A New Hire Sits In on a Content Meeting at CNN

Executive Producer: Ok, people. Whatta we got?

Finance Correspondent: The DOW had its worst day in 35 years yesterday. On top of that, analysts are predicting a very slow rebound.

(The Executive Producer squints his eyes, sticks out his chin, and appears to consider this for a second)

Executive Producer: Let’s come back to that. What else?

News Producer: There was a massive dairy recall announced this morning.

Executive Producer: Eh. Come on, people. “Wow” me.

Foreign Affairs Correspondent: Putin ordered the Russian military to invade England.

Executive Producer: What is this, 1936? Let’s ask the new guy.

New Guy: Uh… honestly, I would lead with the invasion.

Executive Producer: Typical new guy response. So predictable. What happened to my team here? Listen, how many YouTube cat videos do we have ready to go?

Assignment Editor: Three.

Executive Producer: Is that enough?

New Guy: Sounds like three-too-many to me.

(The whole room stares at the new guy, fearful of what he might say next)

Assignment Editor: I agree. Ferret videos are all the rage now.

Segment Producer: I don’t know. That feels like a fad.

Executive Producer: Alright, let’s do two cat videos and one ferret video tucked in between them, so it’s not as jarring to viewers.

Foreign Affairs Correspondent: How about we lead with a montage of Hollywood A-listers who haven’t aged well in the last 20 years?

Assignment Editor: Nice!

Executive Producer: I like it, I like it. Now, how many times did we break into last night’s 6 pm news segment with a Kardashian tweet?

Segment Producer: 12

Executive Producer: And how many times did we break in with a Trump tweet?

Segment Producer: 8

Executive Producer: Oooh, that number needs to triple, at a minimum.

News Producer: The one currently getting the most buzz is his one from last night in which he bragged about his bowel movement measuring a foot and a half long. But there’s no picture.

Executive Producer: Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. We can still leverage the hell out of Trump’s 18-inch turd. Did he make a joke about his name being on it?

News Producer: No.


Executive Producer: Hmmm. Call him up, ask him to do a follow up tweet that says the turd came out with the Trump name on it. Blitzer can talk about that for 45 minutes, easy.

Finance Correspondent: Do you still want to circle back to the plummeting DOW?

Executive Producer: (Groans) I don’t know. How are we going to get people to care about that?


Assignment Editor: We could do a simultaneous live feed of four other people claiming the DOW is a myth.

Executive Producer: Keep tinkering with that idea. I could be talked into the myth thing.

Segment Producer: Just got off the phone with The Donald. He said when our segment ends about his giant poop, he’d be happy to tweet out that Ted Cruz’s poop always has “Imported from Canada” stamped on it. You know, in case we need to fill another hour.

Foreign Affairs Correspondent: That man is a genius.

New Guy: Shouldn’t we be informing people about the events going on around them that impact their lives?

(Long pause)

Executive Producer: Well… that’s not really our job, now is it?

Rest of the Room: (In unison, adamantly): No, no, absolutely not.

New Guy: Yeah, I guess you're right.

This Will Only Hurt (Your Psyche) a Little

“Huh.”

“What? What is it?”

“Yooouuu… have a cavity.”

I suspected as much before I arrived because my tooth had been hurting for more than a week, but of course I took no pleasure in being right. The only thing I felt was shame.

I hadn’t hurt anyone or committed some selfish act or set a goal for myself that went unaccomplished, but shame washed over me nonetheless. Why? It’s not like I had to break it to my parents. And my dentist didn’t care. If anything, he was probably delighted. Now he would get to charge me more.

So what’s the big deal, I kept asking myself.

The big deal is I’m almost 40 years old, for God’s sake. Children get cavities. They eat too much sugar and don’t brush properly, then they get a cavity, and hopefully learn their lesson. I got a couple of them as a kid, like almost every kid does. But that was three decades ago.

What the hell is a grown man who spends every morning and every night reminding his two kids to brush their own teeth doing with a cavity? That’s like imploring your teenager not to text and drive, and then getting into an accident yourself because you were texting while driving.

My credibility was gone. I was one of them now. And my dentist felt the same way.

“Soooo… you wet the bed too?” he laughed as he reached for the numbing agent.

“What?!”

“Now, I’m going to give you a shot in your gum before filling the tooth. It might hurt a little. Do you want to call your mom to see if she can come in and hold your hand?”

Jesus, the guy was roasting me like I was on a Comedy Central special.

“Just plug it, you son of a bitch.”

He giggled, and gave me the shot. He could have given me 50, I wouldn’t have noticed. No amount of physical pain would have registered. There was only humiliation.

The typical barrage of questions followed as the doctor patched the hole. “How’s work?” “Kids enjoying school?” “Got any fun plans for the summer?”

I cared not how nonsensical and drooly my answers sounded. What was left to be embarrassed about?

He softened on taking jabs at my manhood, or maybe he didn’t; I wasn’t paying much attention. My thoughts turned to whether this was the start of a trend. If my teeth were weakening in my old age. Perhaps they’d all turn to dust and spill out of my mouth, forcing me to replace them with tree bark and acorns. Future meals would consist only of milkshakes and mashed potatoes.

Maybe I wasn’t a child at all. Maybe my body was in rapid decline, and soon I would wield a cane and require an electric chair lift to get up and down stairs.

When it was over, I steadied myself trying to make it to the front desk, still reeling from the effects of the shot. Fog filled my head as clear thought seemed to leave it.

The doctor picked up the basket full of suckers and peered at me over the top of his bifocals. “None for you today,” he giggled some more.

Was I hearing the voice of the guy who worked in my mouth or the guy who lives in my head?

“We’ll mail you the bill,” his assistant said.

“Oh, ok. Well… thanks, I guess.”

The doctor tapped a picture on the wall. In it, a young boy was smiling and giving a “thumbs up.” He had a Spiderman blanket draped over his shoulder.

“If you want, next time you can bring in your binky,” the doctor said, doubling over in laughter.

Curse the dentist and his jokes. Or whoever was making them.

Curse them all!

Too Much of a Good Thing, Indeed

It’s not exactly controversial to claim that society is more demanding these days than it was even 10 years ago. We demand more rights for more of our citizens, better wages for the lower class, more accountability from our corporations… we even want the government to shut down less. And we demand more on an individual level as well. We want the internet to work faster, our phones to do more, our cars to be safer, get better gas mileage, start on their own, brake on their own and tell us how to get places.

And why not? Might as well max out, right?

So why do we get mad when we get our money’s worth? We complain all the time that the price of movie tickets keeps going up, but then we also complain when a movie is too long. Same with sporting events and books. “You know, at $29.95 for the hardback, they really should have cut 300 pages out of it. Who wants that much book? Gonna throw my back out reading that thing.”

We pay for entertainment and then get angry the more we’re entertained. It makes sense. We’re all infused with the desire to abandon our pleasures so we can pay more money for something else to entertain us until we get mad at that thing for entertaining us too long.

A lot of people argue that it’s because of our shorter attention spans, which I kind of agree with, but that doesn’t explain the whole story. We should always appreciate a good value no matter how short our attention spans get, right?

Short attention spans don’t have anything to do with complaining that restaurant portions are too big. If you can’t finish your meal, or just don’t want to devote the time necessary to finishing it, some restaurants have started giving customers Styrofoam boxes to take the rest of your food home in. It’s great.

We don’t even like getting free stuff anymore. We plunk down hundreds of dollars every year to get a phone that is virtually indistinguishable from the one we replaced the year before, and then bitch a blue streak when we find the latest album from one of the greatest rock bands of all time has been put on that phone for FREE. An album, I needn’t remind you, that we could simply delete if we didn’t want it. And of course everyone deleted it because a free U2 album was too much of an upgrade over last year’s model, apparently.

Even free stuff we like, we only want for a limited time. Remember when hit TV shows put out 22 episodes a year and aired reruns during the summer? Not anymore. Now we want our favorite shows to only broadcast 10 episodes a season and be off the air after 5 years. “Ugggh, do you believe they’re doing a 6^th season of The Greatest TV Show in History? I mean, enough already.”

We just don’t appreciate value anymore. Ever hear someone over 45 complain about the sound quality of CDs or digital downloads? “I miss the pops and the scratches and the static of vinyl.” Or that they don’t like HD televisions because the picture is too clear? Who can blame ‘em? I mean, all that quality. Blech!

Think those people ever say to their waiter, “I’m sorry, I can’t eat this. It just tastes too good.”

Are we on the verge of letting Uber drivers drop us off six blocks from our destination?

Are we going to pay the same price for flights that get us halfway there and then push us out of the plane with an old, dusty parachute strapped to our back?

Would you pay huge sums of money for an organ transplant if the surgeon stopped just as he was about to stitch you up?

Are women everywhere going to start dating Asian men? (That’s a penis joke, by the way. Thank you! I’m here all week)

We're clearly headed in that direction. So, in my best effort to keep everyone happy, I better end this blog po

Why Does Santa Smell Like Uncle Larry?

Life is full of moments that alter how we forever view the world, thanks to reality-shattering truths. Those harsh realities that don’t jive with what we’ve been telling ourselves or with what other people have been telling us. Finding out what we’ve been told is untrue is far worse than the lies we tell ourselves because with it brings the recognition of betrayal.

Long-paragraph-short: realizing you’ve been duped your whole life is a tough pill to swallow. Especially when the dupe involves Santa Claus.

Learning that a fat man in a red jump suit who has inexplicably escaped death for hundreds of years does NOT sneak into your house while you sleep is one thing (Sorry! SPOILER ALERT. I’m so bad with those), but after the dust settles, what stings the most is realizing your parents were the ones perpetuating the myth. A lot of kids usually find out from their friends, which means parents dig ourselves a hole right from the start. We want our kids to trust us and turn to us in times of trouble, yet their friends usually open their eyes to a massive lie that we started. Who would you turn to after that?

But parents aren’t the only ones to blame. Pretty much every part of society available for consumption to a non-Jewish kid is in on the lie. If we tried telling our offspring at a certain age that Santa isn’t real, that everyone they talk to and see on TV is full of bunk, that the guy at the mall is only there so he can pay his child support, it would be like telling them Kanye doesn’t exist.

“I don’t know, mom and dad. I see Mr. Kardashian’s face on all the supermarket tabloids, I hear his songs on the radio, and I’ve seen him give, like, eight speeches during something called the ‘VMAs,’ soooo… the only people who might agree with you are Taylor Swift and George W. Bush. Not exactly good company you’re keeping.”

It’s pretty illogical and totally counterproductive to have our kids believe in Santa Claus, but it’s out of our hands! It sure feels that way, at least. I’m sure the tide will turn eventually, as it always does. I’m sure there will one day be a collective understanding among parents not to tell their kids about him. It will probably start with the Millennials.

“Oh, we’re with our kids every minute of the day, including at school, even though they can’t see us due to the iHelmets we wear to ensure we never have to look anyone in the eye. We can just verbally instruct the device to upload messages to other iHelmet wearers. And we don’t let them play in any sports leagues that don’t give every child a participatory trophy. Of course, we don’t actually watch them play their games live, we only see the games, and the ensuing trophy presentations, through the screens in our iHelmets. Sure, it's a lot of screen time, but we don't own a TV. We don’t want to be “those” people. Since food no longer exists thanks to the elimination of gluten from every facet of the environment, their diets consist of nothing but vitamins and protein suppositories. Oh, and heavens to Betsy, we do NOT let them believe in Santa Claus.”

But the Millenials are probably onto something. After telling kids their whole lives not to lie, they come to find out we’ve lied to them their whole lives. And besides that, there’s something creepy about the notion that if strangers believe you are behaving properly, they will reward you for it.

Then again, that scenario plays out over and over again in all aspects of adult life. Maybe we’re not always rewarded for behaving properly, but we definitely avoid punishment by behaving properly, like at school, work, the airport, in front of police officers if you’re white (am I right?! [wink, wink]). Then there are times when strangers do in fact reward us for behaving properly. Usually the rewards consist of votes, job offers and, of course, sex.

Come to think of it, we spend our whole adult lives trying to get others to acknowledge our good behavior, so we might as well practice it while we're young. And, like finding out Santa is a lie, we might as well have our children get accustomed to not getting the recognition they deserve later in life. No matter how hard they work, or how well they perform, or how many sacrifices they make, they will never get the recognition they deserve!

NO MATTER WHERE THEY GO, OR WHO THEY TURN TO, THE WORLD WILL CONTINUE TO SHIT ON ALL THEIR HOPES AND DRE…

(Heavy panting)

(More panting while bent at the waist)

Excuse me. Where was I?

Oh right, Santa Claus.

To lie or not to lie?

Probably doesn’t matter.

I believed in him once and I turned out fine.

Dog People Have Gone Ape

I’m going to start this off by acknowledging that my own biases probably influenced how I viewed this as a kid, but when I was growing up, it seemed as if there was a collective understanding throughout society that owning a cat was weird. I mean, why would you? Cats are awful.

My bias probably developed from the fact that my family owned some kind of dog during most of my life. We never owned a cat, nor did we ever consider it, probably because no one in the family liked them.

But I clearly remember feeling a part of the majority. I certainly knew, and liked, people who owned cats, but most of my pet-owning friends and family members had dogs. And society as a whole seemed to own a dog, or at least agreed that they were fun and lovable. We bought paintings of them gambling, for crying out loud. “Awww. They have vices just like us!”

The president, no matter who it was, always owned a dog.

And we were constantly reminded of their greatness in books (Clifford, Where the Red Fern Grows), on TV (Rin Tin Tin, Lassie), and in movies (Benji, Lady & the Tramp, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Turner & Hooch, all those Beethoven sequels). One of the most famous dog movies, Old Yeller, ended with the dog getting shot after contracting rabies. And everyone who has seen it agrees that it’s one of the saddest movies ever. Hollywood wisely used a dog in the story so that packed theaters all across the country wouldn’t stand up and cheer at the sight of a cat being shot to death.

The only cat I remember holding a place in everyone’s collective consciousness was Garfield, which was a funny cartoon, but only because it depicted just how awful it is to own a cat.

The bottom line was: dogs saved kids from wells and cats got stuck in trees, which required being rescued by the fire department, which of course cost tax payers’ money.

Now, if owning a cat was weird, at the time it seemed a rather straightforward correlation that people who owned cats were weird. As Homer Simpson so acutely put it, cats are for “losers who live in apartments.” Even your sanity got called into question. Every town, including Springfield, had a woman who owned more than two cats, and everyone in those towns referred to her as the Crazy Cat Lady.

But mental health shortcomings aside, as I remember it, there were never actually negative traits that anyone associated with a cat owner. It simply had to do with the personalities of the pets – dogs are friendly, cats are not. It was that simple. As long as people kept their pets to three or fewer, there was no concern that either breed of owner was unstable.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case. Today’s generation of dog owners has absolutely lost its shit.

Now granted, cat people spend way too much time taking and uploading videos of their cats to YouTube. Videos the rest of us spend hours watching at work. But in order to see cats doing adorable things while we work, we have to rely on the internet because cat people don’t bring their cats to the office. You know why? Because there is no such thing as Bring Your Cat to Work Day.

I used to think the fact that Bring Your Cat to Work Day doesn’t exist is because non-cat owners would be too horrified by the notion, but the truth is, cat people never suggest a Bring Your Cat to Work Day. I’ve never even heard just one cat owner ask if they could pick a random day to bring in their cat, holiday or no holiday. And that’s because cat people are normal. (I just threw up a little.)

They have no desire to bring their pet to work, they know their pet has no desire to come to work, and they’re respectful of their co-workers who might otherwise have allergies or hang-ups about smelling cat piss. However, we’re about a month away from Tuesday permanently falling out of the week in place of Bring Your Dog to Work Day.

And since being away from our pets for 8-9 hours a day, 5 days a week, has gotten so hard, imagine how hard it is to go on vacation without them. Well, dog owners don’t imagine it. Not anymore. Going on a cross-country flight? No problem. Your dog doesn’t even have to ride with the luggage. Buy it a seat right next to you so it can shit in the aisle. And it will nervously shit in the aisle because like many people, dogs get a little freaked out when they ride on an airplane. But just keep telling yourself this isn’t what you want, it’s what he wants.

Maybe you sympathize with these folks by offering up the logic that it’s hard to be away from your pet for that long. Which is true. But what about the hour it takes to do your grocery shopping? Or the 10 minutes it takes to run into the post office? Doing both of those on the same day? Oh my God, then you have to bring your dog!

These days, if you know just a handful of dog owners, you likely know someone who loves their dog more than their kids or is in love with their dog more than they are with their spouse. You thought of at least one person instantly, didn’t you?

This is definitely a new phenomenon. It started innocently enough with the knitting of sweaters, but quickly grew into more intimate activities.

Remember the medical report that came out a couple of years ago that said it was bad for your health to let your dog sleep in your bed with you? Doctors didn’t release medical statements like that 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. That’s because the general public used to say things like, “I love my child more than life itself. I would do anything for her. I work at a job I hate so that she can have a better future and raise children that she will one day love as much as I love her. I also have a dog. He sleeps on the floor.”

Now the reverse is true.

If that’s not enough, we’ve all heard stories, some may be real, some not so much, of people using all varieties of food spread to, let’s say, “cajole” a dog into participating in activities it otherwise wouldn’t. I have never heard of anyone doing this with a cat. Ever. That alone is enough to say I wish I wasn’t a dog person. I don’t want anyone drawing any parallels between me and someone who would say, “I have peanut butter. I have a dog. I have plans for Saturday night.”

I wish I could say that dog people are getting dangerously close to surpassing cat people in terms of weirdness, but we eclipsed that threshold long ago. In fact, cat people should probably be insulted by that statement for insinuating they were ever weirder than the folks who take their pets to the hardware store, restaurants, ice cream shops, sporting events, shopping malls, etc… (sigh)

Like a certain surging GOP candidate, let's do all we can to end this trend.

Things I Pondered While Waiting to See if I Would Get Picked for Jury Duty

I wonder if we’ll get donuts.

I wonder if that cop’s gun is real.

Oh shit, I wonder if that citizen’s gun is real.

Or is that a shoe?

No, it’s an éclair. Motherfucker, where did he get that éclair?

What if we talked out of our butts and pooped out of our faces?

Would we still wear pants?

Our conversations would be very muffled. Especially through pants.

Then again, everyone could wear assless pants. Then we’d hear each other ok, I guess.

We’d be looking at each other’s asses all the time, though. I’m gonna wager that’d be an unpleasant view more often than not.

Of course, we wouldn’t be looking at the person’s ass we’re having a conversation with because the asses would be facing each other. We’d never see the facial expression of the person we’re talking to.

What if people wore pants on their heads?

If pants went on our heads due to the fact that we pooped out of our faces and we didn’t want to have muffled butt conversations, we wouldn’t be able to see.

I guess we could just cut eye holes in the pants. If we can cut the ass out of pants that we wear over our legs, we can just as easily cut eye holes out of pants we wear over our heads.

Plus, without pants on our heads, we would easily smell each other’s horrible breath. Breath so bad that it couldn’t be rectified. Oh, that’s a funny word – rectified – given this train of thought.

We’d have to wear pants on our heads.

Ah hell, that would look ridiculous though. There’d be nothing to fill the leg sleeves. We’d have unfilled leg sleeves just blowing in the wind. It would waste too much fabric.

Oh, oh, and if we didn’t have pants over our legs, everyone’s genitals would be hanging out. That would probably be a bigger concern than exposed buttocks.

So we either wear assless pants that at least cover our genitals and don’t muffle our conversations, or we wear pants on our heads that cover our poop breath, but waste a lot of fabric thanks to unfilled leg sleeves.

Huh.

I think it’s pretty irrefutable that we’d wear pants on our heads AND our legs.

That’s a lot of pants.

Oh wait, if we still put food in our mouths, while poop came out of them, there’s NO WAY we’d wear pants on our heads. That would be an enormous inconvenience. Can you imagine unbuttoning a pair of pants and raising them over your chin every time you wanted to shove a damn potato chip down your gullet? People love eating too much.

Like that guy over there.

Son of a bitch! He has an éclair too! They must be in the building.

I wonder if I can just ask a bailiff where the éclairs are?

Nah. He probably doesn’t want to field a bunch of éclair questions.

Oh, you know what else people love to do even more than eating? Breathing. Eye holes in the pants on our heads would be nice, but I didn’t factor the need for nose and mouth holes. Well, that’s that. Poop breath or not, we’d never wear pants on our heads.

Alright, so what if food didn’t continue to go in our mouths?

What if we talked out of AND ate with our butts? The pants on our legs would have to be assless, even if it meant we’d see fat guys’ asses like that jerk over there with the éclair. 

Oh shit. Would we stop sitting down? If we sat down we’d crush our voice boxes. We’d have to stand up to talk, watch TV, travel… Riding bikes would be a thing of the past. Cab drivers everywhere would be out of work. Sitting down to eat would suck too. Can you imagine leaning to the side every time you wanted to put a spoonful of Raisin Bran up your butt?

Our legs would get so tired from all the standing. We’d be a nation of wall-leaners.

Damn.

“How is this gonna work?”

“How is what going to work, sir?”

“Huh?”

“How is what going to work?”

“Oh, hello officer. Uhh… nothing. I guess I was just talking to myself.”

“Yeah, we see a lot of that from potential jurors.”

“Say, do you know what floor the éclairs are on?”

“They’re not here, I checked. That guy brought some in for himself and his friend, apparently.”

“Oh. Well that sucks.”

“Yeah. He can shove that éclair up his butt."

"I like the way you think, officer." 

Scenes From the Near Future: Vacationing Americans on Their First Guided Tour of Fidel Castro’s Home

Tour Guide: Welcome everyone! Thank you for coming. My name is Maria and I’ll be your tour guide this afternoon. You have the honor of being the first American tour group to see President Fidel Castro’s home! As you can see, it’s quite opulent, but once we’re inside, I think you’ll find that it’s rather cozy, and just like the White House for your president, it doubles as his work space.

Before we begin, I ask that you please refrain from taking pictures, touching anything within the house, or using any of the restrooms. The house has had some plumbing issues lately that we hope Doug’s Plumbing will have rectified by the end of the week.

We’ll enter the house through the sprawling veranda, which overlooks the beautiful Atlantic Coast. This is where Fidel hosts tea for many foreign dignitaries, including Kim Jung-Un, Xi Jinping, from time to time Vladimir Putin, and of course, the Pope. We’ll finish back here at the end of the tour so you can enjoy some freshly baked cookies and pink lemonade while taking in the view.

(A collective “Oooooh” rings out from the group)

Tour Guide: We’ll enter the house here through the kitchen, where you can see President Castro’s staff is dutifully tending to his lunch preparation. You might be interested to know that Fidel requests the same sandwich for lunch every day – two white pieces of bread covered in a food-like spread that you know more commonly in the States as PB&J.

Now, before anyone asks, I will not be able to divulge where Fidel eats his lunch. And no, he will not be joining us on the veranda during cookies and lemonade. For an additional $3,000 you may take the VIP tour with Simone, but your chances of having lunch with Fidel increase only slightly, depending on the day.

Let’s move onto the American memorabilia room. In here, the staff has compiled Fidel’s favorite pieces either from America, or that represent American culture. For instance, there on the wall is Elvis’ first gold record. Below that on the desk is George Steinbrenner’s ring from the New York Yankees’ 1978 World Series title. Here is an oil painting that Fidel did himself of George Lucas and Pee Wee Herman riding a tandem bicycle.

(Bob from St. Pete is heard taking a picture with his iPhone)

No pictures, please! I have to ask you to delete that. Fidel feels very strongly about maintaining his privacy from those who are not paying the tour fee. Thank you.

If you open this closet, you’ll see a box at the top that contains over 1,000 Cracker Jack toys dating back to 1983. Despite the fact that the toys haven’t varied much in over 30 years, he has insisted on saving every toy out of every Cracker Jack box he’s eaten. At the bottom of the closet is a box of VHS tapes that contain every episode of Golden Girls. Huuuuuge Blanche fan. He says he loved her accent, but we all suspect it was her promiscuity.

Now, the walls in this room are so full that we had to put Fidel’s framed photos of himself with the various U.S. Presidents in this hallway leading to the office.

Linda from Cincinnati: I’m sorry, did you say he has photos of himself with U.S. Presidents?

Tour Guide: Oh yes! All of them dating back 50 years. Well, all of them except President Obama. Every year on January 1^st, he insists that his Chief of Staff send President Obama a text that says “We’ll be sure to have you down just as soon as we finalize plans on the closing ceremonies for Guantanamo Bay.” He then has him send an emoji of a winky face followed by an emoji of a middle finger. We tell him how immature he’s being, but… you know dictators.

As you can see, in each photograph Fidel and the president are shoulder to shoulder, pointing at each other and smiling from ear to ear. It’s his favorite pose. Here he is with President Gerald Ford. Obviously it’s Christmas time because Ford is dressed as Santa Claus. Here he is with President Reagan during one of their all-night poker binges. Here he is with President Nixon. Interesting fact: Nixon came down every year for Cuba’s gay pride parade.

(The group let’s out a collective “Ahhhhhh”)

Here he is with President Carter sharing a Big Mac. Oddly enough, there were plenty of Big Macs at the luncheon. No one has really figured out why they were sharing one. Here is President Clinton visiting while Fidel’s nieces and their sorority sisters are home for the summer. Here is George H. W. Bush in town to see the cock fights. Here is Bush’s son, George W. Bush, dressed as a rodeo clown during the rodeo held on the property. He insisted on being in the barrel for the entire bull-riding portion of the competition. Drove your Secret Service crazy.

Ah, now here is Fidel with President Lyndon Johnson. You’ll notice that both of them are riding pigs and that the pigs are wearing berets. This is his favorite picture.

Todd from Mobile: Is there a photo of him with President Kennedy?

Tour Guide: (laughs very nervously while looking over her shoulder) Ok, let’s keep moving.

Now here is Fidel’s office. Beautiful wood paneling, the original shag carpeting, a security system that can monitor activity over the entire compound… this is where most of the decisions have been made that have shaped our country’s history for the last 55 years.

(The guide notices the entire group staring at a large, red button encased in glass on Castro’s desk.)

What? You all are fascinated by the button? It’s not terribly exciting, I’m afraid.

(The group lets out a collective gasp as she flips up the glass and pushes the button without hesitation. A brief siren goes off, followed by a loud bell. Everyone looks out the window to see dozens of chickens run out of their pens and into the yard.)

Fidel pushes this thing 3-5 times a day to let his chickens get some exercise. He’s raised all manner of hens since he was a boy. He has a certain kinship with the birds. (She pauses for a moment.) You all thought it was for something else?

(Everyone shakes their heads without speaking)

Dale from Boise: (picking up a box on Fidel’s desk) Oooh, are these real Cuban cigars? (He flips the box over) “Producto de China.”

Tour Guide: (quickly grabbing the box) Didn’t you hear me say at the beginning of the tour not to touch anything? I should have known this group was going to be a problem.

I’m afraid that’s the end of the inside portion of the tour, so let’s move back outside so you can watch the firing squad practice. And let’s hope everyone can follow the rules a little more closely out there than you did in here.