Going for the Gold

There was a TV show in the '60s called The Outer Limits -- or so I'm told; clearly I'm far too youthful to have first-hand knowledge -- a kind of knock-off of The Twilight Zone, with less imagination and 50% less William Shatner (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). The opening narration said, "There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission," then at the end of the episode they "returned control" to you (a power coveted by today's advertisers).

You may recognize that sensation from the just-concluded Olympics. Thanks to the far-flung tentacles of the NBC-Universal octopus (in turn, part of one of the solar system's largest conglomerates... yet one near and dear to my heart, and bank account), you could turn on your TV pretty much any time day or night and find a channel with an event being contested -- or at least a feature on Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps' diet, Michael Phelps' mom, Michael Phelps' mom's dentist....

I was pretty well invested; by my rough count I watched at least 15 different sports, though I still felt like I was missing out a bit on the Constant Variety of Sport that Jim McKay was always spanning the globe in search of. There were actually many hours of preliminary rounds for swimming, diving, gymnastics, track, and beach volleyball... rumor has it there were even some events happening in other sports where the athletes were fully dressed!

And I know for a fact that they missed out on a number of events that may not involve world-class athletes -- and a bunch of people from tiny islands you never heard of who get to go to the Olympics by virtue of being better at a sport than the other 2 people in the country who play it -- but which are contested every day right here in this venue (a certified Olympic Word). For example:

• Weightlifting. Every other night my son says to me, "Dad, will you carry me to bed, dad?" and I get to heft his angular yet nearly 60-lb. frame up the stairs to his room. During times of misbehavior, on the other hand, if he will not willingly repair to his room for "quiet contemplation", I get to perform the Clean and Jerk.
• High hurdles. It takes a finely-tuned athlete to make your way from one end of the playroom to the other.
• Figure peeling. One of my latest obsessions: see if you can peel an entire apple in one continuous piece.
• Individual medley. A solo competition to determine whether dinner can be assembled from the previous week's leftovers.
• 2-meter dash. It's time to go; let's see who can get to the door first. Although this is a land-based event over a relatively short distance, it's actually a cousin in spirit to the open-water swimming competition, which as I understand it is in turn akin to floating roller derby.

I could, as I have proved many times, go on and on. I am concerned that if I keep at it for too long, I'll give in to the obvious "wrestling" joke, although around here that event's usually held in conjunction with the Synchronized Shrieking competition. This is just a taste of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat as it's experienced here daily... you may scoff, but some of this stuff is way closer to being a sport than rhythmic gymnastics.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Library

I am making every effort to prevent my writing from getting even more elaborate, florid, and generally baroque than it already is, and all because of one trip to the library.

For better or worse, it seems to me that my writing style (is it pretentious even to claim to have a style?) was inexorably shaped – or perhaps bent out of shape – in my teens. My reading habit at that point had worsened to the point where, had it been drugs I was consuming, I would’ve been a corpse within a week. In a desperate search for something/anything to keep my jones at bay, I stumbled in quick succession upon Twain, Thurber, and Woody Allen. A bit later there was P.J. O’Rourke, while at the same time I was marinating myself in Monty Python and David Letterman via TV.

That might seem like a disparate assortment, but to me the unifying thread is not just “funny” but a certain twisted sense of language – a sort of mining of the depths of the thesaurus that produces a little jolt to the synapses – as well as an unwillingness to say in four words what can be said in 12 words with a lot more syllables. In that sense, I can’t quite understand why I never became a true fanatic about S.J. Perelman, who fits comfortably on the same shelf.

In the late 70s, Woody Allen published three collections of short pieces which I eagerly snapped up, read and reread. And even though it’s been awhile since the last repetition, phrases still surface in my consciousness from time to time, and still make me laugh (inwardly, that is – I’m trying to stay out of the Rubber Room).

What I didn’t realize, as Woody seems to have shrunk somewhat from public view, and his movies are rarely anticipated Events (or all that funny), is that he is still writing pieces for the New Yorker. Unfortunately, the New Yorker always reminds me of a guy I knew in college. He was from Jersey, and when he found out that I was from Upstate New York, he remarked that he knew someone from upstate. When I asked where, he replied, “White Plains”.

The map of the world as drawn by the New Yorker would have Manhattan at the center, the other four boroughs arranged like petals of the flower, maybe Long Island along the edge, and then blank space (or as the medieval maps read, “Here be dragons.”). I’ve always felt like they’d rather go out of business than be patronized by the likes of me. I don’t read it much, is what I’m saying.

It was indeed a pleasant shock, then, to visit my local library and find not only a new book by the aforementioned O’Rourke, but also a new collection of pieces (some from the New Yorker) by Woody Allen. I dove into the Allen volume posthaste and was heartened to learn (and made to laugh aloud repeatedly) that his writing hasn’t changed a bit. Is that good, to sound the same 30 years later? Not sure, but mark me down in favor.

Some friends you don’t see for a while, and when you reunite, you're not sure why you liked them to begin with. With others, you forget how much you liked them until you see them. As it turned out, it was like a cool drink of water quenching a thirst I didn’t quite even know I had to open the book and be greeted:

Gasping for air, my life passing before my eyes in a series of wistful vignettes, I found myself suffocating some months ago under the tsunami of junk mail that cascades through the slot in my door each morning after kippers. It was only our Wagnerian cleaning woman, Grendel, hearing a muffled falsetto from beneath myriad art-show invitations, charity squeezes, and pyrite contest jackpots I’d hit that extricated me with the help of our Bugsucker.

As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was an unsolicited little journal, banner-lined Magical Blend. Clearly aimed at the New Age market, its articles ranged in topic from crystal power to holistic healing and psychic vibrations, with tips on achieving spiritual energy, love versus stress, and exactly where to go and what forms to fill out to be reincarnated. The ads, which seemed scrupulously articulated to insulate against the unreasonableness of Bunco Squad malcontents, presented Therapeutic Ironisers, Vortex Water Energizers, and a product called Herbal Grobust designed to implement volumewise madam’s Cavaillons. There was no shortage of psychic advice either, from sources such as the "spiritual intuitive" who double-checks her insights with "a consortium of angels named Consortium Seven," or a babe ecdysiastically christened Saleena, who offers to "balance your energy, awaken your DNA and attract abundance." Naturally, at the end of all these field trips to the center of the soul, a small emolument to cover stamps and any other expenses the guru may have incurred in another life is in order.

It’s quite possible that the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of any Allen 10-page story would be two or three paragraphs long, but that’s what I love about him.

If nothing else, he makes my writing look like a txt msg....

The Human Comedy

One of my most obvious qualities is that I always try to find the humor in everything. While I tend to think this is an excellent quality, particularly for a blogger, it must be said that it's not universally admired. Some would say, for example, that there's a fine line between "finding the humor in everything" and "refusing to take anything seriously."

At minimum, I think I have become a little more savvy about it than when I was in third grade. I still remember that one day, something struck me as funny (no idea what, at this late date), and I actually stood up to share this comic gem with the rest of the class. Alas, Miss Hunt was not amused, and I was summarily dispatched toward the principal's office. I say "toward" because I was so terrified of Getting In Trouble that I merely lingered in the hallway till I thought a sufficient interval had passed for the punishment I was sure to receive -- 39 lashes with a metal-studded whip, I suppose -- and slunk back into the room. Miss Hunt, it seemed to me even then, was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and I suspect she never figured it out. Gee... I sure hope she's not reading this!

All these years later, I'm hoping to become an adult any day now; I confess I succumb more often than not to the temptation to slip a joke into an e-mail memo at work. And I still get sent to the principal's office from time to time. One day we were inundated with "leaving early" memos, so finally I sent one that said, "I've thought it over and I've decided to stay till 5:00." One of my closest colleagues got in my face about that one, and it was only later that I found out he was headed to a doctor's appointment because he was facing a serious health issue.

As my son would say, "Is that funny? No." It's not a rhetorical question for him; he's just really working to master the twisted internal logic of the Knock-Knock Joke. So he tries to make one up, then he looks at me quizzically: "Is that funny? No."

My daughter has no such torments of self-doubt. She will initiate a knock-knock joke, then end it with a string of words that would be several sentences, if they were sentences. Or (sometimes) even words. But she always laughs uproariously, as if being tickled by the feathers of a thousand geese.

When they get a little older, perhaps I can make them understand that there's no need to "make up jokes" -- there's plenty of comedy lying in the road.

Or driving on the road: every time I see the IBS Septic Service truck go by, I wonder if the guy who named it knows what else IBS stands for.

Or beside the road: when the local florist puts up a sign that says "Everyday Sympathy Weddings", I imagine she really meant to make that one descriptive phrase, rather than a bulleted list of 3 distinct occasions.

Or beside another road: I recently saw a highway historical marker put up by the state Highway Superintendents. It was commemorating the first meeting of the State Highway Superintendents. Glad they didn't have to convene a blue-ribbon panel, or even do much research, to come up with that one.

And finally (oh, who are we kidding? More like, "enough for now"), I'm not even sure if this is funny in the Three Stooges pie-in-the-face sense, but the irony is so abundant that I just had to share:

Away back in the early sixties -- in that benighted era we now know as "before I was born" -- there was a famous incident in which Jack Paar, then-host of the Tonight Show, walked off the program and basically went on strike. The previous evening, the NBC censor had removed a joke he told as being too offensive for even sophisticated late-night viewers, and Jack took it personally.

I recently heard that same joke told on the air... by a radio preacher who was using it as a sermon illustration. The joke itself, that is, not the controversy. I can't remember what the point of the joke was to be; all I could think about was the irony. And I'm not sure what, if anything, all of this proves... except, maybe, once and for all, that God has a sense of humor.

April 1-7, 33

Seems like archeology is continually bringing us updates from the past. Witness the furor over the supposed burial place of Jesus and the wife & kids. And after all, what are the odds that a man named Jesus and a woman named Mary would be buried in the same tomb? Um... pretty good, actually.

OK, never mind that one. However, in the spirit of the Dead Sea Scrolls comes the news of the very recent discovery of Jesus' Day-Timer. It was so recent that scholars have not had an opportunity to translate it; but by an amazing coincidence, I actually majored in Aramaic in college. In fact, I was the treasurer of the Aramaic Club -- what a wacky bunch we were!

I wondered what the entries would look like for this same week back then. Here's my best translation:

Sunday, April 1: Parade -- Grand Marshal (note: the card below was attached)

Monday, April 2: Help apostles study for final exam

Tuesday, April 3: Temple -- help clean up; Exercise (upper-body workout)

Wednesday, April 4: Appear on "Pharisee Jeopardy!" Remember to answer in the form of a question.

Thursday, April 5: Dinner with the guys -- I bring the bread & wine

Friday, April 6: Full workout. *Out late -- stay over at Joseph of A's?*

Saturday, April 7: Don't forget to leave early wakeup call for tomorrow.

Check Your Local Listings

I have to admit that I'm a big fan of reality shows. That probably sounds like it ought to qualify me for the Washington's Birthday Sale on lobotomies, but in truth I'm a little more discriminating than that.

I prefer the shows that feature people who can actually do something, competing with their talents, to those that are about trying to balance on a log or live in a house with a bunch of strangers. My personal jury is still out on the newest one, Top Design, but I have been an avid viewer of Project Runway, the just-concluded Top Chef, and (to a lesser degree) America's Next Top Model. Ironically, I've never been a huge American Idol fan, which probably has its origin in the same contrarian streak in me that had the school-aged Mark wearing doubleknits while all those around me wore jeans.

Combining my interest in reality shows with my son's well-documented fondness for Food Network makes me the ideal audience for The Next Food Network Star, which combines Top Chef with challenges that assess the chef's TV-hosting skills. Part of the swag associated with winning that contest is hosting an actual program on the Food Network. And while I'm pretty sure I don't have the skills to succeed on either side of the competition, I still enjoyed envisioning what my program might look like....

The more I imagined the outcome, however, the more I realized: digital cable may have brought about an explosion of cable networks but I'd be hard-pressed to think of one that would be right for my version of "Cooking With Dad".

Actually, maybe the Sci-Fi Network would enjoy the part where we're cooking along peacefully and suddenly the calm is rent by the bloodcurdling shriek of my daughter pounding up the stairs from the playroom screaming bloody murder (hotly pursued by my son wailing that he didn't do it). Believe me, it's the kind of thing that blows out the sound engineer's eardrums.

There might be a few other features of the program that would be a tough sell. I might not make very good eye contact with the camera, considering I'm almost always either reading or doing a puzzle (whether crossword or Sudoku) while I'm cooking. And we'd have to take frequent commercial breaks so I can answer the phone and take messages for The Pastor.

Because of all three of the above issues, I tend to find it a challenge to get the whole thing done in a 30-minute timeslot; on TV, we could edit out the dead spots. I can tell you that my family would really enjoy having the meals come out right on time every night!

I should probably also mention that I might have a hard time sustaining an ongoing series with my somewhat... ah, "limited" culinary range (does frozen ravioli count as a recipe?) -- not to mention that my frequent reliance on cheese, cream, butter, etc. would probably leave most of my viewers dead or recuperating from bypass surgery before the season was over. But hey, it works for Paula Deen.

Sure, Now You Listen

As a parent, you seek every day to help your children absorb all the lessons they'll need to grow and learn and become the people you want them to be. So naturally, when they demonstrate that they've really "gotten" something, it gives a parent a rush of pleasure. Right?

Well, as it turns out, that may depend.

One of the relatively small things we spend time discussing is table manners, which aren't necessarily top priority for a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old. We're not bad at please & thank you, but food-related behavior is often up for grabs.

Recently my son was having crackers & peanut butter for the Ritual Afternoon Snack; he is, as I have mentioned, a creature of the clock, and if he sees it hit 3:00 he will remind me that it's snack time before the colon blinks again. He loves crackers and nearly lives for peanut butter, so naturally he put a whole Ritz in his mouth. Not for the first time, I reminded him that "we need to take bites". He gave me the look he often gives me, which translates roughly into "you didn't see that, did you?" (Sometimes he even says that to me when I reprimand him for something: "You didn't see that!" It's probably my second favorite rejoinder of his, after: "You don't tell me what to do!" Um, that's actually most of my job description...)

That evening during supper, he got a chance to demonstrate that he was catching on. I popped a french fry into my mouth and he instantly said, "Dad, we're not supposed to put the whole thing in our mouth." I briefly considered explaining to him that it was really a bite-size fry -- but I figured it was best to affirm him for recognizing the lesson, so I began to apologize to him for breaking the rule.

So my daughter broke in quickly and said, "Dad, we don't talk with our mouths full!"

A Brief History of Competition

I suppose at the beginning of the history of man, he spent most of his time working. Adam, for example, had to name and classify and organize all of creation; remember, this predated not only the computer database, but also the invention of the 3x5 index card. Eventually, however, he must have felt the need for recreation. The Scripture does not record whether he recognized the basic human instinct for play within himself, or whether Eve simply began complaining that he never took a day off or took her anywhere – judge for yourself.

Soon thereafter, recreation probably included testing one’s skills in rock-throwing for distance or accuracy, or the like: the beginning of sports as we know it. Then, after the invention of what we like to call “other people”, someone else was standing nearby and said, “I’ll bet you a day’s manna that I can throw the rock farther,” and suddenly we have competitive sports.

One day two of those guys were having a close contest, and the neighbors came over to watch, leading to the advent of spectator sports. My guess is that it was the next day that an enterprising fellow put a wall around the other two and began to charge admission -- would you call that “organized” sports? And the day after that, one of the contestants said, “I’m not going to put on a show for you unless you give me a cut of the gate,” which of course constitutes professional sports.

And so it continued for many, many years without much change – until the coming of newspapers. Think about it: reading a newspaper allows us in effect to send someone else to the game for us; then we read his or her account of what happened. Which is yet another “degree of separation” from the original guy throwing a rock.

Two things got me started thinking about this topic: Television Without Pity, and Big Brother. Television Without Pity is a blogsite where the writers blog about TV shows; I visit it frequently to keep up with my favorite shows. Oddly, I prefer to read an entry about an episode I’ve already watched over an episode I’ve missed; I do that every day, and even I think that’s weird.

Big Brother is a reality competition program (as always, using the word “reality” in its TV rather than its actual literal English-language sense) where people go live in a house filled with cameras, and one by one they get kicked out. I watched the first season, right after the original Survivor got me all hyped up about reality TV, and... nothing happened. They sat around, they talked, they ate peanut butter; once in awhile they had a competition invented by the producers. There was one guy who was mildly controversial, so they kicked him out first thing. OK, I confess I watched the second go-round too, but even less happened, so I’m all done.

But suppose I take it into my head to read the Big Brother blog? Actually, I do, once in awhile if the headline catches my eye. Then I’m sitting at my computer, reading something written by a guy who watched a show produced by a bunch of guys who pointed their cameras at a bunch of other people sitting around in a house doing nothing.

I love TV, I love to read, and I especially love to read a good TV blog. But when I consider how far removed you can get from actually doing something, I have to turn off my computer and go outside. Let's see how far I can throw a rock.

Into the Rodent's Jaws

You think you understand something about life, and then you become a parent; suddenly everything you once knew is inoperative. For example, we used to drive cars. Then we had a child. At first, everything seemed normal enough, but then one day I woke up and there was a minivan in the garage. I’m still not sure what kind of cosmic waves were emanating from our home … must’ve been those gamma rays that were always creating mutants and raising havoc in those ‘50s movies.

In the same way, once the kids are out of diapers, at least, a sort of homing instinct begins to grow. The swallows always return to Capistrano; the buzzards come back annually to Hinckley, Ohio; and every family with small children is inexorably drawn to the vicinity of Orlando, Florida.

As a matter of fact, most of them were there last week when we visited the Magic Kingdom. I quickly deduced why they call it a Kingdom – it’s approximately the same size as Liechtenstein, at least when you include all the other associated Disney fiefdoms. It even has a moat, at least in a functional sense, in the miles of Mouse-ka-highways that surround the nerve center. I’m pretty sure that if any evildoers massed to attack, Central Command would have time to scramble squadrons of costumed characters to defend Cinderella’s Castle.

The main impression, as a result, that you tend to take away from the whole venture is the utter immensity of it all. There are something like 35,000 people living in my town… but there are approximately 55,000 Cast Members (not “employees”, “staff”, or “indentured servants”) at the Magic Kingdom. And I literally cannot even comprehend how many other sweaty, suddenly-much-poorer souls were in attendance along with us (and Disney ain't telling, either -- I asked them).

But there is clearly no enterprise on the planet more attuned to processing the great wads of humanity (and cash) that show up every day. After awhile I confess I stopped thinking of myself as “someone on vacation having a good time”, or even “a customer seeking to get my money’s worth”, and I became what industry sometimes describes as a “throughput”: a commodity designed to go through a certain process and come out the other end in some different state.

Here’s the truly odd thing – I say that not in resentment for being manipulated, but in sincere admiration for how they pull it off. Despite the fact that we were surrounded by more people than have ever watched UPN, we really never experienced an interminable wait. That’s fairly significant considering two of our party were under 7.

And you know what, we had a lovely family time, despite being trapped in the world’s largest convection oven. In fact, considering the unrelenting barrage of entertainment (and courtesy, and even cheerfulness), I even came away with an almost unsettling sense of having gotten my money’s worth – which anyone who has seen me with my hand over my wallet knows I do not say lightly. I think that in some sense I began to see the way we were being efficiently fed through an enormous machine as part of the show.

So I find myself against all odds recommending the experience and even considering repeating it. Someday. After my feet and my bank account and my internal thermostat recover. And here’s a little extra ammo for my family to save up and use against me: if I balk, remind me of the feeling of a family of four, ranging in age from 4 to 44 and in life attitude from totally trusting to … somewhat skeptical :-) … remind me of those four people all cackling gleefully as we blast the Bad Guys together on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. The omnipresent MasterCard ads would describe those moments as "priceless", and although that's not the way it shows up on my Visa bill, it will certainly remain a slide in my mental Powerpoint of highlights for some time to come.

Everybody Has a Dream

There are four distinct television periods in our home. First is 7-9 am, dominated by a wide variety of animated programs (but always including, if at all possible, “Magic School Bus”); next is midday, which is a TV-free zone punctuated by an occasional video; fourth is the after-8-pm/after kids’ bedtime period.

In between the last two is the pre-bedtime period. Understand that we don’t as a rule use TV as a child-distraction technique, but in the half-hour or so before bedtime, it can be an effective landing strip for kids to come down from a long, busy day. Even at that hour, it’s possible to find kid-oriented programming, but that’s not cartoon time in our den.

No, even if you take Our Boy out for ice cream, or the circus – or ice cream at the circus – his main preoccupation will be whether he’s going to miss “Unwrapped”. If you’re not familiar, this is a show on the Food Network that goes behind-the-scenes to show how things like M & M’s, ice cream, or chips are made. I have to admit that I am often as transfixed, or more so.

His official bedtime is at 8, but unfortunately that’s when The King makes his entrance, and nothing will do but that we watch at least a few minutes. I’m speaking, of course, of the one and only Emeril. Once he’s seen the segment before the first commercial, it’s as if his day is officially complete and he can go to bed fulfilled.

I’m not sure I understand the fascination. Maybe it’s because he’s loud and boisterous and laughs at his own jokes. Maybe it’s just the “Bam!”, although my son rarely if ever emulates it. One way or the other, he’s clearly the Big Cheese, or Pork, or Pasta, at our house.

The truth is I’m a bit obsessed with him myself. I wish I were an accomplished chef, a wealthy man, a TV star, a celebrity… but it’s really not just a shallow envy of someone who could buy and sell me 100 times over.

I want his support staff.

When he stands up to cook, you know it wasn’t him who chopped all the veggies, boned all the chicken breasts and measured all the spices. When he gets every pot in the house dirty, it’s not him staying after the show to wash dishes; he doesn’t have much incentive to re-use a measuring cup and he never runs out of clean paring knives.

I’d surely love all that, but I’m really most fixated on something even more obscure. After he does the opening bit, the theme song plays and the stagehands come out. One wraps him in a clean, white apron; one pins his mike on him; and right before he takes center stage, they hand him a pristine, snowy white towel.

If he were in my kitchen, he’d be wiping his hands on the same scrap of paper towel all day – trying not to use up the whole roll, since I also have no shopping support staff. And forget about using a kitchen towel, because guess who’s the laundry support staff?

Every time I see the show, that towel seems to loom a little larger, glow a little brighter. I think at this point I’d chop all the veggies, bone all the chicken breasts, measure all the spices, wash all the dishes… if only there were someone to hand me a pristine, snowy white towel when I’m ready to cook.

Brought to You By Hanes

Our local sports/civic arena has fallen on hard times lately. Every year seems to be a virtual torrent of red ink (“but don’t worry, we get great benefit to our economy from the visitors”); now the main tenant, the hockey team, has flown the coop.

If you’ve watched SportsCenter lately, you might guess what solution is being proposed. Maybe you’ve seen some highlights from an Astros game at Minute Maid Park, or perhaps you schedule your New Year’s Day activities around the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. In the 21st century sports world, the way to raise quick cash is to sell naming rights. The Army used to say, "If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, paint it." The modern equivalent is selling sponsorships; our local arena is selling every surface, region, and object, down to individual seats.

I’ll say more about that in a sec, but the most positive local news the past few days is that we’ve finally achieved a respite from the oppressive weather we’d been experiencing – one day last week brought a high temperature of 96 and a heat index of 115. It made me wonder, to the extent that one could form a coherent thought last week, whether it would have been a good time for a fire & brimstone kind of sermon: you know, clean up your act or you could be having this kind of weather for all eternity.

After thinking about it, though, I concluded that would never work. In the first place, one of my core beliefs (and I still intend to explore those more fully sometime) is that you can’t scare anyone into believing. Even more than that, you can’t impress today’s spiritual consumers (word chosen intentionally) with a threat of hell or a promise of heaven. Maybe colonial-era folks – who weren’t having all that much fun in this life, especially if you were the colonize-ee – were motivated by thoughts of the next, but in the present age if faith doesn’t have benefits for the “user” right here/right now, it’s going to be a tough sell.

The good news is, we believe faith does mean something more than pie in the sky, by & by. But even if threats were effective, I’m not sure we have much ammunition. After all, it may be hotter in That Other Place, but I can’t imagine there’s as much humidity.

And if you were wondering, I thought the first “title sponsor” of my blog should be Hanes – since this entry is… umm… brief.

Not Quite the Fortress of Solitude

The trend is definitely exacerbated in the summertime, but it seems to get harder every year to find a television program with actors and, you know, scripts and things. "Unscripted" television (the industry term for what you and I call reality TV) is all the rage these days, of course. If that troubles you, keep in mind it could be worse: we had a reality boom once before, and all we ended up with that time was "Real People".

I still remember when "Survivor" debuted. I don't think even CBS was expecting much -- after all, it was the dead of summer -- but I was hooked instantly and so was seemingly everyone else in America, and the trend has mushroomed from there.

While there is much to dislike about many reality efforts and the genre itself, especially the way the contestants have gotten increasingly self-aware/conscious/referential, on balance I am enough of a fan that I try to check out a lot of the new ones, and end up watching several on an ongoing basis. At some point I will probably gather my thoughts about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Recently I got to watch the debut of another new one entitled, "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" It's a competition show with a group of "ordinary"... no, "average"... wait, "normal"? Well, let's just say they're civilians. They say they want to be comic-book style superheroes; they show up with their own persona and corresponding costume, ranging from "Captain Victory" and "Creature" to "Monkey Woman" and "Cell-phone Girl".

After one episode I'm still trying to determine how serious everyone is, and what is strictly tongue-in-cheek, but I'm intrigued enough to stop in again. Part of my interest stems from the fact that superheroes are big business around here.

Our son is 6, and our daughter is 4, and they spend much of their waking time playing with a wide assortment of action figures. And the assortment gets wider every week -- they can't wait for Saturday to arrive so they can hit garage sales to recruit more new "guys" for the Task Force. Some of them are good guys, some of them are bad guys -- although this is extremely fluid -- and some of them seem to be the dad of some of the others. This is also fluid, but our superheroes at least seem to feel the need to form impromptu family groups.

As parents we applaud the exercise of creativity indicated by the constantly-changing storyline -- not to mention the idea that they can play together for a period of time (hopefully even without a great deal of Adult Intervention). It also made me, as a parent who naturally wants the absolute best for his children, visualize my own "guys" as superheroes. What might be their secret identities?

Possibilities for my son:

• The Human Alarm Clock -- We never set our alarm any more, for we know without doubt that Our Boy will be in our bedroom every day precisely at 7 a.m. And by "precisely", I mean after the clock hits 7:00 but before the second zero turns to a 1. Who knows, that might be a superpower that would come in handy at the Justice League clubhouse.
• Needle Man -- Not the kind that is used with thread, unfortunately. No one has, or could have, more skill at getting under his sister's skin. This would come in handy if she ever becomes an Archvillain, but I suppose it's possible that he could use it to frustrate other evildoers as well.

Options for my daughter:

• Siren -- I am, as you may have noted, a boy, and my sisters are enough older that I never really grasped a basic fact about girls: girls shriek. When she is angry, her voice can climb the scale... well, the cliche is that only dogs can hear it. I can tell you that I can hear it (not understand it, but hear it) but I'd just as soon not. The only thing more piercing than her angry shriek is... her happy shriek. I'm quite sure there's a way to use that skill to fight crime; maybe she could shatter the windshield of the getaway car.
• Monkey Girl -- Yeah, I know, that one's already taken (at least till that other chick gets bounced off the show). But I'd be foolish not to leverage her most outstanding skill: she loves to climb and clamber, and I can tell you from personal experience that she can use that talent to immobilize someone. Especially when you take into account the high-velocity impact she makes when she approaches her unsuspecting target.

If I'm dreaming big, I have to confess it's not just on behalf of the kids. I also figure that since superheroes seem to enjoy such a lavish lifestyle, in my old age I'm at least guaranteed the apartment over the Batcave.

Little Worksite on the Prairie

I am a creature much sought-after by advertisers: the Name-Brand Buyer. Since I was a boy old enough to take a bologna sandwich to school day after day (after day after day after day), those sandwiches have been unfailingly made with Oscar Meyer bologna and Hellman’s mayo. And as much as I love my laptop, I still use a lot of pens … but I will hunt through the drawer till I find a Pilot -- although in a pinch I’ll go for a Bic Z3. Also, I’m probably a “Toyota buyer” – although it’s hard to tell since they last so long we’ve only bought two.

In the movies, one of the brands I look for is Tom Hanks. According to imdb.com, I’m stunned to realize I’ve seen about 20 of his films. I’m not saying they’re all winners; do all in your power to miss Bachelor Party, The Man With One Red Shoe, or Turner & Hooch. And I’m not sure I’ll be making it to DaVinci Code, for that matter.

One I have missed to date, and which I might be safer to avoid entirely, is the 1986 Hanks/Shelley Long classic, The Money Pit. When it came out, we were apartment dwellers; since then we’ve lived in houses owned by our churches, so it never seemed quite relevant somehow. Now, however, I’m just too terrified to watch it.

About two years ago, we decided it would be great to have our own camp – somewhere to hide out, and a way to simplify vacation-time with two small children. So we bought a double-wide located near a lovely pond, not far from where we’re living. It’s not only a camp, but also a pointed lesson about perceptions, because where I see a quiet spot to get away, my wife sees a blank canvas.

When we were camp-shopping, we agreed we shouldn’t get a fixer-upper since neither of us is particularly handy. Little did I know she would become fanatical about developing those skills. Since then, we have experienced the following … ah, improvements (* - incomplete):

• Paint: Master bath (including trim and cabinets), master bedroom, kitchen, bedroom 1* , back porch, front porch (stain)
• Also in the master bath: light fixture, sink faucets
• Living room – paneling and trim*
• 2nd bath – wallpaper*, tub faucet

The outside has also experienced weeding, mulching, planting, digging up rocks… I can’t even recount it all. Suffice it to say that I made an enormous hit for her last birthday when I bought her a wheelbarrow. I was nuts to shell out for jewelry all those years!

On top of all that, it seemed kind of extravagant to buy a lawn mower for a camp, so I’ve been making do with a reel mower I bought some time ago to trim around the house. Now a reel mower – that is, the old-fashioned push mower with no engine – may be quite effective under some circumstances, but with uneven terrain and intermittent mowing leading to very tall grass/weeds, it’s roughly equivalent to cutting the grass with a steak knife. I might be better off if I just steal Bob Lanier’s basketball shoes from the NBA Hall of Fame and stomp the grass down (that’s mostly what the bar on the front of the mower does anyway).

Unfortunately I don’t think I have enough left in the bank to purchase a place to get away from the getaway, so for the time being I guess I’m still signed up for the work crew. There is one significant consolation, however: the kitchen is always stocked with Hellman’s mayo & Oscar Meyer bologna.

All In a Day's Blog

I try always to have a lot of cereal boxes in the house. Naturally we like to have a number of delicious breakfast options, but perhaps more importantly it's vital to have as much reading material available as is humanly possible.

I have written in the past about some of my reading preferences, but when the chips are down I'm an omnivore. I have a number of subscriptions in an effort to ensure I have something fresh on hand at all times, but if need be, I'll read anything printed-- English-language optional.

It was in such times of extreme distress that I would often scoop up Reader’s Digest. With most magazines I’m pretty linear – I read Newsweek basically back to front, even the business columns. But with RD I usually skip around and find the little anecdotes, especially the monthly features, like “Life in these United States” or “Humor in Uniform”.

You may have read these columns in the past and thought: I could do better than that. And we shall see, because today I am finally submitting a story that I’ve always “meant to”, since the day it happened to me 15 or so years ago. Hopefully this will turn out to be yet another of the many advantages of my somewhat checkered employment history -- a chance to be immortalized in “All in a Day’s Work”, as follows:

I used to work in a large, open office with long tables where the worker bees sat, ringed by supervisors’ desks. As a result, everyone knew everyone else’s business. I listened one day as Mary, the head of the department, told Judy she was leaving for awhile. She explained to Judy that if the phone rang, she could pick it up on her own desk by pressing “pound-4”. Judy said okay, and Mary went on her way.

Before we knew it, the phone rang, and although Judy snatched up her receiver and jabbed at the buttons, it continued to ring. Finally someone called from across the room, “Judy, pound-4!” She continued to stab frantically as she called back, “I’m pounding as hard as I can!”

Just Another Pod Person

Does it seem to you like mankind as a whole is achieving new highs in interpersonal communication? After all, there are innumerable books on the subject. Incidentally, if you’re looking for one, check out Deborah Tannen. Her book, You Just Don’t Understand, is the best one I ever read. Another good one that addresses both verbal and nonverbal communication in marriage is Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages.

Surely we’ve been brought closer together by e-mail, right? You can send your thoughts to someone halfway across the world, instantaneously. In fact, you can even send the same thoughts to dozens of people at the same time, and nothing says “personal relationship” quite like that. I find I hear from a slew of people every week… there’s a lovely fellow in Nigeria who’s made me a very generous offer if I can just help him with a little bank transfer problem he’s been having. And I do like to make new friends, but I continue to get mail from a large number of people that seem a little too interested in certain very personal aspects of my life and… well… person.

Still, I can’t quite shake the notion that there’s a whole lotta communicatin’ going on. I base that largely on the fact that virtually every one I know or see along my daily rounds has a cell phone. Actually, I left out part of that sentence: it should read, “has a cell phone surgically attached to his or her head”. Perhaps I’m not the best judge, since I have been known to put off making the most mundane phone call for multiple days. But do we really have this much to talk about?

When I leave the house, I almost never say to myself, “I wish I could make a phone call. I really need to talk to someone. I can’t wait to get to a phone!” But there certainly seem to be a number of urgent, can’t-wait conversations going on wherever you go. Note I didn’t say “top secret”; another wonderful virtue of cell phones is that they allow not only the two official parties to the call, but everyone else within a 20-foot radius, to stay in constant contact. It’s like being invited into someone’s living room, or perhaps their phone booth.

Not long ago I was driving past a downtown parking lot and saw not one but three young women in the pose we’ve become accustomed to seeing: standing about 15 feet apart, facing away from each other, motionless and slightly hunched. Not a scene from experimental theater, as it turned out.

Up until very recently, my indignation has been pure and unsullied. The problem is that we are in our second year of owning a camp, and while we spend as much time there as possible, it’s not enough to justify the expense of a phone. We’ve been depending for some time on the forbearance of our neighbor, but it seemed like a good idea to find a way to shift for ourselves; the barbed wire she put up along the property line is a bit unsightly.

So we bought the cheapest, simplest, most feature-free phone and coverage available, and the intent is to use it sparingly and for the most part to receive calls at camp. I hope we don’t turn out like the high school kids who plead for a cell “just so I can call home” (and end up talking all day to their friends sitting across the room), but I do have a vaguely uneasy feeling that we’ve joined Cell Phone Zombie Nation. So if you find me hunched over in a parking lot, you have my permission to drive a wooden stake through the heart of my phone.

Postscript I discovered through a bit of googling that I'm mixing up vampires and zombies:

• Vampire <=> stake through heart
• Zombie <=> destroy brain

So I guess I meant "destroy the brain of my cell phone" -- if it hasn't already done the same to me through a combination of deadly radiation and the general dumbification that seems to victimize many cell-users...

Blog of Shadows

There’s been a lot of talk lately in the sports world and even beyond about the new book, Game of Shadows, which is an expose of steroid use by athletes. If you read any of the early news articles, you would be forgiven for believing the whole book is about Barry Bonds. He’s actually only the most prominent figure to have his drug use detailed; there are a number of others from a variety of sports.

Anyway, seeing the furor over the book made me realize that it’s only a matter of time till my own secrets are revealed, so my best course of action is to confess on my own terms: I am also using steroids.

I have actually gotten two or perhaps three compliments on my blog, but I’m afraid those compliments are going to have to be voided – or at least asterisked – because I have been writing under the influence (WUI).

It started innocently enough; I complained to my doctor about a skin condition under my eye and he gave me some Hydrocortisone Valerate. If you are not chemically-minded, note that the “-one” ending is a dead giveaway that a chemical is considered a steroid. I promise I was only using it occasionally, but I’m sure that stopping that pesky itch made it easier for me to concentrate on my writing. For that matter, I can’t say for sure that the residue on my index finger didn’t increase my typing speed and accuracy.

I was almost clean from that when I suffered some inflammation in my ear and the doctor gave me Prednisone (again, note the –one). This is a no-fooling-around steroid … and I have to admit I just gulped down a handful before beginning to write.

To be honest, I read other bloggers and I wonder if maybe they’re getting a little “help”. Their jokes seem to go farther than even my best efforts, and it appears they’re able to recover quicker – some of them post every day. Hey, if everybody else is doing it, maybe it’s the only way to be competitive.

I don’t think I can go on living a lie, though. I have to stay on the stuff for 10 more days – as Barry could tell you (but will not), steroids are prescribed in a "course" and you have to taper off. But after that, I’m off the junk for good. In the future, this blog will be 100% natural -- no additives, no preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors -- chock-full of that natural bloggy goodness.

Is this what I've come to?

I had a scary experience, nearly an epiphany, with the TV Guide crossword. I am something of a devotee of the magazine; I’ve been a subscriber on & off for about 20 years – and by the way, I’m still recovering from the shock of the revamped version. After a lot of years when they always seemed to be looking for excuses not to write about TV, suddenly with the new format comes a renewed focus. Who would have ever guessed that the articles in TV Guide would be about TV shows?

In any case, however, the crossword page has always been my second-least favorite page, behind the hard-hitting journalism and indispensable information of the horoscope page. They’ve regained my attention lately by adding a Sudoku puzzle, which I love, but the TV Guide crossword puzzle over the years has mostly been only good for insults. As in, “You’re too stupid to finish the TV Guide crossword.”

The other night I finished the Sudoku and glanced at the crossword. With clues like “1 – First three letters”, I didn’t figure it would take too long (What, they couldn’t at least base the clue on the TV network of the same name?). And there were definitely some clues of the caliber that have made the puzzle famous… for example, “Leave ___ Beaver (two words)”.

But there were several other clues that were fairly obscure, but that I knew anyway. Kinda made me wonder if there’s such thing as a brain tumor that forces you to remember esoteric TV trivia. That has to be the most logical explanation, right?

Here are some of the clues I got right off, and for which I’m vaguely ashamed (answers below):

1. Ray of Married People
2. Rosalind of AfterMash
3. Shera of Ace Crawford, Private Eye
4. Jethro’s sister on The Beverly Hillbillies
5. Janitor on Night Court
6. Kathy of The Real McCoys
7. John of MacGruder and Loud

I’m pretty sure the most recent of these shows went off the air in 1991. The oldest was cancelled when I was 18 months old. And while I watched all these shows at least once (with the exception, I’m proud to say, of the rollicking Tim Conway vehicle Ace Crawford), I’m certainly not a fanatic for any of them. Nor is anyone else, I don’t believe.

I do have to confess that I’m very fond of a book called “The Complete Directory to Prime-Time and Cable TV Shows, 1946-present”. I own the 8th Edition, after having several others, and I really am capable of reading it like a novel, from ABC Barn Dance (1949) to Zorro and Son (1983). And I have a decent memory for trivia, which at one time made me the scourge of our peers with regard to Trivial Pursuit. But I swear, I haven’t read the book in at least months, maybe a year!

Before I continue, the answers to above, which I do hereby affirm and attest came completely out of my brain without the aid of the book:

1. Aranha
2. Chao
3. Danese
4. Jethrine
5. Art
6. Nolan
7. Getz (OK, I didn’t remember that one till I had a couple letters filled in. But seriously, whoever heard of John Getz?)

So it’s clear to me that there are only two possible courses of action (Note: I have already considered, and discarded, the option of “turning off the television and having a life”): Either I check into the local hospital for an immediate CAT scan in search of that tumor, or I go online and see if I can find the complete DVD collection of MacGruder and Loud.

Christmas Performance Review

So I flunked Christmas.

OK, I don’t think I flunked, but I probably get something like a ‘C’. As a dyed-in-the wool traditionalist and all-around sentimental fool, I have a certain set of expectations for how the holiday season should go. Long-standing family traditions should be gently unwrapped and held up to the light again; children’s eyes should sparkle in wonder at the magic of the Yuletide; every secular, gift-related moment should be counterbalanced with a quiet, yet profound and heart-touching spiritual lesson on Christmas as Jesus’ birthday (my 3-year-old sinks to her knees, hands clasped in reverent prayer)….

Maybe this is just a different time, or maybe my parents’ generation was just better at this stuff (and everything else related to parenting), or maybe I just always wanted the full-body holiday experience so much that I saw something that wasn’t even there. I suppose it’s also just vaguely possible that I’ve set the expectations bar a little higher than reality can support.

In any case, if I had it to do over again, I’d:

• Spend more time reflecting on Advent. I had a very nice Advent calendar with a daily Scripture reading, which I put in my “inbox” and never saw again.
• Do more special things with the family. The Advent wreath got lit once, the angel chimes got lit once (and promptly burned down to barely-visible stubs), and we visited one nearby house to look at lights – and then only as we were on our way home from somewhere else.
• Stage-manage a little better. We had cookies for Santa (which we forgot to put out) and magic reindeer food (which we forgot to put out). Fortunately, my wife woke up with an “oops” and ran downstairs to dress up the set a little, while I tried to stall the children.
• Take seriously the concept of “some assembly required”. One of this year’s gifts was an indoor basketball hoop which, due to other commitments and a missing part, didn’t get assembled till the 28th. In addition, batteries were unsurprisingly not included, and our usual backup cache was not entirely sufficient to meet the demand. But more than anything else, I should’ve recruited some sort of Ocean’s Eleven-esque team of commandos to help break into the packaging ahead of time. Between the hermetically-sealed plastic clamshell packages (which, by the way, present razor-sharp edges if you get past the first line of defense), and the yards of wire twist-ties that bind everything to the package, it takes longer to get a toy out of the package than it did to buy it, or perhaps to manufacture it – which guarantees restless, grumpy children.

Of course, I do have to do it again. With a 6-year-old and a 3-year old, I’m guaranteed at least a half-dozen more attempts at a Christmas that’s the perfect marriage of Billy Graham and Martha Stewart.

On the other hand, maybe along the way I’ll learn to take it as it comes, not sweat the small stuff. After all, we got to spend time with friends and family, as a family. I was really proud of the gifts I got for my wife this year (all wrapped before the 24th), nothing elaborate but every one attuned to who she is and what she needs. I should mention that this was a vast improvement over the year when I got 2 weeks from Christmas with no ideas at all and had to take her shopping so she could point at things she liked – my most shameful Christmas memory!

We did actually talk about the meaning of Christmas, and though the kids still love Santa, they’re excited about Jesus too. I think one of my daughter’s favorite moments was getting to put Baby Jesus into our manger scene on Christmas morning. If nothing else, the kids got heaps of presents, and seem to enjoy playing with the ones that I’ve been able to get out of the package and find batteries for.