Entries Tagged 'being a ridiculous human being' ↓

I am whooped. The fam and I just got back from a place in Pennsylvania called Peddler’s Village. It’s a very toursity place where people go to buy lots of crap that they don’t really need. Fortunately we didn’t go for that reason. You see they also have a mini-amusement park for kids called Giggleberry Fair which consists of a merry-go-round, a playroom full of dress up clothes, musical instruments, puppets, etc… But the coup de gras at this place is “Giggleberry Mountain” which is a gigantic contraption made of nets, ropes, tubes, slides, and anything else a kid might want to climb. It goes up six stories!

BUT, the best thing about this whole place, the thing that makes me want to go back again and again: on the bottom two levels of Giggleberry Mountain are a series of air canons for firing little NERF-like balls, of which there are literally thousands scattered here, there and everywhere. On the lower level there are canons that fire large volumes of balls up into the air, and on the second level there are swivel cannons that you use to fire at opponents on the other side of the well. Or you can do what I did and fire down into the well… into the crowd.

The best part is shooting at those kids who have just walked in and don’t quite realize what the room is all about just yet. Then out of nowhere a little ball suddenly plunks them in the head. They look up like, “What the heck was that?” When they shrug their shoulders and look away, you blast them again. Seriously, how awesome is that? Where else in America can you go where it’s actually okay, and even encouraged, for you to shoot little kids in the head? Nowhere, that’s where!

And I just want to say that I think I earned the title of “Funnest Grownup on the Freakin’ Planet” tonight. Most parents were only shooting at their own kids. Well, my kid was off with her mother climbing nets. So I just started unloading on anyone who was at least six-years-old and within range. At first they’d be like, “Holy crap, was that an adult who just shot me?” But after the second or third direct hit, they smartened up and started returning fire. By the time we finally moseyed on out of this place, I had a good twenty kids all ganging up to blast me with cannons or, when that failed, flinging them like baseballs and cheering like Mardi Gras whenever they pegged me in the face. No kidding, almost every single kid in that well was ignoring every other person at every other cannon and focusing every bit of firepower on me. It was like being on American Gladiators except I was the Gladiator.

It… was… AWESOME!

Was there ever a point in time when the chicken joke was funny? The original one I mean. The one that has come to represent the quintessential definition of a joke in general, and a bad joke in particular.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.

It’s a reversal technique that gives this joke its intended humor. The setup indicates the chicken had some higher purpose for crossing the road. But the punchline indicates he was crossing the road simply for the purpose OF crossing the road. A modern equivalent of this joke (at least the only one I can think of at 4:00 in the morning as I sit in a production trailer babysitting editors) comes from an episode of Friends.

FRANK: We were down at the courthouse, we were having lunch and we just decided to get married.
PHOEBE: Oh my god, what were you doing at the courthouse?
FRANK: We were having lunch.

The funny reversal idea behind the chicken joke is the same, but once we’re actually old enough and intellectually mature enough to get the punchline, we’ve heard it like a zillion times in some other patently not funny context, making it just “that stupid chicken joke.” Really, the only time anyone ever laughs at the chicken joke is when somebody (not unlike the original joke teller) throws some kind of reversal on the expected punchline.

It can be done via a pun like:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide.

It can be done with absurdity:

Q: Why did the frog cross the road?
A: Because he was stapled to the chicken.

Or it can be done by applying a third party personality to the punchline:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A (by Einstein): Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath it depends on your point of reference.
A (by Martin Luther King): I envision a world where chickens are free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.
A (by Buddha): To ask this question is to deny your own chicken nature.
A (by Colonel Sanders): Wait, you mean I missed one?

But just where the heck did the original joke come from? And moreover, was there ever a point in time when people found it funny? Like did the first adult to ever hear this joke laugh when he heard it? As I said, the joke has become kind of a stock character of sorts representing all jokes everywhere and all bad jokes specifically. But that iconic status couldn’t have materialized out of thin air. Was it a really popular joke that just got told too much, making people sick of it to the point where they finally started mocking the thing? It must have been based in something somewhere in the past. Catch phrases are like that too. We say them and we know what they mean, but they don’t actually make sense in our modern context.

Example: “Close but no cigar.”

Heh? What the heck does a cigar have to do with guessing the wrong answer? Well, fairground games used to give away cigars as prizes. So when a patron missed the ring toss by an inch, the guy running the game would let loose with a phrase that actually meant something in contemporary context. Even though that context has disappeared over the years, the phrase still holds meaning.

Likewise, even though the chicken joke is no longer funny, we still recognize it, not only as a joke, but as THE joke. But where? When? Why? How did this particular joke earn such dubious longevity?

And moreover… why a chicken?

I don’t generally find myself having the same hang-ups with my daughter’s playtime that a lot of parents tend to have. I don’t freak out when she crawls in dirt, runs through puddles or climbs on things she’ll most likely fall off of. I have been the recipient of multiple double takes at the park where other parents stop dead in their tracks, wondering if I really just said, “Sweetie why don’t you roll in this mud instead,” or “Honey if you’re going to throw rocks, throw them that way.” I’m equally lax when it comes to language. I don’t use the word “silly” to when I really mean “stupid” or “dumb.” I don’t shush The Girl when she starts talking about “poopie” or “pee-pee.” I don’t give her timeouts for saying, “butt” or “crap.” Off those same double takes, I usually respond, “Hey that’s why those words are there… so she doesn’t say ‘a**’ or ‘s***.’” But a few weeks ago, even I found myself putting the kibosh on what is normally a fun and innocent game we play—all because I was afraid of what other parents might think. Justifiably so I might add.

A little backstory on this game. The Girl is at that age where she’s really learning how to manipulate words and language. Rather than simply parroting stock phrases that she hears from us, she’s realizing she has the ability to rework sentence structure in order to elicit certain responses. It’s simple stuff really, mostly substituting one word for another for comedic effect: “Twinkle twinkle little TIGGER. How I wonder what you PIGLET!” A turn of phrase like that will generally set off a good five to ten minutes of she and I trying to top each other with zany substitutions. One popular version of this game is to alternate the names of various body parts into our base phrase of choice: “Oh no, I stepped on your… [foot, eye, elbow, chin].” Of course, because The Girl is at potty training age, and because she has a baby brother who gets his diaper changed about a thousand times a day, words describing the various male and female genitalia will inevitably come into play: “Oh no, I stepped on your… [butt, tushie, nipple, penis, balls].”

Like I said, I consider this to be a pretty innocent game, but a few weeks ago we were hanging out with my sister and her future in-laws when The Girl suddenly decided to play. Unfortunately, the base phrase that she decided to start with was, “I want to kiss your…” Now she started off by saying “hair,” but I knew where this path would eventually lead. All I could think was that these people had met me once. They didn’t know what kind of person I was. Where was their mind going to go when Allison inevitably said, “I want to kiss your… [well, ya know].” Because I know where my mind would go: “Holy f*** (because ‘poop’ would not be an adequate expletive in this situation), this guy is totally pedophiling his daughter.”

Now I didn’t want to create undue attention or perceived guilt by outright ordering my daughter to stop that now. So I tried laughing it off and saying, “No, you don’t want to do that.” But she persisted, thinking this was some new part of the game I’d just made up. “Daddy, I want to kiss your… beard!” Paralyzed and unable to think of any better diversion, I just laughed and said, “Naw!” hoping she would end it on her own. But no. “Daddy, I want to kiss your… neck!” At this point I asked her to come show me how she jumps off the kitchen table and we vacated the living room before the irreversible phrase could be uttered.

We’ve been getting The Girl ready for what it’s going to be like when her baby brother, arrives next month. Since we’re having a homebirth we’ve been telling her how mommy is going to be yelling and crying and making grunting noises, but that she’ll be okay because it just means she’s pushing the baby out of her belly. Beyond that, we’re preparing her for what it’s going to be like with a new baby in the house, mainly the idea that he’s going to cry a lot and mommy is going to be giving him milk to make him feel better.

The one last thing we’ve been preparing her for is how the baby is going to look different than she does, because he’s a boy and she’s a girl. So we tell her, “You have a tushy, but your baby brother is going to have a penis.” (I don’t know why we euphemized the girl parts and not the boy parts. “Penis” is just a cuter word than “vagina” I guess.) So she’s gotten really good at understanding the differences between boys and girls—since mommy is a girl, she has a tushy, but daddy and her brother have a penis.

Well it was bound to happen eventually. I was at the playground with The Girl a few days ago. She was on the swings when this older boy came over to give her a push. Pretty soon they were playing and talking and The Girl told her new friend that she had a baby brother coming. The boy brought Our Girl over to see his own baby sister who was sitting in a stroller. His mom was there and heard all about how Our Girl has a baby brother coming. The mom and I… I’m sorry, let me clarify… the very hot mom and I started talking about all the stupid random things parents talk about, laughing and joking and whatnot while The Girl and her son ran around playing together.

Well at one point they came back again to look at the baby when The Girl says, “That’s your brother.” I corrected her, telling her that that was the other boy’s sister. I then made the mistake of adding on, “But our baby is going to be your brother because he’s a boy.”

Do you already know where I’m going with this? The Girl, well coached by this point, looked up at the mom (don’t forget, she was quite hot) and told her, “My brother has a penis and daddy has a penis.”

The hot mom nodded her head and said the only thing a hot mom can say after receiving such information, “Um… oh… well… good…”

I think I handled myself rather well though. Rather than get embarrassed, or scold The Girl for something that we’ve been putting into her head for months, I looked the hot mom dead in the eye, and with no sense of irony whatsoever, said, “Yeah, you know, important information to have.”

Important information to have??? I’ve had several days to think over that response, and as dumb as it sounded I have not been able to think of a better one—one that wouldn’t make me come off as some kind of weird incestual pedophile. Deadpan acknowledgement (of the fact that we were passing along ‘important information’, not acknowledgement that I’m a weird incestual pedophile) was the best I could come up with. But you want to know what I’ve really been thinking about? Had I been a single dad (or a scumbag husband for that matter) and she had been a single mom (a single hot mom, let’s not forget), I think I could have used that embarrassing little exchange as an icebreaker to try and, as they say, hit that. I really think it would have worked. And if I ever find myself in a position where I’m actually using my kid to pick up chicks, I am going to make sure they mention tushies and penises in conversation. Mind you, I have always been a total dork when it comes to picking up women, so I’m not even sure what line could have even followed that tour de force “important information” opener. But hey, at least I’d have had a foothold.

Am I right ladies? Yeah you know it.

I received a rather long internet forward on my MySpace bulletin board this week which basically said, “Hey couch potato, make sure you vote next Tuesday!” Like most forwards that don’t involve filling out surveys or watching videos of indie rock bands on treadmills, I gave it only a quick skim before devoting my attention to more pressing matters, like creating my own South Park character and scanning for hotties amongst my friends’ friends list. I fully expected the bulletin and all its content to fade from memory by the time I logged off the site. But before clicking away to post a YouTube video of a cat falling down the stairs, my eyes happened upon one particular line: “They’re calling our generation the Apathetic Generation.”

The composition of this particular bulletin indicated an author with better writing skills than your typical 14 to 23-year-old MySpace user, so it made sense that the original poster was probably someone closer to my age and the apathetic generation to which he referred was my own. Born in 1978, I’ve always been rather confused as to which generation I technically belonged. A quick check of Wikipedia simultaneously places me in Generation X, Generation Y, The MTV Generation and something called “The Boomerang Generation.” But no matter which “our generation” the author was actually indicating, I could only assume that the finger-wagging “they” to which he alluded meant the people of our parents’ generation, which for the average MySpacer means the Baby Boomers.

Normally an attack like this doesn’t bother me enough to give it a second thought (isn’t that what apathy is all about?), but for some reason this particular criticism, made in this particular context, stuck with me well after I’d finished approving new friend requests and changing my profile song to “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. What this nameless “they” was saying, according to the author, was that despite being faced with a war, a nuclear threat, human rights violations and a laundry list of other issues, “our generation” is still too lazy and uncaring to go out and vote. I went back over the post several times and the more I read that one key line, the more self-righteous my apathy became.

When “they” say “our generation” is apathetic, what “they” are really saying is that “we” aren’t like “them.” “We” don’t do all the things “they” did at our age. “Our generation” doesn’t mobilize for reform on college campuses. “Our generation” doesn’t march on the Capitol building waving placards and hurling slogans. “Our generation” doesn’t engage in civil disobedience while singing defiant folk songs. And “our generation” certainly doesn’t rally around political candidates who might end the tyranny, bring peace to our country and harmony to the world. If this is what “they” mean by an “apathetic generation” then I guess I’d say “they” are right.

But can “they” really blame us? After all, “they” are “our generation’s” role models. “They” thought trying to change the world was all noble and groovy for about a decade or so until they realized there was more money to be made selling real estate. “They” were all about fighting The Establishment and standing up for the little man until “they” realized they could use their law degree to defend The Establishment against little man’s lawsuits and earn a fatter paycheck. Woodstock, Marin County, the Sunset Strip, places where “they” used to hang out, smoke dope and say, “Love is all you need,” are now nothing more than giant spaces for them to build luxury condos and hang billboards advertising Big Macs, timeshares, and the next season of Big Brother. “They” were passionate. “They” were going to make a difference. And yet look at what “they” produced. Frankly, I think things might have turned out better if “they” had taken a cue from “our generation” and just said, “Eh, whatever.”

If there’s anything “our generation” has learned from “them”, it’s that politics is not the way to change the world. We tried it out for a while… more to see what all the fuss was about. During the 2004 Democratic and Republican Conventions, “our generation” descended on Boston and New York and tried to capture that allure of the late sixties. We marched. We protested. We spoke out on matters we only kind of understood. But the trend died quickly… probably when all the young men realized this political revolution wasn’t manifesting with a sixties-style sexual revolution. And as soon as it became apparent that those hot Blue State chicks weren’t giving it up after the rally, we went back to work at Best Buy to save enough cash for a Razr phone with internet capabilities—so we could check our MySpace on the go.

Maybe “our generation” doesn’t vote. Maybe we don’t give two hoots about who ends up controlling Congress next Tuesday. But does anyone among us—from “our generation” or “theirs”—really and truly believe that a different set of politicians will be the thing that brings about a new and better America? “They” have already proven their own lack of faith in the power of the vote by moving on from the passionate activism of the late sixties to the apathetic consumerism of pretty much every decade since. All “our generation” is doing is skipping over “power of the vote” and going straight to apathy.

That being said, “our generation” is far from apathetic. We do care about things. We really do. It’s just that right now, honestly, we have no idea whatsoever how to fix the mess that “they” created. Perhaps it will come to us in time. Perhaps what looks like apathy is just “our generation” unconsciously biding its time, watching and waiting until “they” vacate the premises. We know there’s nothing we can really do as long as “they” are still in control, so why waste “our” time and “our” energy on useless rallies and campaigns that will only serve to get another one of “them” elected? Better to sit here quietly listening to our iPods, playing World of Warcraft, and deciding which MySpace friends to put in our Top 8 List. Who knows, maybe MySpace will become the platform where the new revolution begins. Maybe with every silly blog we post, with every YouTube video we embed, with every slutty self-portrait we upload, we will slowly but surely come together as one unit who will finally bring down The Establishment “they” were ultimately powerless to stop. And unlike the misguided stunts “they” pulled in the preceding generation, our tactics are less likely to get us shot by the National Guard.

So to all the “they’s” who want to call us “The Apathetic Generation,” we say enjoy your election next Tuesday. We won’t be there, but we’ll be thinking of you. And when your solution to everything once again fails to solve anything, we’ll be here, predictably not caring. We’ll just keep on doing what we do everyday; hanging out on MySpace and waiting for you to die.

(deep SIGH)

First they took away dodgeball, saying it was too violent. Then a couple of kids fell off the see-saw and monkey bars, so away they went. Next the tall metal slides were replaced by short plastic corkscrews that don’t give you any speed. Before long somebody said that even swings were too dangerous for playground play. Now just when you thought parents and schools couldn’t get any more ridiculous and wussified than they already are, you know what some school board in Attleboro, Massachusetts decided this week? Apparently the game of Tag is no longer an appropriate game. Tag! I mean… TAG for crying out loud! Claiming “Recess is a time when accidents happen,” the Willette Elementary School has deemed one of the most basic, elemental and pure games of childhood as too rough and dangerous for kids to play. What’s even more amazing is that there’s nothing amazing about this decision. Schools all over the country have been taking similar measures for years. In 2002 a Santa Monica school banned the game saying that it “creates self esteem issues among slower and weaker children.”

I just don’t even know what to say about this decision that isn’t already self-evident to anyone who grew up in any previous generation, though I think George Carlin said it best: “Grownups are taking all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives. It’s pathetic.”

Every generation fears the one that comes after it. Our grandparents were horrified by the rock-n-roll our parents listened to. Our parents were horrified by the brain-numbing MTV programming we watched. It’s expected. You think your parents are prudes and you wish your kids would be into the “wholesome” things you liked. But now that my generation is stepping into the parental roles a new and disturbing trend is happening. We’re actually saying that all the things we loved about being a kid are no longer good and valid forms of entertainment. Instead, we claim they’re damaging to the body and psyche of our frail little children. But the more I think about it, the deeper I think it goes. Parents aren’t vilifying things that are dangerous. What they’re really trying to forbid is any activity that kids can do without their direct supervision.

I never made that leap of logic until I read that soccer is now the number one youth sport in America. And what immediately occurred to me was that the article left out one key word from the declaration: soccer is the number one organized youth sport in America. Whenever you see American kids playing soccer, it’s almost without exception a structured, organized event with official teams, coaches, referees, and booster moms selling refreshments and car magnets. You almost never see a group of four or ten unsupervised kids trying to kick a ball through a makeshift goal. That’s what kids all over the world do, but not in America. Here, the sport that kids engage in most, irrespective of adult supervision, is basketball. Kids don’t need an organized group of parents to play basketball. As long as they have a ball, a net and a hard surface they’ll shoot hoops for hours. But since there’s no way to poll every pickup game on every cracked asphalt court in the country, soccer is the sport that wins the most popular title.

And that suits the parents of my generation just fine for some reason. They can’t stand the idea that their kids could be having any kind of fun that they didn’t personally orchestrate and supervise. And that’s why things like playground equipment and unstructured games like tag and dodgeball are going away. “Safety” and “self-esteem” are just easy scapegoats for the real truth: today’s parents are scared that their kids (gasp) might not need them.

I don’t know where all this insecurity originated and why it seems to be unique to parents my age. Is it that we wish our own parents would have spent more time playing with us that we feel compelled to make sure our kids never spend a joyful minute outside our presence? Is it the reports of kids getting stolen out of their own yards that make us too scared to let them leave our watch for any reason whatsoever? What is it that makes games like soccer, where dozens of kids can be supervised all at once, more preferable to games like tag where kids can supervise themselves? Why on earth is our generation unique in vilifying ourselves by vilifying the things we used to love? And where will it end? How much of our children’s lives will we attempt to structuralize with no thought given to what we’re depriving them of?

There’s something about bubble wrap isn’t there? It’s such a great stress reliever. I mean it’s not as therapeutic as other things like sex, drugs or breaking stuff. On the other hand, as far as cost goes, it’s way cheaper than any of those alternatives. If you work in an office that routinely gets UPS or FedEx shipments, it’s pretty much a guarantee that there will be sheets and sheets of this free stress relief kicking around in the vicinity of the mailroom.

And I’ll admit, I partake in the ‘wrap as much as the next guy. I find it’s good for about thirty seconds of mindless entertainment, though I approach it differently than most people. I actually don’t derive pleasure from the dull popping noise each bubble makes as you squeeze it. My enjoyment is a bit more subtle. I like to gently squeeze the bubble with the thumb and forefinger on each hand until a second bubble starts to form on it. You know what I’m talking about? It kind of grows off the main bubble like a pimple. The plastic starts stretching out until the slightly cloudy material becomes perfectly clear and then it pops. And that pop, my friend, is ten times more satisfying than if you’d just gone at the main bubble like a seventeen-year-old who’s just seen his first boob. The sound is a little bit higher pitched, like the sound of a cap gun, and it signifies that you applied just the right amount of pressure. Too much pressure and the main bubble pops with is signature dull snap. Too little pressure and the clear pimple you’ve formed just kind of fizzles out anticlimactically with no sound at all. But executed precisely, that pimple cracks open with a satisfying BIH-TZ.

But even a sound as gratifying as that will, again, only entertain me for about thirty seconds before I go off in search of hookers, heroin and old computer monitors to break. I’m kidding of course… old computer monitors have mercury in them which poisons the environment. Of course, there are some people in this world who view bubble wrap as some kind of metaphysical Rubix Cube. They concentrate on those bumpy pieces of plastic so intently that you’d swear they were trying to discern the secrets of the universe from the broken capsules. And they truly would spend all day popping these things if you gave them the opportunity and a Staples giftcard.

There was a girl I worked with at a production company in New York a few years back who had just such a fascination. And one day she got the motherload. A huge shipment of tapes came in the mail, and protecting this cargo was a ten-foot-long, three-foot-wide virtual throw rug of bubble wrap. And this chick went… to… town on the thing, alternating between popping a series of individual bubbles to twisting a large handful into a fast sequence of firecracker snaps. And mind you, she was the receptionist in our office. In the waiting room where she was conducting this occupational therapy were producers, a casting director and multiple actors preparing for an audition. But she just kept popping, cheerfully oblivious of the entire room staring at her in sawed off amazement.

A couple months ago, I was working late and ordered delivery from a sandwich shop down the road. When the delivery guy got there, he spotted a rather large sheet of bubble wrap sitting on the table. After handing me my food, he said, “Oh wow, bubble wrap!” then picked it up and started popping the bubbles. Okay, no problem. I went into the next room to get the petty cash to, figuring he would get his therapy in, then leave after I paid him. Well as I handed him the money, he didn’t even reach out his hand to accept it. He just kept right on popping.

And then he said (and I swear to you this is verbatim and not at all embellished), “You gotta give me a few minutes man. I love this stuff. I had a sheet of this at my house last week and I spent like two hours popping it.”

I laughed and said, “Oh, there you go,” which is what I always say when I either don’t care about what somebody is saying or think they’re a complete freak but don’t want to say so. In this case, obviously, both situations applied. So I went over to my dinner, unwrapped my meatball sub, took the straw out of its paper and stuck it in my soda, took a drink, took a bite, took another drink and finally said, “Dude, you can take that with you if you want.”

You’d swear I’d just offered him one of the expensive computers I was busy prepping. His face lit up and he gushed, “Really? Oh wow thanks man, that’s awesome.” He grabbed his tip and walked back to his car, popping with the utmost concentration the entire way. I locked the door behind me then went looking for things to break.