I was in self-imposed exile from the living room the other day. My wife and daughter were watching some movie which was built around the premise that Heather Locklear couldn’t get a date.
I went back into bedroom to fold the laundry that had been piling up on the bed and see what was on the TV back there. That’s how Stacy and I divvy up the laundry. The kids and I pull all the dirty clothes out and pile them in front of the laundry room. Stacy divides it all into piles of appropriate size and color and pushes it through the system. I pull it out of the dryer and pile it on the bed where I eventually fold and hang it up.
The kids’ clean laundry gets loaded back into the hamper the dirt laundry came down stairs in and they put it away. Well, Max puts his away. Madison lives out of the hamper for a week before the process starts over again the following weekend.
Anyway, like any guy with full control of the remote control, I couldn’t decide on what to watch until I’d checked every channel – and we get them all. So I surfed through and couple of times before finding what I was looking for, even though I didn’t know it.
“A Few Good Men.” This is one of a long list of movies that once it comes on I have to watch it all the way to the end. I can’t turn it off until Jack Nicholson tells Tom Cruise that he (Cruise) can’t handle the truth.
I sat folding laundry on a Sunday afternoon and watched the movie build toward the familiar conclusion. And as I watched I asked myself why I was watching. I must have seen all or part of this movie 25 times. Yet there was nothing I’d rather be watching.
I started thinking about all the movies I’ll watch even though I’ve seen them all many times. It’s sort of a couch-potato Oscars. I came to a couple of conclusions. First, the movies that I watch even though I’ve seen them many times fall into three basic categories: good movies, bad movies and comedies.
The good movie list includes, but is not limited to, “A Few Good Men,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Usual Suspects,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “Silverado” and, even though it’s a little before my time, “The Dirty Dozen.”
These are all great movies. I’ve seen them all many times, but I still can’t turn them off until Nicholson admits he ordered the code red, Morgan Freeman shows up on the beach in Mexico or Kevin Spacey’s limp goes away and we find out he’s Keyser Soze.
The comedy list is familiar to anyone my age. “Animal House,” “Stripes,” “Fletch,” “Monty Python & the Holy Grail,” “Blazing Saddles” and, of course, “Caddyshack.”
I find it interesting, or at least telling, that most of the comedies are about five to 10 years older than most of the dramas. I’m sure there were good dramas made when I was in high school and college, but they didn’t burrow into my brain the way the comedies did. The dramas all came along after I graduated and became, for lack of a better word, and adult.
All of that is somewhat understandable. It’s the bad movie list that concerns me, at least a little. We’re not talking about Ed Wood bad here, although some of them are close. But these are movies that don’t belong on the same list with Shawshank and “Silverado.”
This list includes a brief plot synopsis since theses movies aren’t as well known as the others. “No Escape,” Ray Liotta is sent to island prison to fend for himself and battle cartoonish bad guys. He meets svengali-like fellow prisoner dying of cancer played by Lance Henriksen.
“Next of Kin,” Patrick Swayze is the middle of three Kentucky brothers who moves to Chicago, marries Helen Hunt and becomes a cop. The younger brother follows him to the big city and is murdered. The older brother, played by, I’m not kidding, Liam Neeson, comes to the city to take on the mob and avenge the younger brother. The hillbillies outsmart the mob.
“Roadhouse,” Swayze is the hired as the bouncer in a bar in a town controlled by Ben Gazarra, who’s determined to run the bar out of business. Sam Elliot is super cool as the Yoda of bouncers, Gazarra chews up scenery and Swayze gets to take his shirt off a lot. This is the Godfather of bad movies.
But my personal favorite on the bad movie list is “The Quick and the Dead.” This has to be the worst movie ever made with five Academy Award nominated actors, three of who actually won (but not for this movie).
Sharon Stone plays a mysterious female gunfighter in a quick-draw tournament being run by Gene Hackman who is a caricature of every western bad guy ever put on film. It’s the bad guy he played in “Unforgiven” times five. Also entered in the tournament are Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio. Rounding out the list of Oscar nominees is Gary Senise as Stone’s father. We see him only in flashbacks and it turns out that Gene Hackman didn’t kill him; he forced Stone to do it.
It’s a cinematic train wreck and when it’s on I can’t change the channel or go to bed before Stone gets her revenge and blows a hole in Hackman that you can see in his shadow. Why is that? It’s bad, I know how it ends and still I watch.
The second thing that I know about my Couch-Potato Oscars list is that it’s very different that my wife’s. Most guys’ lists are going to be different than most women’s. Stacy’s includes “Mystic Pizza” and “Say Anything.” It doesn’t include the movie where Heather Locklear can’t find a man. She’ll only watch that one once.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
At graduation, remember the little man on campus
It’s commencement time and all over the country high school seniors are making speeches. They’re speaking of the times they’ve had with their classmates – the times they’ll never forget. They’re remembering fondly the homecoming dance and the big game.
They’re telling of the day they arrived as terrified freshmen and how they’re leaving proud graduates. They’re waxing poetic about the rivalries and the rallies, about the parties and the proms.
And one of them is undoubtedly saying, “Those were the times of our lives.” And out from under their mortar boards many of their classmates are mumbling under their breath, “God, I hope not.”
I taught high school for four years and I saw a lot of students who were just biding their time. They were working just hard enough for the “A” or “B” their parents expected of them or they needed to get into the college of their choice, but they were clearly not having the times of their lives.
The best of those students would carve out a niche for themselves in the art department or the band that would make the rest of the stuff bearable. But others were just plain miserable for four years. And many of them seemed to think their entire life would be like that – not fitting in, not caring about what the rest of the crowd did or thought and not seeing their contribution to the school as important.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2007, most of you graduating today can be easily divided into two categories – those of you who see today as an ending and those for whom it is a beginning. For the fortunate few among you, it is both.
For those of you in the first group, high school was a four-year Sarah Michelle Gellar/Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. The clothes were hip, the people were pretty and the problems were superficial but seemed important at the time. These people were the prom queens, the football captains and the student body president.
For those in the second group, you’re through with the adolescent posturing and the popularity contests. While there might have been some good times and some good friends, the four years could have just as easily been two and you’d have been just as happy. Perhaps that’s the vast majority of the class.
For every big man on campus there are a dozen “little” ones who made him feel large by comparison. They may have been smaller is stature or in the eyes of the “in” crowd, but in 20 years many of the big men will be working for their smaller classmates.
For every homecoming queen there are dozens of girls who would rather do their homework than their hair.
It’s important to remember that 20 percent of a high school’s population appears in 80 percent of the pictures in the yearbook. For many of these people, high school was one of the highlights of their lives. They were popular, successful and admired.
Many of them will go on to be all of those things. But for others, it’s down hill from here. Many of the students from that other 80 percent will go on to be popular, successful and admired. For some it will happen in college, for others it will take place in their careers.
Some of the skills required to be a successful college student – compliance, a willingness to play by the rules or the ability to throw a football, shoot a basketball or look cute in a cheerleader’s skirt – are not necessarily the skills required to make a good adult or even a good college student.
To put it another way, some of the traits that make for an unsuccessful high school students – creativity, restlessness, the questioning of authority and convention – become more valuable down the road.
I write this not to belittle the cheerleaders or the jocks, although they could come down a peg or two. I write this to recognize and encourage the rest of the class, those for whom high school was way too long with way too much busy work and not enough challenge.
Don’t get me wrong: You’ve finished and that’s quite an accomplishment. But for most of you there was never a question about whether you would graduate, just whether that day would ever actually arrive. You’ve learned to jump through all of the hoops that have been set before you. And, if you were lucky, you found a little corner of the campus like the drama department or the school paper that you could call your own.
But now you’re ready to move on. And hopefully your schools have done their jobs and you’re well prepared to take the next step in your lives.
But high school is not a pattern for the rest of your life. At least it doesn’t have to be. On a college campus you’ll find that you’re not alone in your view of the world. There will be other people there who thought high school was superficial and homogenized, too.
In college there will still be cheerleaders and football players, still be homecoming and silly rituals. But in college you’ll find it’s a lot easier to ignore the Greeks than it was in high school to ignore the popular crowd. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.
So, when you’re sitting through the graduation ceremony next week and the speaker says, “It seems like only yesterday we were scared freshmen looking for our lockers” and you find yourself mumbling how it seems like forever ago, remember that the end of high school not just an opportunity to start over, but a chance to finally be appreciated for what you bring to the table.
If you are one of those people who will look back on high school with fond memories, good for you. But if you’ve reached the end and you can’t figure out what all the fuss was about, relax, you’re not alone. It’s the beginning, not the end.
They’re telling of the day they arrived as terrified freshmen and how they’re leaving proud graduates. They’re waxing poetic about the rivalries and the rallies, about the parties and the proms.
And one of them is undoubtedly saying, “Those were the times of our lives.” And out from under their mortar boards many of their classmates are mumbling under their breath, “God, I hope not.”
I taught high school for four years and I saw a lot of students who were just biding their time. They were working just hard enough for the “A” or “B” their parents expected of them or they needed to get into the college of their choice, but they were clearly not having the times of their lives.
The best of those students would carve out a niche for themselves in the art department or the band that would make the rest of the stuff bearable. But others were just plain miserable for four years. And many of them seemed to think their entire life would be like that – not fitting in, not caring about what the rest of the crowd did or thought and not seeing their contribution to the school as important.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2007, most of you graduating today can be easily divided into two categories – those of you who see today as an ending and those for whom it is a beginning. For the fortunate few among you, it is both.
For those of you in the first group, high school was a four-year Sarah Michelle Gellar/Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. The clothes were hip, the people were pretty and the problems were superficial but seemed important at the time. These people were the prom queens, the football captains and the student body president.
For those in the second group, you’re through with the adolescent posturing and the popularity contests. While there might have been some good times and some good friends, the four years could have just as easily been two and you’d have been just as happy. Perhaps that’s the vast majority of the class.
For every big man on campus there are a dozen “little” ones who made him feel large by comparison. They may have been smaller is stature or in the eyes of the “in” crowd, but in 20 years many of the big men will be working for their smaller classmates.
For every homecoming queen there are dozens of girls who would rather do their homework than their hair.
It’s important to remember that 20 percent of a high school’s population appears in 80 percent of the pictures in the yearbook. For many of these people, high school was one of the highlights of their lives. They were popular, successful and admired.
Many of them will go on to be all of those things. But for others, it’s down hill from here. Many of the students from that other 80 percent will go on to be popular, successful and admired. For some it will happen in college, for others it will take place in their careers.
Some of the skills required to be a successful college student – compliance, a willingness to play by the rules or the ability to throw a football, shoot a basketball or look cute in a cheerleader’s skirt – are not necessarily the skills required to make a good adult or even a good college student.
To put it another way, some of the traits that make for an unsuccessful high school students – creativity, restlessness, the questioning of authority and convention – become more valuable down the road.
I write this not to belittle the cheerleaders or the jocks, although they could come down a peg or two. I write this to recognize and encourage the rest of the class, those for whom high school was way too long with way too much busy work and not enough challenge.
Don’t get me wrong: You’ve finished and that’s quite an accomplishment. But for most of you there was never a question about whether you would graduate, just whether that day would ever actually arrive. You’ve learned to jump through all of the hoops that have been set before you. And, if you were lucky, you found a little corner of the campus like the drama department or the school paper that you could call your own.
But now you’re ready to move on. And hopefully your schools have done their jobs and you’re well prepared to take the next step in your lives.
But high school is not a pattern for the rest of your life. At least it doesn’t have to be. On a college campus you’ll find that you’re not alone in your view of the world. There will be other people there who thought high school was superficial and homogenized, too.
In college there will still be cheerleaders and football players, still be homecoming and silly rituals. But in college you’ll find it’s a lot easier to ignore the Greeks than it was in high school to ignore the popular crowd. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.
So, when you’re sitting through the graduation ceremony next week and the speaker says, “It seems like only yesterday we were scared freshmen looking for our lockers” and you find yourself mumbling how it seems like forever ago, remember that the end of high school not just an opportunity to start over, but a chance to finally be appreciated for what you bring to the table.
If you are one of those people who will look back on high school with fond memories, good for you. But if you’ve reached the end and you can’t figure out what all the fuss was about, relax, you’re not alone. It’s the beginning, not the end.
Monday, May 21, 2007
My brain is keeping me up nights trying to retrieve lost data
As humans continue to evolve, one day we will have a switch in the back of our heads to turn off our brain. This will come in handy when you’re trying to get some sleep and there’s something your brain just won’t let go of. Hopefully, we'll be able to flip the switch back on again in the morning.
This idea came to me in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because my brain was busy trying to remember the name of a cartoon show that's been off the air for a half-dozen years.
It started that day when somebody used the phrase “arms akimbo” in a conversation that I was not part of. The person uttered the phrase in a completely cartoon-free context. But my brain, which was eavesdropping, immediately told me to barge into the conversation and relay this bit of information:
There once was a cartoon show called “Earthworm Jim.” My son used to watch it, and one of the recurring villains was named Arms Akimbo. His arms were permanently akimbo, meaning his hands were stuck on his hips with his elbows jutting out to the side. He’d barge into rooms and knock people over by swinging his arms back and forth.
I butted into the conversation to impart this factoid to my friends. They seemed to think it was somewhat interesting, but totally irrelevant to the discussion they were having. Feeling satisfied that I’d reaffirmed my standing as meaningless trivia champion (especially when it comes to mid-`90s cartoon shows), I went back to what I was doing.
Later that night, I was sitting on my couch, watching a baseball game from the West Coast. The rest of the family had gone to bed. Five minutes after Stacy disappeared into the bedroom, I was asleep on the couch.
I awakened at 2 a.m. a little confused and groggy. I let the dogs out and stumbled off to bed. At some point during the two-thirds comatose walk to the bed, it occurred to me that Arms Akimbo was not a villain on “Earthworm Jim.” He was a villain on another show of the same era, the name of which I couldn’t remember.
I remembered the show was on right after “Earthworm Jim” on the Cartoon Network and the hero, whose name was the same as the show, wore a red suit with a yellow lightning bolt on the front and he had a big black pompadour. I remembered that the police captain on the show was voiced by Ed Asner.
I remembered that we had videotapes in the basement with episodes of “Earthworm Jim,” “Pinky and the Brain” and this other show. I remembered that these shows were very funny, written more for me than my 3-year-old son, Max, who had watched them with me. I remembered pretty much everything about that show, except what it was called.
I have a theory about this. It’s my belief that everyone's brain has a finite amount of information that can be stored in it. Not everyone’s brain can hold the same amount of information, but everyone’s brain will eventually fill up.
This happens to most people in their 30s. Once your brain is full, you can't remember anything new without forgetting something old. Here’s the tricky part: You don't get to choose what your brain is going to dump to make space for new information.
You’d like it to be National League baseball statistics from 1970 to 1980 and the words to Neil Diamond songs, but sometimes it’s your mother's birthday and where you left your car keys.
At some point, my brain needed some space and threw out the name of this cartoon show from 1996. I lay in bed that night trying to recall the name of the cartoon with the guy in the red jumpsuit.
“This is silly,” I thought to myself. “It's 2:30 in the morning. Go to sleep. You can figure it out in the morning. Just ask Max; his brain's not full yet. He'll remember.”
But the more I thought about not thinking about it, the more I thought about it. It was during the next half-hour that I remembered about Ed Asner and about how Earthworm Jim had a sidekick named Snot and his love interest was Princess What's-Her-Name.
It was also during that half-hour that I came up with the switch to turn off your brain theory. (The full-brain theory is one I've had for some time.) But I couldn't recall the name of the show.
I thought about going to the basement and digging through the box of old videotapes. Then I decided that the Internet might be easier. I stumbled out of bed and upstairs to the office.
I sat down, but before I could Google, it occurred to me I didn't know what to type. “What's the name of the cartoon show where the guy wore a red jumpsuit and one of the villains was named Arms Akimbo and Ed Asner did the voice of the police captain?” seemed like it might not work.
My first attempt was – “Arms Akimbo,” villain. This got me a bunch of literary references (possibly whatever the co-workers were talking about), but nothing I recognized as the show. I then tried – “Arms Akimbo,” Cartoon Network.
Eureka. The fourth site was dedicated to “Freekazoid.” How could I forget “Freekazoid?” It turns out that the lightning bolt on the front of the red jumpsuit was an “F!” It also turns out "Freekazoid" started on the WB before finding its way to Cartoon Network. But other than that, I remembered it correctly -- except the name, of course.
After reading a couple of sites and discovering that the Dodgers had won the game 7-3, I made it to bed about 3:30. Later that morning, when I had to get up to make sure the kids were getting on the school bus, I was glad I didn't have my brain turned off the night before. It would have taken more than a switch to get it running again. It might have required a car battery and a set of jumper cables.
And now that I've got “Freekazoid” back in my brain I'm sure something else has been pushed out of there. I'm sure it wasn't that important.
Has anyone seen my car keys?
This idea came to me in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because my brain was busy trying to remember the name of a cartoon show that's been off the air for a half-dozen years.
It started that day when somebody used the phrase “arms akimbo” in a conversation that I was not part of. The person uttered the phrase in a completely cartoon-free context. But my brain, which was eavesdropping, immediately told me to barge into the conversation and relay this bit of information:
There once was a cartoon show called “Earthworm Jim.” My son used to watch it, and one of the recurring villains was named Arms Akimbo. His arms were permanently akimbo, meaning his hands were stuck on his hips with his elbows jutting out to the side. He’d barge into rooms and knock people over by swinging his arms back and forth.
I butted into the conversation to impart this factoid to my friends. They seemed to think it was somewhat interesting, but totally irrelevant to the discussion they were having. Feeling satisfied that I’d reaffirmed my standing as meaningless trivia champion (especially when it comes to mid-`90s cartoon shows), I went back to what I was doing.
Later that night, I was sitting on my couch, watching a baseball game from the West Coast. The rest of the family had gone to bed. Five minutes after Stacy disappeared into the bedroom, I was asleep on the couch.
I awakened at 2 a.m. a little confused and groggy. I let the dogs out and stumbled off to bed. At some point during the two-thirds comatose walk to the bed, it occurred to me that Arms Akimbo was not a villain on “Earthworm Jim.” He was a villain on another show of the same era, the name of which I couldn’t remember.
I remembered the show was on right after “Earthworm Jim” on the Cartoon Network and the hero, whose name was the same as the show, wore a red suit with a yellow lightning bolt on the front and he had a big black pompadour. I remembered that the police captain on the show was voiced by Ed Asner.
I remembered that we had videotapes in the basement with episodes of “Earthworm Jim,” “Pinky and the Brain” and this other show. I remembered that these shows were very funny, written more for me than my 3-year-old son, Max, who had watched them with me. I remembered pretty much everything about that show, except what it was called.
I have a theory about this. It’s my belief that everyone's brain has a finite amount of information that can be stored in it. Not everyone’s brain can hold the same amount of information, but everyone’s brain will eventually fill up.
This happens to most people in their 30s. Once your brain is full, you can't remember anything new without forgetting something old. Here’s the tricky part: You don't get to choose what your brain is going to dump to make space for new information.
You’d like it to be National League baseball statistics from 1970 to 1980 and the words to Neil Diamond songs, but sometimes it’s your mother's birthday and where you left your car keys.
At some point, my brain needed some space and threw out the name of this cartoon show from 1996. I lay in bed that night trying to recall the name of the cartoon with the guy in the red jumpsuit.
“This is silly,” I thought to myself. “It's 2:30 in the morning. Go to sleep. You can figure it out in the morning. Just ask Max; his brain's not full yet. He'll remember.”
But the more I thought about not thinking about it, the more I thought about it. It was during the next half-hour that I remembered about Ed Asner and about how Earthworm Jim had a sidekick named Snot and his love interest was Princess What's-Her-Name.
It was also during that half-hour that I came up with the switch to turn off your brain theory. (The full-brain theory is one I've had for some time.) But I couldn't recall the name of the show.
I thought about going to the basement and digging through the box of old videotapes. Then I decided that the Internet might be easier. I stumbled out of bed and upstairs to the office.
I sat down, but before I could Google, it occurred to me I didn't know what to type. “What's the name of the cartoon show where the guy wore a red jumpsuit and one of the villains was named Arms Akimbo and Ed Asner did the voice of the police captain?” seemed like it might not work.
My first attempt was – “Arms Akimbo,” villain. This got me a bunch of literary references (possibly whatever the co-workers were talking about), but nothing I recognized as the show. I then tried – “Arms Akimbo,” Cartoon Network.
Eureka. The fourth site was dedicated to “Freekazoid.” How could I forget “Freekazoid?” It turns out that the lightning bolt on the front of the red jumpsuit was an “F!” It also turns out "Freekazoid" started on the WB before finding its way to Cartoon Network. But other than that, I remembered it correctly -- except the name, of course.
After reading a couple of sites and discovering that the Dodgers had won the game 7-3, I made it to bed about 3:30. Later that morning, when I had to get up to make sure the kids were getting on the school bus, I was glad I didn't have my brain turned off the night before. It would have taken more than a switch to get it running again. It might have required a car battery and a set of jumper cables.
And now that I've got “Freekazoid” back in my brain I'm sure something else has been pushed out of there. I'm sure it wasn't that important.
Has anyone seen my car keys?
Friday, May 18, 2007
Supervising chickens easier than chaperoning 7th-grade musicians
They were looking for volunteers, but it was easy for me to beg off. My son, Max's middle school music programs were looking for chaperons to accompany the band, choir and orchestra to a competition with a side trip to an amusement park on the way home.
It would be a Saturday that started at 5:15 a.m. and returned after midnight. A good portion of your day would be spent riding on a bus full of middle school students. But as wonderful as that sounds, I had no trouble saying "no," I did it last year.
It started about three weeks before the seventh-grade trip when Max came home with the permission slip for the field trip. The orchestra, along with the band and the choir, would be going to the competition in Shelby, Ohio, and then on to the Cedar Point. The packet also said they were looking for parent volunteers to be chaperons.
I tried to hide as Stacy and Max were talking about it, especially when they outlined the start and end times. But Stacy gave the “of course you’re going to do this for your child” look.
Stacy said she would do it, but she was already committed to do the Race for the Cure that day. How can you argue with that? So I said I would go.
For a couple of weeks I didn’t worry about it too much, but as is got closer the dread started to set in. First was the starting time. I’ve never been much good in the morning. It used to be the only way I ever saw 5:45 in the morning was by staying up all night. But since this wasn’t about watching the sun rise and then going to bed, I figured that was a bad idea.
The other part of the assignment that was making me a little anxious was the idea of being responsible for a group of what I assumed would be all 12- and 13-year-old boys in an amusement park. Under the best of conditions, taking charge of a group like that is a little like herding chickens. By the time you get most of the going in one direction, a couple of the stragglers will have wandered off. If you go after them, you’ll lose the ones you have headed in the right direction.
But I’d committed myself, so there was no backing out of it.
Thursday night there was a preview performance of music the orchestra would be performing. Afterward as I was trying to get my lone chicken to pack up his cello and get to the car, a number of his friends told me that they were going to be in my group for the field trip.
I didn’t know how many I was going to get total, but I knew I’d have Alex, Alex, Michael and John, plus Max. Five wouldn’t have been too bad. But when I got there on the blurry-eyed Saturday morning, I found that my number was actually nine.
I guess not as many parents got the “of course you’re going to do this for your son (or daughter)” look as I might have hoped. So we loaded on the bus and headed north. Thankfully, it was not a school bus. I put on the iPod and tried to sleep.
It was not the best sleep I’ve ever had and as we approached Shelby, the kids began to get a little restless. This was the only truly disappointing part of the day. I guess disappointing is not really the right word. But as the kids entered Shelby, which has obviously not seen its best times economically in recent years, rather than count themselves lucky, the busload of kids was more than a little snobbish.
These were students from on of the fastest growing school district's in the country. The vast majority of them are from comparatively comfortable families and most have never gone to a school that’s older than they are. Shelby Middle School was built before their parents were born.
They were singularly unimpressed. But that’s understandable really. They’re young and haven’t seen a great deal of the world. They don’t really understand how good they’ve got it.
The time at the school for the competition was mainly an exercise in waiting. We were there from about 8:30 a.m. until 1:45 p.m. and my particular group of kids was on the stage for about 20 minutes.
So we tried to give them a schedule. We took them to the cafeteria and to the room to pick up their instruments and get them into tune. Then they got some time to walk around outside. Then back to the room to wait for our escort to the practice room. A rumor ran through the group that all of the school’s groups had been penalized points because the seventh-grade choir had been caught playing leap-frog in the hallways. It turned out that they’d just been given a warning.
Once the last of the school’s groups had performed, we loaded on to the buses and headed north to Cedar Point. My group of nine immediately became 10 as a boy from another group wanted to join ours. The problem was that once inside the park, they all had different agendas. I knew it was going to be impossible to keep all of my chickens headed in the same direction.
We entered the park at a little after 3 p.m. and were supposed to be back at the buses at 8:30. Some wanted to go directly to the Top-Fuel Dragster (two-hour wait, 17-second ride), others wanted to go to the arcade (spend $10 to win a 79-cent stuffed animal) and others wanted to find the roller coasters with the shorter lines and get as many rides in as they could even if it meant missing the big attractions.
We decided that we’d setting a meeting place for 6 o’clock so we could eat dinner and I could count noses (or beaks). I had a cell number for at least one person in each group if I needed to get a hold of them before that. So two groups of three went off on their own and I was left with four, Max, one of the Alexs, one of the Johns and Roberto. They were the group in search of the shortest lines.
I noticed one thing right off. Boys walk at a different speed in an amusement park. Normally, Max’s pace can best be described as a slow meander. When traveling from one roller coaster to another, they all fell into the Olympic race walk category.
While the boys waited in the shortest lines they could find, I tried to find a bench in the shade and put the iPod back on. My roller coasting days are behind me. Getting me into a roller coaster seat is a little snug and, while I don’t come off the rides feeling nauseous, I do feel a little beat up afterward. So I’d buy a $3.50 soda and wait, find the nearest restroom and wait some more.
To this credit, all the boys showed up at the rendezvous point more or less on time and after a flurry of last-minute chicken behavior (if they had to give any money back to their parents, the boys saw it as a personal defeat), we made it back to the bus on time. The ride back to Powell was not the snoozefest I anticipated, but they were relatively quiet as everyone compared notes on their afternoon at the park.
In the end, I delivered all nine of my chickens back in one piece. It's the kind of thing that was fun once, but now it's somebody else's turn.
It would be a Saturday that started at 5:15 a.m. and returned after midnight. A good portion of your day would be spent riding on a bus full of middle school students. But as wonderful as that sounds, I had no trouble saying "no," I did it last year.
It started about three weeks before the seventh-grade trip when Max came home with the permission slip for the field trip. The orchestra, along with the band and the choir, would be going to the competition in Shelby, Ohio, and then on to the Cedar Point. The packet also said they were looking for parent volunteers to be chaperons.
I tried to hide as Stacy and Max were talking about it, especially when they outlined the start and end times. But Stacy gave the “of course you’re going to do this for your child” look.
Stacy said she would do it, but she was already committed to do the Race for the Cure that day. How can you argue with that? So I said I would go.
For a couple of weeks I didn’t worry about it too much, but as is got closer the dread started to set in. First was the starting time. I’ve never been much good in the morning. It used to be the only way I ever saw 5:45 in the morning was by staying up all night. But since this wasn’t about watching the sun rise and then going to bed, I figured that was a bad idea.
The other part of the assignment that was making me a little anxious was the idea of being responsible for a group of what I assumed would be all 12- and 13-year-old boys in an amusement park. Under the best of conditions, taking charge of a group like that is a little like herding chickens. By the time you get most of the going in one direction, a couple of the stragglers will have wandered off. If you go after them, you’ll lose the ones you have headed in the right direction.
But I’d committed myself, so there was no backing out of it.
Thursday night there was a preview performance of music the orchestra would be performing. Afterward as I was trying to get my lone chicken to pack up his cello and get to the car, a number of his friends told me that they were going to be in my group for the field trip.
I didn’t know how many I was going to get total, but I knew I’d have Alex, Alex, Michael and John, plus Max. Five wouldn’t have been too bad. But when I got there on the blurry-eyed Saturday morning, I found that my number was actually nine.
I guess not as many parents got the “of course you’re going to do this for your son (or daughter)” look as I might have hoped. So we loaded on the bus and headed north. Thankfully, it was not a school bus. I put on the iPod and tried to sleep.
It was not the best sleep I’ve ever had and as we approached Shelby, the kids began to get a little restless. This was the only truly disappointing part of the day. I guess disappointing is not really the right word. But as the kids entered Shelby, which has obviously not seen its best times economically in recent years, rather than count themselves lucky, the busload of kids was more than a little snobbish.
These were students from on of the fastest growing school district's in the country. The vast majority of them are from comparatively comfortable families and most have never gone to a school that’s older than they are. Shelby Middle School was built before their parents were born.
They were singularly unimpressed. But that’s understandable really. They’re young and haven’t seen a great deal of the world. They don’t really understand how good they’ve got it.
The time at the school for the competition was mainly an exercise in waiting. We were there from about 8:30 a.m. until 1:45 p.m. and my particular group of kids was on the stage for about 20 minutes.
So we tried to give them a schedule. We took them to the cafeteria and to the room to pick up their instruments and get them into tune. Then they got some time to walk around outside. Then back to the room to wait for our escort to the practice room. A rumor ran through the group that all of the school’s groups had been penalized points because the seventh-grade choir had been caught playing leap-frog in the hallways. It turned out that they’d just been given a warning.
Once the last of the school’s groups had performed, we loaded on to the buses and headed north to Cedar Point. My group of nine immediately became 10 as a boy from another group wanted to join ours. The problem was that once inside the park, they all had different agendas. I knew it was going to be impossible to keep all of my chickens headed in the same direction.
We entered the park at a little after 3 p.m. and were supposed to be back at the buses at 8:30. Some wanted to go directly to the Top-Fuel Dragster (two-hour wait, 17-second ride), others wanted to go to the arcade (spend $10 to win a 79-cent stuffed animal) and others wanted to find the roller coasters with the shorter lines and get as many rides in as they could even if it meant missing the big attractions.
We decided that we’d setting a meeting place for 6 o’clock so we could eat dinner and I could count noses (or beaks). I had a cell number for at least one person in each group if I needed to get a hold of them before that. So two groups of three went off on their own and I was left with four, Max, one of the Alexs, one of the Johns and Roberto. They were the group in search of the shortest lines.
I noticed one thing right off. Boys walk at a different speed in an amusement park. Normally, Max’s pace can best be described as a slow meander. When traveling from one roller coaster to another, they all fell into the Olympic race walk category.
While the boys waited in the shortest lines they could find, I tried to find a bench in the shade and put the iPod back on. My roller coasting days are behind me. Getting me into a roller coaster seat is a little snug and, while I don’t come off the rides feeling nauseous, I do feel a little beat up afterward. So I’d buy a $3.50 soda and wait, find the nearest restroom and wait some more.
To this credit, all the boys showed up at the rendezvous point more or less on time and after a flurry of last-minute chicken behavior (if they had to give any money back to their parents, the boys saw it as a personal defeat), we made it back to the bus on time. The ride back to Powell was not the snoozefest I anticipated, but they were relatively quiet as everyone compared notes on their afternoon at the park.
In the end, I delivered all nine of my chickens back in one piece. It's the kind of thing that was fun once, but now it's somebody else's turn.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Annual spring allergies are rusting my iron constitution
I don't get sick, at least not for any length of time. I can knock out a 48-hour flu in about 12 hours and the last time I missed work for an illness was when my daughter gave me pinkeye.
My mother says when I was 3 and all the kids in the neighborhood got chicken pox, I had eight. All the other kids were covered from head to toe and I had eight little pox. I also got the mump.
But while I rarely get sick, I really whine about it when I do. This is such an occasion. But I'm not really sick, I have allergies. The really frustrating part is that I haven't always had allergies. In fact, I never had them until I was 37 years old.
It didn't happen when I moved to Ohio, but the last spring before I left northern California. I was just sitting there in my living room, minding my own business one spring evening, when I sneezed. Then I sneezed again and again and again. I felt perfectly fine, except for the sneezing.
And these were not delicate little sneezes, the kind where you're sure the sneezer is going to blow out an eardrum trying to suppress the explosion. They're loud and violent and I can fire them off in rapid succession. AAAAAAH-CHAAAAAA!! ... AAAAAAH-CHAAAAAA!!
My personal record is 15 sneezes in a minute. And they happen so quickly I can't get my hands up to cover my mouth. I spend a lot of time wiping off my computer screen. I'd like to apologize to everyone I've sneezed on the the last few years. The bad news is you're all wet, but the good news is I'm not contagious.
Then my nose starts to run and my eyes begin to itch. That first spring, I was very confused. These were clearly allergy symptoms, but I wasn't an allergy person. Allergy people are Jack lemon as Felix Unger walking around the apartment making honking noises and spraying everything with disinfectant. I'm not like that. Like I said, I'm militantly healthy.
So I went to the doctor looking for an explanation.
"This happens to a lot of people your age," she said. (That's not the most comforting sentence in the world and I can't imagine it's the last time I'll hear a doctor say it.) "Sometimes people develop allergies over time."
She gave me a prescription and a couple of samples of other medications and sent me on my way. I had a pill, a nasal spray and some kind of inhaler.
The drugs made the allergies tolerable and in a few weeks, whatever it is that causes them quit blooming and they went away. Whatever it is that sends me into sneezing fits only happens for about three weeks in the spring. But they always come back this time of year and I'm reminded that I, too, am now an allergy person.
The stuff I got from the doctor in California lasted me through my first spring in Ohio. The next spring, for some reason, wasn't so bad. But the following year, allergies came back with a vengeance.
I went back to my stash of allergy medicine and found most of it was gone and the rest had expired in 2001. But I have discovered that one of the benefits of the deregulation of the drug industry is that you now can get over-the-counter medication that actually does something. It used to be that most stuff you could get without a prescription was more placebo than anything else. Not so any more, and now every spring I pop Claritin like Chicklets.
They do pretty much what the package tells you they're going to do. The primary benefit of these pills is stopping most of the sneezing, and they suck all of the moisture out of your head. This keeps my nose from running and my eyes from watering, but it also makes me thirsty and I think my brain is beginning to dehydrate.
I'm pretty sure your brain needs moisture. This may explain my inability to verbalize a coherent sentence and why my typing, which isn't great under ideal conditions, looks like this blog originally was written with the keyboard behind my head, Jimi Hendrix style.
It didn't help that I managed to break my lawn mower in the fastest part of the growing season. I went out to mow my lawn a couple of weeks ago and, being the big he-man that I am, pulled the cord right out of it.
When it didn't start on the first pull, I gave it an extra hard tug the second time. I found myself standing there with the handle and half the cord in my hand as the mower sucked the other half of the cord back inside.
I'm not the handiest guy in the world. I was pretty sure opening the mower up and replacing the starter cord was beyond me. So I called a professional.
I borrowed a neighbor's mower that first day, but while we were waiting for a part (it's the busy time of the year in the lawn mower repair business), it continued to rain every other day and the grass continued to grow like, well, grass.
As I waited for the mower to come back with its new cord, the grass was getting taller and taller and beginning to go to seed. This was especially fun for the allergy sufferer. My house was covered on all sides by grass that was getting so tall that we were beginning to lose the dogs.
The allergy medicine I've been taking is supposed to last 12 hours and 10 pills costs about 12 bucks. So I've been trying to only take one a day, but when they wear off in the middle of the night, all of the moisture rushes back into my head and I wake up sniffling and sneezing.
It'll be over soon and I can go back to having an iron constitution. See what I mean about the whining? Maybe it's a good thing I don't get sick more often. I'd be insufferable.
My mother says when I was 3 and all the kids in the neighborhood got chicken pox, I had eight. All the other kids were covered from head to toe and I had eight little pox. I also got the mump.
But while I rarely get sick, I really whine about it when I do. This is such an occasion. But I'm not really sick, I have allergies. The really frustrating part is that I haven't always had allergies. In fact, I never had them until I was 37 years old.
It didn't happen when I moved to Ohio, but the last spring before I left northern California. I was just sitting there in my living room, minding my own business one spring evening, when I sneezed. Then I sneezed again and again and again. I felt perfectly fine, except for the sneezing.
And these were not delicate little sneezes, the kind where you're sure the sneezer is going to blow out an eardrum trying to suppress the explosion. They're loud and violent and I can fire them off in rapid succession. AAAAAAH-CHAAAAAA!! ... AAAAAAH-CHAAAAAA!!
My personal record is 15 sneezes in a minute. And they happen so quickly I can't get my hands up to cover my mouth. I spend a lot of time wiping off my computer screen. I'd like to apologize to everyone I've sneezed on the the last few years. The bad news is you're all wet, but the good news is I'm not contagious.
Then my nose starts to run and my eyes begin to itch. That first spring, I was very confused. These were clearly allergy symptoms, but I wasn't an allergy person. Allergy people are Jack lemon as Felix Unger walking around the apartment making honking noises and spraying everything with disinfectant. I'm not like that. Like I said, I'm militantly healthy.
So I went to the doctor looking for an explanation.
"This happens to a lot of people your age," she said. (That's not the most comforting sentence in the world and I can't imagine it's the last time I'll hear a doctor say it.) "Sometimes people develop allergies over time."
She gave me a prescription and a couple of samples of other medications and sent me on my way. I had a pill, a nasal spray and some kind of inhaler.
The drugs made the allergies tolerable and in a few weeks, whatever it is that causes them quit blooming and they went away. Whatever it is that sends me into sneezing fits only happens for about three weeks in the spring. But they always come back this time of year and I'm reminded that I, too, am now an allergy person.
The stuff I got from the doctor in California lasted me through my first spring in Ohio. The next spring, for some reason, wasn't so bad. But the following year, allergies came back with a vengeance.
I went back to my stash of allergy medicine and found most of it was gone and the rest had expired in 2001. But I have discovered that one of the benefits of the deregulation of the drug industry is that you now can get over-the-counter medication that actually does something. It used to be that most stuff you could get without a prescription was more placebo than anything else. Not so any more, and now every spring I pop Claritin like Chicklets.
They do pretty much what the package tells you they're going to do. The primary benefit of these pills is stopping most of the sneezing, and they suck all of the moisture out of your head. This keeps my nose from running and my eyes from watering, but it also makes me thirsty and I think my brain is beginning to dehydrate.
I'm pretty sure your brain needs moisture. This may explain my inability to verbalize a coherent sentence and why my typing, which isn't great under ideal conditions, looks like this blog originally was written with the keyboard behind my head, Jimi Hendrix style.
It didn't help that I managed to break my lawn mower in the fastest part of the growing season. I went out to mow my lawn a couple of weeks ago and, being the big he-man that I am, pulled the cord right out of it.
When it didn't start on the first pull, I gave it an extra hard tug the second time. I found myself standing there with the handle and half the cord in my hand as the mower sucked the other half of the cord back inside.
I'm not the handiest guy in the world. I was pretty sure opening the mower up and replacing the starter cord was beyond me. So I called a professional.
I borrowed a neighbor's mower that first day, but while we were waiting for a part (it's the busy time of the year in the lawn mower repair business), it continued to rain every other day and the grass continued to grow like, well, grass.
As I waited for the mower to come back with its new cord, the grass was getting taller and taller and beginning to go to seed. This was especially fun for the allergy sufferer. My house was covered on all sides by grass that was getting so tall that we were beginning to lose the dogs.
The allergy medicine I've been taking is supposed to last 12 hours and 10 pills costs about 12 bucks. So I've been trying to only take one a day, but when they wear off in the middle of the night, all of the moisture rushes back into my head and I wake up sniffling and sneezing.
It'll be over soon and I can go back to having an iron constitution. See what I mean about the whining? Maybe it's a good thing I don't get sick more often. I'd be insufferable.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Organic sausage, reduced-fat Oreos and other oxymorons
I have a friend who claims that he makes “organic sausage.” That’s right, organic sausage. This is an otherwise reasonable man, he’s just spent too much of his life living in California.
I have pointed out to him that “organic sausage” is an oxymoron like “jumbo shrimp” or “compassionate conservative.” The words just don’t go together.
I believe it was Will Rogers (or possibly Chairman Mao) who once said, “Those who respect the law or love sausage should never watch either of them being made.”
That may not be the exact quote, but the implication is clear. You don’t want to know what’s in sausage. It’s full of pig pancreases and other less than appetizing pig bits ground into an indistinguishable goo and packed into something else that you don’t want to think about. And it tastes great.
The quote may also say something about Congress, but I’m not sure. Do they make laws from pig parts?
Anyway, when you sterilize the sausage making process by using only the traditionally edible parts of the pig, you take all of the adventure, and I suspect much of the flavor, out of it. You also, I’m sure, raise the price from $2.19 a pound to $5.49. Pig pancreases are cheap. (I’m not even sure a pig has a pancreas.)
But organic sausage in only one in a long line of “improved” foods. Most of these improvements are designed to make the products better for you. Some of these attempts are more successful than others.
Low-fat mayonnaise tastes pretty much the same as the real thing. And low-fat sour cream is surprisingly edible. But non-fat sour cream tastes like bathroom caulk. What we’re talking about here is non-fat fat. What does that leave? It leaves whatever is holding the fat together – caulk.
You can find “turkey bacon,” baked “potato chips” and even non alcoholic “beer.” Why?
I am somewhat conflicted by all of this. I support the search for the high-fiber, low fat, sodium-free bacon cheeseburger. But when you’re finished, come to me with something that actually tastes like the real thing. The solution is not to suck all the flavor out with the fat.
There’s always someone who will tell you that they taste the same as the original product. That person invariably has 3-percent body fat and the metabolism of a hummingbird. Save your granola breath and go back to the drawing board.
And there are some things with which you should not mess. One of them is Oreo Cookies. The reduced fat Oreo is another oxymoron. Oreos are synonymous with fat. That stuff in the middle is essentially Crisco and sugar. If you take out the fat, you should have to call it something else.
I know that there are many methods, but this is how I eat an Oreo. I grab the little black-and-white slice of heaven by the sides and dunk it in a glass of milk. I hold the cookie under until it’s thoroughly drowned.
The milk should be so cold that it’s difficult to keep my thumb and forefinger in the glass long enough. But I dare not let go because if I do the cookie will sink to the bottom the glass and break up like the Titanic.
You can tell when an Oreo has given up the ghost when there are no more little bubbles making their way to the surface of the milk. I then eat the entire cookie in one bite, including the quarter cup of milk that it has absorbed.
You can’t do that with a reduced-fat Oreo. Reduced-fat Oreos are about as absorbent as linoleum. It’s like trying to drown a small, round piece of plywood. I once dropped a reduced-fat Oreo into a glass of milk and it floated for 45 minutes before sinking.
My wife buys the reduced-fat Oreos because she knows that I won’t eat them and the kids will get some. Regular Oreos disappear half a dozen at a time until my daughter asks, “What do you mean there are no more Oreos? Mom just bought that bag.”
I just shrug and smile with black stuff in the corners of my mouth and fingers pruned from holding them in a glass of milk.
I’m in my mid 40s now and my body doesn’t burn Oreos at the rate it used to and my wife, Stacy, and I continue to look for solutions. It probably has something to do with exercise, but that’s another column.
There are some healthy alternatives out there. I can’t remember the last time I had real Coke or whole milk, but baked potato chips that taste like cardboard are not the answer, and neither are reduced fat Oreos.
I have pointed out to him that “organic sausage” is an oxymoron like “jumbo shrimp” or “compassionate conservative.” The words just don’t go together.
I believe it was Will Rogers (or possibly Chairman Mao) who once said, “Those who respect the law or love sausage should never watch either of them being made.”
That may not be the exact quote, but the implication is clear. You don’t want to know what’s in sausage. It’s full of pig pancreases and other less than appetizing pig bits ground into an indistinguishable goo and packed into something else that you don’t want to think about. And it tastes great.
The quote may also say something about Congress, but I’m not sure. Do they make laws from pig parts?
Anyway, when you sterilize the sausage making process by using only the traditionally edible parts of the pig, you take all of the adventure, and I suspect much of the flavor, out of it. You also, I’m sure, raise the price from $2.19 a pound to $5.49. Pig pancreases are cheap. (I’m not even sure a pig has a pancreas.)
But organic sausage in only one in a long line of “improved” foods. Most of these improvements are designed to make the products better for you. Some of these attempts are more successful than others.
Low-fat mayonnaise tastes pretty much the same as the real thing. And low-fat sour cream is surprisingly edible. But non-fat sour cream tastes like bathroom caulk. What we’re talking about here is non-fat fat. What does that leave? It leaves whatever is holding the fat together – caulk.
You can find “turkey bacon,” baked “potato chips” and even non alcoholic “beer.” Why?
I am somewhat conflicted by all of this. I support the search for the high-fiber, low fat, sodium-free bacon cheeseburger. But when you’re finished, come to me with something that actually tastes like the real thing. The solution is not to suck all the flavor out with the fat.
There’s always someone who will tell you that they taste the same as the original product. That person invariably has 3-percent body fat and the metabolism of a hummingbird. Save your granola breath and go back to the drawing board.
And there are some things with which you should not mess. One of them is Oreo Cookies. The reduced fat Oreo is another oxymoron. Oreos are synonymous with fat. That stuff in the middle is essentially Crisco and sugar. If you take out the fat, you should have to call it something else.
I know that there are many methods, but this is how I eat an Oreo. I grab the little black-and-white slice of heaven by the sides and dunk it in a glass of milk. I hold the cookie under until it’s thoroughly drowned.
The milk should be so cold that it’s difficult to keep my thumb and forefinger in the glass long enough. But I dare not let go because if I do the cookie will sink to the bottom the glass and break up like the Titanic.
You can tell when an Oreo has given up the ghost when there are no more little bubbles making their way to the surface of the milk. I then eat the entire cookie in one bite, including the quarter cup of milk that it has absorbed.
You can’t do that with a reduced-fat Oreo. Reduced-fat Oreos are about as absorbent as linoleum. It’s like trying to drown a small, round piece of plywood. I once dropped a reduced-fat Oreo into a glass of milk and it floated for 45 minutes before sinking.
My wife buys the reduced-fat Oreos because she knows that I won’t eat them and the kids will get some. Regular Oreos disappear half a dozen at a time until my daughter asks, “What do you mean there are no more Oreos? Mom just bought that bag.”
I just shrug and smile with black stuff in the corners of my mouth and fingers pruned from holding them in a glass of milk.
I’m in my mid 40s now and my body doesn’t burn Oreos at the rate it used to and my wife, Stacy, and I continue to look for solutions. It probably has something to do with exercise, but that’s another column.
There are some healthy alternatives out there. I can’t remember the last time I had real Coke or whole milk, but baked potato chips that taste like cardboard are not the answer, and neither are reduced fat Oreos.