Teen Titans

What's the matter with kids these days? There was this nineteen-year-old at the University of Connecticut who ended up getting arrested after a ten minute rant about mac and cheese in the cafeteria. Did I mention this rant was a drunken rant? It ended up with campus police being called, arresting Luke Gatti for his obscenity-laden insistence that he be served his late night snack of choice: bacon-jalapeno macaroni and cheese. To young mister Gatti's credit, it's pretty amazing stuff. Maybe not good enough to get arrested for, but pretty delicious.
That was three weeks ago. About a week later, after the Youtubes gave everyone on the planet a chance to see just how awful a UConn Husky could behave, Luke decided to use the same venue to apologize for his creepy behavior. It should be noted that his apology clocks in at just about one third of his babbling assertion that he was owed pasta and fromage. All good, right?
Unless you happen to be a fourteen-year-old in Irving, Texas. This kid didn't want mac and cheese. He wanted to bring his homemade electronic clock to show his teachers. Ahmed Mohamed was arrested at his high school for bringing a "hoax bomb" to school. As a teacher, I suppose I can understand why people might be nervous. Things are exploding in schools across America on what seems like a regular basis. Better to be safe than sorry. Especially if the kid in question is named Ahmed? Or maybe this was a little too much fear and not enough thought.
Ahmed was invited to the White House. Luke was sent a lot of macaroni and cheese.
And the rest of our nations' teenagers? Well, they land somewhere in between. Some are drunkenly trying to assemble clocks from bits of broken Xboxes. Some are working feverishly in labs trying to come up with tastier versions of cafeteria favorites. Most of them don't end up in police custody, but thanks to social media, we now periodically send a star or two into the Internet heavens as examples of what our country has to offer: homemade electronic macaroni and cheese served in a timely manner. America's Youth: We salute you!

Snap!

It's a pretty hard and fast rule on my playground that when we speak to one another, we use respectful language. As much as we all might like to eliminate or at least diminish the trash talk that takes place in such venues, there is a certain amount of poor sportsmanship that squeaks through. Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls and all that, but it still surprises me how often I have to drop by and remind kids that no one is playing for money here and if they aren't having fun, they should stop. Of course, this doesn't take into account the very real possibility that all that smack they're tossing around is the fun part. Of course. Where would they get that idea?
For years, I have been pointing the finger directly at the grown-ups in this unbalanced equation. All those professional athletes who push and shove and spit and whine are giving children the idea that such things are not only acceptable but part of competition. It's not who wins or who loses, but how bad you made the other guy look on the way to the basket/goal line/home base. It will be on Sportscenter later, on an endless loop. So, Charles Barkley, who are our role models?
I hope it comes as no surprise that our friends running for president on the Republican side of things won't probably be on that list. The most recent interchange between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush will stand as my example for them not being good examples. “When you talk about George Bush – I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” said Lord Trumpington when he was being interviewed on Bloomberg TV. When asked to explain this assertion, The Trumpmeister said in his most emphatic Jersey way, “He was president, OK? Blame him or don’t blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.” Reign, administration, these are just words, right?
Jeb! Bush responded by tweeting, "How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump to criticize the president for 9/11.  We were attacked & my brother kept us safe." At this point, we can take heart in the fact that nobody's mother was mentioned. Not yet, anyway. Former White House press secretary under George Bush, Ari Fleischer, said that Trump is “starting to sound like a truther,” referring to proponents of the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. “Does Donald Trump also think since Pearl Harbor happened on FDR’s watch that FDR is responsible?”
Maybe not, but maybe it had to do with Elanor. Ooo - First Lady slam! 
Is it 2016 yet?

Holllyweird, Karloffornia

A lot of people will tell you that Clark Gable was the King of Hollywood. It's an easy enough assertion to make, what with that "Gone With The Wind" and "It Happened One Night" resume and winning an Oscar for best actor. Eighty-two films, back in the Golden Age, when stars were stars and publicists were publicists. I first became aware of Mister Gable not as Rhett Butler, but as a caricature in a Warner Brothers cartoon. Those ears. And later, my mother regaled me with stories about how he used to chase poor Vivien Leigh around with his raging halitosis generated by his full set of dentures.
I expect that Boris Karloff eventually surrendered to false teeth, since legend has it that removing his partial upper plate gave the Frankenstein Monster's cheeks that extra sunken appearance. As for the bad breath, one would suspect that since he was stitched together from the remains of a number of cadavers, it wasn't just his breath that stunk. But in real life, Boris was quite the urbane gentleman, and was hardly the monster he portrayed so many times on screen. He also made more than two hundred screen appearances in a career that stretched from 1919 until 1971, two years after his death. That's a pretty neat trick.
What I am suggesting here is that if there was to be a King of Hollywood, why shouldn't it be Boris Karloff? That's certainly the way I viewed the world back when I was ten years old. I watched a lot of really horrible movies on "Creature Features" just because I saw him listed in the TV Guide. I have also seen Bride of Frankenstein more times than I can count, and I consider his turn as the Monster in this film completely Oscar-worthy, but that's not how things got done back in the 1930's. Perhaps ironically, this year also found Mister Gable nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty, along with his co-stars Franchot Tone and Charles Laughton. It was Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester who played the dual role of Mary Shelley and The Bride. No Academy Awards for them. They were in monster movies.
The justice, it would seem, comes from the fact that Clark missed out on his second Oscar there, too. Boris Karloff was never awarded an Oscar, not even an honorary statuette. He did receive a Grammy for his recording of How The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. It was that TV special that got him a chance to work with Chuck Jones, animator of Warner Brothers fame. And now it would be an excellent time to point out that Frankenstein's Monster also makes an appearance in that Warner Brothers cartoon, "Hollywood Steps Out" from 1941. Sure, I know we're comparing apples and oranges here, but I never lost a night's sleep because of one of Clark Gable's performances. The same cannot be said of poor Vivien Leigh.

More Mores

What a time we have arrived at, this 2015. At a moment when Lamar Odom has pushed himself to the grotesque brink beyond what had once been considered "reality television," and Playboy magazine is re-imagining themselves as a gentleman's magazine in the most PG-13 sense, we await the next salvo in the pop culture wars. I blame Al Gore's Internet. I blame Al Gore. And his wife Tipper. Tipper and her concerned Parents Music Resource Center banning and labeling records they found offensive. And then, not much later after that, we were treated to a rather graphic Public Display of Affection from Al and Tipper on the eve of the 2000 election. That's e-L-ection.
Now, fifteen years later, the doors to impropriety have been wedged open solidly so that anyone with access to a smart phone or a mouse can watch videos by WASP video whenever the mood strikes them, or watch that clip from the Democratic Convention in an endless loop. Whatever floats your boat, metaphorically speaking.
I'm an old guy, and I remember when there were certain stores and even certain parts of certain stores that you didn't want to be in, at least when anyone you knew was looking. There was an adult section in the family video store I ran. Moms and Dads would stop by and pick up a Disney flick for the kiddies and maybe a little something from the big binder on the end of the counter for later after they went to bed. Consenting adults. In the privacy of their own homes. Never one to condemn or judge other's personal habits, I was still very much aware of who was renting what because there were records of such transactions. Computers, don'tcha know. And then there were those uncomfortable creepy moments when an otherwise mild-mannered favorite customer would take me aside to ask if I had any recommendations from our big book of filth. I could speak knowingly of the Golden Age of Hollywood and German Expressionism, but porn was not my forte. My suggestions in this area were based solely on the clever wordplay in the title. Clever to the tune of a seventh grade boy, or Blackie Lawless. What do I know about "adult entertainment?"
I know that too much stimulation will kill anyone. That's why they put that little "four hour" warning in the Viagra commercials. It's a corollary to the Arthur C. Clarke bon mot that "All new technology will be used for porn." Or something like that. Ah well, at least now I can get back to that interview with Jimmy Carter, and as far as sex on the television goes, I'm in agreement with Monty Python. It's really more of a safety issue. If only Lamar had been more of a Python fan.

What Not To Fear

Zombies. As monsters go, they aren't particularly interesting. As evidenced by the cast of The Walking Dead, stumbling on a stumbling member of the not-so-alive no longer tends to bring a lot of terror to the fore. Instead, the zombie in question is dispatched in some nasty but hum-drum way: a petty annoyance and all a part of daily existence in a world after the Apocalypse. The thing about zombies is that they don't tend to show up one at a time. In this way, they are like Republican Presidential Candidates. Come to think of it, there are a lot of ways that zombies and Republican Presidential Candidates are alike, but I leave that for you to figure out.
I'm telling you that zombies, once you've gotten past that whole dead-but-not-quite thing, you're left with some pretty smelly, boring pests. They're easier to manage than rats, since they tend to be pretty easy to spot, and they don't have a lot of scurry in them like rodents do either. When they made up the word "shambling," they probably had these guys in mind. The folks on TV show refer to them as "Walkers," but that is being way too charitable. They don't tend to rush about, but the limb-dragging shuffle that most of them seem to have surrendered to is not going to cause much of a stir in the speed-walking community. You can outrun a zombie. It would behoove you to keep an eye out for other rotting corpses looking to make you part of their menu, but keeping a clear mind and a lookout for the rest of the herd will put you in good stead.
It is the rest of the herd that makes zombies a problem. All that moaning and hissing and, well, the smell. It can be a little disconcerting. That's how they get you, you know. It's that living dead conundrum that makes most of us shake our heads and try to rationalize: living or dead? It's neither fish nor fowl. For example, it could be concluded that by not being dead, I am a member of the undead. But we save that category for those in limbo, with a foot or what's left of it in both worlds. How do we distinguish? Well, the zombies are the dumb ones, that's for sure. Maybe that's why they seem to crave brains so much, lacking much of their own. See above for GOP comparison.
Zombies are the ones we run away from. Until they get so decayed that they end up in bits and pieces, clawing at the ground in vain hopes of getting back upright. But it's the still mobile version that holds the most potential fear. My son, at one point, had a zombie apocalypse plan for a hasty exit from any and all places that he would frequent: school, friends' houses, neighborhood gathering spots. He wasn't going to be one of those slow-witted victims left flailing helplessly at the onrushing mob of shamblers. He was going to be a survivor. Now that he's moved off to college, I expect he's got a whole new set of plans for how to avoid what for most of the extras in those TV shows and movies is inevitable. You don't have to get eaten, you just have to get mad.

Mister Caven Climbed Up On The Roof

I do wonder what our neighbors must think. Not the ones around my house, but the ones around my school. It is not a regular occurrence, but it happens often enough that one might wonder, "What is he doing?"
I'm climbing up on the roof. I go up there to retrieve errant balls and Frisbees and the like. I go up there to get things down that shouldn't be up there. It would be great to say that every trip up there has a specific purpose and I only put myself at risk when I absolutely have to, but that definition gets stretched at times. Should I have to climb on the roof to bring down a soccer ball that some kid booted up there because he or she decided that they wanted to see if they could get a soccer ball up on the roof? My initial responses would be, in no particular order:
"Looks like we go without soccer for a little while."
"Sorry about that. Maybe you can bring a soccer ball from home?"
"Maybe you would like to figure out a way to get the ball down?"
"Sounds like Buildings and Grounds needs to come out and raise the sidewalk or lower the roof."
"Isn't there someone else that could do that?"
The answer to that last one is "yes." There are plenty of grown-ups who are perfectly capable of clambering up the ladder we have and walking across the very limited slope of our main building's lid. I just happen to be the guy to whom the casual part of business casual means that I am willing to crawl around, fishing various bits of sports equipment out of drains. And then there's the shoes.
A number of times in the past few years, the call has been made to Mister Caven: "Can you please come and get Timmy's shoe off the roof?"
Of course I can, but I am even more puzzled than I am with the occasional errant soccer ball or hula hoop. Why is that shoe on the roof?
I have learned that it is better not to spend a lot of time puzzling about the why and how and to focus on the business at hand: Shoe Rescue. Parents and kids both seem alternately gleeful and embarrasses to have this kind of attention spread their way. It would be so much easier, at some point, to simply let the winds of time eventually wear the discarded footwear into dust, or by chance to have it blown fatefully into the waiting arms of some benevolent stranger.
That doesn't happen. Parents spend enough on their kids' shoes that waiting for any sort of weather event is intolerable, and so they come looking for me. It's nice up there, by the way. The view is pleasant and the ambient sounds of education are just a dull hum from high in the sky. Someday, I might stay there.
For a day or two. There's still so much left to do back on the ground.

Ready?

A month into this great experiment, I still have people calling to ask, "How's it going?"
"What?" I ask in limited dullness.
"The whole empty nest thing," and they wait for me to go on.
"It's okay."
And that's about it. I can't give them a lot of details. Some days are better than others and since it's uncharted territory I don't really know what to expect. Because my wife and I have continued to act as socially responsible members of polite society, I expect that it will appear that all is normal and the tilt of the axis of the earth maintains its roughly twenty-three degrees off center and that whole spinning on its axis thing continues more or less unabated.
But it's my wife's insistence that she wishes that things would go back to normal that makes me wonder. This is the woman who picked a house for us to live in and was the driving force in getting us moved in with freshly painted walls and completed paperwork, all while she was a precarious nine months pregnant. The first night we slept in our new bedroom, with mostly unpacked boxes in the living room and a son still waiting to be born, she laid awake, staring at the new white paint on our ceiling. "Can we go home now?" she asked.
That was fun. We all learned a lot and we are glad to know that in a pinch we can gather up our belongings and push them into a truck and with the help of a half dozen of our closest friends and family we can relocate across town. In a pinch. But do we really have to stay? Can't we just push the reset button and wait until we really need to move?
There aren't a lot of reset buttons in life. I know. I've looked. That night in our new house, I knew exactly how my wife felt. The beginning of another chapter in our great adventure felt like something for which I was never prepared. Having a few practice runs might have given me more security in the choices we had made, but that wasn't really practicable. We plunged on into the void. Into the mystic. The late nights and early mornings and birthday parties and pets and friends and home improvement projects that have gone on since then never really allowed me to feel that sense of a solid earth beneath my feet. It was always moving. Or maybe that was us.
A few nights ago, my wife pulled out our video collection, now cleverly transferred to a series of DVDs, and she watched a family in its primordial state grow into what we are now. We were all so much thinner, younger, smaller, happier than we might have remembered without the aid of audio visual cues. It made a great story. A story that continues now, in places and ways that are not as well documented but every bit as exciting. I look forward to having a chance to review this next chapter. When I'm older. When I'm ready.