The names have been changed to protect the profits

A phenomenon which is new to me is the concept of rebranding. This is an image facelift in an attempt to change the public’s perception of a company or other entity. Often times it is only attempted after a large amount of bad press or a particularly distressing incident.
The first one I heard of was Phillip Morris. Phillip Morris is a company known far and wide as the manufacturer of cigarettes. The only thing to accumulate more bad press than cigarettes is probably…uh…I’m gonna have to think about this one…well… Nazis.
So after a chain of lawsuits that makes Nuremberg look like an episode of Law and Order Phillip Morris decided it was time for subterfuge, oops, I mean a public relations makeover. To do this they didn’t stop making cigarettes. They didn’t stop trying to sell cigarettes to as many people as they could. They did, however, change their name. Phillip Morris became Altria.
This was brilliant. The name Phillip Morris sounds like a man who sits in a glass and steel corporate skyscraper behind a mahogany desk larger than a Volkswagen dispensing orders to buy and sell stock while chomping on a foot long cigar, stepping on the human rights of any and all underlings, and instigating environmentally insensitive policies with a loud guffaw. While Altria sounds like the Greek goddess of empathy who was known for her kindness to large-eyed orphans and kittens.
Actually, I learned the word Altria is derived from a Latin word meaning “high”. This begs the question, is this company making cigarettes from the usual tobacco or has Michael Phelps found a new endorsement deal?
Their logo makes no sense to me. It is a square made up of a bunch of different colored squares. It looks like that thing you get when you select the “more colors” option on your computer. Is this supposed to indicate the diversity of their product lines? Or is it representative of the wide variety of phlegm colors one can produce after having smoked for a number of years.
Another company who decided to rebrand is Blackwater. Yes, the warriors for hire company who got such a rosy report back in the United States after its endeavors in Iraq. This firm put itself through its own version of witness relocation by changing its name to Xe. Nope, I did not make that up. They chose to adopt a company name which is more like an algebra notation than an actual recognizable word.
In one way it makes sense because people who are trying to hide from their past are often referred to as Mr. X in the journalistic exposes recounting the unfortunate events. This company did not adopt the motto of John Wayne type heroes. The old kicking tail mindset of shoot first and ask questions later. They preferred their own variation on that theme: shoot first and refuse to answer questions later.
There have been discussions amongst some political pundits after the recent presidential election that the Republican Party needs to go through a sort of rebranding. They are not suggesting the party simply change its name (even though I would love the chance to name a whole political party) but rather spend time and effort to re-define what the party stands for so it better reaches the voters. While I am not a political operative in any way, shape or form I am a person who spends a lot of time with the younger generation and I think I might have a good idea about how to grow the party by becoming attractive to kids who could not vote in the last election but will do so in 2012.
The Republican Party needs to become the party of the virtual candidate. They need a nominee who was created via the Spore internet site. One who has an ample presence on Facebook. A candidate able to win battles in the World of Warcraft, rescue Princess Zelda, collect voluminous campaign contributions in Lego studs, and willing to name Steve Jobs as his running mate/programmer. I have the perfect name for this candidate as well: George Wii-shington. His slogan would be: “Now is the time for all good nerds to come to aid of their gaming consoles.” If voting becomes the newest app for the iPod touch the election is in the bag.

Christopher Pyle would like to form the Delightfully Apathetic Dudes (DAD) Party. The chief planks of its platform would be mandatory Saturday afternoon napping, a man’s inalienable right to have chocolate covered doughnuts for breakfast and year round NFL. To register in this party e-mail Chris at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com

Superstitions and Valentines

Those of you reading the newspaper today probably do not suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia. If you did you’d probably be hiding under the bed because today is Friday the 13th. That twenty-three letter word is an amalgamation of the Greek words Paraskevi meaning Friday, dekatreis meaning 13, and phobia meaning fear. Those of you still reading do not suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, the fear of long words. No, I did not make up that word, but I really wish I had.
Why would Friday the 13th be considered unlucky? Thursday the 27th may be pretty crummy but nobody talks about it. The number thirteen has long been considered unlucky. One explanation I found for this is because the number twelve is often considered a good number. Numerologists consider twelve to represent completeness. This is because there are twelve months in a year, twelve hours on the clock, twelve inches in a foot, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve drummers drumming and twelve ladybugs at the ladybug picnic (I loved that song on Sesame Street). Because twelve is complete, meaning it is well-centered with a firm grasp of its own self-worth, thirteen is horribly jealous and therefore goes around trying to screw things up.
Friday also has a spotty past. In Norse mythology Friday is named after Frigga, that wild and crazy goddess of love and fertility. Well, when the Norse tribes converted to Christianity Frigga was banished to some fjord or something in the frigid north and was none too happy about it. So, every Friday she and a bunch of her closest friends, witches and a guy called the devil, would get together, throw back a few drinks and plan all the crummy stuff they would pull on people over the next week.
I guess this all means today is unlucky because an indignant number and a ticked off love goddess haven’t taken a twelve step program to outgrow their pettiness. Maybe if we made it a thirteen step program they’d be interested.
If we all survive today tomorrow brings a whole new set of issues our way. It’s St. Valentine’s Day. Why we connect February the 14th with romantic love is as convoluted as why we connect Friday the 13th with Ziggy-type ill-fortune and guy wearing a hockey mask.
Hours and hours of exhaustive research, well, okay, three and a half minutes on Wikipedia, showed me the Saint Valentine whose feast was on February 14th has a biography even shorter than the attention span of a ten year old watching Timothy Geithner explain how the Federal Reserve changing the prime interest rate can cause shockwaves in the Nikkei average….zzzzzzz. Sorry, it isn’t just ten year olds who find that stuff anesthetic.
Back on track. Valentine of Rome was a priest in, you guessed it, Rome, who suffered martyrdom in 269 was buried on the Via Flaminia and whose relics are at the Church of Saint Praxed in, there is a theme developing here, Rome. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable if my relics were on display for just anyone to see.
The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau, that’s a poem for the non-romantics out there, written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife. This was along the lines of a Casey Kasem long distance dedication because Chuck was sitting in the Tower of London after coming out on the wrong side of the Battle of Agincourt.
Since that time Valentine’s Day has been taken from romance to commerce. There is an arc of commercials being presented by a chain of jewelry stores which describes a guy who is so in touch with his inner romantic he hand crafts a card with special paper, curlicue lettering on the front, sealing wax on the back and a poem he wrote himself because he couldn’t find a card to express the depth of his emotion. The commercial goes on to say since every other guy is incapable of that we need to get our sorry behinds to Helzberg’s and drop a chunk of last month’s paycheck in order to buy the affection of the lady in our lives. Neither choice is very attractive to me.
A friend of mine had the right idea. He wasn’t a Shakespearian romantic nor was he a diamond purchasing Casanova. He would take his wife to the store, guide her to the rack of cards and show her the one he would have bought for her if he had been inclined to spend any money on such frivolity.

Who do want to be when you grow up?

What is a hero? When looking at a dictionary we find a description of somebody who is admired because of outstanding qualities or achievements, or we find a description of an impressive sandwich which can also be admired for its qualities and achievements. I think most everyone has someone they wish to emulate. As we go through life the criteria we have for selecting our heroes tends to change.
Looking back I think the first hero I had was Batman. By today’s standards this brings to mind a dark, brooding avenger for justice with a single-minded sense of purpose and an unswerving dedication to serving mankind. I could pretend that is what attracted me to him, but…not so much. I was a devotee of the wham, socko television show with Adam West. This means my hero was prone to walking up the sides of skyscrapers (with cameos from people like Sammy Davis Jr. sticking their heads out the windows), matching wits with grade B has been movies stars playing such villains as Olga, Queen of the Cossacks and Chief Screaming Chicken as well as putting the word “bat” in front of every possible noun in order to make it sound impressive.
“Quick, to the batpole so we can get to the batcave and jump into our batmobile and drive down the bathighway listening to our bat8-track player singing batsongs and have a batpicnic with batsandwiches.”
“Holy get a grip! You’re making me crazy with all this bat…guano.”
I outgrew that.
Like many young boys my next heroes came from the world of sports. I was a big fan of Ed Podolak. He was a running back for the Kansas City Chiefs and he had one of the most impressive games in playoff history. Christmas Day 1971 he racked up 350 yards, running, catching returning punts and kickoffs. He was amazing. The Chiefs lost.
Later I shifted my heroic attentions to the movies. I thought Sean Connery was cool. Why is it Americans think anyone with an accent can play any nationality? Connery, a kilt-wearing Scotsman, has played Englishmen, Arabs, Americans, Russians, an ancient Greek king, and a winged fire-breathing lizard, but the guy was cool with a capital “C” and a capital “OO”, the “l” can remain lower case otherwise it would be ostentatious.
Now that I am a grown man heroes are harder to come by. Comic book characters are no longer viable because the idea of running through alleys in the dark of night pursuing evil doers holds no allure. Actually the idea of running, for any reason, holds no allure. Sports stars are out (see previous sentence). Movie stars are just people pretending to be things they are not. That is not an outstanding quality or achievement because I do that every time I tell my children I’m smarter than they are.
Still we all need people to look up to and pattern our behaviors after as we muddle through our day-to-day life. I have a friend who embodies many of the characteristics I thought I’d like to strengthen in my own personality. He is tireless. He is not only comfortable with all kinds of new technology he is very adept with it. He learns new things, masters them and then moves on to the next thing. He is so capable as a multi-tasker he has lost the ability to do just one thing at a time. I used to say I wanted to be him. Then it dawned on me. I possess neither the energy, the finances nor the mettle to be him. Also, I realized I really don’t want to be all that. It takes up too much time.
Okay, if I am going to figure out who my true hero is I need to get my priorities figured out. What do I truly value?
I value kindness. I value humor. I value intelligence. I value a really good pie. Oh, my goodness! My true hero is the Galloping Gourmet. How embarrassing.
Let’s try that again shall we. I value kindness. I value humor. I value intelligence. I value honesty unless it means you are telling me my weight, how much it costs to send my kids to college or whether I resemble Harrison Ford. Well, that didn’t lead to a hero.
One more go. I value kindness. I value humor. I value intelligence. Oh, my, it was right there all along. My heroes are my father, my mother, my wife and my kids. How boring it that?

Not Everything Has to Have a Point

As many of you probably know my real job is in the world of education, but I believe I would have this same concern for how things are going even if I made a living trimming poodle fur or running Apple computers. Also, I would like to point out many people in the field of education disagree with me. What am I worried about? Well, I’ll tell you. I am concerned too many people believe everything done by a student in school should be useful.
First I guess I need to define “useful”. To most people useful is something which makes it possible to accomplish a particular task. Useful like being able to balance a checkbook. Useful like being able to change the oil in your car. Useful like being able to identify which kinds of mushrooms you can eat without poisoning yourself which is only slightly more useful than being able to identify which peanut butter has peanuts, dextrose, hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt and salmonella.
Don’t get me wrong I approve of useful. I want my children to know how to balance a checkbook. Unfortunately there have been times in my life I decided it was just easier to open a whole new account than try to figure out the Gordian Knot which until recently had been an orderly list of debits and credits. I would like it if they can change their own oil. I am a car ignoramus but I am not as bad as a co-worker who once told me they added oil to their car because it was squeaking. (I did not make that up.) Also, if I am ever hopelessly lost in a forest I want someone who can say helpful things like, “Don’t eat that mushroom” and “You know what bears do in the woods? You’re standing in it.”
The point I am trying to make is the reason for education should not just be the achievement of utilitarian goals. Schools should not be creating worker drones. Schools should give students useful tools and make it possible for people to do all those useful things, but that is not where it should end.
Too often educators fall into the trap of thinking we are making the next generation of employees. Actually, we are making the next generation of employees and participants in the electoral process and handlers of our environment and choosers of our nursing homes. I like to think being all of that requires an understanding beyond the times tables, the four-step problem solving method and the parts of speech. An understanding of things not testable with multiple choice questions.
I was reading a column in The New York Times by Stanley Fish. He quoted the philosopher Michael Oakeshott saying, “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding necessary to practice a skill, and the learning which is expressly focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining.” To me what this is all about is we need to expand our definition of what is useful.
I happen to think the ability to make others laugh is very useful, but you will never see an ad in the yellow pages for a joke repairman. In regards to humor the usefulness is less hammer and chisel useful and more temporal lobe useful.
Sir Jonathan Miller, who graduated from Cambridge, became a medical doctor, directed many productions of Shakespeare’s plays, became a research fellow in neuropsychology at Sussex University and wrote comedy with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore is a genuinely smart fellow. He knows a thing or two about what is useful beyond nuts and bolts. I heard him on a panel discussing how humor makes us human. At this time he said, “One of the rewards which is contained in humor and the reason why we seek it, is because it mobilizes cognitive versatility and the evolutionary advantage of cognitive versatility is self-evident.” I can attest that he really said it because I rewound and played it over and over until I got it all written down properly.
I have to say even though that quote was hard to get right I like it much better than the quote attributed to Richard Teller Crane (a big time rich guy plumbing magnate): No one who has “a taste for literature has the right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness…are those who are useful.” Oh, I hope not. I don’t fit that description unless there suddenly becomes a demand for joke repairmen.

The New Guy is on the Job

Well, the new guy has moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Many people are piling a lot of hopes on this man’s plate. Some of them are realistic and some, not so much. Before he gets too busy I have some requests.
There is a lot of consternation about the economy. While I agree he should look into this issue, first he needs to appoint a blue ribbon, bi-partisan commission in conjunction with a special investigator (has anybody seen Ken Starr lately) in order to explain why Jack Bauer has not been named the Secretary of Homeland Security. He accomplishes more in 24 hours than anyone can possibly imagine. Actually, he does everything in about 17.6 hours when you subtract commercials.
The new Mr. President is a learned man. He went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School and was a professor at the University of Chicago. He has written books and his speeches are hailed by many for raising the general levels of discourse and rhetoric in today’s politics. My hope is he will lead this nation to value the artistry and power of words, to raise beyond the third grade reading level of mass media, and inspire today’s youth to embrace Dickens, Shakespeare, and McCartney. McCartney? Yes, Paul McCartney who wrote those immortal, life affirming words: “Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra, la-la how the life goes on.” Was there ever a better example of John Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”?
Restoring the United States’ reputation internationally is something the new president looks to accomplish. This may not be an easy task. Even one of our earliest friends has issues with us. I’m talking about France, a country who threw in with the upstart thirteen states in 1778 and helped them gain their independence from the England (even though they did so more because they were still ticked at England for the whole Henry V kicking their butt at Agincourt thing than because they liked us, like that girl in tenth grade who went to the dance with you just because she knew her ex-boyfriend thought you were a complete dweeb).
My suggestion to get France to like us again is a win-win situation for both countries. You know how France thinks one of our own native sons is an artistic genius. I am referring to Jerry Lewis, who the French Minister of Culture called the “French people’s favorite clown” when he bestowed upon him the Legion d’honneur. Well, I say send him to France as a present. Throw in Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller and it makes our country a better place as well.
If I may be allowed to stray from the silliness for a while I would like to say I have placed some of my genuine hopes for the future on President Obama’s plate. While watching the inauguration on television Tuesday I choked up a few times. Granted I can be overly sentimental and have been known to cry at Hallmark commercials, but that which was on display January 20th should make most Americans reach for a tissue.
Whether you voted for Senator McCain or the eventual winner everyone should agree when this country puts on its best and tries to live up to the reputation as the beacon of freedom and opportunity for all it can be impressive. The most jaded and pessimistic of us would say we are just pretending. Well, when you were a kid in the backyard you pretended to be the ultimate example of your dreams – an amazing athlete, a hero with superhuman powers, a princess who was the epitome of charm and grace or a fireman rescuing the helpless. Even if we were pretending and have not attained the level of justice and moral strength described on that podium at least we are pretending to be something valuable, something worth striving for and something I want my children to believe is possible to achieve in their everyday lives even if it is not always on display in our government.
I liked President Obama’s list of American values requisite for the tasks ahead: hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism. I work in a school populated with over five hundred children and I know we try to give them exposure to these values, but it is often an uphill battle to make them stick. If our new leader can do anything to help those children and the ones like them throughout our country grasp those ideals there is no way we won’t make headway against all the obstacles in our path.

Getting Rolled Over as a Role Model

I am a family man. This means a lot of different things. It means I have been awakened in the wee hours of the morning because a person measuring less than two and half feet tall has managed to usurp nearly the entire surface area of a king size bed and in the process placed a heel directly into my kidney. It means I have an abnormally high amount of concern regarding the number of lights left on in the basement, why there are seven pairs of shoes in the living room when only five people live in the house, and what exactly is allowed to go into the drain of the kitchen sink. It also means I have to set a good example. All things being equal, I would rather have my kidney mauled by a three year old.
Being a role model is truly one of the most important aspects of being a parent. One of the difficulties is you are one whether you are aware of it or not. My parents were much better at this than I am. I never heard my father say a word which could be deemed R-rated and very seldom heard him use any curses beyond what one hears in comic book adventures from the fifties. To this day I have yet to hear my mother say anything mean spirited. But when my first born daughter was out in the back yard and became displeased with something and the word “damn” emitted from those cherubic lips all eyes turned immediately to me. Actually, the only eyes in the vicinity belonged to my wife, but as all married men know those eyes are powerful eyes, laser beam powerful, triple garlic sauce breath powerful, don’t look directly at the eclipse or you’ll go blind powerful. My daughter had, of course, learned this word from me. In my defense I only used it as an adjective when discussing the dog. So I was surprised Emilyjane used it in a sentence not pertaining to the canine. When I tried to point out her usage of the invective in a whole different context was a sign of her advanced intellect it did not help my cause, but it was a creative way to attempt to get out of damn dog house.
Recently my wife and eldest daughter (whose use of blue language has improved) decided it was time to pay more attention to eating in a healthy manner. This means more vegetables, skim milk, cereal not featuring cartoon characters on the box, and snack foods which have the calorie count written in a font larger than the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline from the Chicago Tribune in order to shame you into only eating one serving, which turns out to be not so difficult after you taste them. You’ve heard the phrase “collateral damage” meaning the unintentional injury or damage which occurs around military action. Well, I am a victim of collateral diet.
A product which has infiltrated my home is a “shake” in a can which describes itself as chocolate. This is like Barry Manilow advertising himself as a rock singer. There may be similarities on some very basic level, maybe a molecular level, but that is as close as it gets. This product not only has the temerity to call itself chocolate but it also claims it is “a delicious meal substitute.” Well, I have news for you Mr. Nutritious Chocolaty Liquid in a can. I know another delicious meal substitute: a bag of Fig Newtons.
But, as I said, being a family man means I have to be a role model. Ergo, I eat the vegetables served at dinner, refrain from complaining about skim milk (which should really be called milk tainted water), and hide the real snack foods in my sock drawer.
If I’m being truly honest I think there is one thing missing in today’s society which existed in the kinder gentler days gone by which should be brought back in full force. I’m not talking about such out-dated things as mothers who have no choice but to stay home and cook dinner and do laundry. I do not mean that children should be simply seen and not heard, not even fully valued as people. I mean double standards should not only be allowed but encouraged.
“Mom, how come Dad gets to have seven chocolate doughnuts and Dr. Pepper for breakfast and I have to eat this pebbles and twigs cereal?”
“Because he’s the dad.”
Hey, I guy can dream can’t he?

Words to Live By, or at Least Near

I like smart people. I like to listen to smart people talk. I like to read what smart people write. I don’t always understand what they are saying but I like to try. In my office I have a long roll of paper tacked to the wall on which I have images of people I admire as well as quotes from smart people.
I know these several syllable prescriptions for a better existence are superficial when removed from the bigger picture from whence they originated, but I get a kick out of them. I frequently fail to use what wisdom they do offer when making the choices which decide my fate, but I still like them and I do endeavor to remember them as I stumble through life.
Smart is important, but I think kindness is the most important personality trait a person can possess. For proof of that I point to a quote on my wall which was attributed to one of the most world renowned smart guys ever, Plato. The quote is: “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” My less than brilliant Greek philosopher interpretation of that is: “Life can really stink so don’t add to someone else’s stinky life by being mean to them.” My way won’t fit so nicely on a marble tablet or a papyrus scroll which is probably the only reason Plato didn’t say it the way I did.
Another aspect of human nature I have to keep reminding myself about connects with Mr. Plato’s statement. People have a tendency to be more than a little self-centered. I don’t mean thoughtless of other people but rather most folks think of the world only how it relates to themselves. Another quote on my wall points this out. Franklin D. Roosevelt is quoted as saying: “Remember, you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.”
Think about it. As you go through your day you are the star. The story doesn’t start until you wake up. The theme music fires up when you get out of bed. Personally, I imagine the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark even if I cut a less than dashing figure as I trudge towards the shower in my flannel pants adorned with dozens of penguins and prepare for my day of not uncovering riches and defeating Nazis.
The thing President Roosevelt was telling us is as we move through our day as the star of the show we keep bumping into people who are the star of their shows. What we need to remember is not unlike too many cooks spoiling the broth too many stars can spoil the movie. Case in point, the movie Wholly Moses had more A-list movie stars than you can shake a stick at and after watching it you would want to use the stick less for shaking and more for striking, pummeling, and bludgeoning. Anyway, we need to remember everyone thinks they are the most important person in the story and we are the wacky neighbor. I don’t mind being Fred Mertz but I draw the line if someone wants to cast me as Monroe Ficus (the Jim J. Bullock character on Too Close for Comfort).
Another one of the quotes on my wall is attributed to William James. It says: The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. I really like that one because being able to correctly select which things to care about and which things to let fall away truly makes life better.
Admit it you have spent a good deal of time and effort focusing on things which later turned out to be of no real importance. There have also been times you ignored things which should have garnered your full attention. Like that time in college you left undone your term paper comparing and contrasting the basic tenets espoused by Machiavelli and those put forth by Jean Jacques Rousseau because the Twilight Zone marathon was running on television. (Actually, in retrospect I think you made the right choice.)
Finally, the last quote on my wall is not from a great philosopher taught in universities throughout the land but it sums up much of what I feel on a regular basis. It speaks to life being a struggle which cannot always be understood, a struggle which gets the better of us all from time to time. I leave you with these words from Warren Zevon: Sometimes I feel like my shadow’s casting me.

Christopher Pyle also loves a quote once attributed to Socrates: I drank what? You may dispute this by e-mailing him at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com

To heck with Guy Lambardo

The song which has come to be synonymous with ringing in a new year is probably the most performed song in the country to which nobody knows the lyrics. Admit it, after “should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind” you, like nearly everybody else, start to make unintelligible vowel sounds until you get to the “auld lang syne” at the end.
Not only do I have a problem remembering the lyrics I have a problem with the apparent sentiment of the single lyric I can remember. I don’t really want to forget all my old acquaintances and never bring them to mind. I like some of my old acquaintances better than a lot of the people I met recently.
Many people do not believe me when I tell them I am a shy person. I admit it is somewhat counter intuitive when there was a time in my life I would wear short pants and cowboy boots and purposely cavort in goofy ways in front of more than a thousand people at the Dodge City Civic Center (I was Marshal Hoops the mascot for the Legend basketball team). I also performed in several productions for what was then the Boot Hill Repertory Company, often in very silly roles. It is just my shyness manifests itself in that I would rather stand in front of a couple hundred people than a couple people.
Because of this basic shyness I don’t make new friends all that often. My wife is the truly gregarious one. She adds friends to her list more frequently and with greater ease than I do. There have even been times in the past when she tried to fix me up. She’d think I was being too reclusive and would arrange for us to spend time with another couple. She was friends with the wife and would scout out the husband to be sure there were compatibilities.
I would tell her I was perfectly content staying home and she would point out “Fred” (a fictitious name used in order to allow anonymity for these innocent by-standers in my blind, man dates) was a sports fan, had similar tastes in music and agreed with many of my political beliefs.
I have to admit most every time she did this I had a fine time. She has a good eye for people I will be compatible with and with whom I can carry on an interesting and entertaining conversation. If my wife ever decides to leave me just how pathetic would it be for me to ask her to find my dates for me when I’m single again?
Even with the success stories of these fix-up friends I still refuse to practice the “acquaintance Alzheimer’s” suggested by the song. In 2008 I celebrated the fortieth anniversary of my longest friendship. Rob and I met the first day of kindergarten at Wiley Elementary School in Hutchinson, Kansas,1968. Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States, the Green Bay Packers were the reigning champions of the National Football League, nobody had walked on the moon yet, a single computer was the size of those gigantic Easter Island stone heads and phones were heavy enough to cause severe blunt force trauma if thrown at someone and the dials were rotary. That was a long time ago. 1968 was the year Celine Dion, Vanilla Ice, and Molly Ringwald were born. Our friendship is the same age and infinitely more talented and entertaining.
Also, 2008 marked the 18th year of my marriage. If our marriage was a person it could now vote, buy lottery tickets and could have been married itself for the past four years if it lived in Arkansas.
The long term relationships are more important to me. Between Claudia and Rob, they possess the knowledge of every stupid move, irretrievably dumb decision, and patently dim-witted action I have ever undertaken, yet they still treat me well and do things which make my life better. Part of this may be due to the fact I also possess some information they may not wish to be made public, heh, heh, heh.
No matter what Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians tell us I suggest everyone out there take a moment to remember old acquaintances, to value what they have added to our lives and how they have helped form us into the people we have become. Also, to remember the time he walked directly into the pillar in our high school lobby making me laugh until I was in danger of losing proper control of my bladder.

For want of something better

‘Tis the season to want things. I am not just talking about base greediness. Not to say there isn’t base greediness in the world (a student at my school when asked what he wanted for Christmas said he wanted two Xboxes, one for the living room and one for his room), but there is also altruistic wanting. The wanting to do good deeds for others, the wanting of a better life for all as the calendar turns from 2008 to 2009, and the wanting of a diminishing number of movie opportunities for Ben Stiller are examples of non-greedy wanting, but rather wanting for the greater good.
This begs the question: why do we want what we want? Recently I have explored several different facets of how our brains work and one of those facets revolves around how we make such decisions.
The basic conflict within our minds is between the forces of emotion and the forces of rational thought. Allow me to put it into simplistic imagery in order to clarify the concepts. The emotional forces, not surprisingly, look like one of those Orc things from the Lord of the Rings movies, a hulking creature of great strength and atrocious personal hygiene. It is not easily distracted from its primal goals.
Rational thought shouldn’t even be referred to as a “force”. It looks like a ninth grade civics teacher. This means the rational thoughts part of the brain is pleasant enough, erudite, introspective, conscientious, ergo rather boring and easily turned into a quivering mass of terrified gelatin.
Think about it. For those of you who went to Liberty Junior High the same years I did, would you place your wager on Mr. Zahorsky (ninth grade civics teacher in 1977) or an ax-wielding, knuckle dragging denizen of the Middle Earth underworld in a one-on-one grudge match?
Actually the two forces don’t even have to get into direct conflict for the emotional side to win. One university study illustrated the general weakness of rationality. It had been previously proven that the typical human mind can hold seven, plus or minus two, bits of information in the forefront of its memory, so some smarty pants college professors designed an experiment. The participants would go into a room and were told a list of numbers to remember. They were then asked to go from the first room to another room and recite the numbers to the person there. Some people were given very short lists and others were given a list at the top of the difficulty level of seven digits.
As the participants went from Room A to Room B an accomplice of the professors stopped them and offered a snack as a way of thanking them for helping with the study. They were offered either a piece of chocolate cake or some fruit. This is where the real experiment was taking place.
The great majority of the participants who were only asked to memorize a couple of numbers asked for the fruit and the majority of participants who were laboring to remember seven digits asked for the cake. The professor folks took this to mean the rational mind was so over burdened by trying to remember the seven numbers the emotional mind was able to make the selection. “Me want cake!” slathered the Orc and since the civics teacher was too busy reciting “one, three, seven, six, uh, blast, what’s next?” it wasn’t able to have the mouth ask for the much healthier and ergo more rational choice of fruit.
I use this learned experiment to explain why I sneak to Dillon’s after work and buy doughnuts. My rational mind is so preoccupied with the pursuit of enhancing the educational opportunities for the eager young people, who, after all, are the hope for the future of our nation, nay, our entire planet, I cannot be bothered to use my rational brain power to select a food which can sate my hunger without contributing to the unhealthy state of being well over the surgeon general’s recommended weight. This is a sacrifice I am willing to make for the benefit of today’s youth. You can thank me later.
Another tidbit of decision making is emotions really are necessary to make a choice. A man who suffered from a brain tumor was changed into a person who relied exclusively on logic. This man would spend hours working out the merits of using a pen with blue or black ink, sometimes not arriving at a decision. This shows extreme rationality is wishy-washy. The emotional person knows how to choose the best pen. Oooo, I like the shiny one.

If you decide you wish to comment you may contact Christopher Pyle at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.

Dear Santa, uh, I'll have to get back to you

I seem to have crossed over into a new stage of life. I don’t want anything for Christmas. On one hand this could mean I have reached a level of contentment in my life, a sort of serenity in which the base desire for material goods has been supplanted by higher thoughts leading to greater understanding of what is truly important in life. On the other hand it might mean I’m old.
When you’re a little person, with the wonder of Santa Claus fresh in your consciousness, it is easy to make a Christmas list only slightly longer than the collected works of Leo Tolstoy. This is not a sign of greed. This is a sign of the belief that the world is full of possibilities, that there is magic at the North Pole, and that the latest Major Matt Mason action figure will make life complete.
I can personally attest to that last fact. When I tore the paper from the green headed alien, Callisto, adding to my collection of Sgt. Storm, Astronaut Doug Davis, and Lt. Jeff Long there was a sense of joy not rivaled by many things in the life of quiet desperation pursued by most folks who work for a living.
As we get past the enchantment of those early years, Christmas often does get slightly tainted with greed. We want stuff for the sake of stuff. After the days of action figures, slot car race tracks (which worked until New Year’s Day) or for the girls, the Crissy doll (which had a knob on her back to retract her hair back into her head and a button in her stomach which made it possible to pull her hair out to a greater length - that was just weird) teenagers tend to want the latest and coolest gadgets and part of this desire is simply for the boost in status amongst their friends.
My stint in this time of life was before Blu-Ray, before MP3 players, before Nintendo, before DVDs, before CDs, before cell phones, before video tape players, before the wheel, oops, went just a bit too far there. I very distinctly remember getting a cool radio. Yes, I said a radio. It was AM and FM. It was designed so it looked like a bottom heavy circle, but it had a hinge of sorts which meant you could swivel it so it looked like a bloated “S”. With this ooh-neat-cool-wow radio I could listen to Casey Kasem tell me Debby Boone was at the top of the charts for the nine hundred and twenty-seventh week with an intensely insipid love song or Dancin’ Don Hall send out good night kiss dedications on KWHK (never to me, sigh).
Later the Christmas list shows signs of maturity. You start asking for things you can actually use. The ultimate sign a person has grown up is when he wants socks beneath the Tannenbaum. What was once the crummy present you resented wasting the time it took to unwrap goes from representing an unfeeling great aunt with a twisted utilitarian sense of gift giving to something else entirely. As a college student I saw each pair of socks as one more day I could avoid going to the Laundromat.
During the first few years of being an honest to goodness grown up it is still easy to make lists of desired stuff. Much of the stuff was placed on the list because it would make life a bit more interesting, fun, or easy to do. My lists would contain a smattering of things not unlike items from lists I made in other stages of my life. I would ask for toys because I thought it really didn’t count as Christmas if there wasn’t something to play with down there on the floor amongst the tattered paper and bows. I would ask for the latest gadgets partially for the coolness factor and partly because they were the toys of people over ten. I would ask for socks because I still preferred putting off laundry for as long as possible.
This Christmas I really don’t want anything. If I was forced to write what I wanted it would sound sappy. I want my children to be happy and healthy. I want my wife to be well taken care of and never to feel she goofed up by marrying me. I want my friends to be successful in what they pursue. For me, I want to expand my horizons as a writer and continue being with my wife, children and friends. Oh, and a couple of pairs of socks would be nice.

Truth, Justice and the Milky Way

Philosophers and artists of all kinds have spent centuries looking for just the right thought or image to sum up the human condition. People are complex and there are innumerable points of view but occasionally one of these extraordinary individuals hits upon something which speaks to each and every human being who considers himself a seeker of the truth. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Mozart, and Picasso, have transcended with word, tone or image into the world of truth and the planet is enriched because of it.
I realize I am just some yutz from Kansas who plays with words but I think I have found an image which illustrates the eternal struggle faced by man each day as he forces himself out of bed and forays out into the maelstrom that is life. This image comes from a dispenser. Not a dispenser of wisdom like the collected writings of Socrates. Not a dispenser of insight like the Oracle at Delphi. Not even a dispenser of down home good judgment like Poor Richard’s Almanac. I’m talking about a dispenser of hedonistic gratification: the snack machine in the break room at work.
It has to be a very specific sort of snack machine. It has to be one of those machines which has a glass front and all the tasty treats are visible. Laid before the seeker are all the tantalizing objects of his desire. The goals of life are just hanging there on those curly post thingees waiting for the proper button to be pushed. When that button sends its message to the curly post thingee it slowly begins to rotate, teasing the seeker. Will the object of desire drop into the catcher tray or will something cause it to get hung up just out of reach, taunting the pilgrim?
Today I visited the break room in search of solace, refuge from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, a salve to soothe dealing with people who would rather create problems out of thin air than work to make the world a better place, or more precisely, chocolate. As I gazed into the newly refilled automated giver of joy I saw something which went beyond mere melts in your mouth euphoria. This was a lesson, a piercing insight.
Curly post thingee number 17 had extra large size peppermint patties. A candy which gives the consumer a bracingly clean cool minty taste sensation while in the same bite offering the dark warmth of chocolate, the yin and the yang of sweetness. That in and of itself was a moment of insight, but the lesson did not stop there. When the omniscient manipulator of the snack machine had reached in to replenish the waning choices he had placed the enticing candy treats behind the last remaining lonely bag of CornNuts.
The symbolism was too stark. In order to get to the nirvana of creamy sweetness one must first shell out one’s hard earned money to chew one’s way through the hardest foodstuff ever invented. As I gazed at this eternal truth before me it dawned on me there might be a shortcut. If someone else would throw themselves on the curly dispenser sword and buy the bag of CornNuts it would clear the path to the soft goodness without me having to endure the callous hardness of life.
I went back later in the day. Blast! Nobody had the guts or strength of character, not to mention the proper density strength of teeth, to sacrifice for the good of the rest of us. The CornNuts still lay between me and the peppermint patties.
Since I am trying to adhere to a budget I have only allotted the price of one snack treat per day. So here was my dilemma: I could use today’s money to by a lesser treat giving less fulfillment or I could buy the CornNuts thus surrendering my own daily pleasure for the sake of others or I could not buy anything, save today’s prearranged allocation of coinage so tomorrow I could buy the CornNuts and then immediately drop the next set of quarters into the machine, buying the peppermint soothing the pain of masticating my way through a crunch so loud it can drown out the laughter of children, the twitter of songbirds and all other sounds of elation known to mankind.
That is when it came to me. My wife actually likes CornNuts. I’ll go get her.

Buddy Can Ya Spare a Billion

It seems the economy is suffering through a bit of a down turn. This down turn is somewhat akin to falling off Mount Everest and landing near the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Look at the newspaper. Oh, I guess you already are. I mean look at the depressing parts of the newspaper. The government is doing more bailing out than a Hell’s Angels lawyer on New Year’s Eve.
Can anyone explain to me why banks need money? Banks are where money lives. Banks are to money as dairies are to milk. Banks are to money as Blockbuster is to DVDs. Banks are to money as the Kansas City Chiefs are to football players…okay, bad example, but you get what I mean.
The government has already committed $700 billion to bailout various financial institutions. If you laid 700 billion one dollar bills end to end the line would reach from Dodge City to the desert planet of Tatooine and continue to the planet Mongo returning to Dodge City with enough left over to get to Jetmore. Okay, I actually started to do the math for a real-life analogy but after figuring 700 billion one dollar bills come to over 4 trillion 200 billion inches of money I gave up.
Now the car companies want $25 billion in what I believe they are calling some sort of loan. So does Congress mail them a coupon book which has sixty little perforated pages asking for monthly payments of four hundred sixteen million, six hundred sixty-six thousand, six hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents to be mailed to United States Capitol Building, Independence Avenue, Washington, DC 20001? (Quick digression: When looking for the mailing address of the Capitol Building I found out it is common to use the abbreviation SOB when sending things to United States Senators. At first I thought it was a strange version of truth in advertising until I found out it stood for Senate Office Building.)
One more mathematical juggling act. If the government took the $25 billion the car companies are asking for and divided it into checks of an equal amount they could give 833,333 people enough money to buy a new car, cash on the barrel head. That might boost the economy for a few folks.
Since the government is not likely to offer any of us a couple of billion dollars to get ourselves out of debt we will have to figure it out on our own. One thing used by many different companies and groups is to sell advertising rights.
Remember when sports teams played in venues with names like Memorial Stadium, Soldier Field, or Boston Garden? Now most teams have sold their souls, uh, sorry, now teams have sold the “naming rights” for their home fields. The Pittsburgh Pirates play baseball at PNC (a bank) Park. The Pittsburgh Penguins play hockey at Mellon (another bank) Arena. The Pittsburgh Steelers play football at Heinz (a condiment company) Field. I always thought there should by a 57 yard line at Heinz Field. (I used that joke in a column I wrote in 2004 but I still think it’s funny. I may be alone in that thought, but I do.)
A math teacher at Rancho Bernardo High School in California has latched on to this idea to pay for supplies he needs for his students. He has sold ad space on his quizzes and tests. This makes sense to the kids raised on Sesame Street. They go from toddlers who hear “today’s episode was brought to by the number 4” to high school kids who read “today’s calculus test is brought to you by Fantastic Sam’s Hair Salon.” The ad ought to read: “If you bomb the test you can get your parents off your back by getting that haircut your mom keeps bugging you about.”
If this catches on companies will target the demographic groups at whom to aim their ads. Vo-tech automotive tests will have ads for Pennzoil. Advanced trigonometry classes will have ads for Apple computers. English literature classes will have ads for McDonald’s because that is where liberal arts majors end up working.
I am willing to do this at a high level. I have no problem telling people the Pyles live in Dr. Pepper House. It would be fine with me if Viagra wanted to pay me to paint my car blue and plaster their logo all over it. For the proper price I am even amenable to have the registered trademarks of amazon.com and Google tattooed on my forearms.

Christopher Pyle has made it obvious he can be bought. All that is left is to haggle over the price. To put in your bids e-mail him at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.

Comedy Writers Fantasy Camp

When we left our intrepid reporter he was preparing to fly off to Los Angeles in pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge pertaining to the arcane arts of story, character and the ever so important punch-line. Okay, so that doesn’t really make me very intrepid. The only genuine danger I faced was leg cramps due to being shoe-horned into an airplane seat for hours.
Traveling is full of interesting moments. Airports contain a diverse collection of people. One of my favorite individuals from this trip was found in the boarding area of my connecting flight in Dallas. This guy was amazing. If he had shown up on the set of The Sopranos they would have sent him back to wardrobe to tone it down. His hair was lacquered into perfect swoops and curves doubling as a helmet in case someone wanted to hit him with a blunt object. His pinkie ring was large enough to conceal a pastrami sandwich. The diamond bracelet on his right arm matched well with the sparkling necklace he wore on the outside of his multi-colored open at the neck untucked shirt. When the attendant called over the intercom for a Mr. Dino Gianetti I am pretty sure mine was not the only pair of eyes to immediately swing in his direction. Yes, it was him. (Author’s note: the name was changed not to protect the innocent, but to protect me in case he was being moved into witness protection and I run the risk of being whacked for having seen him) He paused to shrug into his purple velveteen sport coat and ambled over to the desk to pursue his upgrade to first class. I was sorely tempted to approach him and ask, “Please say it. Just once. Can you please say baa-da-bing?”
Another unusual aspect of my travels actually made me feel safer. Some sort of military or law enforcement dog was on the plane with me. At least if we crashed were carrying our own survivor sniffing dog. I lingered close to the dog for a while before boarding so he cold get a good clean hit off the Classic Club Sandwich I’d eaten for lunch. If the worst came to pass I wanted the highly trained olfactory senses on that animal tuned in but good. I need him tearing around with just one thought in his canine brain… “bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon.”
The design of the weekend was to have us work as if we were really staff on a sitcom. A small group of actors performed a single scene. It was pretty bad. But it was bad on purpose so we had more of a task ahead of us as we re-wrote it. The guy running the seminar wrote it. He is very adept at writing good scenes as he has written for “MASH”, “Cheers”, and “Frasier” among other highly popular shows. He gave us this stink burger in order to hone our own skills.
Each group adjourned to their writer’s room complete with cookies and Diet Coke. My group worked with few breaks from around three in the afternoon to a little after midnight discussing story, character and sprinkling in funny bits. I have to admit it did not feel like nine hours dedicated to one task. If I’d spent that same time frame doing my real job it would have ended in an emergency room visit, either for the victim of my unhinged tirade or my own need for psychotropic meds to avoid attempts at self-immolation.
It was a great experience and since it is the Thanksgiving weekend I wish to thank some people. First, Mom, the original supporter of my odd hobbies and dreams, who helped with the financial burden and a forty-six year old man asking his mommy for money adds an embarrassment price to the monetary one. Next, I thank my wife for being the continuous support system for my inexplicable desire to be a writer which so far contributes $40 a month to our family budget. I thank Ken Levine and Dan O’Day for creating the experience worthy of the cash and self-esteem expenditures. I thank my group of fellow writers for teaching me things and causing frequent fits of laughter. Finally, I thank the staff at the Carl’s Jr. fast food restaurant a couple blocks from my hotel who made it possible for me to eat without having to sell my plasma to afford the hotel restaurant food.

Christopher Pyle was amazed to receive something akin to a fan letter from a genuine comedy writer, a guy who wrote for The Simpsons, after he read my blog post about the weekend. If you wish to deflate Chris’s ego please write to occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.

There are different kinds of smart

Being called an intellectual is often thrown at people as an epithet. Think back to your school days. Was the “smartest” kid in class looked upon with respect and considered to be cool? My guess is “no”. Smart people are often the butt of jokes and the preferred target of bullies. Until they design a new software system and make more money in a three year period than the entire population of western Europe, excluding the Principality of Monaco (Prince Albert II is not only not in a can, the dude is stinking rich).
The definition of intelligence does change as the culture changes. Several years ago Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist who may have been beaten up as a child for being an egghead, put forth a theory he dubbed Multiple Intelligences. Professor Gardner listed seven kinds of intelligence. To boil down an entire career into a single sentence, different people are intelligent in different ways. Man, I did that quite easily and it didn’t take years of research and more money than Prince Albert II spends on yacht wax.
There are times I wish I had a different mode of intelligence than I have. I am about as useful around the house as a guy who likes to write eight hundred word humor columns for a newspaper is around the house. That was a crummy analogy. Maybe I don’t even have the linguistic intelligence I thought I had.
When I have a clogged drain I go down the street and enlist the help of my plumbing Zen Master, Warren, to get the water moving again. When I have computer issues I go to my computer whisperer Seth. Whenever I need help of an artistic nature I go to She of the Pen and Brush, Sarah. I do not feel bad about seeking their help. They have skills and are willing to share. The problem is I have no skill to pay them back.
Really, when will they possibly need to know such marvelous facts like 20% of all species of mammals are bats, the theme to the Batman television show starring Adam West was written by Neal Hefti who also wrote the soundtrack music to the film Lord Love a Duck starring Roddy McDowell, and if trying to traverse a large expanse of ice covered pavement it is best to imitate the way Roddy McDowell walked when performing in the Planet of the Apes movies (it really works, try it). That is the coin of the realm in my world. Pathetic isn’t it?
I was probably destined for this from an early age. When I got home from school in the afternoon I wanted to watch Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas on television. Many kids my age would have been playing in the backyard. Maybe building elaborate roads in the dirt or using a magnifying glass to immolate ants to pass the time. Others would be shooting baskets in the driveway or tossing the pigskin around the vacant lot. Not me.
One particular memory has me watching Merv and Red Skelton is a guest. He does a marvelous physical comedy routine which would not be considered politically correct these days about a guy advertising a brand of Gin and getting properly toasted as he drinks more and more of the product. I immediately went outside, turned on the hose to get a good supply of water, and proceeded to work for an hour or so to perfect the spit take.
This set of priorities stuck with me through my college years. My very first year at the University of Kansas I made sure my class schedule was constructed so I could walk home to my tiny apartment in the student slums in time to see the midday rerun of The Dick Van Dyke Show on KSHB, Channel 41. Reading St. Augustine and Machiavelli in my Western Civilization class could wait. I had to get my education on prat falls and bald jokes.
Fast forward to now. I am a 46 year-old school administrator who writes jokes in a notebook he carries most everywhere he goes. But that is not all. I am about to climb on a plane and fly out to Los Angeles to participate in a seminar. Is it a seminar about reaching severely at-risk students? Is it a seminar teaching me the latest methods for improving reading comprehension across the curriculum? Nope. I am spending loads of money to be locked into a hotel ballroom learning how to write sitcoms from one of the guys who wrote for Cheers.

The News Just Keeps on Coming

The election is over. I have to admit I was a bit of a political junkie over the last several weeks. I found myself going to lots of different websites to load up on information. I listened to a bunch of podcasts from iTunes which center on various issues and aspects of the presidential campaign. The televisions in my house only receive three channels so I often stayed at work to watch cable networks as they examined and parsed every conceivable aspect of the upcoming vote.
There was definitely a point where I reached overdose status. The day before the election I settled into my chair and fired up the internet and found I did not have the energy to go to my bookmarked political sites. Before I even new what was happening I found myself on a sports website. It turns out obsessing on the presidential race had saved me from some emotional stress. How is that? I’m a Chiefs fan.
Like a Western European Hedgehog rousing itself after hibernating through a tough Finlandic winter I poked my head out of the political news cocoon I had surrounded myself with and found there was a whole world out there I had been oblivious to for some time.
I was going to use the more typical bear in my hibernation analogy, but one of the things I learned as I went whizzing around the non-politically interested internet was bears do not actually hibernate. Their metabolism does not sufficiently alter to qualify for true hibernation status. I am sure this will come as quite a surprise to Yogi and Boo Boo who will no longer need to swipe quite so many pic-a-nic baskets to sustain them through the Jellystone Park winters, much to Ranger Smith’s relief.
Here is one news item I had missed. The Swiss Constitution has been amended in order to protect a certain segment of the native population. This on the surface sounds very positive. It is almost always a good thing to have government stand up to protect the down trodden. The odd thing is this segment of the population can literally be trodden down. They were referring to plants.
The Swiss Parliament asked a panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians (and I am quoting from the Wall Street Journal online here) “to establish the meaning of flora’s dignity.”
I am a pacifist by nature, but if remaining neutral and never having to worry about running a war means you now have to spend your time creating panels to discuss the inalienable rights of begonias I may have to re-think some things.
Before going on I have to take a moment and try to picture a conference room full of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians. What a wacky place it must be. The philosophers are in their corner arguing if the Hemlock plant feels guilt for the murder of Socrates. The lawyers are considering a class action lawsuit against John Deere on behalf of wheat. The geneticists are bunched up discussing how to engineer a rose by another name which truly does smell as sweet. Finally, the theologians are debating if they had been pre-destined to be stuck in this room, if it was a matter of man’s free will or if it was a little known circle of Hell.
What sort of conundrum does this pose for Swiss vegetarians? Think of the poor potato. Peeled, boiled, mashed, and slathered in butter all for the personal amusement of some hominid who shamelessly uses the fact that he possess a few measly things the potato doesn’t (central nervous system, powers of cognition, and opposable thumbs) to subjugate the entire race of Solanum tuberosum (for those of you who do not remember you Linnaean nomenclature that’s the Latin name for potato).
Since Florida does not have to spend this November recounting ballots one community is looking to deal with another problem. Deltona, Florida is concerned about too many bugs. To deal with this they are going to bring in a large number of bats. According to Bat Conservation International, a charter member of the Association of Groups Nobody Ever Thought Existed But Do, bats can eat up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in an hour.
A neighboring city is now contemplating bringing a large number of owls to keep the bats from taking over their airspace. This is called the “Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” method of species control.
It truly is amazing what was going on in the world while I was spending all my time with Wolf Blitzer.

Christopher Pyle hopes the Swiss laws pertaining to plants are not retroactive. While visiting Hilterfingen Switzerland in 1982 he decapitated (a.k.a. picked) a flower.

Road to the White House or Trail of Tears

As of Friday October 31, 2008 there are 80 days left in the presidency of George W. Bush. Judging from his approval ratings there will not be many tears shed as he totes his last box of personal effects out of the Oval Office. Do you think ex-presidents swipe towels? I would at least make off with some office supplies.
We are less than a week away from the official Election Day deciding who goes into that office after him. Do you think a new president sits at the desk and spins around in the chair laughing maniacally only stopping long enough to pick up the phone and pretend to authorize an air strike on the home of the sixth grade teacher who told him he would never amount to anything as long as he had that attitude?
These candidates have been running longer than Frank Shorter ever dreamed possible. Think about it. Sen. Obama officially announced 633 days before Election Day and Sen. McCain officially announced 558 days ahead. In that time frame a woman could have conceived, carried to full term and given birth to a child, twice.
Here’s a fun story problem. Usain Bolt takes a magic potion (not steroids) which makes it possible for him to run as fast as he does in the 100m dash continuously. If you figure he can run a mile in about two and half minutes and he started running when Sen. Obama announced his candidacy how many times could he have run the entire equatorial circumference of the Earth? This is even better than the train questions in those college entrance exams.
The question which truly comes to my mind is “Why?” Why would anyone want to put themselves through running for president? I would almost rather run the circumference of the equator, in ill-fitting army boots. At least when you run around the planet the likelihood of being interviewed by Sean Hannity is not very great.
The press has to be the worst aspect of the whole thing. Originally the word “press” was used in regards to the media because of the printing press. Now “press” must refer to a different definition of the word: to use a steady and significant force to put weight on something. No matter which guy you are voting for you have to feel sorry for them both as they are asked question after question by everyone from Larry King to the Live at Five reporter who has the same knowledge of international affairs and current tax laws as does your average sock puppet.
I could never run for president. The first time some hatchet man from the opposing party started saying I did something I never did I would give a news conference which would make Peter Finch’s character from the movie Network look like Mahatma Gandhi.
For years I have said the people who really ought to be president will never run because they are too smart to put up with all the (place your own word to describe animal solid waste here) which surrounds the process. One of the reasons I say this is because of a different George W. I knew.
George W. Pyle was a city manager for over 30 years. A city manager is a non-elected person whose task it is to serve the public. There are probably a few readers out there who remember him in Hutchinson. I knew him pretty well. He was my dad.
He took the public trust very seriously and he worked tirelessly to do what was right for the people in his community. He came from a background which included the sacrifices made during The Depression and World War II, and the call to arms of John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”
I know who he would vote for. He would vote for the candidate who was most likely to ask the country to work together for the good of everybody, most particularly the least of us. He would vote for someone who wasn’t afraid of asking for sacrifice even if it meant a little hardship now in order to ensure prosperity later. He would vote for someone who possessed intellectual curiosity, valued ideas and was looking for the opinion of others. Most importantly, he would vote and then he would do his best to make his part of the world a better place no matter who won.

I believe the answer to the Usain Bolt story problem is 46.

To Uni-Hemisphere Sleep, Perchance to Dream

For thousands of years various cultures have done many different things to mark the passage from childhood to adulthood. Some are simple ceremonies and others cause many different parts of my body to tighten and my stomach to get queasy just having them described. I am very grateful the culture in Hutchinson, Kansas circa 1975, as I entered adolescence, did not require ritualistic scarification to be considered an adult; otherwise I would be a bearded, pot-bellied, gray-haired eighth grader still today.
As is often the case with the human race it seems to me this “now you are a man” stuff has been made more complicated than it needs to be. As a father of three and a former child myself I can easily point to the moment when children cross the line into maturity. It is when they start to sleep, voluntarily.
I fully realize toddlers cannot spell but they seem to think “nap” is a four letter word. The energy expended every day in this country by parents trying to cajole, beg, trick, force, and coax kids to just lie down and go to sleep far surpasses anything T. Boone Pickens ever dreamed of. If we could harness that domestic renewable resource the chant would go from “drill, baby, drill” to “naptime, baby, naptime”.
Recently I learned a bunch about sleep, a subject very dear to my heart. Every animal does it, but there are big differences in how. The reason for the various methods used by different animals in order to get sleep is simple, death. One scientist stated it is dangerous to sleep and if natural selection could have gotten rid of it it would have.
Think about it. You are a happy little mallard blithely napping on the shore of a happy little pond. When a happy (and hungry) little fox, who is very much awake, comes strolling by. Suddenly the happy duck is a happy meal without the toy.
Well, I learned mallards can sleep with one eye open. They actually rest one half of their brain at a time. Each eye is connected to the opposite hemisphere in the brain so the duck places itself in a group with other sleepy ducks. Some ducks watch one direction and different ducks watch the other way. This gives one half of the brain a right good snooze. Then they switch sides and the other half sleeps.
Another one of the many animals who does this “uni-hemisphere” sleeping is the dolphin. These animals live under water a good deal of the time. They also need to breathe air. They also need to sleep. Because of all of these factors a dolphin cannot go into complete sleep. They have to keep one half of their brain going at all times or they would drown.
Truthfully, I had never considered the fact that dolphins are conscious breathers. Unlike us they have to make a distinct decision to breathe. It requires thought. The obvious joke would be to say it is a good thing there aren’t any blonde dolphins, but luckily I would never make the obvious joke.
Smarter than me scientist guys explained that man can sleep with both eyes shut and truly go unconscious to the world around them because we do not have the predation risk most animals have. This started a long time ago when we would go into caves and hide from saber toothed tigers and continues today when we go into condos and hide from predacious sub-prime mortgage lenders.
This uni-hemisphere sleeping intrigues me. I love sleeping. I never get as much as I would like to get. Yet everything I do does not require my full attention. If I could sleep like a dolphin I would love to. There are meetings I have attended that I could easily grasp the content with one cranial hemisphere tied behind my back.
One last tidbit about sleep. It appears sleep is integral to learning. No, I am not suggesting kids sleep in class, even though I had a couple of social studies teachers who seemed to be trying to induce unconsciousness. As we sleep the brain gets “washed”. All the clutter from the day’s activities, important and trivial, is eroded. This leaves the ones which were most prominent still standing and the others all but unnoticeable.
Therefore the special maneuver you learned while playing Mortal Combat XXIX: The Revenge of the Torn Spleen for five hours remains fully remembered and the thirty minute discussion in school about Gandhi is washed away like crumbs off a plate. Wait a minute, that can’t be good.

It's Not What You Know It's When You Know

I may have mentioned this before, but I am surrounded by people who do not understand me. The previous statement was not made due to angst ridden self-absorption like a morose teenager. I truly mean they do not understand me.
My place of work houses over 500 people who were born fifteen years after I graduated from high school. Age has caught up to me in many ways. The waist measurement will never be 32 inches again. My hair is getting lighter in color and in weight. My knee twinges when the barometric pressure fluctuates. But, the times I feel the oldest are when I make references to things I think everybody will understand and they look at me like I just spoke in the language of the aboriginal inhabitants of Outer Mongolia.
Years ago I was teaching a sixth grade class. A kid in the back row was tapping his pencil on his desk, incessantly. I was able to ignore it for a while, but it finally got to me. Instead of racing to his desk taking the pencil from his hand and breaking it into tiny pieces, which is what I wanted to do, I stayed professional. I calmly put my hand on his shoulder and asked him to stop doing his Ringo Starr impression. I received that speaking Mongolian stare. Neither he nor anyone else in the class knew who Ringo Starr was so my statement made as much sense as asking him to carefully insert a lobster into each nostril.
I recently learned there is a phrase other than the over used “generation gap” to point out the different worlds in which different age groups live. It is called a “mindset”. This makes sense because the mindset people have is dictated by the world they know. There is a website published by Beloit College in Wisconsin which makes lists of things pertaining to students who would be graduating in the years 2002 to 2012. It makes for interesting reading.
Technology is the starkest difference between the generations. This is discussed at the website, but I am reminded of another instance I came across as a teacher. This was many years ago. We were doing a fire safety lesson with fourth graders and in order to make it more physical we had the students do actions for the different things one should do in case of a fire. They would actually stop, drop and roll. They would crawl a short distance to show them how they should move in a smoky house. Then we had them run a short distance (as in getting to a neighbor’s house). The last thing was to pretend to call 9-1-1.
This was downright funny. The kids would be in a lather as they did all the physical activities and then they would come sprinting up to the phone we had sitting on a chair for them to make their emergency phone call. They would grasp the receiver and their pointer finger would be poised over the dial. The dial?! They had no idea how to “dial” a phone. They had only seen buttons. There was that Mongolian look again.
Stop and think about the most memorable things in your lifetime, the cultural things, not just your first date with that hot girl from algebra class. Kids going into college this past fall do not have the same collective unconscious we had. They can’t discuss where they were when Kennedy was shot, when Reagan was shot, or even when J.R. was shot. For them the argument has always been Mac versus PC, not Ford versus Chevy. A text is a group of letters on a tiny screen not the book you have to read for history class. These people have no idea why whenever there is a controversy in the world we tack on the suffix “-gate”.
Personally, I look to one very particular aspect of my life that my children will not experience. It is not earth-shattering, deeply philosophical or something that will be discussed by historians in the 22nd century, but I think it is representative of how the world has changed. They do not get to watch Johnny Carson each night.
The persona of Carson showed kindness, intelligence and humor. These traits are not played up nearly enough in the mass media of today. There is more interest in Simon Cowell, political knife fights (still only figurative and verbal, but it could turn literal very easily), and jokes about human effluvia. The mindset has changed.

Being Articulate and Stuff

I like to learn things. Let me put a qualifier on that. I like to learn some things. Learning how to properly eviscerate a large woodland creature for the sake of crawling into the fresh cavity in order to avoid freezing to death on the frozen tundra of an area of the world from which one can see Russia, is of no interest. Learning how to use such phrases as “properly eviscerate” and “frozen tundra” in the same sentence is. Now, if I could only learn how to add the phrase “a touch of whimsy” to the same sentence I would feel truly fulfilled.
Education was highly valued in my family. This did not mean my folks fussed about grades or cracked a whip as we did homework. My mother did try to help me. The difficulty for my mother was not the work. It was the attention level of her pupil, who could often be found playing with the honey filled bear left on the kitchen table while she slaved over quadratic equations. She learned algebra. I learned if you squeeze the bear just right the little plastic stopper can reach gravitational escape velocity.
Since the job which allows me to pay my mortgage is in education I probably shouldn’t say this, but maybe I can get some of that bailout money if I get fired. My father used to say school was ancillary to education. The very fact that he used the word “ancillary”, properly, in a sentence reinforces the fact that smart was important to him. I think he meant school is important for getting a good education, but if you only actively try to learn within the confines of those ubiquitous blond brick buildings you will not be a fully educated person.
Learning new words has always been a pursuit of mine, in and out of school. I like finding words which really express something in a very precise way. The French have term for this. I think it is “c’est la guerre”. Nope, that’s wrong. Maybe, “pate de foie gras”? That’s not it. I need just the proper word, the perfect fit, le mot juste. Oh, well, I guess I’m not going to remember.
People who try to throw words around in order to put lipstick on a pig (sorry couldn’t resist) bug me. The other day I was at a meeting and there was a whole set of things we were to do. One of them was to write down our thoughts on a “tuning protocol”. I found out that was a piece of paper divided into categories. After that we were to spend some time on “silent reflection”. Back in my day we simply called it “thinking”.
I learned a new word earlier this week reading the New York Times online. This electronic newspaper has the coolest feature. If you’re reading an article and you come across a word you do not know (which is to be expected while reading the big city left-wing elitest press) you can simply double click on the word and a screen pops up with a dictionary entry giving the pronunciation and definition of the word. If only those Green Lantern comics I read in my youth did that. The word I learned was “lacuna”.
Lacuna means an empty space or a missing part. The word was used to describe a certain politician’s gap in knowledge. Now you may ask of what use is it to know this word? Well, it was immediately obvious to me how I could use it. I could write the William F. Buckley version of a song from a Disney movie. It would be all about the voluminous empty spaces where intelligence should lie in the world of politics. A song telling the story of no WMDs, a missing Osama Bin Laden, and politicians who seem surprised that CEOs of big corporations could be greedy. I would call the song “Lacuna Matata”. No smarts, no worries.
It just doesn’t seem the general population values intellect. The word intellectual is used as an epithet. The dictionary in my computer says the word means: having a highly developed ability to think, reason, and understand. Call me crazy, but that sounds like something to aspire towards. But, no, intellectuals are thought of as pocket protector geeks only good for programming your TiVo, working on particle colliders in Switzerland, and being an expert witness in the trial of the cool guy in class who embezzled millions of dollars to maintain his trophy wife and jet setting lifestyle.

Fifty States of Mind

We always say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Actually, we don’t always say that. If we always said that we would be really crummy conversationalists.
“Hey, Jim, what do you think of the presidential candidates?”
“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
“OK, Jim, what about the financial situation the United States is facing?”
“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
“Well, where do you want to eat tonight, Jim?”
“You can’t judge, ooowwww…”
Jim did not finish that sentence because his friend just gave him a swift kick in the shin and walked away muttering something about judging a friend by his intelligence.
Anyway, it is fairly common for people to prejudge things. Sometimes that way of thinking makes sense. If a man walks up to you wearing a leather jacket, a patch over one eye, boots with spikes capable of ruining Ben Hur’s chariot, and a tattoos of a skull and crossbones on one shoulder and the phrase “Waterboarding is for Sissies” on the other, chances are he is not going to ask you if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Chances are more likely you are about to meet your personal savior.
One way people judge each other has to do with where a person calls home. Admit it. If you ask a stranger where they are from and they answer Scranton, Pennsylvania you will draw different conclusions about them than if they answer San Francisco, California.
A recent study discussed in an article in the Wall Street Journal seems to say there are things one can assume about a person who comes from a particular place in the country. A research scientist from the University of Cambridge in England (this immediately brings to mind a stereotypical tweed wearing, meerschaum pipe smoking, crumpet eating, Shakespeare quoting, aesthete who tips the machismo scale somewhere between Clay Aiken and that kid you knew in eighth grade who was the target of choice in every single dodgeball game ever played) has put together information from over 600,000 questionnaires in order to tell the “personality” of each of the fifty states.
These questionnaires measured what is called the “Big Five”. The five personality traits defined are: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Can you imagine a person strong in all five? I’m sure after you imagine a person like that you can easily imagine yourself resisting a powerful urge to slap him across the face because he would be more annoying than fingernails on a chalk board and Dennis Miller, combined.
Just like people, no state was strong in all five areas. Extraversion sounds like it is the director’s cut of a movie on DVD, but it really refers to the outgoing nature of a person. The number one state for this was North Dakota. There will now be a slight pause as all readers go: “Huh… North Dakota?” My guess is in North Dakota there isn’t much else but each other to occupy one’s time.
The winner amongst the fifty states for agreeableness is North Dakota. I am starting to smell a conspiracy here. Is it possible the Cambridge researcher was given a sizable bribe to make North Dakota sound like a wonderful, friendly place to live thus increasing its population and making South Dakota insanely jealous?
The top state in the conscientiousness department is North…just kidding, New Mexico. This is also the only personality trait for which Kansas made the top five. This is no surprise. Kansans pride themselves on their sense of duty and self-discipline. This might explain why we don’t score very highly in the two remaining categories.
Kansas is 34th in neuroticism and 38th in openness. Neuroticism measures things like stress and anxiety. (Digression for an old joke: A psychotic person thinks two plus two is five. A neurotic person knows two plus two is four, but hates it.) Well, we Kansans have too much self-discipline to allow ourselves to be anxious. That and a very high per capita intake of Prozac.
Being 38th in openness must be a surprise. There cannot possibly be thirty-seven states with more open spaces than we have. Wait. When this study says openness they mean openness to new ideas. We can be a bit set in our ways. The majority of Kansas voters voted for a Democratic presidential candidate forty-four years ago, a Democratic senator seventy-six years ago and each election still has a number of write-in votes for Eisenhower. We still like Ike.

From Monogamous Mice to Androgynous Anchovies

Many scientists are reporting that Genes may be even more influential to how humans behave than was previously thought to be the case. I can kind of see what they mean. Gene Rayburn hosted my favorite game show, Match Game. Gene Kelly was one of the best dancers ever. Gene Simmons has one of the longest tongues ever. Gene Moore is considered the top window dresser of the 20th century. (I did not make that up. I found it on Wikipedia.) But I fail to see how these giants in their fields influence all of human behavior.
What’s that? Oh, I feel somewhat embarrassed. It is not “Genes” its genes. Genes are those tiny little doohickeys hanging out within our DNA which lay out the blueprint for the building of people. Back in the 1800’s a scientist guy named Gregor Mendel studied inheritance in pea plants and hypothesized about how traits are passed from parent to offspring. Most the time this concept was simply applied to what color a kid’s eyes would be due to the eye color of the parents. Do you remember doing those Punnet Squares in tenth grade biology? I hated those things.
It seems the more we learn about genes and how humans are hard-wired the more it becomes clear we really don’t know how much influence they have over many more nuanced aspects of who we are. A recent study done by a group of Swedish scientists discusses how a certain gene in men can lead to having better marriages.
This relationship enhancing gene is in charge of modulating the hormone vasopressin. The word “vasopressin” is from an archaic East Indian language and translates to “one who admits he is wrong even when he is not”. Okay, I made that up. It really means “one who considers having power over the remote control a god given right”. I made that up, too.
The thing is all this stuff I’m making up is not all that strange compared to the real story. The scientists first became tuned into this gene and the attendant hormone while studying voles. Voles? I had to run to Wikipedia yet again.
Voles are rodents. Great, when deciding what to study in order to get an insight into how men do well or not in a long-term relationship scientists look to rodents. I’m offended. I mean voles are not even tough rodents. Why couldn’t it have been capybaras? They are rodents with attitude, weighing in at over 170 pounds. But, no. They had to go and compare us to male voles. Animals that have a list of predators longer than the list of people who want to slap Britney Spears. They do not even grow bigger than seven inches long, and here’s the kicker, the female is larger than the male. That might explain why a vole is monogamous. She can kick his short hairy tail.
Here is a direct quote from the article as it appeared on the Yahoo News webpage. “They (the researchers) found that men with a certain variant, known as an allele, of the vasopressin 1a gene, called 334, tended to score especially low on a standard psychological test called the Partner Bonding Scale. They were also less likely to be married than men carrying another form of the gene. And carrying two copies of the 334 allele doubled the odds that the men had undergone some sort of marital crisis over the past year.”
Well. I have only one thing to say to that. Huh?
The very next day after I read about rodents being a “vole” model for men committed to their relationship I read another scientific report. This report talked about how all those chemicals man keeps pumping into the environment have effects on genes. Pair that with what I just learned about the importance of genes in regards to how people function and this news is as frightening as one of those John Stossel reports on 20/20.
The scientific genius guy reporting in this article said the chemicals leaking out into the water supply are likely the reason why many fish species are mutating. How are they mutating? They are developing both male and female sex organs. That’s quite a mutation.
If this phenomenon expands to humans there is a bright side. Men with the 334 allele will have a better chance of maintaining a long term relationship if it is with himself.

To Be Paid in Kind

Whenever a person takes up pen and paper (or, in a more contemporary tone, keyboard and laserjet) it is known to the author the message he is trying to impart has probably been done. I realize what I have to say has been said before. We have John Milton, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and Mel Brooks. I cannot possibly measure up to their skills. This does not mean I am going to give up.
One of those great writers was Henry James. He was a brilliant man from a family of great thinkers. He wrote over twenty novels not to mention numerous novellas, criticisms, journals and plays. I have read almost none of his stuff, but I still think I can accurately say the best thing he ever wrote was the following: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”
I am going to put my spin on what Mr. James said because I fear kindness is as common in everyday life as Big Macs are at a convention of Vegans. Okay, I’m dabbling in hyperbole when I say that. I do see acts of kindness on a regular basis. Working at a school affords me opportunities to see children do small acts of kindness, teachers take extra time to help a kid grow, and counselors go above and beyond the call of duty to make a kid feel better about himself.
This week I was an audience member for a presentation from a group known as Rachel’s Challenge. This group was named for an extraordinary young lady who was a victim of the tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado. I am already straying too far from my job as a humor writer so I will spare you the horrible details. Luckily, the bulk of the message revolved around her outlook on life and how acts of kindness can make a difference in people’s lives. The chief hope of this program is that getting others to chip in with acts of kindness will create a chain reaction, snowballing until kindness becomes the norm instead of the anomaly.
I truly believe kindness is the most valuable character trait for people I want to spend time with and the one I try hardest to impart to the next generation. The fear which is growing in me is people will see that the antithesis of kindness gets people what they want. The chain reaction this behavior sets into motion is dangerous.
I recently listened to a lecture by Phillip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford University and the author of the book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. He discussed how situational and systemic factors can make people behave in awful ways they would not think of doing if the environment was different. He specifically looked at prisons and the horrific behaviors at Abu Ghraib.
If you look around it seems the situational and systemic factors most prevalent are impolite if not downright mean-spirited. I just read an article on the CNN website about the presidential election. 15 paragraphs into the article they started talking about education after getting all the important sniping and downright lying taken care of first. I have liberal leanings so there may be a smattering of partisan prejudice, even though I try not to do so, but the Republican convention seemed chock full of sarcastic comments and invectives. The Democrats took their share of shots at their opponents, but it didn’t seem to be as bitter or nasty.
Political talk on Fox and MSNBC is angry far too much of the time. I have never missed John Chancellor, Walter Cronkite, and David Brinkley so much in my life. If Edward R. Murrow tunes his astral television (even better than Hi-def) to present day television news there wouldn’t be enough cigarettes or bourbon in the world to get the bad taste out of his mouth.
Reality television trades on the worst of people. Duplicitous behaviors can win you a million dollars (as well as eating bugs and foregoing personal hygiene for weeks on end). If Big Brother is watching he is watching people stab others in the back. If you want to be just like Donald Trump I think it is time to reexamine your value set.
This country should be a beacon of humanity. Instead it spends too much time peddling pettiness and impoliteness. That is not who we are, but it could be who we become.

Life Isn't Always Fair

The next ten days are a big deal for Hutchinson. There will be tractor pulls, arm wrestling contests, chainsaw artists, pigs racing and pigs just standing around, bands who last hit the Billboard charts in 1986, a performer who had his first top ten hit when you could still buy 8-track tapes and a performer who was born seventeen years after that song was on the charts. The Kansas State Fair is off and running.
I grew up in Hutchinson so the Fair is part of my earliest memories. The very first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Fair, not something their PR guys would want me to say, is mud. It always seemed to rain during the Fair. The second thing is road signs. The first real hint the Fair was coming was when I was walking home from Roosevelt Elementary School there would be sign posts with no signs. The city would put up “No Parking” signs on several streets close to the fairgrounds, but the posts would go up before the signs were added.
We lived close enough we would be serenaded by the dulcet tones of race car engines on weekends and we could catch occasional bars of music wafting over the treetops from the rock groups at the Grandstand. We also lived close enough I could easily walk there. This meant when I got old enough to go without parental escort I could do so without even asking for a ride. Asking for money? Yes. A ride? No.
My best friend, Rob, and I would go to the Fair. As was the case in many aspects of our friendship, he was the adventurous one and I was not. He wanted to go on the rides which would make Alan Shepard throw up. I did not. He would talk to long-haired men with tattoos chiding us to play their midway games. I would not. He would actually get the little crane thing to grab a prize and drop it through the little door which meant it was now yours. I would not. The crane thing isn’t really all that adventurous; it’s just another example of his fair going skill and my lack thereof.
Another thing Rob loved about the Fair more than I did was free stuff. He would load up on giveaways from businesses and political candidates like it was pirate treasure. Once Rob loaded up on stuff at the Democratic Party booth. The Republican booth got more trade so the Democrats probably didn’t mind. Anyway, he got a bunch of bumper stickers which simply read “Glickman” for no other reason than we both thought the name was funny. We didn’t know at the time that little known Glickman guy would go on to become the Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, the group who brings us the Oscars and decides if a movie has too many dirty words to be rated G.
When I was in high school I worked on the school newspaper so I was actually able to attend press conferences for two performers in the Grandstand: Bill Cosby and Red Skelton, two giants of the comedy world who are personal heroes of mine. As stated above, I am not adventurous so I didn’t say anything, but I do have framed on my office wall Red Skelton’s autograph and a picture of a much skinnier, bad hair wearing Chris Pyle sitting quite close to a comedic genius. Awfully cool.
I haven’t been back to the Fair much since I moved out of the family home. I will be taking my ten-year-old son there this weekend. I am looking forward to a few things. I want to see the place through ten-year-old eyes again, even if it is vicariously through George’s reactions. I want to get free stuff from booths in the Sunflower Building. I want to see a gigantic sculpture made from butter. I would really like to get a candied apple, but the last time I went you could only get the caramel kind. Some government watchdog probably found the glass like candy substance used to encase the fruit was carcinogenic, darn them. It’s food on a stick. It’s not supposed to be good for you. I’ve never seen a Pronto Pup represented on any food pyramid, yet they haven’t stopped selling those.

P.S. They had candied apples. I bought one. It tasted...horrible. You can't recapture those halcyon days of one's youth.