How Much For Just The Taffy Pull?

Service station in Flint, MI. Looks like the automotive industry's woes have hit the prostitution sector.

D.O.B.

Tagged as a socialist by the right-wing mouth breathers. 27 million Americans on antidepressants. 1 in 4 women can misread a pregnancy test. Fake grassroots health reform "protesters" bussed in by conservative PAC groups, so they can shout down town hall meetings. New HIV strain discovered in Africa. Arrested Development still off the air. Rising oil prices further threaten global economy. Iran and Israel in potential nuclear standoff. Pizza Hut simply going by "The Hut". Top cybersecurity official in the White House resigns. MC Hammer has a TV show. Earthquake rocks California. JFK blown away. What else do I have to say?

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

Partners In Grime

My girlfriend and I finished the Illinois Muddy Buddy 2009 on Sunday. For the uninitiated, it's a 6 mile race (touring multiple cities) on a treacherous farm course where teams of two alternate between biking and running, culminating in a crawl through a long, foot-deep mud pit. Neither one of us have competed in anything like it and we trained ahead of time, for fear that race day would come and we'd be dead last. Among 1700 teams, we completed the course in an hour and 12 minutes. Not bad for our first time. Given the kind of year many people have had, where opportunities for accomplishment may be few and far between, I'd recommend doing something like this. Hit the trails, run a 10K, train for a marathon, whatever. You may end up bloody and/or muddy, but you'll be damn glad you did it.

Remember The Titans

My 20th high school reunion is tonight and I'm skipping it. I'll be MIA- mostly because this weekend's simply too busy- but also because technology has already acted as my proxy. I'm pretty sure Facebook and other social media sites have rendered traditional reunions obsolete. I have nothing against reunions in theory; I attended my 10-year and had a blast, catching up with old friends and finding previously absent common ground (read: tequila) with others. But in the last year, when another decade had passed and our reunion was on the horizon, everyone came out of the binary woodwork and the online friend requests were flying like bullets. People I barely knew suddenly wanted to connect (read: have a voyeuristic peek at their former classmates' lives) and see who did well and who probably peaked senior year. That's what reunions used to be for. Now, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. have killed the mystery of what the people you passed in the hallways have been doing with their lives. Sure, there are a few people I'd like to see in person, but I figure Google and LinkedIn will be able to put me in touch with them.

Cheers, Class of 1989. Have a drink on me and I'll see you at the 30.

Generation Why?

I'm a big fan of trivia and game shows, mostly because I'm a font of minutiae that is useful only in those circumstances. (Currently, my DVR is full of Cash Cab, where people answer questions and win money until they hit their destination.) However, I've noticed a trend in these shows that disturbs me quite a bit: people in their twenties seem to have slept through history class. I hated history when I had to study it, but I'm a bigger fan of it recreationally. The Aztecs are much more interesting when the History Channel is telling me about them. The thing is, I wonder if anyone under 30 is watching. Ask a quartet of 25-year-old girls about Manolo Blahniks and they could tell you the name of the Filipino sweat shop kid who inspected their pair. But quiz them on World War II and they'll look at you like a dog that's been shown a card trick. One of my pet peeves is when a time-specific query is answered with, "How would I know that? That was before my time."- as though nothing happened before the Reagan administration. You know what happened before my time? The moon landing, the signing of the Magna Carta, the Spanish Inquisition, and Velcro- but I'm familiar with all of it. I'm not sure if it's the result of a culture of immediacy, where anything that has passed is immediately rendered less relevant, or if it's merely laziness. Either way, you might want to know who the first man in space was. In case it ever comes up in a taxicab.

Lazy Eye Of The Beholder

A new study from Helsinki says that women are physically getting hotter. With all due respect to my Finnish friends, I've seen too much evidence to the contrary. Anytime you're in a summertime crowd- amusement park, state fair, pro-life rally- play a little game with yourself and make a mental tally of the number of attractive people you pass. You'll be able to count them on the one hand of an unlucky shop teacher. For an avid people-watcher like myself, a tourist trap like Chicago's Navy Pier is ground zero for the freak show. My girl and I were there a few weeks ago, showing the sights to a friend of hers who was in from Seattle. While they were preoccupied with chatting, I had extra time to play the game. After passing hundreds of people and not having a single hit on the ol' hot-o-meter, I began to get anxious and angry. Good looking people put all of us in a better mood; they reaffirm the boundaries of the human lottery. And I don't have unattainable standards of beauty by any means (and it IS the midwest) but I got the sinking feeling that the results of the Helsinki study were confined to the babes of the Baltic Sea. And my girlfriend. And her friend.

Club Med (iocre)

The thing that strikes me the most about the "debate" over health care reform is this: the degree to which we are impacted by any government policy seems to be inversely proportional to the degree to which we have any say in the matter. If you're the one person buying a new car this year, you can get it in any color- including many not found in nature. Looking for new carpet? You'll spend hours looking for just the right swatch of shag. The Wrigley company makes twenty-five different kinds of Orbit gum (for those days when you're feeling positively pomegranate and spearmint is for suckers.) We've got infinite possibilities when it comes to the most mundane facets of our lives; as consumers, that's when we feel most in control. Despite being one of the uninsured millions, I'm ambivalent about health care. On one side, a more egalitarian way to collective well-being certainly seems to be worth our time and treasure. Our "greatest country in the world" rhetoric becomes even more tiresome when confronted with the reality of grave inequalities in a system bordering on immoral. On the other side, Americans take such piss-poor care of themselves, who knows which variable in the equation bears culpability? Eight in ten Americans say they want the system fixed (or at least simplified). But our representatives are so beholden to the deep pockets of insurance and pharma, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to even pretend to discuss reform.

With all due props to Obama for running on a platform of change, there are some machines against which one's rage is futile.

Diamond Life

If you're among the unfortunate unemployed, it's difficult to be forced into re-evaluating the career you've worked so hard to build. I've spent 15 years on radio and television- two areas hit especially hard by the economic downturn- and assessing the next move is maddening. The difficulty and frustration come from the reality that a successful and lucrative body of work can be stopped in its tracks when times get tough, compounded by the fact that we all have skill sets limited to our lines of work. I've proven myself to be a reasonably intelligent and resourceful guy, but it's a bit of hard cheese to learn that broadcasting and performing is really all I know how to do. I'm certainly not above getting a "normal" job; I'm just not quite qualified for anything else. So it's nice to find out that you can still learn new tricks. My son is turning into a fantastic baseball player and working with him has made me improve my game, too. As much as I love baseball, I didn't have much acumen when I was his age; I swung a bat like a crazed ivory poacher machete'ing his way through the Amazon rainforest. But my kid's got a great arm and, as it turns out, I've actually been able to show him a thing or two to help him bring the heat.

He starts football in the fall and I'm stoked to add "tackle dummy" to my resume.

"Skip" The Formalities

Obama puts his size 12 Rockport tonsil-deep over the Henry Louis Gates arrest. While white people will never be able to identify with the black community's deep and hard-earned mistrust of police, the hair trigger with which the race card is often fired does a far greater disservice to minorities than even the most misguided profiling.

The best line of the day came this morning on Dennis Miller's radio show- "If this had happened in California, Gates could have just told the police he was an illegal immigrant and they would never have asked for any ID."

Jesus Built My Hotrod

Chicago's status as the nation's most bike-friendly city has reached annoying proportions. Now, I love bike riding in the city; it's a classic win/win: great exercise and environmentally-speaking, anytime you can ride a bike, you should. That being said, I also understand the bicycle's place in the highway hierarchy- second to motor vehicles. Cars still own the road; they merely tolerate anyone on two wheels. To the Lance Armstrong doppelganger slowing down the lane by riding directly in front of my car- get off to the side. I don't need a teardrop helmet and blue spandex nuthugger shorts in my field of vision.

And, while we're at it, pedestrians need to stop holding me up by strolling through intersections on my green light. I'm trying to get somewhere for a reason; if you were going anywhere important, you wouldn't be walking there.