Monday, November 3, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Waffle House Wedding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3HcaIiTmDc
DACULA - As the famous twang of Hank Williams Jr. blasted from an SUV stereo Friday afternoon, about 30 folks socialized, sipped soda and puffed on cigarettes. No, this wasn't a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. It was the run-up to a wedding. In a Waffle House parking lot. The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way. For years, the couple tried to marry on their Independence Day anniversary. But the bride was always scheduled to work. Instead of waiting any longer - she got the day off at the last minute; Mathis had to report for the morning shift - the couple of nine years decided to seal the deal at work. The result was what a NASCAR tailgate might be like if Hank Jr. himself stopped by with all his rowdy friends: Loud and proud - country music, storytelling and plenty of Dale Earnhardt paraphernalia - and not an iota of pretentiousness. "It's been crazy, madness," the bride said. "Finally, everything worked out.""I think it's pretty redneck myself," he said, laughing. "But I'm a redneck anyway, so." The couple plans to honeymoon Monday and Tuesday, but then it's back to work.
DACULA - As the famous twang of Hank Williams Jr. blasted from an SUV stereo Friday afternoon, about 30 folks socialized, sipped soda and puffed on cigarettes. No, this wasn't a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. It was the run-up to a wedding. In a Waffle House parking lot. The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way. For years, the couple tried to marry on their Independence Day anniversary. But the bride was always scheduled to work. Instead of waiting any longer - she got the day off at the last minute; Mathis had to report for the morning shift - the couple of nine years decided to seal the deal at work. The result was what a NASCAR tailgate might be like if Hank Jr. himself stopped by with all his rowdy friends: Loud and proud - country music, storytelling and plenty of Dale Earnhardt paraphernalia - and not an iota of pretentiousness. "It's been crazy, madness," the bride said. "Finally, everything worked out.""I think it's pretty redneck myself," he said, laughing. "But I'm a redneck anyway, so." The couple plans to honeymoon Monday and Tuesday, but then it's back to work.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Let the Games Begin
The Summer Olympics are about to start in Beijing, China and I could not be more excited (well, I could be more excited if these were the Winter Olympics - I lived in Lake Placid and attended the 1980 Winter Olympics, so I am biased). I am a big fan of the Olympics, and I am definitely one of those people who is glued to the tv for the two weeks of coverage. They have lost a little something for me since the Cold War ended (there doesn't seem to be the same us vs. them, democracy vs. communism, good vs. evil mentality that gave the Olympics of my youth so much cache, but since I'm a bigger fan of world peace than I am the Olympics, we'll chalk that up as a sacrifice worth making). And they have also lost a little something since professional athletes are permitted to compete (we'll never have another Miracle on Ice moment again, no matter how much NBC wants to shove the possibility down our throats every four years).
But, all in all, I am still a big fan - I enjoy learning about the host city and the athlete stories, which are always compelling. But to truly enjoy the Olympic watching experience, I need three things: 1) a sport I have barely heard of and know next to nothing about; 2) subjective judging; and 3) a useless, hopelessly misguided opinion about said sport. because there is no better way to spend two weeks every four years than pontificating about sports I know nothing about. Come on, don't you love that? That is easily the best part of the Olympics - watching say, diving, and becoming an instant critic/commentator/judge. During the three years and 50 weeks between Olympic competitions I know three things about diving: it involves a diving board (or platform if you want to get technical), you land in water, and you try not to make a splash. That's what I know. On top of that, I am a particularly lousy diver - I can't do a twist, a flip, or a backward dive - hell, I can barely pull off a reasonable cannonball - but during the two weeks of the Olympics, this is a fair assessment of my reaction during the Olympic diving competition: "Oh my God what a lousy pike, she'll lose points for that for sure! And that inward one and a half - pathetic." Isn't that the best?! And I know I'm far from alone - if it is a subjective competition, everyone who watches is going to have an (useless) opinion. Watching the running or swimming sports is too easy, the guy who runs or swims the fastest wins - where's the fun in that for the viewer? No sir, give me the 40 pound fourteen year old on the balance beam, or the Chinese diver who can spin and flip 812 times before hitting the water like a raindrop, because then i get to be a judge too.
The one trend I am not liking with Olympics is the invasion of sports I actually follow (or have at least heard of). Where is the fun in that? The Olympic experience is not about tennis, softball, baseball, and soccer. These are sports with professional leagues, they do not need the Olympics to survive. And we watch them all the time - what in the world is the difference between U.S. Open tennis and Olympic tennis? Nothing. To be a true Olympic sport, it has to be one of two things A) obscure to the point of ridiculousness (is that a word?), or B) a 'lon sport.
Sports that qualify under the former include any activity where your reaction the first time it was described to you was - "What?! That's a sport?? You're kidding?" Examples of which include synchronized swimming, synchronized diving (synchronized anything really), rhythmic gymnastics, bobsled, luge, and ice dancing. these are the sports that depend on the Olympics for their existence because no one is going to pay attention to them otherwise. And it also gives obscure champions of said sports a paycheck for two weeks every four years because who the heck else is going to accurately describe what just happened? "Good evening, and welcome to NBC's continuing Olympic coverage of synchronized swimming. I'm your host, Chet Hardguy, and I'm joined by three-time National Synchronized Swimming Champion Sally Loser, who is on leave from her job as a Duluth YMCA swimming director to explain just what the hell is going on here."
Sports that qualify under the latter need no introduction because they are the heart and soul of any Olympics - your 'lon sports: decathlon, heptathlon, biathlon, pentathlon. What could possibly be better than combining random sports into the same competition and watching the results. "have an idea, let's go cross-country ski twenty miles and fire guns at targets!" "No wait, let's throw a cannonball, jump over hurdles, try to leap over a big bar, see who can jump the farthest, and run a half marathon!" "You guys are idiots! Let's do all that, but also throw a giant spear and take a stick as long as a bus and hurl ourselves over a really, really high bar!" "Well, you guys can do what you want, but I am going to do ten really obscure things, I am going to do none of them very well, and when I'm done, I will declare myself the greatest athlete alive!!"
Man, I love the Olympics!
But, all in all, I am still a big fan - I enjoy learning about the host city and the athlete stories, which are always compelling. But to truly enjoy the Olympic watching experience, I need three things: 1) a sport I have barely heard of and know next to nothing about; 2) subjective judging; and 3) a useless, hopelessly misguided opinion about said sport. because there is no better way to spend two weeks every four years than pontificating about sports I know nothing about. Come on, don't you love that? That is easily the best part of the Olympics - watching say, diving, and becoming an instant critic/commentator/judge. During the three years and 50 weeks between Olympic competitions I know three things about diving: it involves a diving board (or platform if you want to get technical), you land in water, and you try not to make a splash. That's what I know. On top of that, I am a particularly lousy diver - I can't do a twist, a flip, or a backward dive - hell, I can barely pull off a reasonable cannonball - but during the two weeks of the Olympics, this is a fair assessment of my reaction during the Olympic diving competition: "Oh my God what a lousy pike, she'll lose points for that for sure! And that inward one and a half - pathetic." Isn't that the best?! And I know I'm far from alone - if it is a subjective competition, everyone who watches is going to have an (useless) opinion. Watching the running or swimming sports is too easy, the guy who runs or swims the fastest wins - where's the fun in that for the viewer? No sir, give me the 40 pound fourteen year old on the balance beam, or the Chinese diver who can spin and flip 812 times before hitting the water like a raindrop, because then i get to be a judge too.
The one trend I am not liking with Olympics is the invasion of sports I actually follow (or have at least heard of). Where is the fun in that? The Olympic experience is not about tennis, softball, baseball, and soccer. These are sports with professional leagues, they do not need the Olympics to survive. And we watch them all the time - what in the world is the difference between U.S. Open tennis and Olympic tennis? Nothing. To be a true Olympic sport, it has to be one of two things A) obscure to the point of ridiculousness (is that a word?), or B) a 'lon sport.
Sports that qualify under the former include any activity where your reaction the first time it was described to you was - "What?! That's a sport?? You're kidding?" Examples of which include synchronized swimming, synchronized diving (synchronized anything really), rhythmic gymnastics, bobsled, luge, and ice dancing. these are the sports that depend on the Olympics for their existence because no one is going to pay attention to them otherwise. And it also gives obscure champions of said sports a paycheck for two weeks every four years because who the heck else is going to accurately describe what just happened? "Good evening, and welcome to NBC's continuing Olympic coverage of synchronized swimming. I'm your host, Chet Hardguy, and I'm joined by three-time National Synchronized Swimming Champion Sally Loser, who is on leave from her job as a Duluth YMCA swimming director to explain just what the hell is going on here."
Sports that qualify under the latter need no introduction because they are the heart and soul of any Olympics - your 'lon sports: decathlon, heptathlon, biathlon, pentathlon. What could possibly be better than combining random sports into the same competition and watching the results. "have an idea, let's go cross-country ski twenty miles and fire guns at targets!" "No wait, let's throw a cannonball, jump over hurdles, try to leap over a big bar, see who can jump the farthest, and run a half marathon!" "You guys are idiots! Let's do all that, but also throw a giant spear and take a stick as long as a bus and hurl ourselves over a really, really high bar!" "Well, you guys can do what you want, but I am going to do ten really obscure things, I am going to do none of them very well, and when I'm done, I will declare myself the greatest athlete alive!!"
Man, I love the Olympics!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Just Wondering...
...if you and one other person order Chinese food (delivery) and they deliver the food and include four sets of chopsticks, you've ordered too much food, right?
...why there are no bouncy seats for adults - they look ridiculously comfortable, and all babies seem to love them - I know I would put a giant one in my living room and never leave the house.
...if you are disgruntled when you are upset, are you gruntled when you are happy?
...and while I'm on the subject, if something is disjointed when it is incoherent, is it jointed when it makes sense?
...why news people always say court of law when they are referring to the location of legal proceedings. Do we really need the 'of law' part? Are there other types of courts where people bring legal proceedings?
...why some adults insist on responding to a question on age, "I'm 35, but I'll be 36 next March." Really? You're 35, but you won't be 47 next year?? If you are speaking to anyone over the age of 3, I think we can drop the whole "I'm gonna be..." tag line and leave it up to the listener to do the heavy math there Einstein.
...whether I should be insulted that chambermaids fold the end of my toilet paper into a downward-facing arrow? I mean sure, we've all experienced the frustration of being unable to locate the end of the roll, so we end up spinning the roll at 40 times the speed of light hoping to dislodge the offending end piece. And yet, the whole folded arrow is a bit 'cut-off-the-crust-of-your-sandwich' kind of patronizing, no?
...how one can be 'more than happy' to do something for me? If you are more than happy to say, refill my water glass, what is your approximate level of happiness? Elated? Euphoric? Orgasmic? And why does that give you so much pleasure? I feel like I'm missing out on a really fun experience.
...how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Cause I can chuck wood and I do it quite rarely. Its not as fun as it might seem, but then again, I'm not a woodchuck. Maybe they sit quietly in a forest and stare wistfully as a lumberjack chucks piece after piece of wood. And maybe they have a single tear coming down their cheeks like the 'don't pollute' native american.
...whether native american should be capitalized?
...whether, if you capitalize a word or a city, why do you capitolize a building?
...why you raze a building you want to destroy and raise a building you want to erect?
...why 'erect' still makes me giggle? I am almost 40 for God's sake.
...why every actor does Shakespeare with a British accent, even the plays that took place outside of Britain? I'm quite sure Caesar (Roman), Hamlet (Dutch), Othello (North African), Lear (Greek) did not speak the Queen's English, so why not give a performance in an accent of their character's country?
...whether polar bears have given names to areas of land in their neighborhood or paths they regularly follow, such that they realize their world is melting into the ocean? Polar Bear #1: "Hey, how about the fishing this year down on Polar Bear Way?" (well, no one said they were going to be real original - they are polar bears after all) Polar Bear #2: Oh, you didn't hear? Polar Bear Way just fell into the ocean!" Polar Bear #1: "You are shitting me! Man, (or 'Bear') this whole freaking neighborhood is going downhill." Polar Bear #2: "You're not kidding - just last week Big Polar Bear Path just broke off and floated away."
...whether anyone else thinks about this stuff?
...or is it just me?
...why there are no bouncy seats for adults - they look ridiculously comfortable, and all babies seem to love them - I know I would put a giant one in my living room and never leave the house.
...if you are disgruntled when you are upset, are you gruntled when you are happy?
...and while I'm on the subject, if something is disjointed when it is incoherent, is it jointed when it makes sense?
...why news people always say court of law when they are referring to the location of legal proceedings. Do we really need the 'of law' part? Are there other types of courts where people bring legal proceedings?
...why some adults insist on responding to a question on age, "I'm 35, but I'll be 36 next March." Really? You're 35, but you won't be 47 next year?? If you are speaking to anyone over the age of 3, I think we can drop the whole "I'm gonna be..." tag line and leave it up to the listener to do the heavy math there Einstein.
...whether I should be insulted that chambermaids fold the end of my toilet paper into a downward-facing arrow? I mean sure, we've all experienced the frustration of being unable to locate the end of the roll, so we end up spinning the roll at 40 times the speed of light hoping to dislodge the offending end piece. And yet, the whole folded arrow is a bit 'cut-off-the-crust-of-your-sandwich' kind of patronizing, no?
...how one can be 'more than happy' to do something for me? If you are more than happy to say, refill my water glass, what is your approximate level of happiness? Elated? Euphoric? Orgasmic? And why does that give you so much pleasure? I feel like I'm missing out on a really fun experience.
...how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Cause I can chuck wood and I do it quite rarely. Its not as fun as it might seem, but then again, I'm not a woodchuck. Maybe they sit quietly in a forest and stare wistfully as a lumberjack chucks piece after piece of wood. And maybe they have a single tear coming down their cheeks like the 'don't pollute' native american.
...whether native american should be capitalized?
...whether, if you capitalize a word or a city, why do you capitolize a building?
...why you raze a building you want to destroy and raise a building you want to erect?
...why 'erect' still makes me giggle? I am almost 40 for God's sake.
...why every actor does Shakespeare with a British accent, even the plays that took place outside of Britain? I'm quite sure Caesar (Roman), Hamlet (Dutch), Othello (North African), Lear (Greek) did not speak the Queen's English, so why not give a performance in an accent of their character's country?
...whether polar bears have given names to areas of land in their neighborhood or paths they regularly follow, such that they realize their world is melting into the ocean? Polar Bear #1: "Hey, how about the fishing this year down on Polar Bear Way?" (well, no one said they were going to be real original - they are polar bears after all) Polar Bear #2: Oh, you didn't hear? Polar Bear Way just fell into the ocean!" Polar Bear #1: "You are shitting me! Man, (or 'Bear') this whole freaking neighborhood is going downhill." Polar Bear #2: "You're not kidding - just last week Big Polar Bear Path just broke off and floated away."
...whether anyone else thinks about this stuff?
...or is it just me?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Soft Generation?
I am not yet 40, but I really think I am officially old. I don't feel old. I don't look (too) old, save for a few grey hairs creeping in. And I definitely don't want to act old too often (as my wife can attest). But, I am afraid that I am inescapably old due to the fact that I keep uttering one of the the Old People Pledges of Allegiance: "Kids today are soft." "They have no idea how good they have it." And the classic, "When I was their age [insert rambling discourse on how difficult your life was in the mid '80s compared to how easy kids have it today]..." You can't claim to be young and still insist on carrying on a conversation that begins with an Old People Pledge. If you are volleying a complaint about a generation below you, you are officially old.
Now, there are varying degrees of olditude, so the mere fact that you are acknowledging that you are old doesn't put you immediately into God's Waiting Room, but it does make you old. Never once in my 20s did I utter an Old People Pledge, because I was too busy having fun and starting a career to be concerned with the teenagers coming up behind me. And in my young to mid thirties, I was frankly too sleep deprived from starting a family to care what was going on in the generations below me. No, it wasn't until my late thirties that I started to even notice the generations below me, and a few more years after that to utter an Old People Pledge. But now that I'm here, well, you have to jump in with both feet, right? So I'll go ahead and say it: I can't freaking believe that many colleges are not requiring SAT scores of their applicants. Are you kidding me?? One of the most nerve-racking, nausea-inducing, your-whole-future-may-hang-in-the-balance-if-you-blow-this-test moments of my youth will now be a tape deck, or VCR to these kids - something they know existed a while ago, but they can't quite remember why. I mean, when I was there age (Pledge!) we spent the better part of two years taking the PSATs, preparation courses, pre-tests, and then took the SATs, usually multiple times. It was a right of passage to completely bomb one of the exams to such an extent that you convinced yourself you'd never get into college and you'd be digging ditches for the rest of your life. And the Rolodex of excuses you created for discussions with your friends, parents, teachers, and college admission directors was a work of art that you carefully honed and edited, and memorized: "Well, I really concentrated on Verbal this time, so my Math should really come up big time when I take it again." Or, "I'm not very good at standardized tests." Or, "I was absolutely killing it, and I ran out of time." And then there were the horror stories of the kid that so and so knew who screwed up the answer key and all of his answers were off by one line. Terrifying for a 17 year old with college ambitions. And so what if it was biased and didn't really accurately test how smart you were! that's not the point! the point is, it was a rite of passage that everyone had to go through and it either broke you or made you stronger. And now? Nada.
It is bad enough that there is no dodge ball in gym class anymore, no jungle gyms on the playground, and every organized sport up until junior high ends in a freaking tie, so none of the kids will ever have to lose at anything (God forbid!), now we'll soon have an entire generation who doesn't know the pressure of the SATs. Now wonder we are getting our butts kicked by economies all over the world! Plus, where else except an SAT prep course will you learn cool words that sound great, but you can never pull off in normal conversation? Words like ennui (melancholy), eschewed (abstained), and cadre (basic unit). If the next generation is happy at another friend's misfortune, they will never know they are experiencing schadenfreude, and a great story-teller will be just that, he will not be a raconteur. Yes, the SAT will slide off into history like so much detritus. And me? Well, I'll be on a train that leaves New York at 3:00pm traveling 50 m.p.h., arriving in Chicago at a time no teenager will be able to figure out.
Now, there are varying degrees of olditude, so the mere fact that you are acknowledging that you are old doesn't put you immediately into God's Waiting Room, but it does make you old. Never once in my 20s did I utter an Old People Pledge, because I was too busy having fun and starting a career to be concerned with the teenagers coming up behind me. And in my young to mid thirties, I was frankly too sleep deprived from starting a family to care what was going on in the generations below me. No, it wasn't until my late thirties that I started to even notice the generations below me, and a few more years after that to utter an Old People Pledge. But now that I'm here, well, you have to jump in with both feet, right? So I'll go ahead and say it: I can't freaking believe that many colleges are not requiring SAT scores of their applicants. Are you kidding me?? One of the most nerve-racking, nausea-inducing, your-whole-future-may-hang-in-the-balance-if-you-blow-this-test moments of my youth will now be a tape deck, or VCR to these kids - something they know existed a while ago, but they can't quite remember why. I mean, when I was there age (Pledge!) we spent the better part of two years taking the PSATs, preparation courses, pre-tests, and then took the SATs, usually multiple times. It was a right of passage to completely bomb one of the exams to such an extent that you convinced yourself you'd never get into college and you'd be digging ditches for the rest of your life. And the Rolodex of excuses you created for discussions with your friends, parents, teachers, and college admission directors was a work of art that you carefully honed and edited, and memorized: "Well, I really concentrated on Verbal this time, so my Math should really come up big time when I take it again." Or, "I'm not very good at standardized tests." Or, "I was absolutely killing it, and I ran out of time." And then there were the horror stories of the kid that so and so knew who screwed up the answer key and all of his answers were off by one line. Terrifying for a 17 year old with college ambitions. And so what if it was biased and didn't really accurately test how smart you were! that's not the point! the point is, it was a rite of passage that everyone had to go through and it either broke you or made you stronger. And now? Nada.
It is bad enough that there is no dodge ball in gym class anymore, no jungle gyms on the playground, and every organized sport up until junior high ends in a freaking tie, so none of the kids will ever have to lose at anything (God forbid!), now we'll soon have an entire generation who doesn't know the pressure of the SATs. Now wonder we are getting our butts kicked by economies all over the world! Plus, where else except an SAT prep course will you learn cool words that sound great, but you can never pull off in normal conversation? Words like ennui (melancholy), eschewed (abstained), and cadre (basic unit). If the next generation is happy at another friend's misfortune, they will never know they are experiencing schadenfreude, and a great story-teller will be just that, he will not be a raconteur. Yes, the SAT will slide off into history like so much detritus. And me? Well, I'll be on a train that leaves New York at 3:00pm traveling 50 m.p.h., arriving in Chicago at a time no teenager will be able to figure out.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Parental Guilt
So our youngest daughter came home from nursery school the other day with one of those handprint/poem thingys that they love to spring on you every year. Now, the kids have each had fantastic teachers over the years, so I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it is a wee bit presumptuous of a teacher to send home parenting advice in the form of a four-year old's art project, don't you think? Like I need any more people in my life laying a guilt trip on me. All of a sudden I am being told what I can be upset at my kids about? I have an idea - maybe my three kids can go over to their house for a month and coat their bathroom in a healthy layer of toothpaste, and spill milk, chocolate milk, lemonade, water, juice box, maple syrup, and three unknown, random, but incredibly sticky liquids on every piece of furniture they own. Then they can find melted candy bar, gummy worms, potato chip crumbs, half eaten lollipops, and chewing gum in their car. Then, my kids can ruin their $3000 paint jobs by creating Sharpie marker 'murals' on their walls. Then my kids can each run through a field covered in dog doo and goose crap and drag that mess onto every rug and carpet in their house until the whole place smells like the backroom of a kennel in August. Then, when they are absolutely about to go ballistic, I will hand them a laminated handprint and pithy poem that says "please don't be mad at me because I'm little and I'll be big soon", and see who they try to strangle first - the kids or the idiot who handed them this freaking poem!
I love the idea that being four years old is some kind of get out of jail free card. What, being four is suddenly a license to trash my house? At what age am I allowed to be upset with them oh Ye of Infinite Patience? Does there come a point where denting my car with a tennis racket becomes a punishable offense? Or am I to look the other way for all eternity because someday they will be older and ticking me off about more important things? So kindly save the guilt trip for someone else and just send home the egg carton caterpillars. Or so help me, I'll send my four year old to your house on a 95 degree August day eating the biggest Popsicle you have ever seen in your life.
I love the idea that being four years old is some kind of get out of jail free card. What, being four is suddenly a license to trash my house? At what age am I allowed to be upset with them oh Ye of Infinite Patience? Does there come a point where denting my car with a tennis racket becomes a punishable offense? Or am I to look the other way for all eternity because someday they will be older and ticking me off about more important things? So kindly save the guilt trip for someone else and just send home the egg carton caterpillars. Or so help me, I'll send my four year old to your house on a 95 degree August day eating the biggest Popsicle you have ever seen in your life.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Requiem For a King
Well, its official, Chips and Salsa are dead. Now, for the record, I'm not talking about nachos, because nachos will be with us until the end of time due to the MCF - melted cheese factor. The MCF is a scientific theory I have developed that postulates that human beings will eat 83% of the substances on the planet if you pour melted cheese on top of them. When you throw in the BC - the bacon corollary, that percentage skyrockets to 99% - only excrement and "things found stuck to a subway platform" were eliminated. You can read all about my findings in the June issue of The Journal of Angioplasty and Coronary Disease.
But chips and salsa (sans cheese) are over as a primary food source. I don't know when it happened but I have noticed it for quite some time, yet I didn't say anything for fear of declaring a premature death (kind of like those news stories you occasionally hear about a hospital or nursing home sending some poor person off to the morgue while they were still breathing. For God's sake, how hard is it to stick a mirror under some one's nose - you don't even need medical training! But I digress.) I went to two parties this past weekend, both incredibly fun affairs (a Kentucky Derby party and a Cinco de Mayo party if you must know) and both served copious amounts of food, including (the dearly departed) chips and salsa. And, as I suspected, the chips and salsa were routinely ignored in favor of new flashier appetizers like those cheese/spinach puff things, spring rolls and dim sum, or old standbys like pigs in a blanket, chicken skewers and the cheese and cracker platter. And chips and salsa can't even hold their own against other dips, routinely getting their asses kicked by artichoke dips, sour cream and onion, crab, and its own cousin - the Mexican cheese dip (MCF at work in two of the three dips of course). Did I mention that one of the parties we went to this weekend had a Mexican theme? If you are chips and salsa and you can't even defend your home turf, what chance do you have in a non-Latino setting? Where did it all end? One minute chips and salsa were the talk of the town - a must have if you were throwing a cocktail party. Now, they sit lonely and ignored until the chips are so stale and chewy, you can blow bubbles with them, and the salsa gets that crusty green film on top from sitting untouched for so long.
I can't tell you how many times we have hosted a party and as I am cleaning up afterward (or is it afterword, I can never get that straight), I empty an entire bowl of salsa back into its container. And it goes into the back of the refrigerator with the other seven partially-full salsas until two years later when you end up cleaning out the refrigerator and you come face to face with six to ten dead salsa containers. Where have you gone Jose' DiMaggio? A nation turns its hungry eyes away from you. But the chips and salsa industry doesn't seem to mind because until now, no one has had the guts to declare them dead. So people will still keep buying them and putting them out, and stuffing them in the backs of their pantries and refrigerators, refusing to acknowledge they are gone. But I will. I will stand up and publicly mourn this first ballot Appetizer Hall of Fame inductee. Take your place in the Pantheon with the retired appetizers like Potato Skins, Pickled Eggs, and Cru-de-te (other than the carrots and broccoli). Enjoy the hereafter.
But chips and salsa (sans cheese) are over as a primary food source. I don't know when it happened but I have noticed it for quite some time, yet I didn't say anything for fear of declaring a premature death (kind of like those news stories you occasionally hear about a hospital or nursing home sending some poor person off to the morgue while they were still breathing. For God's sake, how hard is it to stick a mirror under some one's nose - you don't even need medical training! But I digress.) I went to two parties this past weekend, both incredibly fun affairs (a Kentucky Derby party and a Cinco de Mayo party if you must know) and both served copious amounts of food, including (the dearly departed) chips and salsa. And, as I suspected, the chips and salsa were routinely ignored in favor of new flashier appetizers like those cheese/spinach puff things, spring rolls and dim sum, or old standbys like pigs in a blanket, chicken skewers and the cheese and cracker platter. And chips and salsa can't even hold their own against other dips, routinely getting their asses kicked by artichoke dips, sour cream and onion, crab, and its own cousin - the Mexican cheese dip (MCF at work in two of the three dips of course). Did I mention that one of the parties we went to this weekend had a Mexican theme? If you are chips and salsa and you can't even defend your home turf, what chance do you have in a non-Latino setting? Where did it all end? One minute chips and salsa were the talk of the town - a must have if you were throwing a cocktail party. Now, they sit lonely and ignored until the chips are so stale and chewy, you can blow bubbles with them, and the salsa gets that crusty green film on top from sitting untouched for so long.
I can't tell you how many times we have hosted a party and as I am cleaning up afterward (or is it afterword, I can never get that straight), I empty an entire bowl of salsa back into its container. And it goes into the back of the refrigerator with the other seven partially-full salsas until two years later when you end up cleaning out the refrigerator and you come face to face with six to ten dead salsa containers. Where have you gone Jose' DiMaggio? A nation turns its hungry eyes away from you. But the chips and salsa industry doesn't seem to mind because until now, no one has had the guts to declare them dead. So people will still keep buying them and putting them out, and stuffing them in the backs of their pantries and refrigerators, refusing to acknowledge they are gone. But I will. I will stand up and publicly mourn this first ballot Appetizer Hall of Fame inductee. Take your place in the Pantheon with the retired appetizers like Potato Skins, Pickled Eggs, and Cru-de-te (other than the carrots and broccoli). Enjoy the hereafter.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
People I've Got My Eye On
The world is a pretty big place full of a lot of people, most of whom have annoyed me at one point or another, I think. There is no getting around it, there is just way too much time in the day and way too many people with whom you come into contact not to be completely annoyed by a whole host of people for a whole host of reasons. In fact, I was going to call this column "People I Hate", which would have been much catchier, but I had to change it because, A) when it comes right down to it, I don't hate them because, B) life is way too short to waste precious moments hating these, well, losers (or jackasses, I can't decide which), and C) there is far too much hate in the world as it is without me adding any to the pile. And when you think of it, hate is a pretty harsh word that should be reserved for reviled figures throughout history like Hitler, Pol Pot, and Barney (the purple dinosaur, not some random guy of the same name). So, I've renamed the column "people I have my eye on" (I'm too tired to capitalize it again) so I can A) come back to hate them later if my philosophy of life changes or, B) if the people on this list become any more annoying (cause let's face it, a guy can only take so much). So without further ado, here is my list of people I have my eye on:
1) The guy who uses a Latin phrase for his high school yearbook quote. Is there anyone on the planet who is more annoying that this guy? Way to stamp yourself as a pompous ass right out of the gate there sport - nowhere to go but down and you're only 18 years old. You're in the prime of your young adulthood, preparing for four great years of college, you have great song lyrics, a passage from a great book, movie quotes, and random friend moments at your finger tips, and your decision is to go with e pluribus unum or whatever? Authored by a guy who has been dead for six hundred years? Where is the logic in this idea? No one except you and three other losers can understand it, you immediately announce yourself as the aforementioned pompous ass, and twenty years later when you are showing your kids your yearbook, you will have instantaneously lost their respect forever, and you will have no idea what the quote even means. And all to prove what exactly? That you think you are smart or better than your classmates? That you studied a dead language for four years for no reason whatsoever? That you spent your high school years playing Dungeons & Dragons in your basement instead of, you know, making actual friends and stuff? That you took a cousin to your prom? I mean, if the quote is so deep and so memorable, and had such an effect on you, you might want to think about translating it into English and save yourself a lifetime of ridicule professor. What sane person - especially an eighteen year old - is going to read your yearbook quote and say to themselves, "Wow, Stan used a Latin quote for his yearbook, I'll bet that is a deep and powerful message. I had better run to him, or to a Latin teacher, or to the internet to find out what it means!" I'll save you the trouble - None. I'll also save you time and preview everyone's actual reaction: "Man, what a tool Stan is."
2) Snooty, condescending barista. First of all, 'barista' is to coffee service as 'sanitation engineer' is to garbage man - let's call a spade a spade, shall we? You pour cups of coffee for your job (you know, until that degree in philosophy or anthropology starts to pay big dividends). So the next time you go into a coffee shop to order a medium coffee with milk and this idiot looks up and announces that what you really want is a "demi-grande hazelnut Colombian blend con leche", kindly reply, "Yes, as a matter of fact that is exactly what I want and I want it extra hot so when I dump it over your head it will hopefully scald the pretentiousness right off of you". This is not open-heart surgery, or cancer research, or splitting the atom, this is grinding a bean and filtering water through it, so lose the 'tude will ya? Gracias.
3) Snooty, condescending waiters/sommeliers. See barista above. Hey, Bottle Jockey, all I want is a halfway decent wine that tastes good, that doesn't require a second mortgage to purchase. So kindly do not look at me like I have not showered in a week when I choose to ignore your recommendation of the $180 bottle of Opus One in favor of the $13 Bobby's Jo's Big Bottle of Red. Kay?
4) The guy who feels the need to shout things out at concerts and comedy shows. Dude, as hard as it is for you to wrap your little pea brain around the idea that no one is there to hear your pithy little witticisms, we have paid good money to hear the musician or comedian currently on stage. And trust me, he/she is not there to have a conversation with you, or in fact, acknowledge you in any way. And your date/girlfriend/wife/buddy is not impressed unless they too are gigantic jackasses. So, if you can go ahead and kindly keep your unfunny, inane comments to yourself, the rest of us would really, really, really appreciate it.
5) The guy who feels the need to shout things out at the movies. The Cro-Magnon man of "idiots who yell things in public places". At least the moron who shouts things out at a concert is speaking to an actual live person. You are shouting at a screen.
6) Guys with two first names like Dave Davidson, Chris Christopher, Mike Michaelson. Wait, I'm amending that because, more often than not, this is not their fault. It is the parents of people with two first names that I've got my eye on. If your last name is Thomas, and you have every single other name on the planet available to you, including any number of names you can just make up (like any Hollywood star kid's name - Apple, Rumor, Goat Cheese, for example) and you come up with Thomas again - well congratulations because you have made the top 3 of most annoying people alive. How can one even justify this? Is it stupidity? Mind numbing lack of creativity? Or is it a marquee-sized neon sign that you have just given up? Whatever it is, it couldn't be any more annoying.
7) People who don't obey the rules of 4-way stop signs. Now, as driving rules go, this has to be one of the more simple concepts because we learned it in freaking nursery school - take turns. If you go first, then I can go, then she can go, then he can go, then we start all over again. So if a four year old can master this concept, why does it seem to escape so many adults?
8) Parents who send out chain letters on behalf of their kids. Those of you who have kids know exactly what I am talking about. You go get your mail and there is a letter for one of your kids with three packs of stickers or stamps, or something sticky with glitter on them which, as we all know, is like heroin to a six year old - they absolutely can't resist it and can't walk away from it. And the letter says something to the effect of, "I have sent you these stickers, now you send this letter to ten kids and include my name and then we will both get 4,000 stickers back!!" Yay!! Listen, first of all, I don't want two stickers in my kids' hands never mind 4,000. My house already looks like the back of a Deadhead's VW bus because of the stickers already in their possession. We have stickers on refrigerators, windows, headboards, cork boards, posters, bikes, scooters, helmets, and occasionally, paper. I'm pretty all set with stickers. Second, its fine if you want to teach your child the fine art of the Ponzi scheme, but can you leave my kid out of it? If I want an Amway salesman, I'll drive to the Midwest and look for a guy with a mustache and a mullet, but I certainly don't need one under my own roof, thank you very much.
1) The guy who uses a Latin phrase for his high school yearbook quote. Is there anyone on the planet who is more annoying that this guy? Way to stamp yourself as a pompous ass right out of the gate there sport - nowhere to go but down and you're only 18 years old. You're in the prime of your young adulthood, preparing for four great years of college, you have great song lyrics, a passage from a great book, movie quotes, and random friend moments at your finger tips, and your decision is to go with e pluribus unum or whatever? Authored by a guy who has been dead for six hundred years? Where is the logic in this idea? No one except you and three other losers can understand it, you immediately announce yourself as the aforementioned pompous ass, and twenty years later when you are showing your kids your yearbook, you will have instantaneously lost their respect forever, and you will have no idea what the quote even means. And all to prove what exactly? That you think you are smart or better than your classmates? That you studied a dead language for four years for no reason whatsoever? That you spent your high school years playing Dungeons & Dragons in your basement instead of, you know, making actual friends and stuff? That you took a cousin to your prom? I mean, if the quote is so deep and so memorable, and had such an effect on you, you might want to think about translating it into English and save yourself a lifetime of ridicule professor. What sane person - especially an eighteen year old - is going to read your yearbook quote and say to themselves, "Wow, Stan used a Latin quote for his yearbook, I'll bet that is a deep and powerful message. I had better run to him, or to a Latin teacher, or to the internet to find out what it means!" I'll save you the trouble - None. I'll also save you time and preview everyone's actual reaction: "Man, what a tool Stan is."
2) Snooty, condescending barista. First of all, 'barista' is to coffee service as 'sanitation engineer' is to garbage man - let's call a spade a spade, shall we? You pour cups of coffee for your job (you know, until that degree in philosophy or anthropology starts to pay big dividends). So the next time you go into a coffee shop to order a medium coffee with milk and this idiot looks up and announces that what you really want is a "demi-grande hazelnut Colombian blend con leche", kindly reply, "Yes, as a matter of fact that is exactly what I want and I want it extra hot so when I dump it over your head it will hopefully scald the pretentiousness right off of you". This is not open-heart surgery, or cancer research, or splitting the atom, this is grinding a bean and filtering water through it, so lose the 'tude will ya? Gracias.
3) Snooty, condescending waiters/sommeliers. See barista above. Hey, Bottle Jockey, all I want is a halfway decent wine that tastes good, that doesn't require a second mortgage to purchase. So kindly do not look at me like I have not showered in a week when I choose to ignore your recommendation of the $180 bottle of Opus One in favor of the $13 Bobby's Jo's Big Bottle of Red. Kay?
4) The guy who feels the need to shout things out at concerts and comedy shows. Dude, as hard as it is for you to wrap your little pea brain around the idea that no one is there to hear your pithy little witticisms, we have paid good money to hear the musician or comedian currently on stage. And trust me, he/she is not there to have a conversation with you, or in fact, acknowledge you in any way. And your date/girlfriend/wife/buddy is not impressed unless they too are gigantic jackasses. So, if you can go ahead and kindly keep your unfunny, inane comments to yourself, the rest of us would really, really, really appreciate it.
5) The guy who feels the need to shout things out at the movies. The Cro-Magnon man of "idiots who yell things in public places". At least the moron who shouts things out at a concert is speaking to an actual live person. You are shouting at a screen.
6) Guys with two first names like Dave Davidson, Chris Christopher, Mike Michaelson. Wait, I'm amending that because, more often than not, this is not their fault. It is the parents of people with two first names that I've got my eye on. If your last name is Thomas, and you have every single other name on the planet available to you, including any number of names you can just make up (like any Hollywood star kid's name - Apple, Rumor, Goat Cheese, for example) and you come up with Thomas again - well congratulations because you have made the top 3 of most annoying people alive. How can one even justify this? Is it stupidity? Mind numbing lack of creativity? Or is it a marquee-sized neon sign that you have just given up? Whatever it is, it couldn't be any more annoying.
7) People who don't obey the rules of 4-way stop signs. Now, as driving rules go, this has to be one of the more simple concepts because we learned it in freaking nursery school - take turns. If you go first, then I can go, then she can go, then he can go, then we start all over again. So if a four year old can master this concept, why does it seem to escape so many adults?
8) Parents who send out chain letters on behalf of their kids. Those of you who have kids know exactly what I am talking about. You go get your mail and there is a letter for one of your kids with three packs of stickers or stamps, or something sticky with glitter on them which, as we all know, is like heroin to a six year old - they absolutely can't resist it and can't walk away from it. And the letter says something to the effect of, "I have sent you these stickers, now you send this letter to ten kids and include my name and then we will both get 4,000 stickers back!!" Yay!! Listen, first of all, I don't want two stickers in my kids' hands never mind 4,000. My house already looks like the back of a Deadhead's VW bus because of the stickers already in their possession. We have stickers on refrigerators, windows, headboards, cork boards, posters, bikes, scooters, helmets, and occasionally, paper. I'm pretty all set with stickers. Second, its fine if you want to teach your child the fine art of the Ponzi scheme, but can you leave my kid out of it? If I want an Amway salesman, I'll drive to the Midwest and look for a guy with a mustache and a mullet, but I certainly don't need one under my own roof, thank you very much.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Can Wii Stop Time?
I haven't posted for a while - mostly due to a very hectic travel schedule, including two weeks in Asia on business. It was a great trip both from a business perspective and because it was my first time to that part of the world, but it was a long time to be away from my family. I haven't been away from them for that long, ever, and I was struck by just how much they have changed - not that they grew so much in two weeks, but that the two-week separation from them showed me how quickly they are growing up. When I see them every day, getting dressed, getting ready for school, playing and participating in various activities, it becomes a seamless stream of events, so I rarely notice their aging. It is only upon a noteworthy event, such as a graduation or birthday that I stop to think how quickly it is going by. Being away for two weeks qualifies as such a noteworthy event because when you're a half a world away, two weeks seems like two months.
I bought the girls China dolls in, well, China, and the dolls are based on an actual queen, empress, and princess from ancient China. The girls were very excited to get them and we were talking about how they were queens and princesses, etc. and I said, "just like the Disney princesses". To which my oldest said, "I don't really like Disney processes anymore." And she said it not in a mean way, but in a matter of fact, 'that's kids' stuff' kind of way - and she may as well have hit me in the face with a baseball bat. My princess grew out of princesses? How can that be?? It was only two years ago that we were in Disney World and she was so awestruck by Cinderella that she would barely go near her for a picture! And now, two years later, no princesses? I was crushed. Who replaced my baby with an adolescent while I wasn't looking? And right after she said it I had to catch myself from screaming, "You do too still like princesses! You have to!" But, she doesn't have to, and Disney has been replaced by American Girl dolls, and computer games, and Hannah Montana concerts. And I can only look at those pictures from our trip to Disney World and wonder how two years can feel like a lifetime.
Speaking of computer games (and Hannah Montana), several of her friends now have the Wii video games system, which for the uninitiated (for example, me, until about two months ago), Wii is an interactive video game system where you actually perform the action that happens on the screen. If, for example, you are playing Wii Tennis, you swing an electronic stick as if you were swinging a real racket. And I have to tell you, this is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. I played tennis, golf, bowling, and baseball, but there are also things like Hannah Montana Dance - where you have to keep up with on-screen dancers, and Guitar Hero where you have to play the notes of songs on a fake guitar as the notes on the screen come down faster and faster. The technology is amazing - I think we're going to have to get it for the girls, but I'm holding out for Wii natural childbirth and Wii colonoscopy - anyone can play tennis.
I bought the girls China dolls in, well, China, and the dolls are based on an actual queen, empress, and princess from ancient China. The girls were very excited to get them and we were talking about how they were queens and princesses, etc. and I said, "just like the Disney princesses". To which my oldest said, "I don't really like Disney processes anymore." And she said it not in a mean way, but in a matter of fact, 'that's kids' stuff' kind of way - and she may as well have hit me in the face with a baseball bat. My princess grew out of princesses? How can that be?? It was only two years ago that we were in Disney World and she was so awestruck by Cinderella that she would barely go near her for a picture! And now, two years later, no princesses? I was crushed. Who replaced my baby with an adolescent while I wasn't looking? And right after she said it I had to catch myself from screaming, "You do too still like princesses! You have to!" But, she doesn't have to, and Disney has been replaced by American Girl dolls, and computer games, and Hannah Montana concerts. And I can only look at those pictures from our trip to Disney World and wonder how two years can feel like a lifetime.
Speaking of computer games (and Hannah Montana), several of her friends now have the Wii video games system, which for the uninitiated (for example, me, until about two months ago), Wii is an interactive video game system where you actually perform the action that happens on the screen. If, for example, you are playing Wii Tennis, you swing an electronic stick as if you were swinging a real racket. And I have to tell you, this is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. I played tennis, golf, bowling, and baseball, but there are also things like Hannah Montana Dance - where you have to keep up with on-screen dancers, and Guitar Hero where you have to play the notes of songs on a fake guitar as the notes on the screen come down faster and faster. The technology is amazing - I think we're going to have to get it for the girls, but I'm holding out for Wii natural childbirth and Wii colonoscopy - anyone can play tennis.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Valentine's Day Massacre
Well, its been about two weeks since Valentine's Day and my ribs are just now recovering from the beating I took in the card store. There were two or three women who were also shopping for cards and between them they worked me over like Wilt Chaimberlain boxing out for a rebound. Every time I went for a card on the rack I would be nudged over, stepped in front of, and outright elbowed out of the way! When you throw in the annoyed sidelong glances and frustrated sighs, I was about as welcome as Brian McNamee and a Clemens family reunion. I don't mean to generalize (ok, maybe I do), but women are like surgeons when standing at a card rack - every move is calculated, precise, and purposeful. They move around one another like they can read each other's mind, and apparently, I was completely screwing up their routine. But women have a distinct advantage at a card rack that men don't have - cards writers write all of their cards for women. That is true of most holidays and occasions, but it is especially true on Valentine's Day.
I could have been at that card rack for four days and read every single card in there, but as a man, I am left with two choices by the Card-Writers of America: a four page Shakespearean love sonnet that no man from the last 300 years would actually say out loud, or a variation on the following theme: "I am a no-good, lousy-dressing, out-of-shape, lay-about, do-nothing, loser that doesn't deserve you, but since I acknowledge that fact in a corny card once a year on a made up holiday, everything is ok." That's it, those are my two choices. I am either an effeminate, emasculated sap, or an oafish loser who depends completely on his wife for every basic need. Thanks greeting card industry for that Hobson's Choice, really appreciate your efforts here. Feeling really manly in a card store to begin with, so thanks for that final knee to the groin. Next time throw in an ax murderer theme too, and maybe a thumb-sucking imbecile, so I can branch out in my greeting card persona. Are there any normal human beings who write greeting cards? Do they really believe that guys fall into one of these two categories? I know that greeting card people pander to the type of people who find Ziggy amusingly relevant, but come on! Throw me a small bone here.
And what about the recipient of these cards? I would be completely insulted if I were a woman and received one of these cards. I want to meet (actually, maybe I don't) the woman who actually enjoys receiving the four page sappy sonnet card. First of all, the prose is throw-up inducing awful, and whoever sits around and writes it should be taken out back and beaten. And second, do the women who receive them honestly believe that the guy put any thought whatsoever into reading all of them and then picking out the throw-up inducing one that best summarizes how he feels about her? Do women actually read the card and think to themselves, "wow, he must really care about me and our relationship." Are some women really that dumb? No guy has ever read more than two lines of one of these cards. Most of it is written in tiny, flowy cursive anyway and who's eyes don't glaze over after one or two sentences of tiny, flowy cursive? No, he just picked the one that looked nice with the lace doily border and red envelope, went over to the next aisle and picked out a box of year-old heart-shaped chocolates and was out the door in 45 seconds. I guarantee you that he put more thought into his lunch order that day than he did picking out that card.
And what if a woman received a card from door number two (the "I'm and idiot" card)? If I were a woman reading this a light bulb would go off - woman thinking to herself as she's reading the card: "You know, you really are a loser. I can't believe I actually married you. I'm calling a lawyer first thing tomorrow- after I get my nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. And thanks for the chocolate, I've only been trying to lose this last ten pounds of baby weight for a year and a half, this should help."
So, if those are my two choices next year I'm going to save my ribs - and my psyche - another beating and do what any normal guy does under the circumstances: buy her a piece of jewelry and have my kids make a card.
I could have been at that card rack for four days and read every single card in there, but as a man, I am left with two choices by the Card-Writers of America: a four page Shakespearean love sonnet that no man from the last 300 years would actually say out loud, or a variation on the following theme: "I am a no-good, lousy-dressing, out-of-shape, lay-about, do-nothing, loser that doesn't deserve you, but since I acknowledge that fact in a corny card once a year on a made up holiday, everything is ok." That's it, those are my two choices. I am either an effeminate, emasculated sap, or an oafish loser who depends completely on his wife for every basic need. Thanks greeting card industry for that Hobson's Choice, really appreciate your efforts here. Feeling really manly in a card store to begin with, so thanks for that final knee to the groin. Next time throw in an ax murderer theme too, and maybe a thumb-sucking imbecile, so I can branch out in my greeting card persona. Are there any normal human beings who write greeting cards? Do they really believe that guys fall into one of these two categories? I know that greeting card people pander to the type of people who find Ziggy amusingly relevant, but come on! Throw me a small bone here.
And what about the recipient of these cards? I would be completely insulted if I were a woman and received one of these cards. I want to meet (actually, maybe I don't) the woman who actually enjoys receiving the four page sappy sonnet card. First of all, the prose is throw-up inducing awful, and whoever sits around and writes it should be taken out back and beaten. And second, do the women who receive them honestly believe that the guy put any thought whatsoever into reading all of them and then picking out the throw-up inducing one that best summarizes how he feels about her? Do women actually read the card and think to themselves, "wow, he must really care about me and our relationship." Are some women really that dumb? No guy has ever read more than two lines of one of these cards. Most of it is written in tiny, flowy cursive anyway and who's eyes don't glaze over after one or two sentences of tiny, flowy cursive? No, he just picked the one that looked nice with the lace doily border and red envelope, went over to the next aisle and picked out a box of year-old heart-shaped chocolates and was out the door in 45 seconds. I guarantee you that he put more thought into his lunch order that day than he did picking out that card.
And what if a woman received a card from door number two (the "I'm and idiot" card)? If I were a woman reading this a light bulb would go off - woman thinking to herself as she's reading the card: "You know, you really are a loser. I can't believe I actually married you. I'm calling a lawyer first thing tomorrow- after I get my nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. And thanks for the chocolate, I've only been trying to lose this last ten pounds of baby weight for a year and a half, this should help."
So, if those are my two choices next year I'm going to save my ribs - and my psyche - another beating and do what any normal guy does under the circumstances: buy her a piece of jewelry and have my kids make a card.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Heath Ledger
We here at Curtin's Corner pride ourselves at never (ok, rarely) taking a cheap shot, especially at someone who's not around to defend himself, so rest assured, this post pokes no fun at Heath Ledger. I didn't know him, I can't say for sure if I ever saw him in a movie, and I don't know much about him other than he was a good-looking Australian actor who seemed to prefer avoiding the Hollywood "scene" (actually, for this last reason alone, he was ok in my book, even though I didn't know this about him until I read the stories following his death. Call it a posthumous thumbs up). So, I will not mock the dead. I just hope he didn't commit suicide, because he seemed to have a lot going for him with an A-list movie career and a baby daughter going for him, at a minimum. (Incidentally, how is one a suicide "victim" exactly? Victim to me implies that some outside act or actor had something to do with causing your harm. If you off yourself, it occurs to me that you are not a victim at all. Yet, I digress).
But how about the reaction of the maid and the masseuse? Now there is a pair I can make fun of. I completely understand the maid not disturbing Heath (he's dead now, so I can go first name right?) when she first got there. His bedroom door is closed, he's a Hollywood actor type who may like to entertain (ahem) female guests (or male for that matter, I'm not judging - maybe "Brokeback Mountain" awoke previously slumbering tendencies), or party into the wee hours and sleep in - no problem. But, when the masseuse arrives and they finally decide to disturb him, the reaction is nothing short of comedic genius:
Maid, "Heath is not waking up!"
Masseuse, "And he's a pale blue color!"
Maid, "He doesn't appear to be breathing!!"
Masseuse, "My God, we have to call....Mary Kate Olsen!!!
Now, I am trained in CPR and First Aid (true story), but I must have been absent the day the Red Cross taught us to call Mary Kate Freaking Olsen if I encounter an unresponsive, unconscious person! Seriously, Mary Kate Olsen?? Putting aside any issues I may or may not have with the vapid, talentless, anorexic, useless Olsen twins, but if you are the maid and/or masseuse and you are in your employer's apartment, and you have found said employer unconscious, unresponsive, not breathing and blue, and your first thought is to call Mary Kate Olsen? Is this a Hollywood thing? Is she known in the industry as the "go to" person in case of emergency? Or did they scroll through his cell phone contact list and debate the merits of the people they found and decided that Mary Kate was the best of the lot? And if, so, how many names did they hit before they reached the M's (or O's for that matter)?
Maid, "What about Armando Assante? No? Brian Benson? No?, Josh Brolin?... C, D, E, F, G - how about Mel Gibson? I mean, he's Australian and likes Heath - should we call Mel?" Masseuse, Wait!! I've got it - I'm calling Mary Kate Olsen, she'll know what to do!!"
I just can't get past the fact that Mary Kate Olsen somehow ended up as their choice. And she was in Santa Monica freaking California when they called!! (Just to recap, unconscious guy, not breathing, in New York City - let's get someone in California on the horn asap!) But, I'm being petty I know, because Mary Kate Olsen completely validated their faith in her by advising them that she'd be sending...her team of four bodyguards. I can just hear an unconscious Heath now: "Mary Kate's four bodyguards are on their way? Thank God, for a second I was in real trouble here."
I mean, this was quickly becoming an idiot contest and Mary Kate somehow lost! Any normal person would have said (well, you know what any normal person would have said so I won't insult your intelligence...but just so I can complete the thought), "Hang up and call 911! Hang up and call EMS!! Hang up and call the fire department, police!!" But, no, not that emergency crisis management guru Mary Kate Olsen - she is going to send her crack team of four bodyguards over. Poor Heath didn't stand a chance if this mensa meeting was deciding his fate.
One last thought, the ultimate lesson here is - actually, the ultimate lesson is not to surround yourself with idiots - but the penultimate lesson here is that if you are famous you should always be nice to your neighbors - because if you die a tragic death and the newspaper reporters show up, your neighbors will have a lot to do with how you are remembered. Think of the power Heath's neighbors wielded in the hours after his death - they could have crushed the guy! He's not around to defend himself and a reporter sticks a microphone into the face of a disgruntled neighbor? "Well, Heath used to get his mail in a pink babydoll negligee and white thigh high stockings, but otherwise he was pretty quiet. Well, except for all of the satanic chanting, but that was only every other day."
Rest in Peace, Heath. Your fatal flaw appears to be the intelligence of the people with whom you surrounded yourself.
But how about the reaction of the maid and the masseuse? Now there is a pair I can make fun of. I completely understand the maid not disturbing Heath (he's dead now, so I can go first name right?) when she first got there. His bedroom door is closed, he's a Hollywood actor type who may like to entertain (ahem) female guests (or male for that matter, I'm not judging - maybe "Brokeback Mountain" awoke previously slumbering tendencies), or party into the wee hours and sleep in - no problem. But, when the masseuse arrives and they finally decide to disturb him, the reaction is nothing short of comedic genius:
Maid, "Heath is not waking up!"
Masseuse, "And he's a pale blue color!"
Maid, "He doesn't appear to be breathing!!"
Masseuse, "My God, we have to call....Mary Kate Olsen!!!
Now, I am trained in CPR and First Aid (true story), but I must have been absent the day the Red Cross taught us to call Mary Kate Freaking Olsen if I encounter an unresponsive, unconscious person! Seriously, Mary Kate Olsen?? Putting aside any issues I may or may not have with the vapid, talentless, anorexic, useless Olsen twins, but if you are the maid and/or masseuse and you are in your employer's apartment, and you have found said employer unconscious, unresponsive, not breathing and blue, and your first thought is to call Mary Kate Olsen? Is this a Hollywood thing? Is she known in the industry as the "go to" person in case of emergency? Or did they scroll through his cell phone contact list and debate the merits of the people they found and decided that Mary Kate was the best of the lot? And if, so, how many names did they hit before they reached the M's (or O's for that matter)?
Maid, "What about Armando Assante? No? Brian Benson? No?, Josh Brolin?... C, D, E, F, G - how about Mel Gibson? I mean, he's Australian and likes Heath - should we call Mel?" Masseuse, Wait!! I've got it - I'm calling Mary Kate Olsen, she'll know what to do!!"
I just can't get past the fact that Mary Kate Olsen somehow ended up as their choice. And she was in Santa Monica freaking California when they called!! (Just to recap, unconscious guy, not breathing, in New York City - let's get someone in California on the horn asap!) But, I'm being petty I know, because Mary Kate Olsen completely validated their faith in her by advising them that she'd be sending...her team of four bodyguards. I can just hear an unconscious Heath now: "Mary Kate's four bodyguards are on their way? Thank God, for a second I was in real trouble here."
I mean, this was quickly becoming an idiot contest and Mary Kate somehow lost! Any normal person would have said (well, you know what any normal person would have said so I won't insult your intelligence...but just so I can complete the thought), "Hang up and call 911! Hang up and call EMS!! Hang up and call the fire department, police!!" But, no, not that emergency crisis management guru Mary Kate Olsen - she is going to send her crack team of four bodyguards over. Poor Heath didn't stand a chance if this mensa meeting was deciding his fate.
One last thought, the ultimate lesson here is - actually, the ultimate lesson is not to surround yourself with idiots - but the penultimate lesson here is that if you are famous you should always be nice to your neighbors - because if you die a tragic death and the newspaper reporters show up, your neighbors will have a lot to do with how you are remembered. Think of the power Heath's neighbors wielded in the hours after his death - they could have crushed the guy! He's not around to defend himself and a reporter sticks a microphone into the face of a disgruntled neighbor? "Well, Heath used to get his mail in a pink babydoll negligee and white thigh high stockings, but otherwise he was pretty quiet. Well, except for all of the satanic chanting, but that was only every other day."
Rest in Peace, Heath. Your fatal flaw appears to be the intelligence of the people with whom you surrounded yourself.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Its Australian For Beer
One of the dangers of letting my children watch tv is their exposure to commercials. We don't let them watch anything other than Disney Channel or Nickelodian, but even on those channels they will run into a commercial or two for something other than the latest gooey art gel or Barbie Princess palace (or Barbie Laundromat, Barbie Off-Track Betting Parlor, or Barbie Oil Change Shop - I'm pretty sure that with thre girls, I have every Barbie "location" they produce). Just before Christmas, the girls saw an infomercial-type add for a Betty Crocker cake decorating kit, and they decided that it would be the perfect thing for my wife for Christmas. So they wrote it in their amended Christmas letter to Santa...a day before Christmas Eve. Now, Santa is pretty good, but he's not that good. So, in his letter back to the kids, Santa explained that this was a pretty popular gift this year, and he ran out and would have to mail the kit to Mommy. Problem solved, and I'm just glad that the local Porche dealership and jewelry store don't advertise on Disney or Nick.
But it got me thinking, why do infomercials always use Australians (or American actors with absolutely horrific Australian accent impressions)? Do people trust Australians more than a U.S. English speaker? Does it make the product sound exotic or special? Do consumers believe the products are made in Australia (because everyone knows, one could never hope to get the combo vegetable slicer/insulin pump with the "never dull" knives/hide-a-key from anywhere in the continental United States). Do the marketing companies do focus groups on how consumers react to different accents. I would love to see the "buy-ability scale" they came up with. In other words, I am dying to know from whom U.S. consumers would be most likely to buy a product, from whom they would be least likely to buy, and I want to see every rank in between. If you were a budding infomercial actor, wouldn't this be helpful knowledge? Australian? You're in - you'll likely never be out of work and you'll be a sure-fire, first ballot Infomercial Hall of Fame inductee five years after you retire. If I had to guess the bottom, I'd have to go with Middle Eastern. No offense to them (well, no offence to the ones who aren't currently trying to blow us up), but I think in this post-9/11 world, you are not going to win over the hearts and minds of Mr. and Mrs. Middle America with Achmed selling your juicer/wart remover. Next up from the bottom - given that middle America isn't too bright (the average American, not geographically) - I'd have to go with "any accent that sounds remotely Middle Eastern". So unless the product is a fallafal maker, sorry, any wanna-be infomercial actor from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan (any of your 'stans, really), Turkey, you'll have to find your acting success as extras/bad guys on "24" or as the villains in any Steven Segal movies. Next up from the bottom, French. 'Nuff said. And, of course German, because no one wants anyone screaming at them in German. Back to the top, I'd have to go with any Australian-like accents to be in a virtual second place dead heat, so "good on ya" New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa, and Zimbabwe - any company that can't find an Aussie will be on the horn to you in no time! I'd probably go with England next, but only if they speak the Queen's English and not cockney - too soccer hooligan for John Q. Public.
I have never been to Australia, but I wonder who does their infomercials? Do they value a U.S. accent, and if, so, which one? Texas drawl? Hillbilly? Minnesota? California surfer dude? (I think we can safely rule out New York and Boston, don't you?) I could all be missing my true calling - selling waffle-maker/dvd players to millions of Australians. If you'll excuse me, I have to go find an infomercial agent.
But it got me thinking, why do infomercials always use Australians (or American actors with absolutely horrific Australian accent impressions)? Do people trust Australians more than a U.S. English speaker? Does it make the product sound exotic or special? Do consumers believe the products are made in Australia (because everyone knows, one could never hope to get the combo vegetable slicer/insulin pump with the "never dull" knives/hide-a-key from anywhere in the continental United States). Do the marketing companies do focus groups on how consumers react to different accents. I would love to see the "buy-ability scale" they came up with. In other words, I am dying to know from whom U.S. consumers would be most likely to buy a product, from whom they would be least likely to buy, and I want to see every rank in between. If you were a budding infomercial actor, wouldn't this be helpful knowledge? Australian? You're in - you'll likely never be out of work and you'll be a sure-fire, first ballot Infomercial Hall of Fame inductee five years after you retire. If I had to guess the bottom, I'd have to go with Middle Eastern. No offense to them (well, no offence to the ones who aren't currently trying to blow us up), but I think in this post-9/11 world, you are not going to win over the hearts and minds of Mr. and Mrs. Middle America with Achmed selling your juicer/wart remover. Next up from the bottom - given that middle America isn't too bright (the average American, not geographically) - I'd have to go with "any accent that sounds remotely Middle Eastern". So unless the product is a fallafal maker, sorry, any wanna-be infomercial actor from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan (any of your 'stans, really), Turkey, you'll have to find your acting success as extras/bad guys on "24" or as the villains in any Steven Segal movies. Next up from the bottom, French. 'Nuff said. And, of course German, because no one wants anyone screaming at them in German. Back to the top, I'd have to go with any Australian-like accents to be in a virtual second place dead heat, so "good on ya" New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa, and Zimbabwe - any company that can't find an Aussie will be on the horn to you in no time! I'd probably go with England next, but only if they speak the Queen's English and not cockney - too soccer hooligan for John Q. Public.
I have never been to Australia, but I wonder who does their infomercials? Do they value a U.S. accent, and if, so, which one? Texas drawl? Hillbilly? Minnesota? California surfer dude? (I think we can safely rule out New York and Boston, don't you?) I could all be missing my true calling - selling waffle-maker/dvd players to millions of Australians. If you'll excuse me, I have to go find an infomercial agent.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Christmas Letter 2007 - Erratum
My sister noticed a reference to a wonderful 2006 and best wishes for 2007 in my Christmas Letter, and I apologize - I had no idea it was 2007, I must have blacked out for a while. No, seriously, unintentional mistakes in my Christmas Letters are like a "Where's Waldo" - there's always at least one, you just have to look for it.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Christmas Letter 2007
So I was doing a bit of online Christmas shopping the other day and I had to fill out my billing/shipping information, and after ‘name’ there was a space for ‘Alias’ (true story). And sure, I probably shouldn’t have been shopping for that sawed-off shotgun on-line, but hey, I’m a busy guy! Seriously, Alias? I think we have finally reached the point at which on-line retailers are asking for a bit too much information. But, who am I to question the retail industry? So, greetings from Paul, a.k.a. Pauly, Paul Sean, Daddy, Rod, Boon, Spider, Curtin, Curty, Benny the Nose, Nicky the Scar, Sweetie, Lovey, Tennessee Slim, Ace, Drapes, The Boston Strangler, the Fonz, and Mordicai “Three Fingers” Brown. Welcome to the Curtin Compound – Official Home of the Curtin Christmas Letter 2007!
Actually, now that our Julia (now 6) is taking an art class, welcome to the four square feet of our house not currently occupied by her art projects. Wow. And we thought she churned out a lot of art projects on her own (for further discussion of said topic, please see Christmas Letter 2006 on my blog at http://pscurtin.blogspot.com/ and, for the uninitiated, for every Curtin Christmas Letter since they began ‘lo these many years ago - as well as other inane musings from a frustrated writer). Kat swears to me that this art class is only once per week, but a six year old girl cannot possibly churn out this much shi…stuff while working for an hour, one day per week. I think she is secretly running a sweatshop of four and five year old art students, and she slaps a “Julia” label on their work and brings it home (hey, it works for Nike). And she doesn’t bring these projects home piecemeal (or, ‘one-at-a-time’ for the idiots reading this Letter), instead, once every month, she comes home with a garbage bag (Irony Alert!) full of that month’s work. And we have to sit in the den while she “reveals” her projects. Meanwhile, I am knee-deep in glitter, paper, wood, Styrofoam, and tissue paper. You wanna do something about global warming, go after the art teachers – there can’t be a tree left on this planet because they have all been turned into paper and wood projects that now reside in my house. I’m thinking of starting a rainforest in my basement. OK, that being said, she is sooo proud of herself during these art shows that we can’t even stand it. She is a sweet, happy, sensitive, precocious (again, ‘bright’ or ‘inventive’ for the idiots) little girl, and a joy to be around. She still loves her Irish Step Dancing, skiing, soccer, and yes, art class, and has proven to be a wonderful first grade student.
Her sister Emma meanwhile, is now 8 and streaking toward double digits and (GASP!) pre-teenage years at light speed. Over my strenuous objections (which gives you a little window into how effective my objections are in my house, strenuous or otherwise) Kat took Emma to her first concert this year – the American Idol Tour. She had such a good time that she quit school, moved out, bought a VW bus, painted it rainbow, and follows the Idol Tour, supporting herself by selling organic grilled cheeses to the other “Idolheads”. OK, actually, that didn’t really happen, but it was one of the irrational thoughts that went through my head when I found out my baby girl was going to her first concert. Emma continues to amaze us with her maturity, intelligence, and grace. She is an honor student in third grade and she loves her Irish Step Dancing, skiing, soccer, lacrosse, and Theatre group (the Fall performance found her as a woodland mobster – youse got a problem wit that? - in a modern adaptation of The Tortoise and the Hare called, “Put Your Money on the Bunny”. Meanwhile, I lost a cool five grand because I thought the freaking rabbit was winning this time).
As for our youngest daughter, well, let’s just say that Tropical Storm Annie has increased in strength over the Atlantic Ocean, and is now Hurricane Annie – and she’s bearing down on the coast of Connecticut. Shutter the windows and hide the valuables for the love of God! Annie is three and a half and, quite frankly, I can’t do her justice in print. But, since that is the only medium currently available to me, here goes: Trouble. Also, dangerous. And while we’re here: strong-willed, stubborn, train wreck, cute as they come, dress-wearing (always), necklace wearing (always), glitter shoes wearing (always), tiara-wearing (as often as we let her get away with), smart as a whip, hug-loving, cuddle-loving, piercing blue eyes, behind which only the bravest dare tread. If you think of the most frustrating thing you can think of, she is there. If you think of the most wonderful thing you can imagine, she is there too. I need her to grow up tomorrow, and I need her to stay three forever. She’s incredible. She’s Annie – and God help the guys that will one day (faaaaaar off in the distance) try to court her. Oh, and she started Irish Step dancing this year – and the third kid is free!! (With four you get an egg roll, but we’re all done).
Kat turned 40 this year. I have no additional story, I just like writing that.
OK, actually, in honor of her 40th, I bankrupted our family…I mean I threw her an amazing party under a big tent in the yard of our dear friends the Elys. It was an incredible night and she looked gorgeous (Redundant Alert!). In fact, it went so well that we will be holding each of the girls wedding receptions under tents in the Ely front yard – thanks Gina and Alex! Kat continues to be the best thing that ever happened to me and she shows no signs of regretting our 11 years of marriage (but the nightly sobbing into her pillow arouses a bit of suspicion). We had another wonderful year watching the girls grow, and going on great vacations thanks to the generosity of our relatives and friends. Two(!) family reunions (McMahon and Curtin – no drinking going on there!); skiing in Vermont with our Hayes cousins (lousy snow, great company!); Sea Island in the spring (thanks John and Kate!); Marthas Vineyard in the summer (thanks Matt and Kathy! and Pat and Bob!); our annual pilgrimage to the Saratoga racetrack (thanks Vineyards! – Andy tried to run into a police horse, but they made up over a couple of $300 bottles of wine – long story, but funny!). And I had to save a spot once again in the Letter to thank our dear friends the Fords for another amazing vacation, this time to Costa Rica (and a special Curtin Letter shout out to our new amigos the Graves, Cox’, Bowlins, Rocchios, Kleins, Lacys – what an amazing trip!) Costa Rica is unlike anywhere we have ever been – pretty much all rain forest with little villages carved out. It is lush and beautiful, and we spent a lot of time hiking and taking zip line canopy tours, and taking an incredible ATV tour of the rain forest. One word of caution, we went during rainy season and Costa Rica takes its rainy season quite seriously apparently – picture seven straight days of wading through chest-deep water while someone constantly sprays you with a fire hose, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how we spent our time outdoors in Costa Rica. But the company, the food, the drinks, and the location were spectacular so we had the time of our lives – and we dried off eventually.
As for me, well, what do I have to complain about? I have my health, the best family (all of you), world-class friends (all of you), a nice house in the world’s best town, the game-winning goal that won my men’s-league hockey team the league Championship (go Lobsters!), and a birdie on my first hole on Pinehurst #2 in September – I continue to have it all.
We hope that 2007 was great for you and that 2008 will be even better. We hope that Santa finds your house. We hope you made it all the way through this letter.
Actually, now that our Julia (now 6) is taking an art class, welcome to the four square feet of our house not currently occupied by her art projects. Wow. And we thought she churned out a lot of art projects on her own (for further discussion of said topic, please see Christmas Letter 2006 on my blog at http://pscurtin.blogspot.com/ and, for the uninitiated, for every Curtin Christmas Letter since they began ‘lo these many years ago - as well as other inane musings from a frustrated writer). Kat swears to me that this art class is only once per week, but a six year old girl cannot possibly churn out this much shi…stuff while working for an hour, one day per week. I think she is secretly running a sweatshop of four and five year old art students, and she slaps a “Julia” label on their work and brings it home (hey, it works for Nike). And she doesn’t bring these projects home piecemeal (or, ‘one-at-a-time’ for the idiots reading this Letter), instead, once every month, she comes home with a garbage bag (Irony Alert!) full of that month’s work. And we have to sit in the den while she “reveals” her projects. Meanwhile, I am knee-deep in glitter, paper, wood, Styrofoam, and tissue paper. You wanna do something about global warming, go after the art teachers – there can’t be a tree left on this planet because they have all been turned into paper and wood projects that now reside in my house. I’m thinking of starting a rainforest in my basement. OK, that being said, she is sooo proud of herself during these art shows that we can’t even stand it. She is a sweet, happy, sensitive, precocious (again, ‘bright’ or ‘inventive’ for the idiots) little girl, and a joy to be around. She still loves her Irish Step Dancing, skiing, soccer, and yes, art class, and has proven to be a wonderful first grade student.
Her sister Emma meanwhile, is now 8 and streaking toward double digits and (GASP!) pre-teenage years at light speed. Over my strenuous objections (which gives you a little window into how effective my objections are in my house, strenuous or otherwise) Kat took Emma to her first concert this year – the American Idol Tour. She had such a good time that she quit school, moved out, bought a VW bus, painted it rainbow, and follows the Idol Tour, supporting herself by selling organic grilled cheeses to the other “Idolheads”. OK, actually, that didn’t really happen, but it was one of the irrational thoughts that went through my head when I found out my baby girl was going to her first concert. Emma continues to amaze us with her maturity, intelligence, and grace. She is an honor student in third grade and she loves her Irish Step Dancing, skiing, soccer, lacrosse, and Theatre group (the Fall performance found her as a woodland mobster – youse got a problem wit that? - in a modern adaptation of The Tortoise and the Hare called, “Put Your Money on the Bunny”. Meanwhile, I lost a cool five grand because I thought the freaking rabbit was winning this time).
As for our youngest daughter, well, let’s just say that Tropical Storm Annie has increased in strength over the Atlantic Ocean, and is now Hurricane Annie – and she’s bearing down on the coast of Connecticut. Shutter the windows and hide the valuables for the love of God! Annie is three and a half and, quite frankly, I can’t do her justice in print. But, since that is the only medium currently available to me, here goes: Trouble. Also, dangerous. And while we’re here: strong-willed, stubborn, train wreck, cute as they come, dress-wearing (always), necklace wearing (always), glitter shoes wearing (always), tiara-wearing (as often as we let her get away with), smart as a whip, hug-loving, cuddle-loving, piercing blue eyes, behind which only the bravest dare tread. If you think of the most frustrating thing you can think of, she is there. If you think of the most wonderful thing you can imagine, she is there too. I need her to grow up tomorrow, and I need her to stay three forever. She’s incredible. She’s Annie – and God help the guys that will one day (faaaaaar off in the distance) try to court her. Oh, and she started Irish Step dancing this year – and the third kid is free!! (With four you get an egg roll, but we’re all done).
Kat turned 40 this year. I have no additional story, I just like writing that.
OK, actually, in honor of her 40th, I bankrupted our family…I mean I threw her an amazing party under a big tent in the yard of our dear friends the Elys. It was an incredible night and she looked gorgeous (Redundant Alert!). In fact, it went so well that we will be holding each of the girls wedding receptions under tents in the Ely front yard – thanks Gina and Alex! Kat continues to be the best thing that ever happened to me and she shows no signs of regretting our 11 years of marriage (but the nightly sobbing into her pillow arouses a bit of suspicion). We had another wonderful year watching the girls grow, and going on great vacations thanks to the generosity of our relatives and friends. Two(!) family reunions (McMahon and Curtin – no drinking going on there!); skiing in Vermont with our Hayes cousins (lousy snow, great company!); Sea Island in the spring (thanks John and Kate!); Marthas Vineyard in the summer (thanks Matt and Kathy! and Pat and Bob!); our annual pilgrimage to the Saratoga racetrack (thanks Vineyards! – Andy tried to run into a police horse, but they made up over a couple of $300 bottles of wine – long story, but funny!). And I had to save a spot once again in the Letter to thank our dear friends the Fords for another amazing vacation, this time to Costa Rica (and a special Curtin Letter shout out to our new amigos the Graves, Cox’, Bowlins, Rocchios, Kleins, Lacys – what an amazing trip!) Costa Rica is unlike anywhere we have ever been – pretty much all rain forest with little villages carved out. It is lush and beautiful, and we spent a lot of time hiking and taking zip line canopy tours, and taking an incredible ATV tour of the rain forest. One word of caution, we went during rainy season and Costa Rica takes its rainy season quite seriously apparently – picture seven straight days of wading through chest-deep water while someone constantly sprays you with a fire hose, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how we spent our time outdoors in Costa Rica. But the company, the food, the drinks, and the location were spectacular so we had the time of our lives – and we dried off eventually.
As for me, well, what do I have to complain about? I have my health, the best family (all of you), world-class friends (all of you), a nice house in the world’s best town, the game-winning goal that won my men’s-league hockey team the league Championship (go Lobsters!), and a birdie on my first hole on Pinehurst #2 in September – I continue to have it all.
We hope that 2007 was great for you and that 2008 will be even better. We hope that Santa finds your house. We hope you made it all the way through this letter.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Was Grampa Joe a druggie?
As I have mentioned previously in this space, I am a movie lover (actually, I just mentioned it in the column below, penned only yesterday, but I kind of like how this sentence starts; I'm intrigued to find out what I write next). I happened to run across Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the other day - not the most recent one starring Johnny Depp (who is a tremendous actor, loved him in The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, but he seems like he's trying a bit too hard as his version of Willy), but the classic version starring the immortal Gene Wilder (quick true story - I was hitting golf balls at a local public course this Fall and who should walk over and set up right next to me...yes, Gene Wilder! Apparently he lives close by, but, I mean, come on! Blazing Saddles!!!!, Young Frankenstein!!!!, Stir Crazy!!!!, The Producers!!!!!, Willy Wonka!!! standing right next to me hitting golf balls! I was speechless. He must be pushing 70 by now, and he was a little thin, but he hit the ball pretty straight, and he was nice enough to offer me the rest of his basket of balls when he was done hitting. Which, of course I accepted if only to have the chance to speak to him for a few minutes and thank him for all of the laughter he brought me for my entire life. Very nice guy.)
Anyhoo, I have few rules in life, but one of them is that if Gene Wilder is in a movie I have just run across - especially if that movie appears on the short list above - I am watching it. So, a few nights ago when Willy Wonka came on, I was in. And maybe it was because I was overtired, or maybe I just finally saw things as they really are, but I'm pretty sure Grandpa Joe was a drug addict who manipulated Charlie into taking him to the Chocolate factory to satisfy his drug jones. Think about it, the man exhibits all of the classic signs of a drug abuser - let's take them in order:
1. He was rail thin and pasty white - the fashion industry doesn't call this look "heroin-chic" for nothing.
2. He had no job, no money, and he was a freeloader who lied in bed all day, every day. How selfish is that? When the movie starts Charlie comes home from school, and his Mother comes home from her 14-hour day doing other peoples' laundry, while these four deadbeats are lying in the only bed in the house which sits right in the middle of the biggest room. Tell me that's not exactly what a crack den looks like. Grandpa Joe freely admits that he hasn't been out of bed in twenty years, so that means that Mom is emptying bedpans as well, which must be a great job when all they eat every day is cabbage soup. And how ripe does that crew smell? I hope Mom hits them with a hose every few weeks or the smell would be unbearable!
3. he has a willing enabler in his daughter (Charlie's Mom). I used to feel sorry for Charlie's Mom because she busts her ass all day, everyday, and when whiny Charlie hits the freaking candy lotto, he goes right for Grandpa Joe to share the prize! I'd have gone bullsh_t on him if he tried that! (And while we're on the subject, people talk about Veruka Salt's sense of entitlement, but what about Charlie's? The entire first half of the movie he's whining at whoever will listen that he deserves one of the five golden tickets because it would mean more to him. Well, la-di-freaking-da, don't we have a high opinion of our self!? Four billion people in the world, but he thinks he is top 5 most deserving! Jees, Veruka got a bad wrap, in my opinion). But back to Mom, I used to feel bad for her, but she's just an enabler at this point - another clear sign of Grandpa Joe's drug abuse. I mean, what person working 14-hour days, doing all of the cooking and housework, and eating nothing but cabbage soup while trying to raise a teenager wouldn't lose it on the four grandparents after a couple of weeks, never mind twenty years! Get off your asses and go get jobs as WalMart greeters you deadbeats!
4. Grandpa exhibited clear signs of hoarding. When everyone else was asleep (and went to sleep starving, by the way), Grandpa Joe pulls another Wonka Bar out from behind his pillow for he and Charlie. Way to plot with the kid while the rest of the family starves Grandpa Joe. Classic drug-seeking behavior.
5. Grandpa Joe always had a little money stashed for "tobacco" (he tells Charlie that he used his tobacco money to get Charlie the first chocolate bar). Yeah, pull this one Joe, it plays jingle bells. A little "medicinal marijuana" is more like it.
6. When Grandpa does finally get to his feet, it is to score some quick and easy cash and prizes. Yeah, you're too sick to get out of bed for twenty years, but as soon as the kid is throwing freebies in your face, you miraculously get better?! (another example of Mom's enabling by the way).
7. As soon as he stands up, Grandpa is staggering around like he is drunk.
8. When they get into Wonka's factory, he encourages Charlie to sign his life away, just so he (Grandpa) can get into the factory: "sign away Charlie, we've got nothing to lose." Yeah, maybe you don't Grandpa, you drug addled old coot, but Charlie has his whole life in front of him.
9. As soon as the coast is clear, he convinces Charlie to steal some Fizzy Lifting Drink so Grandpa Joe could get "high". Two signs of drug seeking here: encouraging others to commit crimes on your behalf, and using the stolen substance for your own pleasure. Man, they can write drug abuser textbooks on this guy.
10. Encourages Charlie to take the everlasting gobstopper to Slugworth - or, in drug parlance - switching dealers and double-crossing your first dealer when you think he has screwed you.
And you know what? Grandpa Joe played everyone perfectly because he scored the biggest prize in the end - the factory and all its contents. I wonder how long it took for him to sell the Oompa Loompas into slavery and bankrupt the company to support his drug habit? If they did a Willy Wonka 2, Grandpa Joe would have have looked like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface.
Anyhoo, I have few rules in life, but one of them is that if Gene Wilder is in a movie I have just run across - especially if that movie appears on the short list above - I am watching it. So, a few nights ago when Willy Wonka came on, I was in. And maybe it was because I was overtired, or maybe I just finally saw things as they really are, but I'm pretty sure Grandpa Joe was a drug addict who manipulated Charlie into taking him to the Chocolate factory to satisfy his drug jones. Think about it, the man exhibits all of the classic signs of a drug abuser - let's take them in order:
1. He was rail thin and pasty white - the fashion industry doesn't call this look "heroin-chic" for nothing.
2. He had no job, no money, and he was a freeloader who lied in bed all day, every day. How selfish is that? When the movie starts Charlie comes home from school, and his Mother comes home from her 14-hour day doing other peoples' laundry, while these four deadbeats are lying in the only bed in the house which sits right in the middle of the biggest room. Tell me that's not exactly what a crack den looks like. Grandpa Joe freely admits that he hasn't been out of bed in twenty years, so that means that Mom is emptying bedpans as well, which must be a great job when all they eat every day is cabbage soup. And how ripe does that crew smell? I hope Mom hits them with a hose every few weeks or the smell would be unbearable!
3. he has a willing enabler in his daughter (Charlie's Mom). I used to feel sorry for Charlie's Mom because she busts her ass all day, everyday, and when whiny Charlie hits the freaking candy lotto, he goes right for Grandpa Joe to share the prize! I'd have gone bullsh_t on him if he tried that! (And while we're on the subject, people talk about Veruka Salt's sense of entitlement, but what about Charlie's? The entire first half of the movie he's whining at whoever will listen that he deserves one of the five golden tickets because it would mean more to him. Well, la-di-freaking-da, don't we have a high opinion of our self!? Four billion people in the world, but he thinks he is top 5 most deserving! Jees, Veruka got a bad wrap, in my opinion). But back to Mom, I used to feel bad for her, but she's just an enabler at this point - another clear sign of Grandpa Joe's drug abuse. I mean, what person working 14-hour days, doing all of the cooking and housework, and eating nothing but cabbage soup while trying to raise a teenager wouldn't lose it on the four grandparents after a couple of weeks, never mind twenty years! Get off your asses and go get jobs as WalMart greeters you deadbeats!
4. Grandpa exhibited clear signs of hoarding. When everyone else was asleep (and went to sleep starving, by the way), Grandpa Joe pulls another Wonka Bar out from behind his pillow for he and Charlie. Way to plot with the kid while the rest of the family starves Grandpa Joe. Classic drug-seeking behavior.
5. Grandpa Joe always had a little money stashed for "tobacco" (he tells Charlie that he used his tobacco money to get Charlie the first chocolate bar). Yeah, pull this one Joe, it plays jingle bells. A little "medicinal marijuana" is more like it.
6. When Grandpa does finally get to his feet, it is to score some quick and easy cash and prizes. Yeah, you're too sick to get out of bed for twenty years, but as soon as the kid is throwing freebies in your face, you miraculously get better?! (another example of Mom's enabling by the way).
7. As soon as he stands up, Grandpa is staggering around like he is drunk.
8. When they get into Wonka's factory, he encourages Charlie to sign his life away, just so he (Grandpa) can get into the factory: "sign away Charlie, we've got nothing to lose." Yeah, maybe you don't Grandpa, you drug addled old coot, but Charlie has his whole life in front of him.
9. As soon as the coast is clear, he convinces Charlie to steal some Fizzy Lifting Drink so Grandpa Joe could get "high". Two signs of drug seeking here: encouraging others to commit crimes on your behalf, and using the stolen substance for your own pleasure. Man, they can write drug abuser textbooks on this guy.
10. Encourages Charlie to take the everlasting gobstopper to Slugworth - or, in drug parlance - switching dealers and double-crossing your first dealer when you think he has screwed you.
And you know what? Grandpa Joe played everyone perfectly because he scored the biggest prize in the end - the factory and all its contents. I wonder how long it took for him to sell the Oompa Loompas into slavery and bankrupt the company to support his drug habit? If they did a Willy Wonka 2, Grandpa Joe would have have looked like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Do you go to the movies?
I am a movie lover. With three kids, we hardly ever actually go to the movies anymore but with 1800 channels on our cable system now, plus pay-per-view, Netflicks, and a DVR (digital video recorder for the uninformed - kind of a built in TiVo. And if you don't know what TiVo is, well, I don't know what to tell you), we can have our choice of movies right at home. In fact, I'm pretty sure going to the movies will soon go the way of the drive-in. I still manage to see every movie I want to, and I don't have to take out a home equity loan for two tickets, a medium popcorn and two bottles of water. (But, I really need to buy a fake movie theatre butter machine, because that is the only reason to go to the movies in a theatre anymore. A few pumps of that stuff and you have enough processed fat and chemicals to kill a horse and, of course, you need the equivalent of two Bounty rolls of napkins to get the grease off of your hands, and most of it sticks to the first few handfuls of popcorn on the top, so eating those couple of handfuls is like cramming a butter-soaked sponge into your mouth, while the rest of the bag tastes like chalk and sand balls because its been sitting in the popcorn-display-window-thingy since the first Jaws movie came out, but I defy you to find me something quite so delicious. But I digress.) Nor do I have to listen to five cell phone conversations as I try to watch the movie. Or stand up nine times because the idiot in the middle of the row feels the need to leave the theatre every five seconds. Or miss a key part of the movie because idiot #2 can't remember where he was sitting and stands in the aisle (right in my line of sight) for twenty minutes while he looks around. Or, the newborn the idiot couple (we'll call them #3 and #4 and give the kid a pass) brought asleep in a car seat baby bucket decides to wake up and scream (and idiots 3 and 4 are somehow shocked by this). Or if (read: when) my lovely wife (if you think for one second I'm calling her an idiot, you haven't been paying attention) has a question about the plot, I can pause the movie so we can chat while not missing any of the action. Yes, watching at home is a much more enjoyable experience. And I used to lament not seeing the next big blockbuster right away, so as not to be behind the times or out of the loop on the next great movie discussion, but I have found that pretty much all of our friends have young kids and they are in the same boat as we are. In fact, just last weekend we were talking about "Knocked Up" (very, very funny by the way), and all of us were talking about it as if the movie had just come out. But, it had been in the movie theatre six months before - we were only talking about it now because it was finally on cable, so we all finally saw it. So, if you can deal with the six month lag (and the aforementioned lack of movie popcorn butter, watching movies at home is quite a pleasant experience. The only downside to at home is finding the time to watch.
Fortunately for me, I don't sleep much. Actually, that is rather problematic because I love sleep, or, at least I used to love sleep when I got it. In college - once we were Juniors and had some schedule flexibility - my roommate Mark and I would schedule all of our classes in the afternoon just so we could go out late, and sleep in, and still make all (and by all, I mean, of course most. and by most, of course I mean many. and by many, of course I mean some.) of our classes. The other guys in our apartment started calling our room the Bat Cave because we were rarely seen before noon. And it was great, but I wish I could have seen myself 20 years later (I can't believe I was in college 20 years ago, but that is a whole other column) because I would have soaked it up and enjoyed that sleep so much more. Because once you have a job and kids, the very first thing to go is sleep and, near as I can tell, you never get it back.
I am very jealous of a person who can pop right up in the morning, wide awake, ready to tackle the day. I am not that person. If it were up to me, the day would start at, oh, 11:30ish. This lack of sleep is made worse (compounded, if you will) by the fact that I have always been a night owl. I have no problem at all staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning, even if I have to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 the next morning. And its not like I have a choice - I cannot for the life of me fall asleep until 11:30-midnight even if I turned off the light and went into complete shutdown mode. I used to do this and it would compound (exacerbate, if you will) the problem because I would toss and turn and watch the time tick by wondering when I would fall asleep. So, finally, I gave up and just went with the fact that I am a night owl; that's just how I'm wired.
But, one of the advantages to being a night owl is the chance to watch a good movie - and trust me, there is always a good, cheesy, or bad but so bad its good movie somewhere on tv (I think its a law). Last night, for example, I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which happens to be one of the top 10 greatest movies of all time (along with the two Godfather movies - yes, there are only two, despite what you may have seen or heard, Caddyshack, Animal House, The Quiet Man, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Sting, any James Bond film and the Star Wars movies. OK, some of the 10 have more than one film in the series, but you get the idea.) And what's great is I can't go five days without one of these movies being shown somewhere, especially Star Wars lately.
I have been on a Star Wars roll the last six months and I'm such a junkie, I can't turn them off no matter how often I've seen them. Maybe it has something to do with the Force as a concept that fascinates me. These guys are using a mystical power to move objects, knock people/things down, speak to the dead (or at least the no-longer-with-us-but-glowing-apparition-guys). Do you remember that scene in the first (well, third, well, original) Star Wars movie when Obi Wan is speaking to Luke from beyond the grave or wherever he is? (actually, you are probably not a geek, so you likely do not remember it) Anyway, Obi Wan is telling Luke to "trust his feelings" and "use the Force". Meanwhile, he's been "dead" for days, so this is a pretty neat trick - and Obi Wan showed remarkable restraint waiting so long to speak to Luke. If I had the powers of the Force, I'd be waaay to tempted to constantly interrupt people's lives. [At the deli counter just before ordering] "Luke, have the ham and cheese, the roast beef isn't good today." [On the highway] "Luke, take the Merritt Parkway, there's an accident on 95." [On the golf course] "Luke, there's a little wind up here, I'd hit the five iron." Do you think there is an on/off switch for this sort of conversation, because it would probably get pretty annoying after a while to have some old dead guy giving you advice from the great beyond: "Paul, its 1:30 in the morning, go to sleep already."
Fortunately for me, I don't sleep much. Actually, that is rather problematic because I love sleep, or, at least I used to love sleep when I got it. In college - once we were Juniors and had some schedule flexibility - my roommate Mark and I would schedule all of our classes in the afternoon just so we could go out late, and sleep in, and still make all (and by all, I mean, of course most. and by most, of course I mean many. and by many, of course I mean some.) of our classes. The other guys in our apartment started calling our room the Bat Cave because we were rarely seen before noon. And it was great, but I wish I could have seen myself 20 years later (I can't believe I was in college 20 years ago, but that is a whole other column) because I would have soaked it up and enjoyed that sleep so much more. Because once you have a job and kids, the very first thing to go is sleep and, near as I can tell, you never get it back.
I am very jealous of a person who can pop right up in the morning, wide awake, ready to tackle the day. I am not that person. If it were up to me, the day would start at, oh, 11:30ish. This lack of sleep is made worse (compounded, if you will) by the fact that I have always been a night owl. I have no problem at all staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning, even if I have to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 the next morning. And its not like I have a choice - I cannot for the life of me fall asleep until 11:30-midnight even if I turned off the light and went into complete shutdown mode. I used to do this and it would compound (exacerbate, if you will) the problem because I would toss and turn and watch the time tick by wondering when I would fall asleep. So, finally, I gave up and just went with the fact that I am a night owl; that's just how I'm wired.
But, one of the advantages to being a night owl is the chance to watch a good movie - and trust me, there is always a good, cheesy, or bad but so bad its good movie somewhere on tv (I think its a law). Last night, for example, I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which happens to be one of the top 10 greatest movies of all time (along with the two Godfather movies - yes, there are only two, despite what you may have seen or heard, Caddyshack, Animal House, The Quiet Man, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Sting, any James Bond film and the Star Wars movies. OK, some of the 10 have more than one film in the series, but you get the idea.) And what's great is I can't go five days without one of these movies being shown somewhere, especially Star Wars lately.
I have been on a Star Wars roll the last six months and I'm such a junkie, I can't turn them off no matter how often I've seen them. Maybe it has something to do with the Force as a concept that fascinates me. These guys are using a mystical power to move objects, knock people/things down, speak to the dead (or at least the no-longer-with-us-but-glowing-apparition-guys). Do you remember that scene in the first (well, third, well, original) Star Wars movie when Obi Wan is speaking to Luke from beyond the grave or wherever he is? (actually, you are probably not a geek, so you likely do not remember it) Anyway, Obi Wan is telling Luke to "trust his feelings" and "use the Force". Meanwhile, he's been "dead" for days, so this is a pretty neat trick - and Obi Wan showed remarkable restraint waiting so long to speak to Luke. If I had the powers of the Force, I'd be waaay to tempted to constantly interrupt people's lives. [At the deli counter just before ordering] "Luke, have the ham and cheese, the roast beef isn't good today." [On the highway] "Luke, take the Merritt Parkway, there's an accident on 95." [On the golf course] "Luke, there's a little wind up here, I'd hit the five iron." Do you think there is an on/off switch for this sort of conversation, because it would probably get pretty annoying after a while to have some old dead guy giving you advice from the great beyond: "Paul, its 1:30 in the morning, go to sleep already."
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Organic Guilt
From the home office in Tallulah, Georgia, I present the Top Ten Reasons I haven't blogged in a month:
1. I was attempting to honor the Hollywood writers' strike.
2. I forgot my log in ID and password.
3. After almost a year posting, I'm fresh out of original ideas.
4. I was caught up in the passion of Hillary's ideas and I've been on the campaign trail for a month.
5. Lost the will to write after witnessing another Red Sox World Series victory.
6. The guy I'm plagiarizing my stuff from hasn't posted in a while.
7. Recovering from breast-reduction surgery.
8. Mistakenly believed the story that the Internet was passe and everyone went back to communicating face-to-face.
9. Trying to catch up on my Oprah's Book Club list.
10. I have been traveling almost constantly for the past month and this is the first time I have found time to post since my journeys began. My apologies to the four people who read this blog.
But, since I'm here, I might as well write.
Hi. How have you been? I've been well, thank you - a bit haggard after my traveling schedule, but no worse for the wear. I don't really mind travel too much - I mean, being away from my wife and kids sucks, and the work piles up on my desk, but the actual travel never really bugged me...until now. And that is because the Green Guilt Police are making it so less fun to travel. And I know, it is very un-PC to say anything against the environmental movement these days, what with Al Gore quickly becoming more influential than the Pope, but the Green Guilt Police are starting to annoy me. And don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to doing my share to help save the planet from whatever ails her - after all, I now only bathe in rainwater I collect from my gutters - sure there is all manner of sticks, mud, dirt, dead flies, and disease-carrying muck, but I am all about doing my part. But what gets me is the all-consuming, I'm-going-to-influence-every-second-of-your-life theme to this latest environmental movement that has me annoyed.
For example, I was in the San Francisco airport the other day and I was washing my hands in the men's room, and when I went to get a paper towel, the towel dispenser had the following sign on it: "Take only as many paper towels as you need - do your part to help the environment." And I read this and I was thinking a couple of things: first, what if I have really big hands, or I got them extra wet and sudsy? Are people monitoring paper towel usage to gauge the effectiveness of the sign? But mostly, I was thinking, "Damn it!!!! How did they figure us out??? What kind of geniuses are these environmentalists??? For years, I have been recruiting a counter-environmental movement with only one purpose: to slowly kill the planet by using two to three (depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels that we didn't really need. It was the perfect plan - for years I had painstakingly convinced 1/2 to 3/4 of the six billion people on the planet (hard numbers are difficult to come by, what with the birth and death rates being so varied) that the earth was becoming uninhabitable, and that paradise awaited us beyond the grave. Well, that took a lot of convincing, I don't mind telling you - the language barrier alone was positively maddening at times. Just getting the first billion took like six months. And then there were the doubting Thomases of the bunch who kept asking me if I was committed to the movement, that they had seen me using the automatic hand-dry thing on several occasions (you know, to try to throw the environmentalists off my trail), and did I really have what it took to get this done. And trying to recruit three billion people to join my fiendish plot without word leaking out? Well, let's just say that I spent more than a few nervous nights scouring the Internet for word. And then there was the training - how to surreptitiously take two to three extra paper towels (depending on ...well, you know) without being scene; when to abort a mission; how to lose a suspected tail; what to do in upscale restaurants and hotels that had linen towels (three words: toilet paper rolls). But, in the end, it was all worth it. I had successfully recruited the (approximate) number needed to destroy the world using only extra (two to three, depending on size and thickness) paper towels. Our training was impeccable. Our mission clear. In only a matter of hundreds of thousands of years (well, possibly millions, but hey, I'm an optimist) we would use two to three (again, depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels each time we used a public rest room, and I WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD, HA HA HA HA (fiendish laughter)!!!! But, damn those environmentalists, damn them to hell. How could they have learned of my plan? How could they know? Well, they may have won the battle, but we'll win the war! (in fact - and don't tell anyone you've read this - what the environmentalists don't know is that I have a back-up plan to destroy the world in only several million years: taking an extra Kleenex and throwing it away without using it - they'll never suspect it - HA, HA, HA!!!!!! Take that Al Gore!!!
1. I was attempting to honor the Hollywood writers' strike.
2. I forgot my log in ID and password.
3. After almost a year posting, I'm fresh out of original ideas.
4. I was caught up in the passion of Hillary's ideas and I've been on the campaign trail for a month.
5. Lost the will to write after witnessing another Red Sox World Series victory.
6. The guy I'm plagiarizing my stuff from hasn't posted in a while.
7. Recovering from breast-reduction surgery.
8. Mistakenly believed the story that the Internet was passe and everyone went back to communicating face-to-face.
9. Trying to catch up on my Oprah's Book Club list.
10. I have been traveling almost constantly for the past month and this is the first time I have found time to post since my journeys began. My apologies to the four people who read this blog.
But, since I'm here, I might as well write.
Hi. How have you been? I've been well, thank you - a bit haggard after my traveling schedule, but no worse for the wear. I don't really mind travel too much - I mean, being away from my wife and kids sucks, and the work piles up on my desk, but the actual travel never really bugged me...until now. And that is because the Green Guilt Police are making it so less fun to travel. And I know, it is very un-PC to say anything against the environmental movement these days, what with Al Gore quickly becoming more influential than the Pope, but the Green Guilt Police are starting to annoy me. And don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to doing my share to help save the planet from whatever ails her - after all, I now only bathe in rainwater I collect from my gutters - sure there is all manner of sticks, mud, dirt, dead flies, and disease-carrying muck, but I am all about doing my part. But what gets me is the all-consuming, I'm-going-to-influence-every-second-of-your-life theme to this latest environmental movement that has me annoyed.
For example, I was in the San Francisco airport the other day and I was washing my hands in the men's room, and when I went to get a paper towel, the towel dispenser had the following sign on it: "Take only as many paper towels as you need - do your part to help the environment." And I read this and I was thinking a couple of things: first, what if I have really big hands, or I got them extra wet and sudsy? Are people monitoring paper towel usage to gauge the effectiveness of the sign? But mostly, I was thinking, "Damn it!!!! How did they figure us out??? What kind of geniuses are these environmentalists??? For years, I have been recruiting a counter-environmental movement with only one purpose: to slowly kill the planet by using two to three (depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels that we didn't really need. It was the perfect plan - for years I had painstakingly convinced 1/2 to 3/4 of the six billion people on the planet (hard numbers are difficult to come by, what with the birth and death rates being so varied) that the earth was becoming uninhabitable, and that paradise awaited us beyond the grave. Well, that took a lot of convincing, I don't mind telling you - the language barrier alone was positively maddening at times. Just getting the first billion took like six months. And then there were the doubting Thomases of the bunch who kept asking me if I was committed to the movement, that they had seen me using the automatic hand-dry thing on several occasions (you know, to try to throw the environmentalists off my trail), and did I really have what it took to get this done. And trying to recruit three billion people to join my fiendish plot without word leaking out? Well, let's just say that I spent more than a few nervous nights scouring the Internet for word. And then there was the training - how to surreptitiously take two to three extra paper towels (depending on ...well, you know) without being scene; when to abort a mission; how to lose a suspected tail; what to do in upscale restaurants and hotels that had linen towels (three words: toilet paper rolls). But, in the end, it was all worth it. I had successfully recruited the (approximate) number needed to destroy the world using only extra (two to three, depending on size and thickness) paper towels. Our training was impeccable. Our mission clear. In only a matter of hundreds of thousands of years (well, possibly millions, but hey, I'm an optimist) we would use two to three (again, depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels each time we used a public rest room, and I WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD, HA HA HA HA (fiendish laughter)!!!! But, damn those environmentalists, damn them to hell. How could they have learned of my plan? How could they know? Well, they may have won the battle, but we'll win the war! (in fact - and don't tell anyone you've read this - what the environmentalists don't know is that I have a back-up plan to destroy the world in only several million years: taking an extra Kleenex and throwing it away without using it - they'll never suspect it - HA, HA, HA!!!!!! Take that Al Gore!!!
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Flying Bazaar
I recently took a plane trip - not an unusual occurrence in my current occupation - and I have to comment on the state of our airlines. Now, I realize I am not blazing new trails by ranting about airlines, I mean, how many "tiny bags of peanuts" jokes have you heard from comedians over the years? I have no proof, but I am quite sure that right after the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, stand up comedians stampeded to Kitty Hawk, NC to be the first one to complain about airline food. By the way, Mr. and Mrs. Wright, where were you going with naming your sons Orville and Wilbur? I don't want to offend all of you Orvilles and Wilburs reading this blog - of which there must be hundreds - but, seriously Orville and Wilbur? What was the thought process in the hospital when they were born? Mrs. Wright: "Oh honey, its a boy - what a beautiful, wonderful boy!" Mr. Wright: "He sure is a perfect, handsome boy - let's name him Wilbur!" Mrs. Wright: "OK, but promise me our next son will be Orville - we have to grab that name before someone else in the family does!" I like to think the parents were conspiring for a lifetime of inside jokes. They would just sit in the audience at school plays and recitals and science fairs and crack up when their kids' names were read out loud: "I cannot believe we named them Orville and Wilbur" (wiping tears of laughter from their eyes) "man, that never gets old!" Even today some of the names parents come up with sound like they lost some sort of bet and the punishment was naming their kid after a J Crew color or an organic vegetable: "Fennel, Shallot, come down for supper - and make sure your brother Loden washes his hands!" But I digress.
I am not one who generally complains to the customer-facing airline representatives - the counter people, the flight attendants. First of all, they have little to nothing to do with whatever my complaint happens to be - weather delays, mechanical problems, annoying person cutting his nails in the seat next to me. Second, they are not paid well enough to deal with all of the whining and complaining they already get (if I were in their shoes, I would be punching people left and right every time they tried to fit a full-sized suitcase into the overhead bin and then yelling at me when it won't fit, or asking to switch seats with fourteen people so they can sit next to their spouse, or having one last inane cell phone conversation ten minutes after they were politely asked to turn it off so we can take off). Third, I feel sorry for them because they are the face of a corporation and take all of the abuse, while the decision-makers get off Scot-free (and by the way, how did that expression start? Who is Scott and why was he freed, and why was his freedom so noteworthy that a saying was coined to memorialize said freedom?) So, unless a customer-facing person is directly responsible for my complaint, I prefer to remain silent and then write a scathing letter to the powers-that-be, who then throw my scathing letter in the circular file and have their secretary send me a form letter. But at least I have you to complain to.
Food. I understand that every airline on the planet is either in bankruptcy, fighting to avoid bankruptcy, or just emerging from bankruptcy protection, so they are all cutting corners where they can. Food service seems like the #1 choice to cut, and I am quite ok with that. If I want microwaved chicken-like glob, overcooked vegetables and a stale roll I'll stay home and eat my wife's cooking (cue the rim shot - ba-ching!) Just kidding honey - you are a wonderful cook! (she really is an incredibly good cook, but that joke was just begging to be written. Man, now I'm in trouble; I'll be eating microwave popcorn for dinner for a month! The sacrifices I make for my art...) But, now that the airlines have announced that they are no longer serving food, it has somehow given carte blanche to every idiot traveler to bring any food they want onto the plane. And a turkey sub is apparently well down of the list of these folks' culinary choices, because now, at best, the inside of the airline smells like the foodcourt at a mall and at worst it smells like the open air bazaar of some third world city. Really sir, a turkey sandwich and bag of chips wasn't going to tide you over for a few hours? You really had to get the muchu pork, fried rice, baked stuffed goat head and cabbage stew? I have to go straight to a meeting when I get off the plane and I smell like I just did a double shift on the fry-o-lator at Arby's. And everyone who brings this picnic basket-sized feast is somehow shocked - shocked - when they spill curry mustard sauce all over themselves and their carry on! Yeah buddy, the picnic table that was available to you on the last flight has somehow, inexplicably been replaced with a pulldown tray table the size of a cereal box, go figure.
Seats: Now, I'm 6' 4" (hi Meg!), so I don't have a lot of room on planes to begin with, but we are seriously at the point of airplane seats the size of my kids' car seats. I have no idea how fat people fly, because I can barely squeeze into the seat as it is and my knees are so wedged into the seat in front of me that the muchu pork guy is using my thighs to hold his drink and dessert. And the person in front of me (who is a little 5' 2" weasel and has room to stick his feet straight out in front of him and still not touch the seatback) invariably thinks there is something wrong with his recliner button, so he jams backward four hundred times giving me a total knee replacement sans anaesthetic. But that seatback had better be in the full upright position on takeoff and landing! Cause you know, if the plane is going down or up that 2 inches of angle difference really matters to your safety and well-being.
Bathrooms: I think they should be smaller. It is a tad too roomy in there, what with the 4' height and 2' width - they are a little too comfortable. I mean, I can still get in there if I bend over while leaning back and slightly to the side, while resting one foot gently upon the sink and an arm on the mirror. Which easily frees one hand at a 90 degree angle, pinned to my side to unzip, aim, control the flow and re-zip. No complaints there.
Yes, what a privilege it is to be alive in this golden age of air travel.
I am not one who generally complains to the customer-facing airline representatives - the counter people, the flight attendants. First of all, they have little to nothing to do with whatever my complaint happens to be - weather delays, mechanical problems, annoying person cutting his nails in the seat next to me. Second, they are not paid well enough to deal with all of the whining and complaining they already get (if I were in their shoes, I would be punching people left and right every time they tried to fit a full-sized suitcase into the overhead bin and then yelling at me when it won't fit, or asking to switch seats with fourteen people so they can sit next to their spouse, or having one last inane cell phone conversation ten minutes after they were politely asked to turn it off so we can take off). Third, I feel sorry for them because they are the face of a corporation and take all of the abuse, while the decision-makers get off Scot-free (and by the way, how did that expression start? Who is Scott and why was he freed, and why was his freedom so noteworthy that a saying was coined to memorialize said freedom?) So, unless a customer-facing person is directly responsible for my complaint, I prefer to remain silent and then write a scathing letter to the powers-that-be, who then throw my scathing letter in the circular file and have their secretary send me a form letter. But at least I have you to complain to.
Food. I understand that every airline on the planet is either in bankruptcy, fighting to avoid bankruptcy, or just emerging from bankruptcy protection, so they are all cutting corners where they can. Food service seems like the #1 choice to cut, and I am quite ok with that. If I want microwaved chicken-like glob, overcooked vegetables and a stale roll I'll stay home and eat my wife's cooking (cue the rim shot - ba-ching!) Just kidding honey - you are a wonderful cook! (she really is an incredibly good cook, but that joke was just begging to be written. Man, now I'm in trouble; I'll be eating microwave popcorn for dinner for a month! The sacrifices I make for my art...) But, now that the airlines have announced that they are no longer serving food, it has somehow given carte blanche to every idiot traveler to bring any food they want onto the plane. And a turkey sub is apparently well down of the list of these folks' culinary choices, because now, at best, the inside of the airline smells like the foodcourt at a mall and at worst it smells like the open air bazaar of some third world city. Really sir, a turkey sandwich and bag of chips wasn't going to tide you over for a few hours? You really had to get the muchu pork, fried rice, baked stuffed goat head and cabbage stew? I have to go straight to a meeting when I get off the plane and I smell like I just did a double shift on the fry-o-lator at Arby's. And everyone who brings this picnic basket-sized feast is somehow shocked - shocked - when they spill curry mustard sauce all over themselves and their carry on! Yeah buddy, the picnic table that was available to you on the last flight has somehow, inexplicably been replaced with a pulldown tray table the size of a cereal box, go figure.
Seats: Now, I'm 6' 4" (hi Meg!), so I don't have a lot of room on planes to begin with, but we are seriously at the point of airplane seats the size of my kids' car seats. I have no idea how fat people fly, because I can barely squeeze into the seat as it is and my knees are so wedged into the seat in front of me that the muchu pork guy is using my thighs to hold his drink and dessert. And the person in front of me (who is a little 5' 2" weasel and has room to stick his feet straight out in front of him and still not touch the seatback) invariably thinks there is something wrong with his recliner button, so he jams backward four hundred times giving me a total knee replacement sans anaesthetic. But that seatback had better be in the full upright position on takeoff and landing! Cause you know, if the plane is going down or up that 2 inches of angle difference really matters to your safety and well-being.
Bathrooms: I think they should be smaller. It is a tad too roomy in there, what with the 4' height and 2' width - they are a little too comfortable. I mean, I can still get in there if I bend over while leaning back and slightly to the side, while resting one foot gently upon the sink and an arm on the mirror. Which easily frees one hand at a 90 degree angle, pinned to my side to unzip, aim, control the flow and re-zip. No complaints there.
Yes, what a privilege it is to be alive in this golden age of air travel.
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