Hold Your Nose, Life's a Gas

Like most children, my daughter Grace is a study in contrast.  She likes to dress up like a princess, yet enjoys running, jumping, climbing and crashing into things all over the playground. In school she is an angelic teacher's helper. At home she can be a wild child.  With her charm and manners, she can win over a room. And with toots that would make the cast of Blazing Saddles jealous, she can clear a room.  Grace takes great delight in ripping a high-quality pant rocket .  Yes, much to my wife Amanda's chagrin, Grace has discovered one of life's Indisputable Human Truths: Farts are Funny.

It is true. No matter what your family calls the act- tooting, beefing,  cutting the cheese -farting is funny.  Think about it, through the course of history, what has elicited more giggles,  chuckles, or outright howling laughs than a well-timed ass blast?  Exactly.  Of course, the key term in that sentence is "well-timed."  As you can imagine, Amanda and I have different definitions of a "well-timed fart." 

As parents, we are trying to provide a united front.  As students of comedy, we disagree slightly on the rules of engagement.  At the dinner table?  Off limits.  In a quiet classroom, church, or meeting?  No way.  Every other situation? I say use your best judgement.  Amanda then reminds me I'm an idiot.  The fact remains farting is funny  and my girl has a gift.  I am, as Amanda sees it, to blame for Grace's gift/curse/ability to conjure up a cloud of hot garbage.  I get it.  After all, my wife has never passed gas. Never. Ever. Not once.  She lays the blame squarely at my cheeks feet.  I think Amanda is taken aback by our cute seven-year-old girl acting like a twelve-year-old boy.  Grace has become a bit obsessed with all things bathroom related.  Talk of poop, toots, and the like send her into fits of laughter.  I get it.  I still think bathroom humor is funny.  Deep down I am still twelve.  Amanda, not so much.

This leaves me with a big challenge.  It is my duty (heehee, I said doody) to balance teaching Grace manners with sharing my supposed knowledge and fartistry.  Because if I am going to be blamed for making Grace a gaseous monster, I am going to get my money's worth.  So far, Grace only knows floating an air biscuit equals big laughs.    She must study the deviousness of SBD, dutch ovens, and crop dusting.  She must revel in the simplistic joy of Pull My Finger.  She must beware the perils of the shart.  And, of course, she must learn nuance.

Grace, like Spiderman before her, must accept that with great power comes great responsibility.  For the fartist, timing is everything.  She must understand that just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  But it is sometimes hard for me to be stern with a lesson when all I want to to do is laugh along.  She really does have a knack  for bringing the thunder from down under at hilarious times. And her peals of laughter are hearty and genuine.  It is hard to not laugh with her.  My eyes often tear up, either from pride or because Grace has made a room smell like the zoo.  So, we seek balance, we seek the line between Grace being a lady and the girl who recently, after being chastised for stepping on a duck, told her mother, "Fartin's a part of life, Mom!"

"You play hockey? On ice?"

Humans mark milestones as a way to honor the past, to pause for reflection.  Not all anniversaries deserve fanfare; some pass with barely a whisper.  It's often just as well, as we tend to over romanticize the past.  In the next few paragraphs, please permit me to do just that.  Sometime this month, I have no idea the actual date, marked the twentieth anniversary of the end of an era that only a handful of people even care about.  Twenty years ago this month, a tiny rag tag recreation league ice hockey team played its last game together ending one of the most formative times of my life. 

You wouldn't think playing on a beer league ice hockey team could have such a profound effect on someone, but playing for KNK Vending (just a sponsor nice enough to foot the bill for jerseys) actually changed my life.  Two friends, Matt and Eddie, pushed me to join the ice hockey team they were forming.  I was reluctant.  I could barely skate and, though I enjoyed the sport thoroughly, I wasn't trained in the intricacies of the game.  I was also shy and afraid to try new things.  In the team's second season, my buddies pushed enough that I signed up, hoping to have some fun.  I am forever grateful to Matt and Eddie, for it was some fun that we had. 

On the ice we eventually found success.  We were a bunch of inexperienced young players with some older veterans sprinkled in.  We were brash, fast, and took ourselves way too seriously.  The other teams hated us.  What we lacked in skill and experience, we made up for with fitness and hustle.  We became better the more we played together.  We wanted to win and fought (sometimes literally) hard to do so.  We attacked each Saturday night game with a Stanley Cup-sized thirst that, in retrospect, seems quite silly.  Not that I would change a thing.  Though we never won a championship, we had a blast turning the stodgy rec league on its ear for a few seasons. 

Personally, playing hockey benefited me greatly.  I found an athletic endeavor at which I was actually halfway decent.  I quickly became the fittest I have ever been.   I learned that mucking and grinding, winning the puck battle along the boards is about the most fun you can have with your clothes on.  I figured out that nothing is quite as refreshing as an ice cold beer in the locker room after a game.  Hockey gave me confidence; my wife used to tell me she wished I was half as aggressive in real life as I was on the ice.  Saturday night, and the chance to skate freely, was often the highlight of my week. Of course, the hockey itself was just a springboard.

The real gift hockey gave me was my teammates.  Without responsibilities like families and careers, we basically ate, slept, and skated hockey (and beer and tacos).  We held team meetings that were equal parts strategy sessions and beer-fueled hijinks.  We sported team jackets and held Wacky Hat Nights.  We played midnight street hockey on any well-lit tennis court or parking lot we could find.  We hurled terrible insults and nicknames at each other; the more vile the better.  We raced shopping carts, carried each other out of bars, and laughed as much as I have ever laughed.  Friendships grew and were strengthened.  Stories were born, stories that make our wives roll their eyes as we tell them again and again.  Yes, my teammates, and the silly shit we got into, the fun we made for ourselves, was the real gift of KNK Vending.

Sometime that March, after we lost our final game playing together, I closed my eyes for a moment.  When I opened them twenty years had passed.  During those years, some of us played together again, sometimes even against former teammates.  Many of us have "retired", but remain friends.  We have stood in each other's weddings and consoled at funerals.  We have watched our kids grow, some even playing the game we love.  Some of us still play, no doubt being harried by some young punks like we used to be.  Circle of life and all that.

Twenty years after peeling off that red sweater for the last time, we don't see each other often enough.  We mostly talk through Facebook or texting.  Hell, some of us don't even speak anymore.  And that's okay, times change.  What will never change, for me at least, will be the fondness with which I look back on that era, or the love I have for those guys.  Happy Anniversary, Gentlemen.

Indiana Jones and the Grab for Cash

Far be it from me to tell Steven Spielberg how to shoot his new Indiana Jones movie, but if he asked my advice I would start with the following steps:

Step 1) Hire JJ Abrams
Step 2) Make this the first page of your script:

Fade in.

Int.  a small, quaintly decorated bedroom

Tight shot of a sleeping Indiana Jones.  Indy wakes, rolls over, and rousts a sleeping Marian
                         Indy:
You're never gonna believe the nightmare I just had.  We had a kid and there were swinging monkeys and aliens and a poorly drawn villian. It was awful!

                        Marian:
That sounds terrible.  Of course, we do have a son, you know.

Camera pans to a photo on the night stand, a family potrait of Indy, Marian, and son (Chris Pratt)

Cut to Indy with that famous lopsided grin

Cue first trumpet blares of iconic "Raiders March"

The news of Indy 5 did not fill me with the same delight that I felt at the announcement of The Force Awakens.  Star Wars is such a vast playground with nearly infinite possibilties for characters and settings.  Indy's world is far narrower.  Yes, Harrison Ford acquitted himself quite well in TFA.  But with Indiana Jones he is the WHOLE movie.  A Ford/Jones in his seventies has a lot less, how to put it nicely, range of motion.  Sure, we could have transition to a new main character.  However, the passing of the fedora is far more complex than with Star Wars.  Unless, of course, Indy's son finds an artifact, say an alien laser sword, you know, an elegant weapon from a more civilized age, that he uses to murder his father on a bridge.  Yes, I suppose that would be one way to do it.

I'd love to say I trust Spielberg enough to make something better than Crystal Skull.  I'd love to think Indiana Jones and Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up will be a palate cleanser capable of erasing Crystal Skull like TFA erased the prequels.  The problem is Spielberg likely doesn't think Skull is the dog turd it is.  The truth is it does not really matter if Indiana Jones and the Raiders on the Rascals needs to be made or not.  Spielberg knows he can mine Gen X for its nostalgia dollars.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is my second favorite movie of all time.  Like with TFA, I will be stoked to take my daughter to see an Indiana Jones movie in the theater.  Just like when Lady Ghostbusters  is released this summer, when Indiana Jones and the Early Bird Special hits theaters I will happily walk to the ticket window and say, "Please take my money!"

The Myth of Donny Dangerously

I admit it. I was waaaaay wrong about Donald Trump's staying power.  I thought he was a showman on a lark that would be bored by now.  I thought it was hilarious at first. A blowhard that will say anything? Awesome.  What is he gonna do, make Omarosa Secretary of State?  Hahaha!  The whole thing, at least to me, seemed silly and frivolous, not to mention impossible.  I think his entire campaign was delivered with  the wink and nod of an inside joke. Until Trump saw that he could win, that is.  Once he saw that no one would, or at least competently could, challenge his bluster he doubled down on the rhetoric.  As the poll numbers rose, the arrogant prick in him would not allow him to walk away.  That leaves us with a an unchecked celebrity egomaniac as the presumptive nominee. 

As one man, Donald Trump is not dangerous.  He will run to the center for the general election.  To be truly dangerous, one has to have actual ideas, and I am not sure Trump has any of those beating around under that disaster of a hairdo.  Shouting about making America great again and promising to not make bad deals hardly qualifies as think tank material.  

It is the concept of Donald Trump that is terrifying.  The atmosphere created by his candidacy is incendiary.  While the carnival barker riffs from behind his podium, his supporters aren't getting the joke.  It's all just a show, but his supporters can't ( or won't) see behind the facade.  Instead they take his violent , jingoistic speech as a license to act like idiots.  When push comes to shove (literally), Trump's calls for bullying have been many, his pleas for restraint too few.  The concept of this mythic figure, Trump the Aggressor,  has made it okay for his fans to pour out their hate.  His fans wear their anger like a badge, as if they have been deputized as modern-day freedom fighters. (Freedom from what, I don't know.) They foolishly pin their frustrated hopes on a man who has always looked out for just one thing: himself.  A man who likes to hear himself talk.  A man who will say anything to get elected. A man who likely does not give two bits about the people that cheer him on. 

Yet, cheer him they do.  People from all walks of life rally behind Trump.  Intelligent people embittered by eight years of a Democratic President.  Frat boys who never met a mob mentality they didn't like.  Dunderheads thinking they too can appoint their bathrooms with gilded toilet seats if we can just get The Donald in office long enough to wave his magic wand.  Listening to them as they are interviewed in line outside a Trump rally, his supporters can offer no more coherent argument than the candidate himself.  I suppose it is no surprise in the era of celebrity and sound bite journalism that people are swept away by inarticulate catchphrases.  "Make America Great Again"  and "You're fired!" are the new "Hope" and "Change".  All empty,  meaningless words leading sheep to the polls.

Sadly, the options are not much better.  Bernie Sanders, the mad scientist mixing promises and suspect economic policies in his Vermont laboratory.  Mrs. Cilnton, a tired remnant of a bygone era.  John Kasich, so desperate to seperate himself from the negative antics of the  game show-like debate stage that I am surprised he didn't just continually shout, "One dollar, Bob!"  Marco Rubio, whose every recent television interview looked like a hostage video.  And Ted Cruz, equal parts snake oil salesman, preacher, and condescending professor, lecturing me slowly because I am too stupid to otherwise keep up.  These are the great lights that will lead us from the darkness of our discontent? 

Donald Trump the celebrity billionaire TV host has been around a long time.  Donald Trump the presidential candidate may have arrived at the perfect time.  His angry rhetoric has fomented a fervor that is as ugly as it is popular.  His campaign may have coalesced at the intersection of desperate ignorance and Twitter, but it might keep rolling right up Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day.  God help us all.

Of Politicians, Buffoons, & Jerks

America, we need to talk.  There is a great divide in this country that needs healing.  Opinions are strong, tensions are high.  Conversations, even among friends, simmer with contempt and distrust.  Half of our citizens, though well-meaning, do us a great disservice.    When I volunteered to step in as a savior candidate that can rescue the Republican party at a brokered nominating convention, I introduced myself with a short blog post knowing I would need to further flesh out my platform.  Today, for you America, I add another plank to that platform.  I am no ideologue, but on this particular issue I will not bow, for I know I am right.   No doubt, not everyone will agree with me, but America, I assure you my way is THE way.

This is an issue that strikes at the heart of the American family.  People are destroying a beloved institution.  A bedrock of family values is being undermined by folks who, apparently, don't know any better.  Now, I know I will never be considered a typical family values candidate by some.  I support gay marriage and adoption.  I support the further decriminalization of marijuana.  You see, while I am neither gay nor a pot smoker, I do know how to mind my own business. You wanna put your lips to a penis or a pipe, who am I to judge?  To each his own, except when the kids are involved. 

And that is where my next  platform plank comes in.  I have seen things.  I have visited business offices and school lunchrooms.  What have I seen that worries me so? Believe it or not, half of America does not know how to correctly make a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich.  It's disgraceful.  Sure, you can half-ass it and leave your children sticky and gross.  Or you can do it the right way, the American Way, leaving your children fulfilled and ready to lead.  Yes, I have my preferences regarding bread choice and jelly selection (potato/strawberry jam), but this is more about technique: when making this American staple, the PB&J, one should always put peanut butter on both slices of bread.  This move seals the bread, locking in the jelly.   As one of my key advisers of the #EverForward movement says, you have to "make a pocket" for the jelly.  This Peanut Butter Pocket (copyright pending) protects the fingers of the wee ones from the evil forces of stickiness and soggy bread.  Think of the school children able to leave the cafeteria confident and ready to learn instead of embarrassed and smeared with Smucker's grape.  This is how we regain our edge, America!

I have heard (and dismissed) the rebuttals of my detractors.  They say my method uses too much peanut butter. I say There is no such thing.  They say doubling the peanut butter throws off the delicate ratio of PB to J. I say Making the pocket allows you to double down on delicious jelly.  They say if you eat fast enough the sandwich does not have time to get soggy.  I say Don't wolf your dinner down so quickly, lest you get a tummyache.  I say Be empathetic to the student whose lunch is smushed in his locker all morning.  I say Imagine yourself so distracted by a particularly compelling Wheel of Fortune puzzle that you ignore your sandwich until the bread IS soggy.  You'll thank me when you don't have to pry yourself out of the LazyBoy to wash your sticky fingers before Jeopardy starts.  They say I must be in the pocket of Big PB, taking money from Skippy or Jiff.  I say Check my records, I am only beholden to making America's sandwiches great again.

Vote for me, and together we will Save the Sandwiches!
#EverForward #MakeThePocket #SaveTheSandwich

Let's Go Caps!

I really considered not writing this post. In fact, I probably shouldn't.  By doing so I may anger my friends and alter the course of history.  You see, we hockey fans are a superstitous bunch.  We believe we somehow affect the outcome of a game, series or even a season by the choices we make.  The hockey gods reward or punish us depending on which sweater we choose to wear, where we sit while watching the game,  our pregame rituals and meals, or perhaps the maintenance of our playoff beards.  I have not written about my beloved Washington Capitals all season.  Which is odd because, besides my escapades as a dorky dad, the Caps are probably the thing about which I have blogged most frequently.  I've wanted to write about the Caps; they are in the midst of a terrific regular season.  However, my superstition-addled mind has prevented me from doing so.  The Washington Capitals have never won the Stanley Cup during any season in which I have written a blog post about them.  So, simply by penning this little blog post I am running the risk of ruining the Caps' season.  Of course, folks of sound mind, not afflicted  by years of playoff futilty and curses, you know, normal people, would tell me how silly this notion is.  They might point out that my writing, not to mention what I wear or eat on game day, has zero to do with whether a group of men I have never met win a championship.  They may also point out that the Caps have not won a Cup in the forty years they have existed, not just the ten during which I have blogged.  It is true that they don't need my help in screwing this up.  Since a couple items of Caps news have made me climb back behind my keyboard, I will throw myself upon the mercy of the court.  Blame me if you must  when this goes South.  I'm pretty confident that no matter what happens I am just along for the ride.

Item number one was a column by Dan Steinberg that appeared in the Washington Post last week.   In the column, Steinberg takes to task journalists and Caps fans who have said that what the team has done in the regular season does not matter.  He says that if you can't enjoy the season then you shouldn't even be a fan.  Well first, Mr. Steinberg, you don't get to tell me how to root.  Secondly, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive.  I can enjoy  the regular season (which I am) AND feel that it is all for naught if the Boys in Red flame out in the postseason.  I have been punched in the goobers enough times by this team to be cynical. 

We fans know the team is excellent so far this season, but truly, it can not change the overall tenor of how we feel about this franchise until April, May, and (cross your fingers) June.   Mr. Steinberg likely can't comprehend how badly I want this team to win.  He must understand, though, regular season records, however historical, are just window dressing.  I can get giddy over the emergence of Evgeny Kuznetsov, appreciate the consistency of the HoltBeast, and marvel at the continuing brilliance of the Great 8 and still call the season a dissapointment if Washington does not make an epic playoff run.  Until this team wins a Stanley Cup, it will be measured by Stanley Cups.  With its ratio of playoff futilty to regular season success, what this team does October to April matters, but not by much.  As soon as the Rangers eliminated the Caps in Game 7 last year, the first thing I thought was that this team can not prove anything to me until next April.  As April approaches, the song remains the same. Show me.  Don't tell me about potential based on this awesome regular season. Show me in the postseason. 

The other bit of news this week was the trading away of Brooks Laich.  Laich was the longest tenured Cap and, by all accounts, one of the nicest men to have donned the Red, White, and Blue.  During Laich's twelve year run in D.C. he was a great penalty killer, probably should have been named captain, and, for a time, rode shotgun with Alex Ovechkin and Nick Backstrom on the top line.  But like those running mates, Laich most symbolizes  the playoff shortcomings this team has endured.  Laich was a good quote, but also a bit of an empty suit.  Said all the right things, but talked a better game than he delivered.  Injuries robbed him of his game the last few seasons, leaving him unable to play up to the most recent contract he was stupidly given by George McPhee.

I like Brooks and wish him well in Toronto.  What I don't like are the fans that feel the Capitals betrayed Brooks Laich.  Hockey is a  business and, frankly, I am surprised GM Brian McClellan was able to dump Laich's bloated salary.  I have read message board comments (my first mistake) berating the Caps for trading away a good soldier like Brooks Laich while on the cusp of winning a Stanley Cup.  These commenters are what I like to call...stupid.  Firstly, if future President Trump ordered me waterboarded for my true opinion, I would say the Caps will not win the Cup this season.  Secondly, McClellan's only responsibility is to make the team better.  He did that by freeing up some salary cap space with the trade.  We thank Laich for his service, but Washington did not owe him a shot at the Cup this year.  After all, he has been here for all the failures; it is not like he has been playing for a team that has never reached the playoffs.  Sometimes sports sucks.  I know Laich understands this.  I wish the fans would.  Besides, they don't have worry about Brooksie missing out on a Cup run because I have just put on the blog jinx, right?