Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I Can't Believe (Cough! Cough!) I Won Gold!

I don’t know how closely you follow international news, but you may have heard recently that China has come under scrutiny for having environmental standards that are, shall we say, less than habitable. Within the past year, China has been found to fill its food with cardboard, coat its toys in lead paint, and pump the ashes of dead Pandas into its atmosphere.

I don’t have a link for that last one, but I’m sure it’s true. NBC Nightly News has in fact featured a story on China’s poor air quality for 118 (give or take 3) consecutive days.

Fortunately, at no time in the near future will hundreds of countries around the world send their finest athletes to China for more than two weeks to compete in intense athletic competitions while eating that nation’s poisoned food, breathing its poisoned air and playing with its poisoned toys.

Wait a sec. What?

Oh, right. The Olympics. Is that this year?

Hmmmm.

Well I’m sure everything will be fine.

But what kind of advantage does this pose for the Chinese athletes? It’s been widely reported that many American athletes are training here in the U.S. and waiting to arrive in China until after the Olympics are over. Meanwhile, the Chinese athletes have been not only training, but living in this chimney-like atmosphere for decades. Surely they’ve become accustomed to it, thereby building up a necessary tolerance, right? So when it comes time to run the 10,000 meter distance race, the rest of the world’s track stars will feel like they’re camping on the ledge of an erupting volcano, while the Chinese athletes will merely feel like they’ve been smoking a pack of menthol cigarettes.

And don’t forget, the Chinese have always been adventurous eaters (which is why they're always walking into the Veterinary Clinic without taking any animals in with them). They’re used to egg rolls, General Tso and that crappy soft-serve yogurt that is somehow simultaneously runny and full of ice crystals.

Then again, maybe years of exposure to this type of environment will catch up to all of them as they’re pushing their bodies to extreme limits. Maybe in the middle of a relay, the Chinese athletes will double over like they’ve just seen John Daly play a round of shirtless golf.

Who knows? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But we might want to send Daly over there just in case.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Do We Look Like That?

As a parent of a small child, I hope to never become a parent of a small child. Since that sounds a little confusing, I’ll explain. I’m not saying that I don’t want to go through parenting a second time. And I certainly don’t regret having the first one. What I mean is that I hope to never sound or act like the parent of a small child. At least not the ones I encountered at the zoo during the “special” visit by Dora the Explorer.

Good God.

A couple of weeks ago my wife, my young son and I ventured to the zoo, completely unaware that this cartoon-character-come-to-life would be there, and even more unaware that every parent in the tri-state area was descending upon the zoo to see this traveling mecca of entertainment. If only these parents could have seen themselves.

Now, it wasn’t like a scene at the mall the day after Thanksgiving. Everyone was very civil. It was more like a scene of once normal, well-adjusted adults who have morphed into mobile nurseries that live only to serve their midget-sized offspring. And most were completely unaware that other people were at the zoo and that these people could see them.

For example: I was standing in line at a concession stand behind two dads and their corresponding set of kids, I’d say ages 5-7, and upon reaching the front of the line, both dads tried asking their kids what they wanted to eat. The kids, however, were more interested in running around and acting silly (like kids do). So the dads asked again. And then again. And continued asking. Meanwhile, the line had grown quite large.

Keep in mind I’m at a concession stand that sells pizza, giant pretzels and hot dogs. To a seven year old, there is no wrong answer. Yet the dads were intent on getting this right, no matter how long it took. Call me crazy, but I saw this as an opportunity for them to teach their kids a valuable lesson. They could have decided what each kid was going to eat, ordered the food, and if one or more of the kids wasn’t happy with what they ended up with, that’s when the parent says…(can you guess?)…(it’s a word I heard many times growing up)…(here it comes)… “tough.”

Again, this wasn’t a French restaurant, so the risk wasn’t very high that the kids would be disappointed. But if one of them was unhappy, impart the lesson: “Instead of listening to me when I asked you what you wanted, you chose to goof off, so I had to order for you. So, you can either eat what I ordered you, or when we continue our tour of the animals, I can push you over the ledge of the grizzly bear exhibit. Your call.”

After finally getting my bottled water (always worth the wait), I saw an example of a woman who is slowly losing her own identity. As we sat at a playground, this mom was significantly happier than her kids to see the approaching show. While her kids played on the swings, she intermittently broke from her conversation with another adult to yell things like, “Dora, kids! Dora! Are you excited?!” Sadly this was not a case of a mother trying to round up her kids by feigning excitement (which parents are known to do). She was expressing general enthusiasm. I was close enough to the playground to hear this actual conversation:

KID 1: “Is that your mom?”

KID 2: “Yeah.”

KID 1: “She’s really hyped for this Dora the Explorer show.”

KID 2: “Yeah, and she doesn’t even realize I stopped playing with that crap two years ago.”

KID 1: “Wow.”

KID 2: “I’ve asked her to get help. She just holds her hands over her ears and sings the show’s theme song.”

KID 1: “Yikes.”

KID 2: “Can I go home with you?”

And parents of small children can be seen coming from hundreds of yards away. They look like a whirling dervish of chaos. The image reminds me of the giant hamster balls on the old American Gladiators, whereby the parents are the gladiators making the hamster ball roll, and in this instance the ball has strollers, diaper bags and noisy kids covered in jelly stuck to the outside of it. The only thing missing is a flashing sign on top of the ball that reads, “Here we come. Leave now or you’ll never escape.”

Of course my wife is far less concerned with morphing into this spectacle. While I was envisioning the hamster ball, she was making comments like, “Look at their stroller, that is badass. It’s so maneuverable and has a huge sun shade. That’s what we’ll need when we have two (kids).”

Sigh. I just hope it doesn’t get to the point that people start hiring clowns to follow them everywhere they go.

DAD: “I’ll have the pasta alfredo and my wife will have the chicken salad.”

WAITER: “Anything for your friend?”

DAD: “Oh, you mean Sprinkles? I don’t know. Sprinkles, do you want anything?”

SPRINKLES: “Nah. While the kid’s asleep, I’m gonna go out and have a cigarette.”

DAD: “Ok, but hurry it up. If he wakes up and starts fussing, I want your ass back in here puttin’ on a show.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love to see my son happy and I’m sure I often look ridiculous. I already do something I swore I’d never do whenever someone approaches and smiles at my kid – “Can you say hi to the nice lady? Can you say hi? You say hi at home. Say hi.”

(My son, of course, is imminently smarter than I am because he knows that in 2-3 years we’ll have the conversation about how he should never talk to strangers, despite my efforts to get him to do so at the age of 16 months.)

I just don’t want to be the dad who is so obnoxious in public that he might as well yell out, “Hey everyone, look at my son! Look at the way he watches the monkeys! Isn’t he cute? He’s a genius too. One day he’ll buy and sell every one of you. Look how he laughs at the monkeys! He's adorable!”

So if you see me acting this way in public, or if you see someone who you think is me, feel free to smack me (or him) around until I (he) come(s) to my (his) senses. I promise to do the same for you.

Friday, July 18, 2008

The Well is Dry

Ok, I know this blog hasn't been updated in two weeks, but I don't know what to tell ya.

Here, what do you think of this - It seems Madonna is in the news again, breaking up the marriage of a famous athlete and making a lot of people unhappy with the release of her new toy.

That's it. That's all I got. Keep checking back in case Peter Cetera models a doll after himself.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

It's Not Tea, But it Sounds Like Jolly Good Fun

Well, as you may have heard, the Fourth of July is upon us – a holiday in which most of us celebrate our independence either by seriously injuring ourselves while improperly discharging fireworks, or by watching Will Smith movies. Then again, I’m sure at some point, somewhere, hundreds of people in a cramped theater have seriously injured themselves while watching a Will Smith movie.

This second, and more recent tradition started back in the mid ‘90s when a Will Smith movie in which he battles aliens premiered on the day that shares its name with the title of the film: The Legend of Bagger Vance. In it, Bill Pullman plays the president, Will Smith plays Muhammad Ali, and Tommy Lee Jones plays a space alien who spends the majority of the movie looking for Harrison Ford. Frankly, the film had too many plot twists for my taste.

Fortunately there are other ways to enjoy the holiday. For instance, many people will spend the day taking in a baseball game, unless of course those people are Pittsburgh Pirates fans. Those people will more likely spend the day seriously injuring themselves. Not necessarily with fireworks, but by any means possible.

The Fourth of July is also a popular time to barbecue. Americans pride ourselves on the ability to cook almost anything over an open flame: hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, chicken, fish, bratwursts, pork chops, prime ribs, shiskabobs, smores, Will Smith albums, etc…

Unfortunately, all of this fun in the name of our independence eventually started rubbing England the wrong way. To squelch some of our merriment and deliver a little retribution for fleeing their iron hand, the Brits created something known as Wimbledon. For those who prefer to watch more popular sports such as backgammon or monkeys driving soapbox cars, Wimbledon is an event in which athletes are not only subjected to playing tennis, but they’re forced to travel to England to do it.

The Brits don’t fare particularly well during this tournament, but they’re happy simply watching American athletes, the men anyway, humiliate themselves on their courts. Thankfully, the Williams sisters have represented American female tennis very well at Wimbledon over the last decade. The men, however, are another story. For a while, we were quite proud, thanks to Pete Sampras, who won 42 consecutive men’s Wimbledon titles. Even England didn’t mind Pete’s domination, mainly because they thought he was British, due to his personality. (It was often said that Pete was as lively as a mannequin on sedatives.) After discovering he was in fact American, Pete was banned from Wimbledon and the U.S. men have done poorly ever since.

It’s gotten so bad that Congress has actually drafted a bill to ensure a return to dominance for the U.S. men by making it mandatory that every year we send over Will Smith to compete in the tournament. But even if the bill doesn’t pass, the British can’t dampen our spirits with their Wimbledon and their Pittsburgh Pirates. We’ll always have our fireworks and hot dogs and hero movies and 50% off mattress sales.

So however you choose to celebrate, have a safe and happy Fourth of July.