK, Edna. You and the Geritol Gals take dairy, and Bernie and I will take tuna. The Efferdent Gang will be on checkout stand duty. And remember, never say ‘die’."

The World is Too Much

2005-06-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

In my 35 years thus far on the Big Blue Marble, I have only seen a handful of Alfred Hitchcock movies: Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Rear Window. I can honestly say I really don’t remember much about Vertigo and Rear Window, but I can make the claim to having seen them. Be that as it may, I’ve never felt like I had a huge cultural chasm in my soul for not seeing more Hitchcocks, but I was induced to see The Man Who Knew Too Much last Saturday evening. As far as flicks go, I was entertained. (There was no Jar Jar Binks or Cher in the movie, so Man definitely had a few stars coming to it before it even began.)

At any rate, not far into the movie the main characters, a Dr. and Mrs. McKenna (played by Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day) are seen traveling through Morocco on their way to Marrakech with their son Hank. They befriend a smarmy Frenchie who seems to insinuate himself into their evening’s plans, and as the movie cuts to the scene in which the McKennas and Luis Bernard (that’s Frenchie’s name) are preparing for a night out on the town, you see Doris Day helping Hank put on his pajamas (with a robe and slippers – I was waiting to see if the kid was going to light up a pipe and start reading the evening paper). The two of them, mother and son, are singing "Que Será, Será" (which, by the way, is Spanish for "I feel like a complete moron wearing a robe and slippers in the middle of Morocco"). You quickly learn that the parents are getting ready to go out, and the son is about to be babysat by someone in the hotel’s employ. Red flag! It should come as no surprise to learn that just a little while later in the movie someone to whom the parents casually entrust their son subsequently kidnaps the boy.

I’m probably not the first to think this, but I may be the first to verbalize it: Hitchcock was a nefarious knave whose primary goal was to advance the agenda of a powerful triumvirate composed of Henry Ford, Coco Chanel, and The San Diego Chicken. It’ll all be abundantly clear in a moment.

Henry Ford: he perfected the assembly line to mass-produce his automobiles. If your child is abducted, what better way to cover ground quickly in your search than an automobile? (Let’s remember, the movie took place in the late 50s.) Following that same logic, what better way to be prepared for such an abduction (in Marrakech or elsewhere) than to purchase a handful of Ford’s vehicles and have them at the ready?

Coco Chanel: she was French. But it goes way beyond that! No matter how sweaty you get, you must smell good. You didn’t see people passing out when Doris Day’s character entered the room after an exhaustive search – they embraced her and wished to be by her side. Dainty, genteel, and feminine all go out the window if you smell like an outhouse.

San Diego Chicken: I know what many of you are saying. "The San Diego Chicken didn’t even come into existence until the late 70s, and Hitchcock was in his heyday in the late 50s and through the 60s." Why do you think you’ve never seen the face of The San Diego Chicken? There’s a whole army of individuals who portray the Chicken; it’s gone through generations of certain families, and the machinations of the Chicken (along with Ford and Chanel) were alive and well at the time of The Man Who Knew Too Much. By getting the world to accept that the world was an unsafe place basically ushered in a mania ready to embrace dancing poultry as entertainment. It all fits.

If you think this is a stretch, simply take a look at the world today: people pay extra money for hubcaps that spin around like a Cuisinart blade ready to slice carrots, Pauly Shore is about to get another TV show, and Hillary Clinton was elected Senator of a state in which she never lived previously.