The Sounds of Insanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Truth in Advertising

On a recent trip up to the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, traveling on Highway 260 just two or three miles east of Payson, I passed through the lovely little hamlet of Star Valley. Basically, Star Valley is a suburb of Payson, where people are moving to escape the urban decay and evil trappings of metropolitan Payson. But I digress.

As I came around a bend in the road (as one is wont to do when traveling through the country), I spied a tall pole on the south side of the highway on which were affixed different signs advertising various business establishments. Occupying the very top of this pole was a rather sizable statue of a cow. (I am fairly certain it was a statue as it remained deathly still; not moving in the least, which is completely contrary to what you would expect a live cow to do with a large pole sticking in its belly.) This didn’t seem altogether odd until I read the sign immediately below the statue. Written in large, red letters (in an Old Western style font) on a white background with a red border were the words "Topless Cabaret".

Not being from Star Valley or Payson, I was a little bewildered by all of this. The possibilities that ran through my head were the following:

• They had dancing cows that performed topless. This, of course, is the obvious conclusion, but it begs the question: "Do cows normally wear tops? If so, what would a topless cow look like?" I watched many years of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and I can honestly say that Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler never did a story on a topless cow. Of course, those were more innocent times, and the moral standards of your average cow were much higher in those days. (I can remember when cats and dogs once thought it abhorrent to sleep in the same room.)
• In some sort of bovine-inspired Ichabod Crane fantasy, the dancing cows actually have no heads. This seems far less likely than the first option given the fact cows aren’t known for being fleet of foot or extremely agile, and taking away their vision is not going to make them any more graceful. This would be choreography hell!
• Lastly, the building itself has no roof. The more I pondered this option, the more it made sense. Unless the cows were house broken or wore diapers (which the latter would really cut down on the "show" factor for a cabaret atmosphere), it would be wise to have really good ventilation. And on those evenings when it’s raining, you instantly have the whole Flashdance thing going. Genius!

Being en route to a destination, I didn’t have time to stop, so I had to devote a great deal of mental energy to this . . . issue. Think of the thousands upon thousands of hours motorists like myself have wasted in either trying to figure out what the signage meant or stopping to see what was being advertised. (If you’re in the latter group, you should be ashamed of yourselves! You’re only encouraging good cows to be bad.)

Here’s my point: let’s be more clear in the "messages" we send. I’ll give you a perfect example: one day while driving on the freeway, I came upon a car driving in one of the middle lanes with its emergency flashers blinking. As I passed this car, I noticed the driver was a shriveled old man with Coke-bottle glasses and a bead of sweat painted across his upper lip. The message was clear: he was terrified to be driving, so give him a wide berth. Until I’m endowed with the authority to remove drivers from the road at my discretion, I can accept that.

Parenthood

You know you’ve turned into your dad when you hear yourself uttering the following phrases with absolutely no forethought:

• "I don’t care who started it. I’m ending it."
• "I’m your father, and I said so."
• "No, you can’t use your brother’s head as first base without his consent."

However, you know you’re fully entrenched in parenthood when you hear the following phrase leak from your lips: "Okay, Jack, don’t put your foot in the toilet anymore. Okay?" This is further underscored by the fact you uttered these words in a very matter-of-fact voice – no venting of frustration, no exasperated tone – just as if you’re asking the pimple-faced clerk at Albertson’s where the non-fat milk is located.

Let’s analyze these sentences for a moment. The first word uttered is "okay": this would signify a direct and unmitigated acceptance of what just took place. Next, the verb "put" is used – not "jam", "dunk", "stick", "shove", etc. – which is an innocuous way of addressing the action. There’s not surprise or fear of imminent danger associated with the word "put". One "puts" socks in a drawer, keys in a pocket, tires on a car, etc.

Obviously, the words "toilet" and "anymore" should never be used in a sentence side by side. Consider the possibilities: "Frank won’t use the toilet anymore." "Frank doesn’t flush the toilet anymore." Ouch!

The final word is "okay" again. This would signify that you’re making some type of reasonable bargain. In a reasonable bargain, generally reasonable actions have preceded the pact. In some strange parental way, by use of "okay" at the end of the discussion, one has either implicitly or explicitly accepted these events as normal.

Just remember: Parenthood is an exploration of the many grades and variations of normal.

Half Baked

I read an article recently that stated that homosexual men and heterosexual women responded similarly to male-hormone-related odors. (I’ve been in my share of locker rooms, and I must say the odors emanating from within would cause identical reaction from any gender, preference, or even species – dry heaves.) At any rate, apparently the study involved "manufacturing" odors that mimicked male perspiration and female urine. (As a side note: can you just imagine the pride of the parents of these scientists? "Big deal, Martha. Your son may be a Supreme Court Justice, but my daughter can create substances to smell just like urine. Top that!") For some reason, there are many in the world who believe that the "discovery" that homosexual men and heterosexual women responded similarly is earth shattering. My reaction was more along the lines of "No duh". Perhaps these same scientists can conduct studies to determine if dogs bark or if Las Vegas casinos have better odds than the individual gambler.

I use that segue to ask the following question: Have the people of Arizona lost their minds? It’s now May, and the weather is getting very hot – it goes along with the whole dogs barking and casinos’ odds reasoning. However, each and every local newscast has the "meteorologist" looking to the anchors with a pained look on her/his face and saying something along the lines of "Well, Hal, it looks like it’s going to be another hot one today. And I’m not really sure when this ‘heat wave’ will end." How about October, folks?

And to add stupidity to moronics, we are now having "Heat Advisories" in Phoenix. There’s a reason it’s called the Valley of the Sun – we live in the same neighborhood as the bright yellow orb. At each Port of Entry on the Arizona borders, the officers should administer an IQ test. If the individual wishing to enter our fair state doesn’t rate high enough on said test and is too dense to know that you need to drink a lot of water and stay in the shade as much as possible should be forever exiled to Fargo, North Dakota with nothing but a Speedo and flip-flops.