Going to Cell in a Hand Cart

Earlier this week I was part of a very large group of people placed in a contained space for over two hours. When we were released I was one of the few who did not feel the need to move as quickly as rats leaving the Bush White Hou…oops, I mean a sinking ship. Since I was taking a leisurely stroll to my car I was able to observe the other folks. This is my conclusion from that experience. Cigarettes have been replaced by cell phones.
I realize on first glance this seems like a dumb thing to say. Saying dumb things is something at which I excel. However, the more I think about this the more I think I’m bloody well brilliant for postulating this theory.
The first supporting detail was what I noticed Monday. Upon leaving the building a huge number of folks reached immediately for their phones. It was truly amazing to me how many people needed to talk to someone RIGHT NOW. It couldn’t wait until lunch time. It couldn’t wait until they drove to their next destination. It couldn’t even wait until the sun fully cooked away the residual air conditioning off their clothes. They had to call that very second.
That is an addiction my friends as insidious as nicotine, as hard to shake as a Lucky Strike habit, and as malicious as Marlboro mania. To put it simply… it just isn’t really a good thing for people to be that dependent on an electronic device for their happiness. Okay, so that wasn’t put simply. You get what I mean though.
The cell phone habit can do many of the same things that smoking does. The user may suddenly find himself facing a deficit in his cash flow. A two pack a day habit costs something like $40 to $50 a month. Cell phone bills can make that look like coins in sofa cushions.
As I extrapolate this theory further the parallels between cigarettes and cell phones are amazing. Cigarette packages fit perfectly into a man’s shirt pocket, so do cell phones. Cigarettes require you to use your mouth and your hands, so do cell phones. Cigarettes smolder for several minutes after you light them, so do cell phones.
A really cool cigarette smoker would keep a cigarette behind his ear as he walked around in public. A really cool cell phone user has a “hands-free” device attached to his ear as he walks around in public. Actually, both of these affectations makes me want to approach the person and very politely kick him in the shin and run away.
Back before they were outlawed throughout the land, cigarettes annoyed people in public places. Now cell phones do that. You’re sitting in a movie theater and just when the hero is deciding which wire to cut on the incendiary device planted in the basement of an orphanage filled with puppies the entire audience is treated to a tinny electronic rendition of Wild Cherry’s 1976 hit “Play That Funky Music, White Boy.” After the refrain and two choruses the yutz finally answers the incoming call. He proceeds to have a conversation, loudly. This makes everyone else in the audience want to strap an incendiary device to his Motorola, putting him out of their misery.
If you or a loved one are struggling with a cell phone addiction there may be help available. Lessons learned from watching people kick the smoking addiction could be applied to this newest scourge. Going cold turkey and flushing your cell phone down the toilet may not work for many people and it can be hard on the pipes. If a cigarette smoker can switch to a nicotine patch a cell phoner can get one which only texts. Some of the buzz without all the harsh health risks. A support group could help, but an 800 number hot line seems counter-productive.
If simpler methods fail one could turn to aversion therapy. For a smoker every time he took a puff a trained physician would administer an electric shock making the process of smoking much less pleasurable. Doing this for a cell phone addict would be much easier. They would not have to sit in a clinic. The cell phone could be wired so instead of playing an insipid song or vibrating when a call was coming in it could send 20 volts (not a commonly lethal level) into the person answering. After experiencing a few jolts like that talking to one’s BFF might be less attractive. The keypad could also be booby trapped with high voltage shocks so texting would require thumbs of asbestos.

Some things go together, some things don't

The old saying has always been, “politics makes strange bedfellows.” Well it appears business may create even odder ones. It was announced a few weeks ago the Energizer Company was going to purchase the Playtex Company. Just bringing this to your attention may be sufficient for a humor column. I am sure most people reading this have already come up with their own jokes about the Energizer Bunny and any one of many Playtex products. My work here is done…
Big companies have been buying big companies for ages. Here are some of note from the last decade or so. Exxon bought Mobile Oil and became Exxon/Mobile. Time Corporation bought Warner Communications and became Time-Warner. Then America Online bought them creating Time-Warner/AOL. These people may be stinking rich, but they are not very imaginative when it comes to naming their new companies.
This trend of just sticking the two names of the formerly separate companies together makes it easier for the general public to recognize the brands but it should not always be done. For example, if a certain diversified manufacturer purchased a particular heavy equipment manufacturer it would become Eaton-Caterpillar, which is down right unappetizing to say the least. However, if that same diversified manufacturer purchased a particular Pennsylvania company and then bought a certain insurance group it would be Eaton-Hershey-Chubb. This tells a simple story of cause and effect. If one major retailer purchased a retailer of home improvement materials it would be Target-Lowe’s, sounds like Robin Hood is trying to hit the Sheriff of Nottingham’s ankles.
There are some companies which should be able to do the hostile takeover thing simply because of their names. Pep Boys would have no trouble with La-Z-Boy, but neither of them have a chance against Manpower. Everyone who has ever used a quick hand game to decide who gets the last slice of pizza knows International Paper beats Rockwell International.
Another recent example of one company buying another is IHOP restaurants purchasing the chain of Applebee’s restaurants. These are two companies which do basically the same thing, feed hungry patrons. Yet they each bring something of benefit to the other. Applebee’s offers car side service, a wide variety of appetizers, menu items friendly to vegetarians and people trying to eat healthy. IHOP offers a dirt load of syrup.
The merger of two restaurant chains makes sense. Anyone can see them living together harmoniously, but some companies just do not go together. Can you imagine a merger of Smith and Wesson and Wesson Oil? The combined name flows off the tongue quite easily, Smith and Wesson Oil. Even though you can shoot the chicken and fry it up in one fell swoop, it is most difficult to load the bullets with your fingers covered with 100% pure vegetable oil.
Okay, maybe that example is a bit far-fetched. How about this? Phil Knight at Nike decides to buy L’Oreal. Athletic shoes and hair coloring products do not at first glance go together. However, I have seen women with such a bad dye job running away seemed like a good idea at the time. Upon closer inspection it is the snappy slogans associated with the companies which make them natural allies. Just Do It Because You’re Worth It. It even makes a complete sentence.
Slogans are very important to corporations trying to make sure they stay at the forefront of the public’s awareness. Think back. You can probably remember slogans from your early days. “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is,” is instantly recognizable to more than one generation of television watchers. As powerful as slogans are getting them mixed up can cause some real damage. So, merging companies must exercise caution.
Think of the disaster if the slogan Sonic is using to point out their restaurants are open deep into the night (Even sweeter after dark) became associated in the consumer’s mind with a different product. A product like maybe, Coppertone? People would be very confused. Or if the slogan Colgate toothpaste is using at the moment (So clean you can feel it) got mixed up with a company which sold kitty litter.
Now let’s take a moment to pick out some companies which really should merge. Taco Bell and Tums make a natural partnership. Without the existence of the one the other would take a real hit to his bottom line. Anheuser-Busch and Bayer are a match made in hang-over heaven. It may be a vicious circle but Jenny Craig being purchased by Russell Stover makes sense on many levels. Finally, for all you parents of diaper wearing children Huggies buying large chunks (no pun intended) of stock in Renuzit is a no-brainer.

Supermarketing does not always make sense

I used to believe the advertising and marketing of products was a well thought out process undertaken by intelligent and highly trained individuals. I mean look at Darren on “Bewitched”, both of them, he (they) worked hard to come up with just the right imagery. Lately, not all of the decisions of the Madison Avenue brain trust make a lot of sense to me.
The other day I took a leisurely stroll through the local supermarket. Usually, I run into the store, get the few things I have been sent for (plus something with nougat or caramel), rush to the self checkout (grumble as the guy in front of me pays using a penny jar the size of a shop vac), and then scamper out (being sure to eat the contraband candy before I get home). This time I looked around and saw many puzzling things.
I came across a selection of very healthy cereals. I read the boxes simply to pass the time. I have no interest in eating healthy cereals. This prejudice was validated the more I learned about them.
The first brand I saw was called Perky-O’s. In big letters it proudly proclaimed it was gluten free. I have no idea what gluten is so I was willing to believe I would prefer not to have it as part of any well-balanced breakfast. Then I noticed another large label saying it had thirty percent less sugar. How can something called Perky-O’s have less sugar? Perky equals sugar.
It got worse. Next I saw a cereal called Good Friends. The package featured two very happy people with their heads together smiling out at me. They were way too happy for early morning. It said it was very high fiber. I suppose if you are going to share high fiber cereal with a friend it had better be a good friend.
In order to make the ingredients sound attractive the makers of Good Friends gave them a lyrical quality. One variety said it was made of a quartet of flakes, blossoms, granola, and raisins. Blossoms? Then I remembered the lyrics to that San Francisco song from the sixties. “If you’re going to San Francisco. Be sure to wear some flowers in your teeth.”
The other variety touted a trio of flakes, twigs, and granola. It actually said twigs! Who would spend nearly five dollars to buy cereal which boasts of twigs? I can buy a knock-off brand of Froot Loops for a buck fifty and then go into my backyard and add all the twigs my little heart desires, for free. I suppose it comes in handy when the main dish supplies its own toothpicks in every spoonful. I preferred it when my breakfast featured a prize of a decoder ring or little plastic “Freakies” characters, not bits of dead tree. Somehow I think I could make several more jokes abut having twigs in cereal, but I’ll let you all play the home version while I move on.
Wait, one more. “Don’t worry, honey, the new cereal I got is fine. Its bark is worse than its bite.”
I had to get back to something I understood so I went to the regular cereal aisle. My old friends were all there: Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger, and those elf guys with the onomatopoeia names. But, wait a minute, something is not quite right. There is a new version of Rice Krispies. The box has big letters saying it is an “organic” version. This begs the question if one of the elf guys should change his name. I mean if the cereal is organic and helps your digestive system stay regular maybe the last guy should add another “O” to his name.
Every big corporation wants a piece of the action in supermarkets now. Disney has all sorts of food products. Breakfast cereals, ice cream and even Mickey Mouse lunch meat. You have to admit with the questions surrounding the manufacture of certain kinds of meat products it takes real courage to put a picture of a rodent on your package.
Disney has a lot of marketing experience but this last product has to be a mistake, Old Yeller dog food. Didn’t anybody in the pet food division see the movie? “Our dog food is specially formulated for the family pet that contracts rabies after fighting off an infected wolf to protect the children. Included in every bag - a box of tissue and a bullet!”

Where oh, where...

I didn’t grow up a dog person. We had gerbils. We had a fish tank. A fish tank with snails and fish until the snail to fish ratio got so out of hand looking into the tank was not possible due to the number of snails sliming their way across the glass. They might move slowly, but they multiply faster than a Hewlett Packard 9100B.
My wife grew up a dog person. I cannot remember all the names and breeds her family had, but she can. She had a dog when we got married. Her dog didn’t like me moving into his house.
His favorite way of punishing me was to ask to go out right when I was going to bed. He particularly liked it with wind chills hovering around Tenzing Norgay levels. He was a Shih Tzu so his ancestors were from the Himalayas. This meant he was better prepared for the cold than I. It also meant he was around ten pounds so he couldn’t take me in a fair fight. He had to rely on trickery. He would get me outside then stand stock still with his muzzle pointing directly into the frigid wind. Occasionally, he would peek at me to enjoy seeing the grown man shivering in flannel pants and slippers. If I hurried him and came in from the cold sooner than he wanted to I would be rewarded with a very warm spot on my carpet.
At the moment the senior dog in the house was a pet sitting episode gone horribly wrong. When we lived in Cimarron the kids ran a pet sitting service. We would take other people’s dogs into our house and all too frequently onto my bed. Anyway, a lady asked us to watch her dog while she was out of town. That was eight years ago. The lady was not placed in the federal witness protection plan, nor did she choose the same career path as Shelley Long. She is fine and living in Cimarron. By my calculations her pet sitting bill is now $16,790 (including the 15% gratuity); leap year days are on me.
The junior dog in the house caused quite a stir recently. Alice, the middle of our three kids, has always wanted a pug or something similar. My wife told this to a friend who works with the local humane society. That is what brought Rosie into our lives about a month ago.
On the 4th of July we had friends over for dinner and didn’t want the dogs under foot while we ate. Both dogs were placed in the backyard. The backyard which Dad (a.k.a. Me) had not properly fixed to hold a small dog. So, we now have a small dog and a fence with imperfections large enough for a small dog to fit through if properly motivated. Then came the perfect motivation: fireworks.
Once we discovered her escape we all scattered in impromptu search parties. Finding a small lost dog is hard enough, but on this night it was impossible. All the explosions made it sound like Bruce Willis was filming a re-make of a Sam Peckinpah movie directed by Quentin Tarantino in Chilton Park.
The next day we marshaled the troops. Flyers were made. Phone calls were made. We visited the Animal Shelter. We wandered the streets. I went to the radio station and asked the Steves (Brown and Deno) and Keith to announce the A.P.P.B. (all points puppy bulletin). We talked to the Humane Society people. Alice called her sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Teran, and had her translate our flyer so we could have it in Spanish. The Globe will place lost dog ads for free. Everyone was great.
I don’t write suspense thrillers so I will let you know we now have the dog back. After a week of being missing Rosie and Alice are reunited and there was great rejoicing. A nice person found Rosie on the evening of July 4th and took good care of her. She eventually saw a flyer and brought her to our house.
So many people were so helpful I cannot thank them enough. Not only people I count as friends, but people who were simply empathetic to a girl and her lost pet. Shona, Barb, and Jane from the Humane Society, the radio guys, Mrs. Teran, my wife’s walking buddies (Janie and Susan), strangers we talked to as we looked, friends who walked with us to look, kind-hearted mail carriers, and even the guy on the bicycle who took the flyer offered to him as he whizzed past my wife shouting back that he would keep an eye out.

Potter, Potter everywhere, nor any drop to drink

It happened quite by accident. A friend of my wife’s recommended a book to read aloud to our girls (Emilyjane was five and Alice was three, this pre-dated our third child, George). Little did we know the impact it would have on us, much less the world. Of course, I am referring to “The Sickness Unto Death” by Soren Kierkegaard. Our 3 year old had a very interesting take on the philosopher’s assertion that people often seek to disprove the existence of a supreme being because of their own shortcomings in avoiding sin. Naaaah, only kidding. The book I’m talking about was actually “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. The book which started it all for so many people sucked my family in completely (even George as soon as he crossed from the blob-like existence of an infant into a more sentient creature).
Today marks the one-week-left point before the final book hits the shelves. My family will be at the local bookseller for the midnight release to get our copies, yes, plural. In order to avoid dissention in the ranks three children and one wife will get his or her own copy. If I had to make book (so to speak) I’d give 3 to 1 odds the oldest daughter will finish the 784 pages first. Foregoing sleep and sustenance from the moment she gets hold of it, she will read until the end. I, on the other hand, will definitely be the last one finished. I like sleep and sustenance way too much. This is why I don’t rate a copy of my own. I take too long.
I take too long, partially because, unlike the children, I have a job. Being the slowest also means I will require something of the family which is hard for them to do, silence. “Don’t tell me anything that happens! If you do I may have to drop the book, which is roughly the size of a microwave oven, on your toes…twice.” A few days after the book is released, if someone peeks into the window as my family eats dinner, it is likely they will see four people eating and having an animated conversation. The fifth person (me) will be staring longingly at his spaghetti, sitting with each index finger planted deeply into each ear whilst humming “Stars and Stripes Forever” with great enthusiasm. Who needs the South Beach Diet? I have the I-Don’t-Want-To-Find-Out-If-Snape-Is-A-Good-Guy-Or-A-Bad-Guy-Until-I-Read-It-Myself Diet.
Truth be told, I haven’t read the last three books in the series. I listened to them. I love being read to. My mother did for the majority of my youth and I always placed myself in the proper spot so I could hear her read to my little sister when I was officially to cool to have my mother read to me at bedtime.
The Potter series is available in audio formats read by Jim Dale. Jim Dale is not a well-known actor. After you star in “Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World” it is hard to find just the right movie to follow up. He does a fantastic job. He is even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of distinct characters voiced in an audio book – 134 in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” The former record holder was Rich Little reading “Pilgrim’s Progress” using the voices of every guest invited to the 1977 after Oscars party thrown by Swifty Lazar.
Mr. Dale also accomplished something a great number of fathers could not do. He kept three children still and quiet as our minivan traveled the width of two full states. I would much rather hear, “Can you turn it up a little?” as opposed to “Daaaaddd, Alice wiped her hands on me and I’m covered with cheese doodle dust!”
Something as big as the Potter phenomenon means everyone wants a piece of the action. A big chain of video stores advertised the book. Video stores are the haven of people who avoid reading. Students rent “Of Mice and Men” in order to write their book report, but show their ignorance when they keep referring to Lenny and his best friend Squiggy. Grocery stores have cardboard cut-outs of the boy wizard counting down the days to release. Pick up some milk, a loaf of bread and a pound and a half of Harry. Actually, the book may weigh more than that. This is why I feel sorry for the car hops at Sonic because with the purchase of every Potter book you receive a free side of french fries (or potato wands).

Christopher Pyle predicts Harry will survive the final book but will discover that Darth Vader is his father. If you wish to argue this point Christopher can be contacted at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com. The headline proves he occasionally listened in Mr. Knauer’s class.

Okay, it has been over a week and I haven’t seen one red cent increase in my bank account. The good people of this fair city voted for a casino. There was supposed to be this wonderful windfall of cash. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little peeved because I don’t have any money coming my way. I bet some multi-national corporation is in cahoots with the government to funnel all the money into an off-shore account to fund secret research in an attempt to develop an automobile which runs on grass clippings in order to hide it from the consumers thus lining the pockets of Exxon and Lee Iacocca.
What’s that? They haven’t even started building the casino yet?
I have been handed an article from a previous issue of the Daily Globe. Talk amongst yourselves while I catch myself up on the facts…
It seems it may be a while before anyone starts building the Las Vegas of the plains. According to the article by Mark Vierthaler (who seems to be very bright young man – probably due to the fact he had a certain newspaper columnist as his sixth grade teacher) there is an ongoing legal action which could make it a year before the Lottery people can even go ahead and make plans to build casinos. So, if we are waiting for the swift machinations of the court system and government bureaucracy, there may be casinos on Mars before there is one in Dodge City, America.
Even though it could be a year or two before the one armed bandits start eating dollars, I bet there are a lot of folks who think we got trouble right here in Its-Been-Like-Thirty-Years-Since-We-Had-Water-In-Our-River City and that starts with T and that rhymes with C and that stands for Casino. (I offer my sincerest apologies to Meredith Wilson.) Before people start calling evangelists, exorcists, and Buford Pusser to save us let’s look more closely at what a casino is.
My trusty paperback dictionary says a casino is a barrel, especially one containing alcohol. What? Sorry, I skipped a line, that’s a cask. A casino is a gambling establishment. That is seems pretty straight forward. Actually, the confusing part is the fact people keep calling it a “destination” casino. Isn’t anyplace you go your destination? But, you don’t hear McDonald’s calling itself a destination drive-thru. At the end of most days I head for my destination La-Z-Boy.
I don’t need to dissect the words. When I want to know about something I look to Hollywood. The way things are shown in the movies must be how it will be in real life. There are three different movies I know with casinos. “Ocean’s Eleven,” not the George Clooney one, I’m talking the real cool cat one with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. That was fun. Good looking guys and beautiful women laughing and having a great time. Nothing wrong with that, except our heroes are all thieves and Dean only had one song. The second one is “Dr. No” with Sean Connery. I think I’d look pretty good in a white dinner jacket playing baccarat impressing women and men alike with my savoire faire. Then there’s “Casino” with Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci, oh, my goodness, if Joe Pesci will be in the casino I am not going. He is the most annoying thing to appear on screen since Pia Zadora starred in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” If our casino follws this movie there will be more planted in the fields of southwest Kansas than wheat, if you get my meaning.
I’ve been to Las Vegas. It was years ago. I saw Sinatra perform. (Unfortunatley, it was Frank Sinatra Jr. and he had the talent and charisma of my ninth grade civics teacher.) I stayed at a hotel which was later blown up in order to make room for new hotels and casinos built to resemble famous landmarks from around the world.
Maybe Dodge should do that. Vegas already has a pyramid and the Eiffel Tower. We could build the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Nope, people already think gambling is crooked. Let’s try the Great Wall of China. It would look historic and keep the Oklahomans from attacking. That’s not flashy enough to attract tourists. We need something more American. I’ve got it. Create a casino built to look like Mount Rushmore. Who wouldn’t want to spend time in a building you entered by walking through Teddy Roosevelt’s mouth?
The initiative on the ballot passed handily. But I have two words for the supporters of the casino in Dodge. These two words often accompany the lifestyle surrounding a house of gambling. They are two words which should strike fear into the heart of every right thinking person in this town. What are those two words? I hope you are sitting down…Elvis impersonators.

To the stars through a cool ad campaign

This is my first column to appear in the Hutchinson News.


“Ad Astra Per Aspera?”
“Too high falutin’ nobody goes around speaking Latin. It sounds more like we are selling cars. Test drive the new Chevy Astra Per Aspera, today!”
“The Sunflower State?”
“Too cutesy, people will think we wear flowers in our hair like Haight Ashbury hippies.”
“The Jayhawk State?”
“That just ticks off the K-State grads. Maybe we should stay with Kansas, As Big as You Think?”
“I still don’t know exactly what that means, besides if someone thinks we’re Rhode Island small it does nothing to show them the error of their ways.”
The preceding conversation was made up, which I suppose is pretty obvious because no one actually says things like “the error of their ways” in real life. Otherwise the conversation does seem plausible because Kansas is forever trying to re-define its image.
I am a life-long Kansan. Sorry, this is a newspaper, so I suppose I need to come clean with full disclosure. I was born in Nebraska, but I moved to Hutchinson when I was five and have not claimed any allegiance to the Cornhuskers since Tom Osborne retired. I lived in Los Angeles for fourteen months. Then I came to my senses. For about two years I lived on the Missouri side of Kansas City, but I could throw a rock into Kansas from my apartment. Well, Roger Clemens could, but only after sitting out half the season and getting a contract paying him more than the entire day shift at Wal-Mart, not a particular Wal-Mart, all of Wal-Mart. My nearly-life-long Kansan status should allow me to give some suggestions for making Kansas more appealing to outsiders.
First, I think we need to let go of the stereotypes. Even though I currently reside in Dodge City and therefore could be bludgeoned by the butts of replica six-shooters for saying this, I think it may be time to stop trading off of the Gunsmoke television show. It went off the air 32 years ago. Don’t get me wrong it was a great show and Marshal Dillon was a true hero to more than one generation. However, we have to face facts. Most people under 40 do not remember the show. If you walk up to people in any bustling metropolitan area and ask, “What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Festus’?” most of them will back away slowly hoping you don’t follow them as they scurry into the nearest Starbucks for refuge.
It is also time to distance ourselves from Dorothy. Every time I told people out in L.A. I was from Kansas they felt it was required to make an inane Toto joke. The first few months I didn’t mind and I even laughed occasionally. Towards the end of my time in tinsel town my response got a little harsher. I asked them to check out my ruby slippers. The person bent down to look and before he could remark how I was simply wearing Chuck Taylors I smacked him on the back of the head with my limited edition hardback copy of L. Frank Baum’s Rinkitink In Oz. The outstanding warrant for assault with a blunt literary instrument may have contributed to my return to Kansas.
The most egregious misconception about Kansas is that the entire state is pool table flat. Dodge City has hills. This can be attested to by my fourteen year old daughter who has been spending great portions of June peddling her bike around town as part of a summer physical education class. Not only can my daughter attest to it but the pharmacy bill for Ben Gay and ibuprofen does as well. Besides, the gentle rolling of the high plains is much more interesting than those ostentatious mountains over in Colorado. Any yutz with an instamatic camera can claim oceans and mountains are impressive. The beauty and grace of the grassland requires a more restful and intellectual appreciation. I’ve got it, let’s start advertising in the Mensa newsletter.
Maybe I should re-evaluate the whole thing. We can just cave into the big city snootiness and start a whole new ad campaign.
The following should be read by an actor with a commanding, authoritative voice: “Tired of the hustle and bustle of big city life. Tired of never getting the rest your body and soul requires. Want to get away from it all? Go where there isn’t anything…Kansas.”
Wait a minute; I’m not sure that came out right…

Fun and Games at the Games

Everybody’s heard of Wrigley Field. Even people who are not big baseball fans know about the ivy walls, the bleacher bums, and the fans who sit on the rooftops of nearby buildings to watch the games. There is also a history of broken hearts for the fans of the Cubs who play their home games in this historic venue. This heartache may be one of the reasons so much beer is consumed at the park. Frequently the aforementioned bleacher bums are pretty well lubricated by the time the seventh inning stretch rolls around. This brings me to something I find inexplicable.
But first, a digression: you know how sports teams often have free giveaways at the gate for the first so many fans who attend? T-shirts, hats, key chains, or the ever popular bobblehead dolls. I went to Royals stadium on the night they were giving away Denny Matthews bobbleheads. When you pushed a button it played sound bites of Denny calling unforgettable moments in Royals history. The sad part is these moments occurred twenty some years ago. End of digression.
The inexplicable thing happening at Wrigley Field was one of those giveaways. On June 17th the first 10,000 fans were given a Cubs Sharpie. Yep, pens which write with permanent ink. This ink resists a variety of cleaning fluids and possibly even napalm. The brain trust in the Cubs promotions department willingly handed 10,000 fans (adults, children, and drunkards) 10,000 pens enabling the greatest single day event of “For a good time call…,” “Cubs Rule,” “Cubs Stink,” and “I’ve had Rubella, Shigella, and Salmonella. Now I’ve got a bad case of Piniella,” graffiti and vandalism in sports history. From 2000 to 2006 I worked for the Dodge City Legend. Running the game night festivities was a major portion of my job description. I can just imagine the looks on John’s, Tom’s and Jimmy’s faces (the guys who worked at the Civic Center) if I told them I was going to hand out super-indelible, never-come-off-unless-a-nuclear-device-is-detonated-nearby, markers to the fans. What’s next, they say, “Rustoleum Spray Paint Night”? Or how about “The Legend, in conjunction with Smith & Wesson, present Small Hand Gun Night (BYOB – bring your own bullets)”?
All the extra showmanship around a sporting event, or game operations, (game ops as it’s said in the biz) is an industry unto itself. It takes a certain kind of genius to put a college-educated grown man into a suit designed to resemble something from a Timothy Leary hallucination (i.e. Stuff the mascot for the Orlando Magic) then place him on a large four wheeled scooter. Take the guy on the scooter and stick him in the pocket of a gigantic sling shot device. Stretch the sling shot device to its fullest, releasing the mascot guy making him a projectile rolling across the court running into giant foam rubber bowling pins which causes a crowd of 23,000 people to cheer loudly when he makes a strike or groan if one pin stays standing. Sheer poetry in motion and well worth the $2,250 (price includes shipping) it takes to buy the ten five foot tall foam rubber bowling pins. The “price includes shipping” statement begs one question. How angry is the UPS guy going to be when that box shows up on his route?
Another question may have occurred to some readers. How did he know how much ten five foot tall foam rubber bowling pins would cost? Easy, I went to Gameops.com. Where else would one find such wonderful stuff? Some of these things would be great just around the house. What rumpus room would be complete without 2 foot wide, 2 foot tall Jumbo Inflatable Dice? Just $250 for a pair. This bit of information was included on the description: No air pump is included, but is recommended for inflation. Darn, I wanted to spend a week and half light-headed as I blow 16 cubic feet of air from my own personal lungs into these vinyl shapes. For you Yahtzee fans out there you have a price break. A set of five 2 foot inflatable dice only costs $600, a savings of twenty-five dollars. Honey, where’s the checkbook?!
Now for my favorite item in the Gameops.com catalog. Everyone knows you can pick up 7-foot inflatable spheres known as Human Hamster Balls at every discount and convenience store in any town in the state, but only at Gameops.com can you find the Human Hamster Ball Repair Kit. For a measly $48 you get a piece of poly vinyl, industrial strength ultra vinyl glue and a bottle of Zippy Cool. What’s Zippy Cool? Zippy Cool is a lubricant for the Hamster Ball zippers, because everyone knows what a pain it is when your Hamster Ball zippers stick.

The sweet smell of success, or is that pie?

Everyone wants to be a success. The issue seems to be what qualifies as a success. If I were to score a single basket in an NBA playoff game I would consider that a success of epic proportion, and I do mean epic. Mel Gibson would be chosen to direct the movie version. I don’t know how he will explain having the whole thing subtitled because the characters are speaking the ancient Polynesian language of the Maori tribes in New Zealand, but I guess it just makes it more epic. On the other hand, LeBron James is deemed a failure if he scores less than 20 points. Success is relative.
Shooting for success can cause a lot of angst. The key is to keep the goals realistic for the person and situation at hand. I have worked in schools for a lot of years and some kids are adept at some things and not at others (Warning: making a statement of such insight and acuity of perception comes from years of intensive training and should not be attempted by an amateur.). Let’s say a student is asked to solve for X using the following number sentence: X + 17 = 18. Now a kid in middle school can have success with such a task and therefore feel good. Another example could be like this: A train leaves Sacramento at 2:00 AM on a Thursday. A second train departs from Chicago at 6:00 AM on the same day. If both trains travel at an average speed of eighty miles per hour, each stopping once for forty-seven minutes apiece (the first train stops at Winnemucca, Nevada and the second train stops at Ottumwa, Iowa), using only an abacus and a sharp stick in the dirt explain why the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union was unable to maintain political control after 1923. Trying to answer such a question would cause great anxiety or even a sense of abject failure in many folks. While we all knew one guy in our high school class who could actually answer the preceding question, we also knew the chance he would get a date for the prom was as likely as a Shakespeare in the Park production of “King Lear” starring Ashton Kutcher. Which kind of success would you prefer? A scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study how quarks are affected when one reverses the polarity or getting to second base with Heidi Harris on a sultry April night. Personally, I received no scholarship and spent the night of my senior prom in my parents’ living room watching “Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters” on TV, that Irlene was a cutie.
A favorite movie line of mine was in “Heaven Can Wait.” Buck Henry is talking to Warren Beatty and he asks him to not so much lower as broaden his standards. That is probably good advice when one is deciding how to measure success in life. When I moved to Los Angeles my goal was to become the next Richard Donner (the director of “The Three Musketeers”, “The Omen” and “Superman: The Movie.”). I then broadened my idea of success. Instead of emulating Mr. Donner (director of multi-million dollar movies) my goal was NOT to emulate the Donner Party by getting stranded in the mountains and resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. I did get stuck in St. Johns, Kansas during a blizzard, but my mom had sent a bag of groceries with my family so once we borrowed a can opener from the nice lady in the motel office starvation was no longer a concern.
In America success is most often measured by the money and power one has accumulated. Since I am a married man with three children I do not have much of either. So I did a little research on what makes rich and powerful people. Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling author and consultant to big companies was interviewed about what are the traits of highly successful businessmen. He pointed to two characteristics which are shared by most. The first is something he called “explanatory style.” This refers to how an individual explains failure to himself. Truly successful people do not immediately dismantle their egos when the have a set-back. There is not a lot of wallowing in self-recrimination which leads to a “what’s the use I’ll just fail again” mentality. The truly rich and powerful simply blame their staff, fire a few folks, and move on to the next triumph. The other characteristic is stamina, but I’m kind of tired now so I don’t think I will continue writing…

Being part of something bigger, which is part of something bigger...

From time to time I feel the urge to be intellectual. The most common way for me to do this is by reading a science or philosophy book. Now, I know some people think any adult reading a book which does not revolve around a detective or a raven-haired beauty suffering from amnesia, has to be a guy who ate paste in grade school and only kissed one female in his entire life, his mom. I beg to differ. I never ate paste, maybe a couple of tastes of Elmer’s glue, but I didn’t like it. (Quick note to my wife: I have only kissed one female over the last eighteen years.)
Before any readers of this column start accusing me of being an intellectual snob let me say I seldom finish any of these books. After a couple or three chapters my brain starts swelling like a tick which has accidentally hooked on to the femoral artery of the most recent Belmont Stakes winner. Really, I was fifty pages into my most recent book before I realized the author was not talking about Ray Nitschke, the middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, but rather Friedrich Nietzsche, the middle linebacker for the Prussian Existentialists (their cheerleaders’ favorite cheer is: “What does it matter. We’re all going to die eventually.”). Uh, sorry, I am now told he was a German philosopher of the late 1800’s. This heavy thinker said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” In my life I have to admit what doesn’t kill me usually makes me whine and complain like a debutante whose father took away her credit card. I can’t understand the paradoxical nature of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, nor can I drop a 230 pound running back behind the line of scrimmage. I’m afraid neither Mr. Nietzsche nor Mr. Nitschke would be very proud of me.
The work I am wading through now is a book by Ken Wilber called A Brief History of Everything. First of all I have to wonder about Mr. Wilber’s grasp of the English language. In my dictionary “brief” means something of short duration. His book is 548 pages. That ain’t brief. Brief is the attention span of my children as I explain why they…well, why they should do anything. Brief is Billy Donavan’s tenure as the head coach of the Orlando Magic. Brief is the amount of time I spend contemplating whether I should have that second doughnut at breakfast. (The answer is always an emphatic “Yes”.) Brief is not 548 pages.
Okay, here is what I think I learned within the first fifty pages. Everything, and I do mean everything, is a holon. (There will now be a slight pause while everyone looks up at the ceiling as if the answer for each confusing question in life is written up there.) What is a holon?” You ask (as you notice a water stain which looks remarkably like a hedgehog riding a unicycle). I just told you. It is everything. Try to keep up, will you?
Anyway, Mr. Wilber explains the word holon was coined to denote something which is at once a whole unto itself and a part of something else. Since Mr. Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time (not my idea – it was written on the back cover of the book) he explains the term by talking about the atom is a whole by itself yet part of a molecule. A molecule is a whole by itself yet is a part of cell. A cell is a whole by itself yet…well you get the idea.
Allow me to try to put the concept into terms of the more common man. A hamburger patty is a whole unto itself. A special sauce is a whole unto itself. Lettuce is a whole unto itself. Cheese is a whole unto itself. A pickle is a whole unto itself. An onion is a whole unto itself. A sesame seed bun is a whole unto itself. Yet they are all components of a Big Mac. A Big Mac is a whole unto itself, yet it can become a part of an enlarged waistline requiring elastic pants. Elastic pants are a whole unto themselves, but they are also part of my wardrobe because I keep saying yes to the second doughnut at breakfast. Which is a part of my crummy diet, which is part of the reason my wife keeps telling me I need to exercise more, which is part of…well, you get the idea.

Some words say more than others

Remember back to grade school when one of the subjects was language arts. I liked that term. Using the language properly is an art. It quite possibly is a dying art like the art of composing heart-wrenching ballads for accordion or painting unique card playing dogs on velvet. (I have a suggestion for spicing up the works of velveteen canine Texas hold ‘em, add Elvis as the dealer.) Anyway, the English language can be very frustrating, but it can also be used to say just the right thing in just the right way, or at least say something interesting.
Following in a long line of people over forty I say the popular culture of today’s youth can be pointed to as one of the main culprits in messing up the language. What with e-mail and instant message language trying to say things with the least amount of typing possible. I don’t understand why it is so important to get the information to the receiver so quickly. We are not talking about getting Admiral Nimitz the latest intelligence regarding Japanese troop movement near the Solomon Islands. We’re simply trying to let Tiffanii (with hearts dotting all three i’s) know that Greg and Jimmy are going to be at the mall and they are so hot I could just die.
Wait a minute I might be on to something here. Remember how the United States military used soldiers who spoke the Navajo language as a code the enemy could not break. The CIA and Home Land Security ought to look into arming teenage girls with Motorola Razors and injecting steroids directly into their thumbs to heighten their text messaging powers. Even if al-Qaeda intercepts something the messages would be as intelligible to them as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s explanation of the plight of artists under Soviet control would be to the writing staff of Two and Half Men.
Not long ago I spent a big chunk of a Sunday afternoon on the internet. An afternoon I should have spent at the office catching up on paperwork or mowing the foot long grass in the backyard or playing catch with my son so he doesn’t empathize with that heart-wrenching Harry Chapin song. (How would that song sound on the accordion?) The internet trail I was wandering down was full of linguists. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Theoretical linguistics looks at grammar, semantics, morphology, syntax, phonology, and phonetics. Was I studying the morphology of letters as they evolved from ancient Sanskrit to modern romance languages? Nope. I was reading an intellectual food fight about how many words are in the English language.
A San Diego based high tech wizard claims to have created a mathematical equation with which he can plot the growth of words in the English language. According to his website, www.languagemonitor.com, Paul Payack explains his algorithm tracks words and phrases in relation to their frequency of use and contextual usage and it is weighted, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, and citations in the major media. (Can you say “too much time on your hands”?) As of Monday May 28th Mr. Payack’s website says there are 993,412 in the English language.
Geoff Nunberg is a linguist who is contributor to National Public Radio, which means he is more intellectual than someone on ESPN and reads more books than someone on Fox, but isn’t going to win a Noble Prize anytime soon. Mr. Nunberg says Mr. Payack is full of beans. He said it in a more erudite way than I just did; after all, he is a linguist. The language gets new words added with some frequency. Some due to new discoveries in science (a new word coined which means something that was a planet and then a bunch of astronomy nerds got together and said it wasn’t anymore – Plutoed). Other words grow out of popular culture. (Truthiness, from Stephan Colbert, means something a person knows from the gut, not based on evidence, logic, intellectual examination or actual facts.) However, Mr. Nunberg doesn’t think someone can count the words and also many of the words counted are not words people really use.
All science and intellectual arguing aside words can say interesting things very simply. Poetry is supposed to give the most succinct descriptions of life. I get lost in serious poetry but the common man poetry of song lyrics do speak to me. Here are some of my favorites. I am not sure I understand exactly what they are saying but I like how they feel.
“Sometimes I feel like my shadow’s casting me.” – Warren Zevon
“I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” – Elvis Costello
“Standin’ in a bucket of bad news, havin’ a ball.” – The Lonesome Strangers.

Medical Science: From Hippocrates to Prozac

Some sciences are exact. It can be proven and repeated over and over that certain materials are combustible when they reach a certain temperature Fahrenheit. The temperature paper must reach before it will burn is 451 degrees. The temperature gasoline must reach before it will burn is 495 degrees. I do not know what the temperature has to be before a person’s hand will burn. However, I do know if you leave your car windows up on an August afternoon the steering wheel gets to that Fahrenheit level in the time it takes to run into the store and buy milk.
Unfortunately medicine is not one of those exact sciences. Over the last few months entirely too many members of my family have visited doctors for entirely too many reasons. I am not denigrating the doctors we have seen. I just wish these medical professionals had a magic book which allowed them to listen to the symptoms, diagnose the problem, and dispense a cure. While I’m wishing, why not have the cure be something simple like burying a potato in the backyard during a full moon to get rid of a sinus infection instead of paying $47 for a prescription which cures you nearly as fast as burying a potato in the backyard during a full moon would.
As I was wandering around the waiting room of one doctor’s office I picked up a pamphlet describing the symptoms of depression. I don’t think I’m depressed. What is there to be depressed about? The world is a safe and caring place full of sympathetic people who all wish to help one another lead a meaningful and productive life. Well, maybe that’s an overstatement. But, the country we live in is a shining beacon of truth and justice with a government devoid of greed and corruption led by men and women of unquestionable integrity. Oh, my. My house no longer has a basement which leaks whenever there is a rain shower of more than seven one hundredths of inch. Bingo! That one is true. Oh, I give up. Pass the Prozac.
That same pamphlet said depression is caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. Here we are in the early 21st century and they trot this out. Hippocrates, one of those Greek guys from like 400 BC, said human behaviors were caused by bodily fluids called humors. These fluids were blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Other then being somewhat gross (anything which talks about phlegm falls into the somewhat gross category) this was wrong. It was disproved by doctor type scientists, which was good because the idea led to doctor type barbers opening veins left and right to “balance the humors.” So here is this pamphlet in a reputable doctor’s office saying the chemicals might be out of balance in my head. Maybe Theodoric of York from the old Saturday Night Live sketch was right when he said: “You know, medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time. Why, just fifty years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter's was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach.” I need an MRI to check for toads and dwarves.
Recently my wife and I took our oldest daughter to see a couple of different doctors in one day. This by itself is not a bother. The issue is the amount of paperwork and bureaucratic-like red tape one must wade through. I realize with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (aka HIPAA) the government intended to protect the public from people prying into our personal medical business. However, I suspect the medical establishment is taking it too seriously. Every receptionist, nurse, and doctor asked us the same questions. I know they are supposed to treat the information as a secret but I really don’t mind if they tell each other. That just makes sense.
As I get older the doctors get younger. This makes it harder to take them seriously. A doctor should be balding with gray hair around his temples and a sympathetic face made more caring by the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Two of the doctors we dealt with this day looked more like refugees from the Disney Channel. When they came into the examination room I expected them to give us the test results using pom-poms and high kicks.
“Ready? Hit it. Your EKG was A-OK and we think you’re just swell.
We promise that in 30 days you’ll get the bill from H-E-A-R-T.
Goooo, heart!”

Christopher Pyle’s daughter is just fine, but he does still have the concern there is a toad in his stomach eating his Prozac. This knocks his humors out of whack. He may be a quart or two low on phlegm.

Remote locations on the TV dial

For many years of my life I watched a lot of television. As a kid Saturday mornings was the jackpot. Does anybody else remember Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp or “Up at at ‘em Atom Ant!”? As a youth I was always looking for laughs. Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett offered humor which was not hurtful or hedonistic. When cable came into my life I spent more and more time with movies. I will watch Gunga Din no matter what time of day it comes on and Michael Caine was in some really awful movies. Sports have been the constant ingredient in my television viewing recipe. I know where I was when Ed Podolak had 350 all-purpose yards against the Dolphins in ’71, when Danny Manning squeezed the final rebound in ’88, and when Bill Buckner watched a five ounce white sphere roll between his feet changing his life forever and giving hero status to a man with the less than epic name of Mookie.
Over the last few years I have dropped television from my days. There are some good programs on, but there is entirely too much stuff being sent into our homes through that box. Some of the programs remind me of the old nature shows. Marlon Perkins would venture out in the wilds of Africa and show us the behavior of animals whose only concerns were fulfilling the basest of needs and following self-serving instincts. Now Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is replaced by MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 which goes to deepest, darkest Beverly Hills and shows us the same thing only with designer dresses and out of control egos replacing dying gazelles and angry alpha males.
A little while back I spent more time in front of a television than I’m used to. The NCAA basketball tournament still draws me to the flickering blue light like a moth to one of those bug zappers. Fortunately, I do not get so close I experience a jolt of voltage making it so my wings will never caress the wind again. OK, I know I don’t have wings and “caress the wind” is an awfully girly phrase, but I found myself in the middle of a metaphor and I didn’t have another way out…gimme a break.
In my younger days I had the fastest mute button in the west, so I seldom heard commercials (and I was able to get Billy Packer to shut up once in a while). This was not possible for this tournament. No, I haven’t passed my prime. My trigger finger is just as spry as ever. The issue is the mute button itself. Ever since I started living in a house with three walking and talking children it has become much harder to keep track of things. People who do not have children believe the remote control is “remote” because it is used to control something from a distance. People with children know it is “remote” because it is inexplicably transported to remote locations. Locations like the crisper drawer of the refrigerator, under the sofa of the house three and half blocks south of your house, or the backpack of a scientist traipsing along the Amazon River studying Pink River Dolphins. That name is confusing. Is the river it lives in pink or the dolphin itself?
Watching and listening to the commercials brought to mind some questions. First is the color yellow some sort of visual signal for stupid? Remember those two guys who discussed cell phone service throughout the tournament? The dumb one always wore yellow. A German line of cars has an incredibly British guy describing how great they are. Is this just because Americans think all foreigners are the same? I mean we bought Sean Connery (a guy from Scotland) as Mulay Achmed Mohammed in one movie and as Khalil Abdul-Muhsen in another.
The thing I truly do not understand is big time stars doing the voice-overs for commercials. I get why products would want George Clooney to appear in their ad, but if you can’t see him how many people recognize his voice. It is his voice talking about beer. Is there some sort of subliminal message forcing the nameless rabble to follow the voice of a star? Gene Hackman tells us we can build things together with Lowe’s. Somehow I do not expect to see him with a crescent wrench fixing the dripping faucet in my bathroom anytime soon. But the absolute best has to be that Latin sex symbol Antonio Banderas, the heartthrob from Desperado and The Mask of Zorro. He is making house payments by supplying the voice of a sexy bumblebee in an allergy medicine ad. I know when I think of relief from nasal congestion the first thing that comes to mind is a Bombus distinguendus with an Andalusian accent.

There is too much to learn. I can't keep up.

A conversation amongst second graders at recess:
“Okay, today I’m going to be Apollo and you are Artemis, right? Who are you going to be?”
“I think I’m going to be Demeter.”
“Cool.”
This is not what most people expect when imagining the imaginative play of eight year olds. One would expect Power Rangers, not the twelve tasks of Hercules. However, it is one of the games my son and his friends are playing at Northwest School. This makes my brother very happy.
My brother, Eric, believes there are things a person needs to know in order to be considered educated and Greek myths are on that list. He is one of those guys who actually did all the reading in college, not just the Cliff Notes or renting the movie. (My problem was I went to get The Grapes of Wrath and ended up with The Wrath of Khan, “Wherever there’s a Klingon crushing a tribble, I’ll be there.”) Eric reads more books in a month than the average person reads in, well, in…okay, ever. When he found out my son had an interest in Greek myths Eric sent him a book entitled: Flammarion Iconographic Guide: Gods and Heroes of Classical Antiquity. When I was eight years old my reading material did not revolve around Hephaestus and Tartarus, but rather, Archie and Jughead.
The pop culture version of smart people is on display every weekday afternoon on the quiz show Jeopardy. I competed on that show a few years back. I lost. I was smart when it came to the category titled “S”- oterica, which meant every answer would start with the letter “S”. So I got things like “southpaw,” “Seattle Seahawks,” and “Scared Straight”. The guy who went on to win ran the category titled Vietnam. Which is more indicative of intelligence? At one point in the game he correctly identified a yurt. A yurt is a circular tent of felt or skins on a collapsible framework, used by nomads in Mongolia, something I had not heard of before, or for that matter, since. Which one of us was smarter? I do not know. I do know which one of us ended up richer, and it wasn’t me.
The other day I saw a short video talking about just how much information is being generated these days. Here is one statement from the video: It is estimated 1.5 exabytes (1.5 times 10 to the eighteenth power) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. One of those unique and new pieces of information must have been the word “exabyte” because my computer doesn’t recognize it. What the video failed to say was probably eight-tenths of that unique new information will revolve around Britney Spears going in and out of rehab, hairstyles on American Idol, and indispensable information for guys who play fantasy baseball like Zach Greinke’s earned run average with runners in scoring position and less than two outs, on odd numbered Wednesday afternoons.
Another factoid from the video said: It is estimated a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th Century. Average citizens of the 18th Century were still required to focus more on things that kept them alive (those Frenchmen hiding behind that hill would like to shoot any Englishman coming this way) as opposed to information about Edward “Lumpy” Stevens the first great bowler in the history of English Cricket. (I did not make that up. It is an actual unique piece of new information generated sometime during the 18th Century.) I wonder what his earned run average with runners in scoring position and less than two outs, on odd numbered Wednesdays was.
What information people really ought to know is the crux of the matter. (I am showing off what I think is important by using words like crux.) The phrase thrown around education circles is essential information. What do people truly have to know? Who gets to decide what people have to know? With the legislation of No Child Left Behind the government gets to decide what kids have to know.
Does this frighten anyone else? The arbiter of intellect is the same group of people who decided Kansas needed not just an Official State Bird and an Official State Song but also an Official State Soil.

Virtual Grief for a Cyber-Buddy

Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. The previous was a phonetic representation of a funeral dirge, not adjectives describing a line of eleven people waiting overnight to buy tickets for “Dukes of Hazzard – The Musical.” The funeral dirge was played in honor of my trusty laptop computer which went to cyber heaven this week at the oh so young age of five years old. It surprised me how hard I took the news. Technology has always been a fun thing, but I thought I could take it or leave it.
I am content with four channels on my television. I am usually patient enough to cook without a microwave. We went without an answering machine on our phone for months until a friend became frustrated and bought us one. The best example of my technological indifference has to be my cell phone. The one I have at the moment has been mine for eight months. I have received sixty phone calls. The phone keeps track. I don’t. That works out to seven and a half calls a month. My most technologically advanced friend relies on his cell phone like a philodendron relies on photosynthesis. Seven and a half calls an hour would be slow, like glacier moving across Norway slow, for him.
There are some things I know how to do to “clean-up” the computer a little bit. I clicked the proper icons to start the defrag process (see I know some computer jargon). I then parked myself at my desk, staring at the little bar with the label stating 2% complete. I remained motionless as it stayed at 2% complete for about nine minutes. This would be followed by a short rock back in my chair and a glance at the heavens in gratitude when it jumped to 3% complete. To my family walking by and checking on me (over the next few hours) it appeared I was sitting shiva for a deceased family member. It looked like any second I would break into a Hebrew chant imploring some sort of mitzvah from the Moses of Microsoft. This, in truth, was as likely as any of my computer skills making a difference.
I think I was taking it hard because my computer is one of the only things in our house which I can call mine. As any husband and father can understand sharing is a matter of everyday life. From sharing a sip or three from my bottle of pop to a favorite t-shirt being turned into a nightgown for a little girl, dads share most things. I don’t mind sharing, but it didn’t seem to go the other direction very often. Think about it. If my wife pilfers from my closet no one at the store will bat an eye. On the other hand, if I wear her new culottes and wedgies I will find myself embarrassing my family all the way back to colonial days on the Maury Povich Show. I have already embarrassed my wife because I just implied she has culottes and wedgies in her closet, which are about thirty years out of date (she does not).
After I tried the few things I knew how to do as my computer choked and gasped, I called my sister, who works on computers for a living, and got a prognosis from her. Then Seth, my technologically advanced friend, took a crack at it and declared it most likely a goner. My next step was something like organ donation. I took the computer (or in its present state, the very heavy rectangular Frisbee) to a computer whisperer to get some files and things removed like a liver and a kidney for the organ bank.
Alan, the computer psychic, was most encouraging. He went right to work dissecting and re-connecting the hard drive. As is the case with most guys good with computers he was an adept multi-tasker. He answered the phone as he was working with my computer cadaver and began to help another customer. At least I assume he was helping someone, because all the information he was spouting was as coherent to me as a group of sailors leaving a Shanghai waterfront bar at four in the morning. This is what was said: “Your IP address and your sonic wall may not be interfacing this could cause the little pixies who run the printer to declare war with the tiny hamsters in control of the power supply which usually means the Grand High Vizier of the Operating System gets ticked off and moves to the Bahamas,” or words to that effect. I could be wrong. My mind started to wander.

Driving through the generation gap

I am fully aware that I am on one side of the generation gap and my children are on the other. This past weekend that gap was illustrated over and over again causing me to think of it as less of a gap and more of a chasm, an abyss, a disparity larger than the difference between the number of people who have been informed all about Anna Nicole Smith’s life and death and the number of people who wanted to be informed about Anna Nicole Smith’s life and death.
As a birthday present my oldest daughter, Emilyjane, wanted to take a trip. So 8:00 AM Friday we packed the minivan. My first observation wasn’t so much a generation gap but rather a gap between the genders. The plan was to return home less than 48 hours after departure. I had one bag which was about the size of an overweight dachshund. Each of the three girls had bags and extras which made the minivan necessary for cargo, not just for comfort.
The first leg of the trip was a little on the short side. We went three blocks to get yet something else from one of the girl’s houses. I do not know what we needed, but I didn’t feel the need to ask, discretion being the better part of parenthood. We had been on the road a total of eighty-five seconds so when we stopped it only made sense that all three girls piled out of the van to go to the bathroom.
This trio of girls is a group any parent would be proud of, but I still don’t understand their behaviors. The first thing I noticed was symptomatic of the birth order theory of personality. One girl is an only child and proceeded to fall asleep as soon as we started rolling. It was obvious being an only child she thought it was natural to sleep on top of whatever, or in this case, whoever, was handy. My daughter is the oldest of three, so she thought it was only natural that she not be slept upon. The last girl is the baby of three children so she thought it was par for the course to have someone sleep on her. I guess it all worked out in the end.
As a father I have become very adept (or as the kids would say, I have mad skills) at closing my senses to what is going on in the back of the minivan while driving long distances. This was put to the test when it came to the radio stations the girls preferred. I had to resort to my i-Pod to keep from pulling my rapidly graying hair out of my head.
Let me give you examples of the different tastes in music and see which side you are on. My earphones were playing Sammy Davis Jr. singing “Begin the Beguine.” Here is a snippet of the lyrics: “What moments divine, what rapture serene, Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted, And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted, I know but too well what they mean.” Here are words that tell of love lost, words which paint pictures, words which require having scored above a 6 on your SAT’s to understand. Now a short description of what the girls were tuned to. I do not know the artist (and I use that term loosely), but it sounded like the defensive linemen from the entire NFC North were calling out the words, rather than melodiously interpreting them. These men were saying “Walk it out.” They proceeded to say it multiple times. How many times? Take the number of times any reasonable person would repeat any one phrase and then multiply by seven. You’d be close.
I was traveling with three teenage girls so of course part of our time was spent in a mall the size of a third world country. We had been inside the building, maybe three minutes, when a fully uniformed member of the Tulsa police force approached the girls. I was about five paces behind which was preferred by both them and me. The police officer asked the girls where a particular store was located. This made sense to me. If you want to know where something is in the outer reaches of the universe you ask Stephan Hawking. If you want to know the lay out of a mall you ask a teenage girl. I was about to step up and say we were from out of town so we couldn’t help, when all three girls turned and pointed to exactly where the police officer wanted to go.
It was downright eerie.

FIve Percent of the Recommended Daily Allowance of Riboflavin

Being a healthy person is more difficult than it should be. I am over forty years old, so I am supposed to be aware of what my body is saying. The problem is when my body is telling me to put down the candy bar and have a mess of broccoli; it is speaking in some arcane dialect of an indigenous tribe from the darkest recesses of the Amazon rain forest. Okay, I lied. I can understand what my body is telling me. I just don’t like what it is saying.
To accurately characterize the way my body talks to me I would have to say it is more like peeved grumbling than whimsical extemporizing. This happens most often after I have been doing physical labor for an extended amount of time (extended for me is anything which is longer than the attention span of your typical three year old watching C-Span, heck anyone watching C-Span). Shoveling snow a few weeks ago caused my body to not only grumble but to use words I cannot print in a newspaper which is not edited by Lenny Bruce.
One of the big problems with staying healthy as you get older is there is a ton of false advertising when you are younger. A double cheeseburger with onion rings and French fries followed by a chocolate shake was normal for me in college. It didn’t cause any change to my waistline and heartburn was a myth akin to Bigfoot, heard of but never experienced firsthand. No one ever told me that those things accumulated over time and when I turned 30 I’d wake up to find the size 32’s I had worn since high school were less likely to button up than Rosie O’Donnell’s mouth at a Donald Trump awards dinner. Also, the income I threw into fast food would have been much better utilized acquiring stock in the Tums Corporation because I now consume more of them than the number of Tic Tacs consumed at the 29th Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. (There is such a thing. I looked it up.)
The other day I decided I needed to look into what foods were best for enhancing mood. If I am not totally healthy maybe I can at least be happy as I slowly damage various parts of my body. So I went to “The Google” (as President Bush would say) and did some research. I found an article on WebMD which described nutritional ways to manage mood. I hoped it would say Dr. Pepper and cherry Danishes were the secret to creating a happy individual. Unfortunately, the advice was stuff which would make me healthy, no hot fudge or mass quantities of Fritos.
Point one was to maintain stable blood sugar. Sugar, cool, I like sugar. The doctor-type people went on to explain their idea of sugar was fruit and whole grains. Where did these guys go to medical school? Sugar is Twinkies. Sugar is Ding Dongs. Sugar is Ho Hos. Sugar has happy names with a certain sense of onomatopoeiatic (I think I just made that word up) flights of imagination.
The experts also said to exercise 20 minutes a day to enhance mood. That is counter-intuitive. “Sir, we would like you to run on a treadmill for twenty minutes so you end up at the same place you started out, causing sweat to pour from various parts of your body, which will offend the olfactory senses of anyone within fifteen feet of you, after which you may very well think your legs are made of molten lead because they burn like crazy and you are not able to lift them without using your hand and arm muscles to help, and we will only charge you fifty bucks a month for the privilege.” Sure, that would cheer anybody up.
There was a brief glimmer of hope. The article said not to follow an extremely low-fat diet. This is because fat is needed for anti-depression. Eureka! In order to fight depression I need doughnuts! My glee was brought to an abrupt halt. They said I needed healthy omega-3 fats which were found in flaxseeds.
This called for another quick spin on the internet. Wikipedia describes Flaxseed as follows: It is an erect annual plant growing to 120 cm tall, with slender stems. The leaves are glaucous green, slender lanceolate, 2-4 cm long and 3 mm broad. The flowers are pure pale blue, 1.5-2.5 cm diameter, with five petals. The fruit is a round, dry capsule 5-9 mm diameter, containing several glossy brown seeds shaped like an apple pip, 4-7 mm long. Mmmmm, mmmm, don’t that sound like somethin’ straight from Aunt Bea’s kitchen.

Warning: This Blog May Be Hazardous to Your Health (I don't know how, but it might)

I am arriving late for many of my appointments. Why? Every time I get into my car I have too many things to do. There is a sign on the visor which says, “IMPORTANT Before driving, read the label on the other side of the visor.” For some reason I am compelled to do as I’m told. Then on the other side of the visor it says, “IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SAFETY Following these instructions will greatly improve your chances of avoiding severe injury in case of an accident.” Since avoiding severe injury is right towards the top of my “To Do List” each and every day, I read it most carefully.
That alone would not make me late. The problem is at the bottom of the visor it instructs the driver to consult a section in the owner’s guide. By the time I read all that too, I might as well go back into the house because I am now horribly late for whatever compelled me to get into the car in the first place.
I know it is a dangerous world we live in. If you look around there are warnings everywhere. Coffee cups at fast food restaurants point out the contents are hot. Two liter bottles of soda point out the contents are under pressure and they should be opened with caution. I suppose the next thing will be warning labels on warning labels, after all you can get a wicked paper cut off of some of those things.
A cursory inspection of my house revealed so many imminent dangers it is a wonder I haven’t met my insurance deductible five times over. I found a hand held air pump. I purchased it to pump up a basketball. There on the side in bold red letters it reads, “Warning: designed and intended for inflating purposes only.” This is where the warning label truly needs a warning label. It would read, “Warning after reading this warning label you run the risk of wasting the next hour and half of your life trying to think of things you could use this pump for other than inflating things and what would be the intrinsic danger involved with such unauthorized activity.”
My personal favorite warning labels feature the stick figure icon of a person dealing with the worst case scenario. A while back I was helping a friend paint her house. We were using scaffolding to get to the very topmost parts. Now I am not one of the bravest folks in the land so there was no need to warn me about the danger of falling off a platform forty feet off the ground. I was so aware of the danger of falling off a platform forty feet off the ground I was often seen simply sitting on the plank and griping the iron bars so tightly my wedding ring spot welded in place. It was as I sat there, immobile due to the fear of gravity driving my head into the flower bed below, that I noticed the warning label. It not only had words describing the precautions which should be taken but it also had that poor little cartoon stick figure guy falling backwards off the little cartoon stick figure scaffolding to his little cartoon stick figure death. I am surprised there were not little cartoon stick figure pallbearers carrying a little cartoon stick figure casket past a little cartoon stick figure weeping widow as well.
Since this poor guy goes through so much in his selfless quest to help the rest of us stay safe, I decided he needed more of an identity in order to create some empathy. He is obviously bald. This may be because nobody draws hair on stick figures or it may be because he has set himself on fire so many times by not following all warning labels on cans of aerosol furniture polish. Anyway, I have named him Yul after one of the most famous bald guys ever, Yul Brenner.
Not only does the name Yul reflect his lack of hair, but it also helps him get his point across to the public. If you do not heed the warning labels Yul suffer severe injury, Yul be visited by ambulance drivers, and Yul never win the lawsuit because the insurance company lawyers will make sure Yul appear to be an imbecile of epic proportion in the eyes of the jury because you can’t even read the label telling you that using the hand held air pump to give a constipated kinkajou an enema is an unauthorized activity, etc. etc. etc….

I don't want it all...just the good stuff

“Greed is good,” was a battle cry of the late 1980’s made famous by Michael Douglas’s uber-rich and powerful Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street. For some reason Mr. Douglas chose to play the role sporting a hairdo he received when he took a wrong turn at the strip mall and ended up at Jiffy Lube instead of Super Cuts. It has been twenty years since that film hit the multiplexes of the land and it is no longer cool to wear your hair like that (note to Pat Riley) nor to overtly claim one of the seven deadly sins is actually a virtue. It is, however, still ingrained in most every American to want more than he or she has at the moment.
This is proven on a nightly basis on every “reality” television show on every network. It must be greed driving the people on American Idol who have the same chance of having a song played on the radio as my son’s guinea pig has of winning the Kentucky Derby (she has a tendency to drift too wide of the rail on the last furlong). It surely can’t be any reasonable semblance of an awareness of one’s own talent. When these people sing in the shower the soap on a rope hangs itself.
Greed must be the motivating factor behind anyone signing up to compete on Survivor. There would have to be a GUARANTEE I would be given a million dollars (not a CHANCE amongst 15 other pathetic graspers at fame…sorry, competitors) if they wanted me to wade through leech infested stagnant ponds, eat rats on a stick, or go without a shower for 48 hours. I have a very sensitive scalp and I need to maintain my proper shampooing regimen.
People who want to improve their lot in life through hard work are not greedy. People who utilize special talents to earn large amounts of money are not necessarily greedy. People who refuse to split the last slice of pizza are. I do not think of myself as greedy, heck you can have the entire Canadian bacon and pineapple if you want it, but I sure wouldn’t mind having more money. I would even settle for more free time and less stress, which can sometimes be a by-product of more money.
Being Bill Gates rich or even Paul McCartney rich is not what I want. It doesn’t bother me to drive a used minivan. However, last week when the minivan had a flat tire I wished I was rich enough to call “the guy,” have it taken care of and just write the check. When you have something akin to surplus money you can always call “the guy.” I do not know who “the guy” is but he can fix the flat tire, unclog the sink, remove the viruses from your computer, and if the price is right, “the guy” has a cousin in New Jersey who can “Jimmy Hoffa” the person of your choice.
Many people would tell me I need to be grateful for what I have. When I grumble and grouse about things which really are rather unimportant my wife often says, “It could be worse.” I prefer not to subscribe to the “It could be worse” school of optimism. Of course it could be worse. It could always be worse. One of Job’s buddies from the Bible could have said “It could be worse” and it could have been. I mean with all those boils it would have been worse if he had been married to Lot’s wife. Can you imagine coming home from a hard day of questioning God’s existence with open sores all over your body and hugging a pillar of salt? Ouch.
Just because “it could be worse” is no reason to be content with the way things are at the moment. As the old words of wisdom say: Some people look at the world as it is and ask “Why?” Others look at the world as it could be and ask “Why not?” Yet others look at the world around them and ask “Why can’t I have the same chances other people have, really, I have as much talent as Jason Alexander, for goodness sake, and not only will he receive money from the never ending reruns of Seinfeld, but just because he’s kind of famous he gets a children’s book published even though there is no reason to believe he has any talent as a writer of children’s books or even deserves to have a publisher look at his manuscript, but because he was a whiny self-centered nebbish on a hit sitcom he gets to do what ever he wants.” Or maybe that’s just me.

Some are more equal than others

At the risk of sounding un-American I have to admit I am finding it harder and harder to buy into the “All men are created equal” precept Mr. Jefferson threw into the Declaration eleven score and ten years ago. Well, when I think about “created” equal it might be viable. As an example let’s take Alan Greenspan and Jimmy Kimmel’s Uncle Frank, they may have started out equal but on down the line some things went a bit haywire. I do not intend to devalue either person, but you cannot say they are equal in many comparable traits.
This great land of ours has always valued the individual. The idea that anyone can grow up to be President is a wonderful thing to tell children. Even though it may have the same merit as telling them “if you keep making that face it will freeze that way” or talking them into doing things they really hate by telling them it builds character. Also, if you spend twenty minutes at any grocery store and you will be able to point out at least a dozen kids you hope will never become president of the local chapter of the Frodo Baggins Fan Club much less of the United States. You know the kind of kid I’m talking about. (Gimme some cookies? Gimme a candy bar? Gimme some gum? Buy me something, buy me something, buy me something.) Actually, if you spend twenty minutes at the national conventions for either party and you will be able to point out at least a dozen candidates you hope will never become president of anything more powerful than the local chapter of the Dan Quayle Fan Club. Once again, you know the type. (Gimme your attention? Gimme your trust? Gimme access to your wallet? Vote for me, vote for me, vote for me.) The problem is the idea of equality has been twisted a bit.
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but we are not all equal. Think of it this way. If you require heart surgery it would make much more sense for the person wearing the rubber gloves to be someone who spent more time in med school than playing Super Mario Brothers. This brings to mind a conversation I overheard as I was walking across campus in my undergrad days. One twenty year old hung over guy stops staring at the coed jogging by and says to the other twenty year old hung over guy: “I was going to go with a pre-med major, but I decided to go for business because you can party more.” Now if I became a patient of this man in later years I would not want the last few words I heard as the anesthetic took hold to be: “I was going to us the scalpel but the DeWalt 6.5 Amp Heavy-Duty Variable-Speed Top-Handle Jigsaw sounded much more fun.” Come to think of it if this guy did graduate with a business degree I wouldn’t want my vice president in charge of the long range planning saying to his buddy as they stroll down Wall Street: “I was going to invest the company’s retirement funds in FedEx and Exxon stock but I decided betting the whole thing on Chicago Cubs to win the World Series was more fun.”
Technology has made it possible for anyone to get his or her ideas out to the general public, and I do mean anyone. The world of “blogs” and YouTube means people with the journalistic acumen of Walter Cronkite’s left shoe can tell the world what is happening, whether it actually happened or not. I’m sorry, but I still prefer the information being spread around the countryside be gathered and distributed by people with ethics, intellect, and a conscience. Not by people with a laptop, a modem, and the spelling ability of Walter Cronkite’s right shoe.
It has gotten to the point that even Time Magazine named the nameless “You” as its Person of the Year for 2006. To explain this choice Time editor Lev Grossman wrote, “It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” However, the previous sentence could be pure bunk because I read it on Wikipedia, a website written by the normal guy on the virtual street, not by stodgy men in horribly out of date clothing who spend hour upon hour researching the accuracy of things before they put them into print for hundreds of thousands of people to read.
Just because Time Magazine named the common man Person of the Year doesn’t mean it’s a positive thing. Josef Stalin was also named Person of the Year, twice!

Auld Lang Syne of the Apocalypse

May old acquaintance be forgot. Out with the old and in with the new. New and improved. Better tasting plus more cleaning power! Humans always seem to think new, in and of itself, proves better. Well, here we are at the beginning of a “new” year, so following this logic things will be better or at least have increased cleaning power.
Personally, many things went quite well last year. I do not feel the need to throw it aside like a sock with a hole in the toe. Actually, I don’t throw away socks with a hole in the toe. I still hold to my theory stating each pair of socks you own is one more day without having to do laundry. There needs to be two holes in the toe and one in the heel before I think about tossing aside an old sock. Something my wife does not understand, but is willing to tolerate. Which brings me to one of the reasons 2006 was a good year.
I didn’t get divorced. Now those of you who know me need to realize there was never any danger of this happening. The reason I take the time to mark I didn’t get divorced is because my marriage is the best thing in my life and if 2006 was a good year, which it was, my wife is a major contributor to that success. Getting sappy is not in my job description for this column so I will now digress.
One big reason I do not have any problems in my marriage is I am too tired to create any. Infidelity is often cited by couples ending a relationship. If Cheryl Tiegs, (this proves I am out of the “lusting in my heart” stage of life because I had to reach all the way back to when I was thirteen to think of a “hot babe” to use as an example), if Ms. Tiegs offered to make my deepest fantasy come true she would remain fully clothed as she wrote the check getting me out of debt so I could quit my job and sleep until 9 o’clock every morning. Okay, to prove I’m still a red-blooded American man she could write the check while wearing that white mesh swimsuit she wore in Sports Illustrated.
Another example of why 2006 was a good year is 364 days of the year I did not throw up. Everyone can agree that a day without throwing up is always better than a day in which one does throw up. The day I had some sort of virus which caused extreme discomfort was horrible, but it was not self-inflicted. There were times in my youth I ingested a few too many containers of cereal malt beverage and became unwell because of it. That was long ago, just a few years after Cheryl Tiegs lived in my daydreams.
Nowadays the things which threaten my day-to-day health are a result of spending my work days in what amounts to a petrie dish of bacteria and viruses, a school. I have decided there are only two ways to avoid catching any illness when working in a building with six hundred germ incubators (a.k.a children). The first is to arrive each day wearing one of those suits the NASA guys wore when they invaded Elliot’s house looking for ET. This makes it very hard to sit at my desk and the gloves make it impossible to type discipline referrals into the computer. The other way is to bar students from the building. This greatly reduces the risk of being exposed to germs and it eliminates the need to write discipline referrals as well, two for the price of one, cool.
Looking forward to 2007 I have to admit I have my worries. Even though the Chiefs got into the playoffs which required Kansas City winning, Tennessee losing, Cincinnati losing, Denver losing, the moon moving into the seventh house, Jupiter aligning with Mars, causing peace to guide the planets, and love to steer the stars. There are other indications the world may be headed for disaster. Not the least of which is “Armed and Famous.”
Ad after ad for this “reality” show was displayed as I watched the game. If handing an ex-professional wrestler (Trish Stratus), a has-been television heartthrob (Erik Estrada), the son of a whacked out rock star (Jack Osbourne), a little person who made his living being publicly humiliated by someone named Johnny Knoxville (Jason Acuna a.k.a. Wee Man), and a member of the most famously dysfunctional family of all time (LaToya Jackson) real guns and badges is not a sign of the apocalypse I suggest someone study the Book of Revelations a bit more closely.

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Hollywood

I finally accomplished writing a column two weeks in row. This should appear in the Globe December 13th.

Driving down the street the other night I saw one of those inflatable snowmen in someone’s yard. These things are all over the country this time of year. However, the image in front of me was one which made it clear I was in southwestern Kansas. The snowman was bent so low to the ground he looked like he was tossing his icicles all over the grass. Inflatable snowmen are not tougher than the December Kansas wind. It’s good to be home.
As a young man I spent one Christmas season living in Santa Monica, California. Even with the name Santa in my mailing address the Christmas spirit was hard to muster. I worked in a mall, the repository of all that is tacky and sentimental for any holiday season, yet I still didn’t feel like the geese were getting fat. (It didn’t help that instead of hearing Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole’s mellifluous tones for some reason a pair of street performers were constantly dancing to Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” in front of the bookstore which employed me.) Living six blocks from the beach is great in June and July, but after Thanksgiving the only tide I want to be concerned with is one of the Yule variety.
The Midwesterner out of Kansas feeling was brought home with stark realism one afternoon in mid-December. I had driven into Hollywood to do some Christmas shopping. (Tacky touristy items have an allure as stocking stuffers.) I came out of a store and looked to my left and saw Santa Claus ringing a bell standing next to a black pot. That’s not odd. The problem was he was wearing short pants! They were red with white fur trim, but Santa was wearing short pants! That is like Perry Como singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That’s like Currier and Ives painting a picture of the Arabian Desert complete with camels and Bedouins. That’s like Rudolph having rhinoplasty which rivals Michael Jackson’s. That is like Santa Claus wearing short pants! Oh, sorry that’s what started this whole thing. I lost track. See how completely wrong it is?
Bermuda Santa wasn’t all. Soon after that shock I heard the convivial ringing of sleigh bells. Ahh, this is more like it. I looked onto Hollywood Boulevard and saw a pair of exhausted donkeys with bits of wood tied to their heads as antlers. While pathetic, I could live with it. You’d think in the very heart of make-believe and special effects someone could have come up something better than chair legs haphazardly attached to hooved critters to create fake reindeer. What made me want to hop the next sleigh to Kansas happened next. The donkeys were pulling a wagon with a dozen or so little kids sitting in it, southern California’s version of a hayrack ride, I guess. These little ones were not all bundled up singing Jingle Bells at the top of their lungs. Nope, they were riding along in silence. I noticed one little boy with a glint in his eyes. Maybe this guy had visions of sugar plums dancing in his head. Maybe he was dreaming of the Red Ryder BB gun he hoped Santa would deliver. Maybe a Lionel train set was steaming around the Christmas tree in his imagination. Then again, maybe not. I looked behind me to see what had his attention. He was staring at a window display, not a Macy’s window display from “Miracle on 34th Street.” Nope, it was a window display from “Sleazy on Hollywood and Vine.” It was the Frederick’s of Hollywood holiday panorama of unmentionables. I don’t remember anything else about the wagon. I was distracted for a while.
Growing up in a part of the world where Christmas is cold and even occasionally white allows me to buy into the images used in most all media versions of the holiday. What if I had grown up in southern California? All my memories would be of Santa in short pants and underwear mannequins. That would be sad. A kid I knew out there was eighteen years old and had never seen snow fall from the sky. She had seen it in movies and on television, but she had to take other people’s word for it. Snow falling from the sky is as mythical to a Santa Monica High School student as intellectual lyrics in a rap song is to anyone over forty. A southern California kid dreaming of a white Christmas is as likely as Snoop Dogg alluding to Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal work “Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology” in his most recent release, “Kickin’ it with Kierkegaard.”

Christopher Pyle wishes everyone a wonderful holiday season, and points out the Grinch is pure existential myth. One Christmas he pushes the huge sack of Whoville Christmas trappings up the mountain only to find the next Christmas he must push it up the mountain again.

Sometimes we just need the Snickers to work

“Make the Snickers work” was scrawled on a piece of paper posted next to the candy machine in the lounge at work. The pain and suffering expressed by those four simple words was palpable. Novelists spend years of their lives trying to convey such emotion. They use thousands of words crafted, edited, and re-written with painstaking care in order to give the reader a sense of human longing, desire for the unattainable, striving for perfection. Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, even Danielle Steele, come up short compared to this anonymous author’s reaching out to powers greater than himself to make life worth living. Maybe I am overstating things just a bit. Dante was successful a couple of times.
When the candy machine keeps your sixty cents and does not dispense the chocolate confection there is a sense of loss and frustration, and you see the struggle against the powers that be as something fruitless, or at least candy bar-less. Your will to continue is called into question. You are a poorer individual, at least sixty cents poorer. The reason you forced yourself out of your chair, trudged up two flights of stairs and poked through a fistful of loose change is taken from you. The goal is now unreachable because all you have left is pennies. The coin return of life just springs back into place without the friendly clink of coins dropping into the tray for retrieval.
The metaphor illustrated by this experience is downright stark. The act of rising up from your chair represents the energy exerted to pull yourself up from the simple and mundane and move towards something greater than oneself, something of nougat sweetness. Trudging up the stairs is emblematic of man’s continual climb towards perfection, something akin to the Eight-Fold Path described by the Enlightened One, also known as Buddha. (Have you seen pictures of Buddha? It appears that dude had access to a whole bunch of candy machines.) The loose change symbolizes the cultural and economic tokens of achievement which are tools to an end, but should not be the goal in and of themselves. Picking through the coins is like pulling the greater achievements out from amongst the lesser ones, the quarters from the pennies, so to speak. Then our “Everyman” takes those great achievements (the coins) and uses them in trade (deposits them into the slot and pushes button 22) in order to reach his ultimate goal (the Snickers bar). He stands there waiting for the corkscrew shaped holder of his heart’s desire to rotate and gently drop it a mere six inches. Then all he needs is the energy to push aside the door and grasp what he has been working for his entire life. But no, the mechanism is still, the Snickers bar does not move. The goal is visible through the Plexiglas. It hangs there, mocking him, so close yet unattainable.
Now some people would not do what our friend did. A person of lesser character would grab hold of the machine and shake it in a craven attempt to aggressively take what was being kept from him. Others might pound on the glass protesting loudly the unfair and heartless treatment he was receiving like those earliest humans calling out to the moon as if it was a caring deity. The basest among us might have taken the nearest blunt object and burst through the boundary of glass and greedily grabbed not only the Snickers bar but also the mini chocolate donuts, the spicy barbeque chips…all the treasures in the machine without a single thought towards others. Others who, at this very moment, might be sitting in their office chairs dreaming of the time when their break will come and they can use their coins to purchase a little slice of heaven simply known as Funyuns.
Our hero did not care about his own achievements and dreams. He performed a selfless act. The call to powers greater than himself (the Candy Machine Guy) was not demanding repayment of his own lost coins. Nay, he used his energy to make a plea that the unsympathetic machine of life be repaired so others following in his footsteps would not suffer the ignoble pain of such horrible loss. This person did not place himself above others. He did not let his loss scar him and cause him to behave is a way which was beneath him. He simply and artfully wrote the words “Make the Snickers work” and left them for others to see. A sign of the danger one must face whenever one places too much worth upon a single goal.
Then again maybe he just hit button number eleven, got a bag of Skittles, and went back to work.