Whose Castle Is This?

Here's a Chris Rock bit that echoes through my house: "What does daddy get for his hard work? The big piece of chicken at dinner! My mama would kill us if one of us ate the big piece of chicken by accident! 'What the... you ate the big piece of chicken! Oh, lord no! Now I gotta sew up some chicken! Give me two wings and a porkchop, daddy won't know the difference!'" Monday night we had Sloppy Joes for dinner. My wife and son each had one. I got two. This is how we draw the line in my house. If you bring home the bacon, you get more bacon.
That doesn't mean this line is always clear. Way back in my bachelor days, I used to sit down to dinner in front of my very own Tombstone frozen pizza. Sometimes I didn't even bother slicing it into eight smaller pieces. Instead I would chop it into four big slabs and commence to gnawing. When I moved in with my wife-to-be, We shared that same pizza. Now the eight pieces were split five to three. I got the five. When my son was born, he was more than happy to take the nodules of sausage we would drop on his high chair tray. One of his first words was "meat." Eventually we had to give up one of our pieces of pie to the growing boy, and I was quietly pleased when my wife sacrificed one of hers. I held steady at five, while she dropped to two. Soon my son's appetites could not be satisfied by one piece, and so I let one of mine go. Now that he is in middle school, the ratio has changed again. Mom is still a solid two, while my son and I hold steady at three each. Even now I am getting questions from my son that sound like this: "Are you going to eat that last piece?" Or "How many have you had already?"
Does it matter? I'm the dad. I should be forking food off of your plate. But that's not the way it really works. It's only a matter of time before we're cooking two pizzas, and watching our little boy inhale his very own. It's the mathematics of parenthood.

Dear Mister President

When I voted for you, I knew that I was getting a mixed bag, specifically when it comes to education. This is a guy all about change and hope and wanting the best for his country and its children, even if that means privatizing education. Charter schools and vouchers as concepts and ideals, provide plenty of hope and massive change for public education, but in reality the picture is much less clear. Any kind of reform requires commitment to a common goal, and leaving no child left behind seems to be the only thing that was ever agreed upon. And we all know how that has worked out.
Now, with mid-term elections just a few weeks away, my president is taking aim once again at education, linking it to the economy by suggesting that our future success depends on teaching our children better than we were taught ourselves. A valid point, but we continue to struggle with just what that future will look like. Not the "every kid has a video screen in front of them and projects his or her answers holographically on a display above their heads" future, but the what will my kids do when it's time to go to middle school. Or high school. Or college.
A recent study showed that giving teachers bonuses to improve their students test scores failed to achieve the expected result. They weren't giving the money to the right people. They might have had better success if they had paid the students themselves, or even given cash to parents who brought their kids to school every day. That vision of the future seems less likely. Then there's the "Race to the Top" vision, which on Monday took a slightly confrontational tone when my President said, “We’ve got to be able to identify teachers who are doing well, teachers who are not doing well. Ultimately if some teachers aren’t doing a good job, they’ve got to go.” Presumably to make room for the ten thousand math and science teachers that he wants to recruit and train. Along with this tough talk came the admission that “We’ve got to raise teacher pay generally,” to ensure that teachers can afford to stay in teaching. Somewhere in there is a message that seems to say, "Get motivated or you won't get to stick around for the big raises."
Mister Obama, I know it's been a tough year, and this next month and a half looks to get even tougher, but maybe you could use this time to go after some more challenging targets. The economy, for one. The war in Afghanistan. Global warming. Educational reform is as old as Plato, who we all know as Mickey Mouse's dog. Perhaps this program for "do your job or get out" could be applied to other realms of public service, if you catch my meaning. I don't deny that public education isn't broken, but I do believe that throwing money at the problem or trying to save it with a swift kick isn't your best bet.

A Certain Age

This is what the doctor said to me: "Eventually, we all end up on some medication or another." This was unpleasant news for me. It was also something that felt more like a sentence than a revelation. I had been living my life with the expectation of staying healthy via eliminating my unhealthy habits and tendencies until everything collapsed at once. I never imagined myself as one of those people who lived via their medicine chest, taking fistfuls of pills to maintain their fragile constitution. Somewhat taken aback by this physician's assertion, I stammered, "Well, I thought I was in pretty good shape," hoping to salvage a little of the face that I was losing by the moment. To which the doctor replied, "Well, not really good shape. You could stand to lose a few pounds."
Suddenly, my life was vaudeville: "Doctor, I want a second opinion."
"You want a second opinion? You're ugly too." Ba dum dum.
And so the aging process continues to work its magic on me along with the rest of the planet. As someone who regularly espouses the inevitability of entropy, I should take all of this with a big steaming cup of karma. But it doesn't make me happy.
There was a time when I lived with little more than a tube of toothpaste and dental floss in my medicine chest. Now that I am, as a friend of mine intones, a "man of a certain age," I can't avoid the turbulence of time. The pits between my teeth have grown deeper. My eyes, not unlike an old TV set, take a while to warm up in the morning. I make that old guy noise when I bend down to pick up the stray Lego. I am moving from an ordered state to a less ordered state. If I were a planet, and feel free to insert your clever astronomical joke here, my orbit has begun to decay.
But I'm not ready to crash into the sun. Quite the opposite, actually. It is not my intent to buck this trend completely. I accept that I will continue to experience gravity more profoundly as I grow older, but I look forward to doing it gracefully. That starts with the next interaction I have with that particular physician. You may have noticed that I have not referred to him as "My Doctor." His diagnosis may have been spot-on, but his bedside manner should be put on life-support immediately. He should know that I always need to be the funniest guy in the room, even if I am the guy wearing the paper nightgown.

Forward Into The Past

I get it. People are frustrated. They are angry. America is land of the free and home of the brave and lately we haven't been feeling like that very much. Instead, we've been apologizing for this and that, and spending money trying to fix things that may have been broken for a long time anyway. It is this dander that has been stirred into a revolution, with a small R, and calling out to the masses of those who feel under-served by this current administration. Why should we, the most powerful nation on the planet, have to back down to anyone or anything, including science?
The facts about global warming continue to be debated. The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster wants us to believe that global temperature is in inverse proportion to the number of pirates. Unfortunately, what the Church has failed to take into account is the recent rise of pirates, in Somalia and Johnny Depp. Global warming? All evidence points to the coming of another ice age, the kind we haven't seen since "The Day After Tomorrow."
Maybe that's why MegBay Whitman decided to go ahead and vote against a measure that would repeal a greenhouse gas law she called a "jobs-killer." She's been saving up all those votes for the past twenty-eight years for something really important. There are bigger concerns for us now: protection against renegade ice floes and polar bears. Happily, we've got Sarah "Quitter" Palin around to help us with that second one, and the anti-piracy task force of Clive Davis and Carlos Santana to help us with the first. These are dangerous times, but if we all pull together, we can make it out alive.
Then and only then can we get back to our main concern: Debunking the "myth" of evolution.

A Very Short Book

See the funny men. See the funny men pretend to read a book. The funny men do not read the book. The funny men wrote the book. One of the men has a funny name. His name is Boehner. That is a funny name. Maybe that is why the other men are smiling. Maybe they think he has a funny name. Maybe they think their book is funny.
The book is called "Pledge To America." It is not about furniture polish. That would be a funny book. It is not about the Pledge of Allegiance. The book that is making them smile is about how the men want to save their country. That is why they are not wearing suits. Saving the country is hard work that could not be done in suits. Even though these men usually wear suits when they are doing their job, they want to show how hard they are working by rolling up their sleeves. This is called a "metaphor." The men are not sitting in a book store. They are sitting in a hardware store. That is where people who do hard jobs like saving their country shop. Hard working people buy hammers and nails and saws, and these men want them to buy their book, but not at the hardware store.
The men don't really want you to buy their book with money, either. This is another "metaphor." They really want you to believe like they do. They want the government to stop spending money. These men think that government is getting in the way of people being happy. Not the part of the government that they are in. They think that part is fine. They don't like the ideas that are not theirs.
For example, they want to tear up all the work that was done so that everyone can see a doctor when they need to and replace it with a plan where everyone can see a doctor when they need to. That is a funny idea. They want to keep the bad guys out of our country. That is not a funny idea, but it is funny how they think that anyone who does not look and act like them is a bad guy. Their book is forty-one pages long. It is not a long book, but it does have a lot of pictures. All of the people in the pictures look just like them. Isn't that funny?

Blockbusted

Why should I care if Blockbuster declares bankruptcy? It was that retail behemoth that landed in the center of town one day and video rental was never the same. I went undercover with my best friend and co-manager to check out our competition: High-contrast paint job and even brighter overhead lighting. The staff was snappily dressed in matching polo shirts and obsequious attitudes. "Can I help you find something?" they pressed.
"Do you have 'Picnic At Hanging Rock?'" I asked without a trace of the setup I was giving them. Peter Weir's creepy classic was as scarce as hydra's teeth, and I knew it. It was one of the titles that I was constantly on the lookout for at our shop down the street. The happy droid scurried off to his terminal to check his database, but I already knew the answer.
"Gosh, I don't see it even listed here," came the sad reply from behind the counter.
"How about 'Faces of Death?'" There was no subtlety in my friend's query. He was out for blood. He knew this collection of snuff was one of the "extreme" titles available at this proudly family friendly establishment while plenty of more mainstream films, the ones that featured procreation rather than execution, were not allowed inside Blockbuster's shiny happy facade.
Smug as our little interaction made us, there was no denying the acres of new releases that covered one wall of that great big box of a store.
It was obvious that the demand we were able to create at our shop for the newest titles would disappear abruptly in this environment. Our customers were routinely disappointed to find out that the copy of "Top Gun" they had reserved for Friday night hadn't returned from its slumber party the night before. We saw their disappointment and seized the opportunity. "So, you're looking for a little Tom Cruise to spice up your evening? Why not check out 'Endless Love' and see his film debut?" Curious and ever-trusting, most of our loyal customers would take our bait, and return the next day with a shrug and a grin, thankful for the absurd detour from the norm. It's what we did back in those days. We took pride in the breadth of our catalog and our ability to steer people to movies they might otherwise have missed. My friend and I carried on for hours this way every week, and every so often when someone insisted that they needed something "new that's good that I haven't seen," we would sigh and write their name down in the reservation book for that weeks hottest new release. Whether it was good or not.
It wasn't long before the Blockbuster way became the way. We closed our store and went to seek our fortunes elsewhere. Now we're on opposite sides of the country, and every so often when life gets sad or lonely, we kid ourselves about getting back together and opening our own video store once again. Those were our salad days. Before DVRs and Netflix. Before you could watch movies on your phone. Before Blockbuster.
Do I feel a pang of sadness that the video rental business itself has all but disappeared as well? Not really, since I know that once there was a spot, not unlike Camelot, where college pukes such as my buddy and I could offer money-back guarantees on films like "Birdy" and "Videodrome" without flinching. We knew our customers would be back, even if was just to take another chance on our staff's obscure recommendations.
In the meantime, the store that my buddy and I always secretly wished we worked for, The Video Station, continues to rent movies and talk to people about them. Not just what's new that's good that's in. Blockbuster is dead. Long live the new flesh.

Behavior Unbecoming

And now, turning to the world of sport, we examine the strange case of New York Football Giants running back Brandon Jacobs. In the course of having their collective posterior handed to them by their quarterback's big brother, Mister Jacobs lost his temper. Understandable at some level, since playing professional football is a stressful occupation, and there are millions of dollars at stake for each and every performance. At another level, these players are professionals and should be expected to act in a responsible manner. Which is why throwing a temper tantrum, and a helmet, seems so ridiculous.
Jacobs was flagged for a personal foul for a late hit and had gained only eight yards on four carries, that's when he threw his helmet at the bench. He missed. Instead, the protective headgear landed about ten rows up in the lap of an Indianapolis Colts' fan, who briefly waged a tug-of-war for this souvenir with stadium officials. The main reason for denying this citizen his rightful dibs was that Brandon might need his hat if he wanted to go outside and play again.
No need to worry about that, since his coach had him put his bottom on the bench that he had such a hard time finding with his equipment.
The next day, the National Football League decided that this lapse in judgement should cost Brandon Jacobs ten thousand dollars. Fine to be paid to the league office, obviously. The fan who gave up the helmet was bribed with plenty of nice things in trade then had his new toy pulled from his hands by authorities. He won't be seeing any of that ten thousand dollars. He gets to be part of sports lore, not unlike Steve Bartman, except that Bartman kept his team from winning. This guy in Indianapolis got to watch his team mop up the mess that was the rest of the New York Giants and took home some lovely parting gifts. Steve Bartman is still in a witness protection program.
Rumor abound that Brandon Jacobs wants to be traded because he doesn't think he'll be able to perform to his potential in his new backup role. He was mildly effusive with his apologies: "We were losing the game and I was mad," Jacobs said. "No one wants to lose, and I kind of lost my cool." Kind of. If he had been on the playground where I was watching the behavior, he would have bypassed the bench and been headed straight for the Principal's office. He wouldn't be traded to another team. He would be asked to sit in the Principal's office for the next few recesses. And I would probably get to keep the helmet.