Resolution Time!

Well, it is the end of another year.  I'm sure that we'll remember 2009 for a number of things like the crappy economy, the death of Michael Jackson and the beginning of Barack Obama's term as president.  Most of all, of course, we'll remember this as the Year of Balloon Boy.

I'll look back at the year and remember several fond memories.  I had a chance to attend my first Super Bowl (it doesn't look like a second one is in our near future).  I enjoyed a great experience as a camp counselor at Jumonville.  I had a great week on a mission trip to Louisiana.  We took a nice family vacation to New England and into Quebec.

Most of all, of course, I'll remember 2009 as the year I ended up wearing two ties to church on Easter.

Well, here it is, the last day of the year, and it's time once again to consider making a New Year's Resolution.  Last year I decided I was going to quit procrastinating, but I decided to put that one off until sometime in the future.

This year, I have spent a lot of time considering what my new resolution should be.  I weighed all of the options, and came to the amazing conclusion that I simply have no room for improvement in any aspect of my life.  How about that?

Best wishes to you and yours for a fine 2010!

Annoying Jesus

I never thought I'd use my blog as a place for a eulogy, but there's a first time for everything, I guess.

I had an opportunity to spend a week with a guy named Marcus Crow on a mission trip to Louisiana last spring.  (Marcus is the guy on the left in the picture.  I'm beside him, along with his son Calvin and Calvin's friend Katie.)  Marcus was quite a character, to say the least.  We made the trip with a group of United Methodists with the goal of helping people who had been affected by hurricanes over the past couple years.

While helping the people of Dulac, LA, was certainly a goal for Marcus, I think he was there more because it gave him an opportunity to spend some time with his son.  Marcus and his wife had divorced, and it was obvious that he cherished any amount of time he was able to spend with Calvin.  Normally he only had weekend visits with his son.

I learned quite a bit about Marcus during that trip.  He had been a Marine, and fought in the Persian Gulf.  He enjoyed cooking, and was really excited about the "Bad Ass Hot Sauce" he bought while we were in New Orleans (he let me try a dab on my finger, and I spent the next half hour gasping at a water fountain).  He had been in a very serious car accident several years earlier, and was lucky to have survived it.  He had numerous surgeries and many physical therapy sessions since the accident, and seemed to have constant pain as a result.

And I must say Marcus was rather fond of the f-word.  I have to admit that I have never seen a person who felt right at home dropping f-bombs in the presence of numerous pastors, apparently never thinking that this was inappropriate.  Marcus was a lay pastor at his church, and occasionally delivered sermons when his pastor was away.  I would imagine that people filled the pews on those occasions, because it's not every day you have the possibility of hearing obscenities during a sermon.  Like I said... he was quite a character.

As lucky as he was to have survived the car crash six years ago, he was not so lucky early Christmas morning this year.  A fire broke out at his house, apparently as the result of a space heater he was using at his home near Blairsville, PA.  A neighbor smelled the fire during the early morning hours and tried to get into the house, but the smoke was too thick.  Firemen later found Marcus, who had apparently come just a few feet from escaping the blaze at his back door.  You can read more details about the tragedy here.

I took a trip yesterday to pay my respects to Marcus at his church in Blairsville.  While most of the service was as serious as most funerals, there were lighthearted moments where people shared their memories of Marcus.  A woman from his choir recalled reminding Marcus "please don't use the f-word in front of the children in Sunday school."  Another woman sobbed as she recalled details of our Louisiana trip, and in between tears she said, "I bet he's up there in heaven, annoying Jesus right now."

Since our mission trip, I have kept up with Marcus thanks to Facebook.  Most of his status updates were along the lines of "Calvin is coming tonight -- I can't wait!"  Or "I'm chillin' with Calvin tonight."  Or "I'm sad that Calvin is heading back to his mom's tonight."

Despite his quirks and his tendency to take nothing very seriously, there were two aspects of his life that meant the world to him:  God, and his son.  I'm sure that when he's not busy annoying Jesus, he's doing a fine job in his new role of guardian angel for Calvin.  My deepest condolences.

Not Cool Enough for the Fist Bump

On behalf of all of us in Smootville, I sincerely hope you had a wonderful Christmas!  Now that we have that holiday behind us, it's time to get back to the pressing issues of the day, like whether or not it is proper to "fist bump" someone.

There are two types of people in this world:  those who fist bump, and those of us who just aren't that cool.

Perhaps you have seen this fist bump thing growing in popularity these past few years.  Instead of simply saying, "hello" to someone, or offering a handshake, or even a high-five, cool people will stick their fist out directly at you, and the expectation is that you will extend your fist and bonk it against theirs.  Kinda weird when you think about it.

I remember a couple years ago someone had gotten into the fist bump stance in front of Little Smoot, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do.  I think she just waved at them.  I remember trying to save the awkwardness of the situation by showing Little Smoot how to do the fist bump with that person, so she'd know what was going on the next time.

The truth of the matter, though, was that I would have preferred to simply wave at the person like she did, because I'm just not cool enough to do the fist bump.

There's a guy I see on the sidelines of Steelers games who is a big time fist bumper.  He's a former Steeler player himself, and is part of the team's radio crew nowadays, and he's a really nice guy.  He's clearly cool enough that he can fist bump whoever he pleases, and no one thinks anything of it.

But when he greets me and wants to fist bump, I always feel weird about it.  Oh, I definitely fist bump him, because he's a rather large man and I don't want to insult him, but I know that if anyone sees me fist bumping, they'll start whispering because people know I'm not that cool.

Oh, and this particular guy wears his wedding band on his thumb.  I am obviously nowhere near cool enough to pull off that kind of stunt.

Even worse amongst football players is the full body bump.  You see players doing this after pretty much every touchdown now.  They used to spike the ball and do a little dance, but now it is mandatory that as soon as they cross the goal line, they have to find the closest player on the field and leap into the air directly into one another.  Otherwise they incur a 15-yard penalty upon the kickoff, I believe.

In a matter of a few years, I suppose that when we greet people, we'll just smack the crap out of each other.

Wrap Crap

If there's one thing I'm just terrible at (ok, there are lots of things I'm terrible at) it's wrapping Christmas presents.  I always put it off as long as humanly possible because I really don't want to look at the end result any longer than absolutely necessary, for fear of causing permenant eye damage.

This year I actually got things "wrapped" a little early, rather than waiting until 11:59 on Christmas Eve, as per normal.  I guess I just wasn't born with the Martha Stewart Gene.  And I suppose I find the whole thing a little pointless.  Who came up with this idea of wrapping gifts in the first place?

Think about what a waste the whole process is.  We take all this time to wrap the presents in paper to disguise them, and then we shred it all to pieces on Christmas morning to see what's hidden beneath it.  Woop-de-doo.  The end result is an indoor snowstorm of wrapping paper, flying all over the place, with some pieces still being retrieved from behind the couch as late as Labor Day.

If I hadn't mentioned it previously, I'm also terrible at buying gifts in the first place.  You know how some people have a knack for coming up with the perfect gift ideas -- the ones where people gasp with excitement when they open them?  I never think of those.  People always try to be polite, but I can tell they look at my gifts and immediately think, "I wonder if I could get anything for this piece of crap on eBay.  Nah, probably not."

Well, as if it's not bad enough that I stink at buying gifts in the first place, I have to narrow my selections down to things that come in rectangular packages.  Otherwise, I'll just never be able to wrap them no matter what.

As I was spending the better part of yesterday afternoon wrapping just a few gifts (thank goodness, Mrs. Smoot takes care of the vast majority of things, so I really just have to wrap her stuff, mainly), it occurred to me that surely by the time a person reaches age 41, surely they should know how to operate a pair of scissors properly.  But no.

When I cut the wrapping paper (undoubtedly at the wrong size), I always manage to cut it severely crooked.  I would be much better off if I just left the roll outside and waited for deer to gnaw on it.  It would undoubtedly be more presentable.

Oh, and I can never seem to use enough tape.  I don't know what my obsession is with tape.  Even though my gifts end up looking like they were wrapped by escaped mental patients, the wrapping would undoubtedly stay on the packages with just a tiny percentage of the tape I ultimately wind up using.  Sometimes I have more tape on a gift than wrapping paper.

Wrapping things as poorly as I do, there is at least one advantage.  I really never need to use those "To: From:" labels.  On Christmas morning, everyone can simply look at the quality of the wrapping and say, "Ah!  This one must be from Hank!"

Anyway... From Smootville to your neck of the woods, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a swell 2010!

A Christmas Conspiracy

I enjoy conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, so I'm going to create one of my own.  I think that a town near Smootville specifically designed their community Christmas lights in such a way that they allow the local police to collect more traffic fines.

Ok, I suppose I should explain that one.

This particular town apparently has Clark W. Griswold as its mayor, given the number of lights strewn up and down the street.  In addition to all of the small, multi-colored lights, they also have these big bell-shaped lights that are strung across the street.  And these lights are the same color as the regular stop lights that are tossed into the mix, and they're positioned pretty much in the same way as stop lights.

So as a result, I find myself driving down the street, slamming on my brakes, thinking that I'm seeing a red light above me, and then finding out that it's just a Christmas light.  Meanwhile, other people are breezing through the real red lights, assuming that they're simply decorations.  It would be very interesting to stand there with a video camera just to capture the various driving oddities that take place on any given night during the holidays.

I can almost hear the discussion during a borough council meeting earlier in the year:

"But how are we going to pay for all of these lights?"

"I've got it!  We can make 'em look like traffic lights, and then arrest every other car for driving erratically!"

Of course I'd like to think that this is merely a theory, but part of my brain really has to wonder...

Psychology 101: Vehicular Personification

Ok, we're in the midst of crappy winter weather, so I thought it would be good to write a cruise-related blog entry today.

I would like to announce my official opinion of the new Epic class of ship being introduced by Norwegian Cruise Lines:  It's hideously ugly, and I'm afraid of it.

We love to go on cruises, and we recently got together with some folks with whom we'll be cruising to Hawaii in a few months.  Some of us began chatting about this new ship, and some of the people were talking about how exciting they thought it was.  I had to offer counter-testimony, because this truly is the ugliest thing in the ocean, and I am including octopuses and squids in that assessment.

At first I couldn't quite put a finger on why I hate this ship's design so much, but I finally did a deep analysis, and I came to some really insightful conclusions.  If you happen to be a psychology major, please feel free to steal this idea for your thesis -- I promise you'll get an A.

Ok.  Here's the deal.  I believe that we have a natural tendency to personify our modes of transportation by giving human characteristics to various vehicles.  Think about the movie The Love Bug, for example.  Herbie is a cute, lovable VW Beetle.  His headlights are his eyes and his front bumper gives him a bit of a smirk.  Same sort of thing with the more recent movie Cars.

When we look at a car, we subconsciously think of it as having a human face, and we can either like it or dislike it for those features (are you psychology majors writing all this down?  Good).  My Prius, for example, has a bit of a round head, but has a sophisticated elegance about him.  He's witty, yet restrained in his personality.

Anyway, I strongly believe that the same thing goes for ships (and airplanes, too, for that matter).  When we look at a ship, we can sort of think of the bow as a giant nose, and the decks above it make the eyes, etc.  A quick glance will make you feel good about it, or it will perhaps scare the crap out of you by having a menacing appearance.

Well, that's where the problem lies with the Epic (pictured at the beginning of this entry).  When you view this ship from the front, it looks like the poor thing has some sort of severely malformed forehead.  It could be a tumor, or some sort of monsterism.  Whatever the case, it has this bulging forehead area that just looks disturbing.  I just know this ship has some sort of mental issues, and I would be afraid that it would start veering all over the place, possibly in search of smaller ships that it could eat.  I dunno.

Epic is scheduled to enter into service next June.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Peer Pressure at 14,410 Feet

You know that, as loving parents, we would never make fun of our child.  That would be tasteless, and it would come at the expense of her self-esteem.  So we would never do such a thing unless she said something that was really quite inadvertently funny.

Little Smoot was at a Girl Scout meeting recently, and they were talking about peer pressure.  Her Girl Scout leader asked the group, "Have any of you ever experienced peer pressure?"

Well, Little Smoot put her hand up, knowing that she has indeed experienced this, and she wanted to share her experience with the group.  "I felt it when we were at the top of Pike's Peak in Colorado last summer," she offered.

"No, sweetie," the leader responded.  "We're talking about peer pressure.  Not ear pressure."

"Oh."

12 Step Cat Program

I think Feline Smoot needs an intervention.

Mrs. Smoot went out and bought our cat these little sticks that contain catnip as a Christmas present.  They were in a bag in our bedroom, along with a whole bunch of other Christmas-related bags.  Normally we don't allow the cat to hang out in our room, but I apparently inadvertently left the door slightly ajar and he made himself at home.

Not only did he enjoy the comfort of our king-sized bed, but he also apparently detected the smell of the catnip and made it his mission to hunt through each of the bags until he located it.  And the evidence suggested that he was quite successful in doing so, considering I found the sticks scattered all over the room, along with the remains of the plastic bag they came in.

For someone who has no opposable thumbs, he did a remarkable job of opening these things and flinging them all over the place.  And I won't even mention the mess he made of the rest of the bags, which had contained non-cat related gifts.

Since the "cat was out of the bag," so to speak, we decided to just give the cat his Christmas present early.  He is usually fairly rambunctious as it is, but now he has been running around the house, bonking into things, and looking unusually gleeful.  And there have been times when he'll be rolling around on the floor, pausing for a moment to say, "Duuuuuuuuude" with his eyes all glassed over.

I'm gonna keep him away from the car keys for a while.

The Red Kettle of Guilt

Ok, I feel guilty.  All the time, come to think of it.

This is the time of the year when the Salvation Army people are right there in front of every single store.  I was doing some online shopping this morning, and a Salvation Army lady and her kettle materialized right beside my computer desk, for heaven's sake.

I toss a few bucks into the kettles from time to time, but it would simply be way too costly to attempt to give them money every time you pass them.  I spent some time with my calculator and realized that if I donated $1 every time I passed a kettle during the holiday season, it would cost me $77,438 in December alone.

So, much of the time I have to walk past the Salvation Army people without making a donation, and I always feel like a cretin when I do that.

They give you those big, puppy dog eyes (sometimes in the form of an actual puppy), and they'll ring those bells right at you as if to say, "Sure.  I'm sitting here in -58 degree weather, getting repetitive stress syndrome from ringing this damn bell, as we attempt to help people at this blessed time of the year.  Feel free to walk right by me.  I can see that you're doing your best to avoid eye contact, you cretin."

I wonder if we have an extra $77,438 around here somewhere.

Little Smoot's Croonin' Debut

Ahhhh.  We're breathing sighs of relief here in Smootville.  Little Smoot had her Christmas concert at school last night, and she did a great job with her solo.

She came home from school just a couple weeks ago and announced that the director had asked her to do a solo.  I remember my jaw dropping down to the floor as I asked her, "And you said yes!?"

I can admit it:  Smoots are not generally gifted when it comes to singing.  I don't even sing at home when I'm alone.  The last time I did that, we didn't see the cat for several days.  Ok, I will admit that after six beers I will do karaoke, but that's entirely different and carries with it no expectations of being in key or anything.

So Little Smoot said she had agreed to do this solo, and for the longest time she did not know what song she was being assigned.  And when she did find out what song it was, she didn't seem particularly concerned about practicing it.

Finally, she came home one day and said she knew all of the words, so I asked her to sing it for me.  Let's just say that if she had been singing this on American Idol, Randy Jackson would have described it as being "a little pitchy, dawg."  And I honestly wouldn't have wanted to hear Simon's critique.

I was definitely a little apprehensive when it came time to go to the school last night.  I considered a few different options, in case she ended up being really, really bad.  I thought about sitting next to the exit so I could sneak out.  Or maybe I'd sit near the fire alarm so I could trip it if things got really out of hand.

But sure enough, our little girl got up there and did a very nice job with it, and I didn't have to sneak out the exit after all.  We were very proud of her; she did something that no other Smoot would dare to attempt!  Good job, dawg!

Microwave Mystery

It bothers me greatly that I don't understand how microwave ovens work.

I mean, I get the gist of how most of our main appliances work.  You stick bread into the toaster, and you can see those little red things get hot, and that's how the toast gets burned to a crisp.  The blender has a little propeller thing in it, so when you turn it on it makes a really loud, annoying noise and it makes things mooshy.

The stove is easy enough to understand because you can actually see flames making stuff hot.  No problem.  But microwave ovens don't make any sense at all.  Nobody seems to understand them.  You stick stuff in there, and you can't see that anything is happening, but sure enough, your food quickly becomes heated.

Microwave ovens have been around for a long, long time, too.  According to Wikipedia, some dude named Percy figured out how to microwave stuff way back in the 1940s.  This is remarkable for a couple reasons... back in the 40s people didn't know a whole lot of stuff, considering Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet.  And even more remarkable is the fact that this guy's name was Percy.  Who the heck names a kid Percy?  Even in the 1940s, that couldn't have been cool.

When we were growing up, my mom would never allow us to have a microwave oven for fear that they'd melt our brains, or something.  So my only exposure to them back then was when we went to visit my grandparents.  Most kids were not as amazed by microwave ovens and their miraculous abilities to melt cheese over Doritos as I was.

Ever wonder what would happen if you were able to keep the door of the microwave open and turn it on?  I mean, would everything in its path start bubbling and melting all over the place?  I've never heard of anyone attempting it, but surely I'm not the only one who wonders such things.  I would certainly be tempted to open the door up and aim the microwave at our Swearing Neighbors as an experiment.

Oh, and another thing: why can't we put metal in there?  Just another microwave oddity, if you ask me.

Anyway, if anyone can explain to me in simple terms how these things work, I would be tremendously grateful.  I would assume that the real answer is something along the lines of "alien technology."

Ice Ice Baby

We had a bit of an ice storm here in the greater Smootville area on Sunday.  People were freaking out, as per usual, driving their cars into one another, sliding down embankments, etc.  I saw a picture of one car that was firmly planted in a vertical position in a creek.  Only people in this area could be that bad at driving in inclement weather.

Anyway, two of our three major TV stations were doing wall-to-wall coverage of this amazing event on Sunday morning (who could have envisioned such a thing:  ice... in December!).  I always get a kick out of watching our news stations cover stuff like this.  Ok, the driving conditions were a bit hairy, but they made every effort to put the movie 2012 to shame by blowing things completely out of proportion.

Here's what cracks me up.  The newscasters spend most of their time pointing out what a bad idea it is to be out on the roads.  "Even if you absolutely have to get to work today, or you're having that life saving heart-lung transplant, for the love of God, stay at home!  Do not go outside under ANY circumstances!  It's not even completely safe to be watching our televised pictures of the weather!"

They'll go through this whole spiel about how moronic it would be to go out and drive in these conditions.  And then in the same breath they'll say, "And here's Kent Brockman, standing along I-279 with a live report!"  Obviously these reporters are out driving on the highways themselves, as if their presence on the roads somehow makes us safer than if they were doing the entire broadcast from indoors.

And you can be pretty sure that their giant TV vans are sitting there, blocking part of the road.  According to the IIYRSS (Institute of Imaginary Yet Real-Sounding Statistics), 78% of accidents on bad weather days are actually caused by news vans blocking the highways.

Mistakes on the Lake

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's seeing happy people from Cleveland.  Clevlanders are not supposed to be happy.  They're certainly not supposed to be jubilant. And most certainly not ecstatic.  But that was indeed the scene last night as the Steelers lost to the Browns.

The Steelers absolutely suck this year.  There's no doubt about that.  They have obviously opted to take this season off after winning the Super Bowl last year.  I get that.  No big deal.  We lost last night, and that was that.  But the Cleveland people acted as though they had just won every major award given to people on planet Earth.

They were dancing around, kissing each other on their putrid little lips, and in general acting like barking morons.

I honestly hope that many of them are waking up today (probably on the street, covered in their own bodily fluids, I'm guessing), and they're coming to the realization that they really don't have a whole heck of a lot to be excited about.

I mean, woop-de-doo... they are now 2-11!  They have won two games this year.  Get out the champagne!  The Steelers suck, sure, but 2-11?  I could probably get a better record with a team consisting of myself and some of my high school friends, while under the influence of NyQuil.

As I was walking back to my car (while wearing a Steelers coat), I had a few unnecessary encounters with some of Cleveland's finest thinkers.  As I was crossing a street, a guy rolled his window down and said, "HEY!  When is your next playoff game!? Ha ha ha!"  I immediately considered several witty comebacks, including:

-- "I'm surprised you're familiar with the concept of playoffs."
-- "You're 2-11 for heaven's sake.  If I were you, I'd continue driving straight into Lake Erie."
-- "C'mon... your team was mathematically eliminated from playoff contention during the pre-season."

I kept my response brief, though:  "When was your last playoff game?"  Of course, that confused him and he went speeding off down the street, presumably to splash into Lake Erie.

As I was driving out of town, another guy made a point of rolling his window down (it as 14 degrees out) so he could offer me a popular obscene hand gesture, apparently based on the fact that my car has a Pennyslvania license plate.  I assume that another mile or so down the road his arm probably froze off, but I'm sure he was still very proud of making such a witty and though-provoking statement in my direction.

Anyway, I would like to think that things are getting back to normal up there on the Mistake on the Lake.  The Steelers may stink at the moment, but we know it's a temporary thing.  Cleveland will always be... well... Cleveland.

I Gnant Galk Gnow.

I had my dentist appointment yesterday, and that's always a good time.  I was already in a great mood, because I woke up and learned that my damned Christmas lights had been blown off the highest gutter of the house overnight.

Someday the police are going to knock on my door after I throw one of my Christmas light-related fits ("Uh, sir, we received a report that someone at this address was dancing around the yard, screaming 'fa la la la la' while throwing lights and plastic clips all over the place.").

So anyway, I got to my dentist appointment, full of Christmas Cheer, and God bless our dental hygienist lady, but why does she ask me all of these open ended questions while she has my mouth pried open and she's poking me with that pointy metal thing?

That really drives me a little bonkers.  She's a really, really nice lady, don't get me wrong, but surely she is aware of the fact that her fist is half way down my throat, and it would be pretty hard for me to carry on a whole lot of a conversation.  Yet she asks me questions like, "What do you think about this... what do you think about that...?"

So I can either ignore her, which seems like it would be rude, or I can attempt to come up with an answer, either using sign language or a series of word-like grunts.  I used a combination of these techniques today, and I have no idea if she understood anything I was trying to communicate to her.

It would be cool if they'd give people little keyboards to hold on their laps so they could type in an answer to whatever small talk we're trying to have.  This would also solve the problem of what I should be doing with my hands during my appointments.  I usually clinch them together hard enough that I could probably squish coal into diamonds.

So now my teeth feel nice and squeaky clean, and I'm able to communicate again.  But guess what?  I have to go back in a couple weeks.  Wanna know why?  Because I brush my teeth too well.  Yep... I have managed to brush my teeth to the point where I've eroded some of the enamel, so they have to paint some pretend enamel back onto my mouth for me.

We live in a very strange world.

Another Facebook Member

Little Smoot is now on Facebook.  Now it will be much easier for her to tell people about her various academic and social accomplishments, like dancing on the stage with Flo-Rida.

She had been bugging us for a good while about getting a Facebook account, and we successfully avoided it for quite a long time.  The other day she told me, "But everyone in my class is on Facebook!"

Suuuure, they are, I said.  Just like everyone in your class has their own cell phone, and everyone in your class has their own pony, and everyone in your class has a vintage Corvette, etc.

Well, I got a friend request from one of Little Smoot's classmates the other day, and this gave me access to see this girl's list of Facebook friends.  And, oddly enough, practically every other member of her class was indeed on Facebook.  Go figure.

Not wanting her to be a social networking outcast, I helped her set up her account.  I figured it would take a bit of time to explain all of the intricacies of Facebook to her, since it took me several months to really understand it.  I wanted to help her learn how to ignore some of the stupid crap on Facebook, like Farmtown (part of the site where you can manage your very own pretend farm...  the heck with that), and whatnot.

But, like most things, she caught onto Facebook pretty much immediately.  And as we speak, she is busily messing with her stupid Farmtown application.

Calling All Shawties

My taste for music has never exactly matured.  Granted, I haven't matured in most any other way, either, but anyhow...

I have done a pretty good job of keeping up with current music, long beyond most of my contemporaries, who have either adapted their listening habits to age-appropriate music, or they have actually already died, or whatever.  My brother was rather dumbfounded at Thanksgiving when I told him I'd rather listen to Kanye West than Dave Matthews.

Nowadays, Little Smoot has been getting into Top 40 music pretty heavily.  She can sing all the words to pretty much any song we hear on the radio, and we enjoy listening to these things together.

Mrs. Smoot has taken her to several Christian concerts over the past couple years, and they've both really enjoyed doing that.  These are obviously nice, wholesome outings, where they're surrounded by nice, wholesome people, even though the concerts have a rock edge to them and are much like any other rock concert.

Well, to balance her out a bit, I took Little Smoot to a Flo-Rida concert last night in Pittsburgh.  Even most fuddy-duddies who have no idea who Flo-Rida is would probably recognize the song "Low," which you'll almost definitely hear if you ever attend a wedding reception nowadays:

"Shawty had them apple bottom jeans (jeans)
Boots with the fur (with the fur)
The whole club was looking at her
She hit the floor (she hit the floor)
Next thing you know
Shawty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low!"

We managed to get seats in Row 4, which was nice because Little Smoot could actually see for a change.  At age 11, it's often hard to see what's going on at things like this, especially once people start standing up and dancing.  And before I knew it, she was not only in the front row, but she wound up on the freakin' stage, dancing with Flo-Rida.  They had invited around 25 or so "Shawties" (I had to use my official Rapper to English Dictionary to look that up... it means "girls") to join them on the stage, and of course Little Smoot was right there.

I must say, it was a rather surreal moment to look at a stage where these gigantic rapping dudes were singing, and beside them was my own little Shawty, who for the record sang along to every word of the song.

We made it out unscathed, thankfully, and Little Smoot had some very jealous Shawty friends at school today.

Bleepin' Beepin'

Every single thing in our house beeps.  And what's worse is that everything in our house emits the same beep.  Same frequency, same duration, same everything.

Off the top of my head, I can think of several things right near me that share the same beep.  Let's see.  There's the microwave, the smoke detector (when it's low on batteries), the carbon monoxide detector (when it wants to notify me that I'm about to die of Mystery Fumes), the cell phone, washing machine, dryer, my car (when locking or unlocking it with the remote), and of course the oven (when it reaches a designated temperature).  I'm sure there are several more.

So I was sitting here the other morning, and I heard a single "Beep."  Swell.  Was my laundry done?  Was my lunch ready?  Did I accidentally unlock my car?  Or, better yet, was I about to be overcome with carbon monoxide?

I spent a good bit of the day checking out various possibilities.  When Mrs. Smoot got home, she asked me how I had spent the day and I responded by saying, "I didn't do anything today," which sounded a lot more productive than the fact that I was chasing down the source of a lone beep.

Many hours later I finally figured out that Little Smoot had received a text message on her phone, causing the beep.  After spending so much time on a fruitless search, I really started rooting for the carbon monoxide, frankly.

Reasons for Having a Reverse Camera

When I got my new Prius a couple years ago, I thought the back-up camera was a pretty cool feature.  There's a full-color screen on the console, and when you put the car in reverse, you get a really nice video picture of what's behind the car.

It seemed like the kind of feature that impressed people who would ride in the car, and I really enjoyed it.  There were times that I'd drive into town entirely in reverse, just so I could use the camera for navigation.  "Coooooool," I thought.

Well, it turns out that you can also use the camera as a way of avoiding obstacles.  I don't know if this was even mentioned in the manual.  I really thought it was just there for the sake of being cool.  I'm sure that other Prius owners find this feature to be a total babe magnet.

I was on a Geocaching adventure a couple weeks ago, and I needed to turn around on a rural road.  So I put the car in reverse, and moved backwards at around 1 mph, and heard this lovely "C-R-R-R-R-U-U-N-N-N-C-H" noise as I backed into a wooden post.

I said a few holiday-oriented words, and checked out the lovely handiwork I had done on my rear bumper.  And I drove straight to an auto body shop so I could determine just how mad at myself I should be (by their estimate, I was mad at myself to the tune of $750).

Thankfully, Mrs. Smoot handled this as gently as one could possibly expect, laughing out loud at me and saying, "I thought you had a back-up camera?!"

Merry Stinkin' Christmas!

Early in November we experienced some really nice weather here in Smootville.  There were some days when the temperatures climbed toward the 70-degree mark, so I figured I'd do the unthinkable:  I decided to get our Christmas lights up early so I wouldn't have to hang them later on when it was cold out.

I was pretty excited about taking care of our outdoor illumination project, and I got the approval from Mrs. Smoot to go out and purchase brand new lights this year.  In the past, our lights have driven me fairly berserk because I'll hang the highest ones on the house (which involves the ladder and a very long poking stick) and then half of the them will go out at random places and random times.  It happens every year, even with brand new icicle lights.

This year I decided I wanted to get the new LED lights.  There are a couple advantages of having this sort of light, compared to the traditional ones.  For one thing, they're reliable.  They basically never burn out, and have a life expectancy of 20 years or so.  Plus they use only about 10% of the electric used by older lights, so they'll actually pay for themselves after a few seasons.

I found a good sale on the LED lights, and I traveled an hour to a store to get them.  And then I got 'em all hung on the house.  Ta-da!  Even though Christmas was over a month away, I felt a special holiday glow when I got the project finished.  At least until the following Sunday morning when I headed out to church.

Much to my surprise, some idiot had stolen one of the strands of red LED lights right off of one of my freakin' bushes.  It was obvious that it had been hastily yanked off the bush, leaving another strand behind it, out of place.  Who the heck steals a single strand of Christmas lights?

I immediately began figuring out ways to thwart morons from taking additional ones.  I thought about rigging up some sort of surveillance camera, or somehow electrifying our bushes so anyone who touched them would get a nice holiday jolt of amperage.

Instead, I went through each strand of lights and used plastic tie-downs to securely fasten them to each bush.  If someone wants to steal my lights now, they'll have to go through some serious extra effort, involving the sophisticated know-how involved in operating a pair of scissors.  Ha-ha on them!

Whoa... a Blog Entry!

It has been brought to my attention that I have not made a blog entry now for a month.  A few weeks ago Mrs. Smoot asked me why I hadn't been blogging, and I pointed out that practically nobody had been commenting on any of my blitherings, which probably meant that nobody was reading any of this crap in the first place.

Well, to my shock, I had dinner last night with some friends who had apparently all noticed that I had not been blogging lately.  (The few people gathered around that table undoubtedly make up 99.9% of the totality of readers I have accumulated over the course of my blogging career.)

Anyway, another person at the table has a blog that she has not bothered updating since August (and that posting basically said, "Wow, sorry I haven't blogged since April!"), so it was rather ironic that she was the one to point out my lapse, while looking at me with one of her eyebrows raised well into her forehead.

We decided to have a contest to see which one of us would be the first to update their blog, which I figured I could win easily, even if I put it off for a few more weeks.  But alas, she beat me to the punch by posting an "I WON" message on her blog last night.  Lame, but a victory nonetheless.

So that brings me to my additional list of excuses for why I haven't blogged for so long.  One possible explanation is that I got confused when it was time to change my clocks for Daylight Savings Time.  Instead of winding the clock back an hour, I accidentally skipped my calendar ahead by a month.  Therefore, I have no November blog entries.

I'm not sure that excuse entirely makes sense.  So let's go with my backup excuse.  I've been spending about 95% of my recent weeks unclogging our stupid toilets.  This one is actually pretty realistic.

Our house was built in the 90s, and there is actually a law that newer houses can only install "low flow" toilets instead of the older ones that used more water.  The result is that these toilets can never quite handle the load, and I wind up clogging them all the time.  I can clog a toilet merely by performing a bodily function commonly known as "#1," let alone the much more complex processes of higher numbered bodily functions.

So I have become intimately familiar with our plunger, and I spend a whole heck of a lot of time with it.  I even made a song about it:  "Poop, poop, poop... flush, flush, flush... clog, clog, clog... plunge, plunge, plunge..." It has a nice beat to it.

Anyhow, I'll try to make a more sincere effort at keeping this updated a little better, because everyone is obviously deeply concerned about the issues that affect my life, such as our toilet problems.

Another Halloween in Smootville

It's not even Halloween yet, but the fun is over in Smootville.  I think there's some sort of law saying that we're not allowed to have Trick-or-Treat on the actual night of Halloween.  And it definitely can't be held on a Friday night in the fall, because of the weekly religious holiday around here (high school football).

So we had Trick-or-Treat last night.  For the first time, we allowed Little Smoot to just head off with one of her friends.  This time I didn't get to play the part of the Creepy Protective Parent Hiding in the Bushes while the kids go from door to door.  You see them lurking in the shadows when handing out candy, eyeing you suspiciously as though you're the one responsible for all the stories about razor blades being found hidden in apples, or whatever.

I always debate whether or not I'm going to decorate the house for Halloween for Trick-or-Treat night.  It's pretty much a futile effort for a couple reasons.  For one thing, we typically don't get very many kids down this way.  The way our road is situated, a lot of the kids wind up turning on a side street and they never get down this far.

And it's hardly worth trying to compete with some of our neighbors who apparently spend every last bit of their paychecks on Halloween stuff.  We have seen people renting hearses, and this year there were at least two people dressed as Jason, chasing people with chainsaws.  One guy had so many strobe lights that he had to notify the Federal Aviation Administration.

I usually bring out my old DJ light show and spooky music, along with a strobe light and some other decorations.  I found that the smoke machine actually helps draw kids here from further up the street.  If you've ever seen a fire at a building, you know how many people rush to the scene to gawk at it.  I figure if people see smoke, they might think that they're going to get to see an actual fire, so they are naturally drawn to it.  It seemed to work last night -- we had far more people than usual at the door!

Having relatively few kids show up isn't really a bad thing.  I have lots and lots of extra candy to eat now!

Balloon Boy Wannabe

I had been thinking seriously about dressing up for Halloween this year.  I haven't dressed up for a long, long time, mainly because nobody ever invites us to parties.  I think the last time I dressed up for Halloween (in the early 1990s, I believe) I had an outfit that created the illusion that I was a baby riding on an old lady's back.  It was cool.

Prior to that, I went to a dance in college dressed as an ATM card since that was something that best represented my life at that time.

This year I was seriously considering dressing up as Balloon Boy.  For several nights in a row I would lie awake thinking about how to construct an outfit that would look enough like the balloon that people would know what it was, and they'd feel compelled to give me a cash award for Best Costume Ever.

I did some Googling and found that a pre-packaged Balloon Boy outfit already exists (pictured above).  But I had something a bit different in mind.  I basically wanted to wear the balloon itself, with me coming up through the middle of it.  Or possibly wearing it as a hat.

But after thinking and procrastinating about it quite a bit, I finally decided that it would undoubtedly be another of those projects where I'd start to mess with it, get flustered, and toss the whole thing out unfinished.  And I'd probably waste a lot of aluminum foil in the process.

And on top of that, I have a feeling that the balloon would probably make my butt look big.

There's Waldo!

As you probably know, I photograph Steelers games for a newspaper.  Sometimes I'll hear from friends who are going to the game, and if I'm lucky, they'll be tailgating prior to the game and I'll get to eat their food.  But I'm also very happy to track them down in the stands and take their picture if I'm able.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is that the camera is a powerful tool.  Just by merely pointing the camera toward the stands, I can magically get a hundred or more people to stand up and yell "WOOOOOO!" even though my camera does not record sound.

People just can't help but have that reaction, I guess.  And when I try to take a shot of a couple specific people, it can be hard to get just those people without some other idiot jumping in with his own personal WOOOOO for the shot.

Such was the case this weekend for my good friends John and Linda, who, as you can see in the photo above, had their very own Waldo right next to them.  I think it is actually legal in most states to thwack these folks in the head in order to keep them out of shots.  After I took this picture, a beer guy in the front row told me he thought I was taking his picture, as though I was fascinated by the process of selling beer.

I was thinking about these people, wondering what goes on in their demented heads when they feel that it's necessary to jump into someone else's photos all the time.  And then I had one of those ah-ha moments, realizing that most of the time I am the idiot jumping into other people's shots.  I can't begin to imagine how many photo albums are in existence with at least one shot of me acting like an idiot in the background.

Maybe it's built into the male genetic code.

Bed Time

I rarely have problems or confusion when traveling into a different time zone.  This is because we live in a house that has many of its own time zones, and we deal with that every single day.

In our living room, for example, you can sit in one spot and see at least three clocks, all of which are set at slightly different times.  I usually just try to take an average of the three when I'm trying to guess the time.  We don't do this on purpose; it's just the way it worked out for that room of the house.

The kitchen is currently on "Blink Time," because for some random reason our power went off momentarily yesterday.  So at the moment everything is blinking 12:00.

The bedroom is a whole different story.  There are at least four clocks in the bedroom, and they're all set radically differently for psychological purposes (or possibly "psychotic" purposes, if you prefer).

These clocks are set in such a way so we confuse the heck out of ourselves in an effort to get up in the morning.  My clock radio is set seven minutes ahead of the real time so that when it goes off I can hit snooze and then wake up just as the news is starting.  I always have a brief moment when the alarm goes off and I think I need to get up immediately, but then I'm so excited and happy to remember that I can hit snooze!  And if I don't feel like listening to the news, I can always hit snooze again.

Whoever invented the snooze button should, at minimum, be elected the Ruler of the World.

Mrs. Smoot has some other weird time setting on her clock.  She often gets up at ungodly hours of the morning to go to work, so I'm sure her methodology is a bit more complex.  I believe that she has her radio set something like 23 minutes and 12 seconds fast.  I'm sure it involved some sort of complex equation, and I prefer not to think about it too much.

I also have a cool clock that illuminates the atomically correct time onto the ceiling, and alternates with the temperature.  This is handy in the middle of the night when I have to wake up and take a whiz; I can see how many more hours of sleep I can get, and how chilly my trip to the bathroom is going to be.  I've thought about artificially boosting the temperature for psychological purposes, but you can probably over-think these things.

Urinal Unification Act

I'm seriously thinking about writing to my congressperson, just as soon as I figure out who that person might be.

Like many people, I frequently visit a variety of restrooms.  I have recently noticed a disturbing trend in some public restrooms.  It would appear that whoever designs these things can't decide how high to mount urinals on the walls, leading to some weird situations.

The other night we went out to eat, and there was a urinal that was so low to the floor that I almost had to pee while standing on my knees.  I took a picture of it (above) with my cell phone because I thought it was pretty weird.  Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, but I think it would have been weird on my part to wander into the bathroom with my normal, big camera.

I can understand how some places put urinals nice and low for the benefit of kids, but I think that one may have been designed for people no taller than your average fetus.

Last week, I was in a restroom where the urinals were so high that I almost needed to jump up and down while peeing, and that could certainly introduce its own problems to the process.

So I am hoping to get a new law introduced.  I call it the Urinal Unification Act of 2009.  It would require all urinals to be at the same, comfortable height, based on a person of my particular dimensions.  I'm obviously hoping you'll consider contacting your congressperson, too, if you can figure out who that might be.

The Movie M&M Scam

I cannot resist M&Ms.  I'm not one of these people who can't keep his hands off chocolate like some addicts, but if there is a plate of M&Ms around, I'll dive in head-first if necessary.

When I took Little Smoot to see part of a movie this weekend, I bought myself a $3 box of the candy to chomp on while we watched the show.  The box certainly appeared to be large enough to satisfy my M&M craving for 90 minutes or so.  I took a picture of it with a can of my other addiction, Diet Vanilla Pepsi, so you could have a sense of scale.

The box certainly looks like it would be big enough to enjoy for a while, doesn't it?  Well, the problem is that the box is just a tad bit deceiving.  I opened the box and found that it contained a plastic bag of M&Ms.  Notice I didn't say it contained a bag "full" of M&Ms.  No, it contained a bag that was, at best, 1/3 full of M&Ms.  Apparently the other 2/3 of the bag contained some very expensive air.

I can understand that some products have a tendency to "settle" in their packaging, creating some space in a larger area, but these are M&Ms for heaven's sake.  How much settling could they possibly do?  I figured I must have paid at least a quarter for each "M" in the box.  It was a pretty pathetic sham, I thought.

I finished the whole box before the opening credits ever started (and long before the fire alarm chased us out of the theater).  I eventually had to resort to gnawing on my coat for sustenance.

Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater

Weird things just seem to happen when we're around.  I wouldn't recommend hanging around us, frankly.

I took Little Smoot to see Where the Wild Things Are at a brand new theater this weekend.  It was cool to smell that new theater smell and everything.

We watched the movie on a new "XD" screen, which is supposed to include several amazing enhancements.  The main enhancement I noticed is that they toss in an extra surcharge for viewing a movie in this particular theater.

Anyway, we got through nearly the whole movie when suddenly the film stopped, the house lights came on, and bright lights started flashing.  And there was a rather shrill "WOOOP WOOOP!" noise, followed by an announcement that "the preceding alarm is to indicate the presence of a fire in the building.  Please evacuate immediately."  Lovely.

In a sense, this wasn't a really bad thing because I was getting really, really tired of the guy in our aisle who decided that it was cute that his young son had gotten bored with the movie at about the 5-minute mark, and he allowed the little brat to climb all over everything while talking very loudly.  As a form of discipline, the man would smile at the kid every so often.

So we all congregated outside where it was sort of a drizzle/snow mix.  The theater, which was obviously very well prepared for such an event, dispatched employees into the crowd to announce that "We don't have any idea what's happening."  They were actually telling us that, as though this was the helpful information we were seeking.

After 10-15 minutes, they opened the doors and let everyone back in.  Sadly, the annoying guy and his annoying kid had apparently left.  Just as we thought they were about to restart the movie, the alarm started sounding again.  A man eventually came into the theater to let us know that they couldn't figure out how to turn it all off, so we could just go home and take passes for future movies, possibly to be shown in their entirety.

I'm already looking forward to going back so I can see part of another great show.

Up, Up and Away!

I did my share of dumb things to get in trouble when I was a kid, sure. I remember when I accidentally squirted glue the whole way across my room's carpet. I gave a kid a bloody nose by thwonking him with a wooden train on my second day of Kindergarten. And I can remember throwing up in my boots one time.

But let it be said that I've never decided to pilot a weather balloon, and I never even accused my brother of doing such a thing. And I don't believe I ever hid in our garage attic for several hours, either. And I'm almost certain that I never did those things in such a way that they garnered international attention and included the activation of the National Guard.

I must say that I got a kick out of watching CNN yesterday when this kid, apparently a member of the Adventure Family from Hell, was thought to be floating through the sky in Colorado. I love watching "breaking news" stories, because the networks usually have every last detail comically wrong, and this was no exception.

For quite a long period of time the news channels followed this Mylar balloon by trailing it with a helicopter. They followed its every move, and it reminded me a lot of O.J. Simpson's white Bronco after a while. The news people seemed certain that there was a kid, somehow stuck inside this balloon, even though to the extremely untrained eye, this looked to be pretty much impossible. It seemed that everyone, including Wolf Blitzer, was convinced that this kid was somehow able to just float away in a glorified Hefty bag.

After a couple hours the balloon finally landed in a field and all of these emergency personnel swarmed upon it and immediately began stabbing the thing with pitchforks and whatnot. I couldn't help but think that if these people really thought that there was a kid inside this thing, perhaps it would be in their best interest to stop jabbing sharp implements at it, unless they also suspected this kid of being Satan or something.

As I (and undoubtedly every other viewer) suspected, the kid was eventually found hiding at home, presumably because he thought he was going to be in big trouble for accidentally letting the giant balloon float away.

I did think for a moment that maybe the kid was a big fan of the movie "Up," where Ed Asner decided to float away in a similar fashion. That would have been a much cooler version of the story.

Pet Ownership vs. Serious Mental Issues

I am all for having a pet. Heck, we have a pet, come to think of it. I can't help but notice that there are some number of people out there who seem to seriously think that their pets have human qualities, and they treat them as such. There's definitely a fine line between pet ownership and mental illness, that's all I'm saying.

Some people carry on about their pets to the point where I honestly think they should seek some sort of professional help. I know a woman who takes this all to a new level. She's a nice enough person, but her life clearly revolves around this little pesky dog.

It's not even one of those dogs that a normal person would enjoy. It's one of those easily-excited dogs that will start yapping at you, and it will bounce up and down and up and down and up and down until you hope that the owner looks away long enough that you can kick the stupid thing out of the way. Not that I would necessarily do that, of course, but I can't say that the thought hasn't crossed my mind.

The first clue that the owner might be a little whacko is the simple fact that they think it's cute that the dog is bouncing all over you, rather than giving the stupid thing a kick themselves. I'd be mortified if our cat started bouncing all over someone who obviously wasn't enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Another serious mental illness clue is when the owner talks about the dog's aspirations in life. This woman often says things like, "Fifi is really looking forward to her obedience class tonight!" Really? How the heck do you know? Did she tell you this? Perhaps she e-mailed it from her computer?

Speaking of which, there's another sign that a pet owner has lost it. This same woman has established her own Facebook account for her dog, amongst other web sites. I know the dog has been taking some sort of training but I really doubt that typing is one of them, what with the obvious lack of opposable thumbs and everything.

And let's not even talk about people who dress their animals up in clothes, no matter what the occasion.

Well, I have to run. The cat just told me he wants to go watch the Travel Channel.

New Mommies and Daddies

I was thinking back to my childhood days, and I laughed ("LOL'd," for you hip people) when I recalled some of my parents' tactics for getting my brother and me to shape up.

My brother and I were constantly fighting with each other in those days. Constantly. If we weren't physically beating the crap out of each other, we were making a race out of something that shouldn't have been a race. I wouldn't want to embarrass him, so I won't mention that one time we were racing each other to the bathroom and it resulted in an injury that put him on crutches for several weeks.

When we were younger still, my parents had a hard time leaving the house without one of us freaking out at the idea of being left with each other and a babysitter. Again, not to embarrass anyone, but it was my brother who would cry his eyes out every time my parents left, leaving them no choice but to sneak out.

My dad had a strategy for dealing with us at that age. He'd threaten to place a call to the "New Mommies and Daddies Company," so he could trade us in for newer, better kids. Sometimes he'd actually pick up the phone and pretend to talk to them. I remember one time when he hung up the phone and announced "even they don't want to take you" because we were being so bad.

Little Smoot is old enough now that she'd never fall for the New Mommies and Daddies bit, even though, thankfully, she is almost always well behaved to begin with. I would imagine that most parents would be hesitant to use this strategy with their kids nowadays anyway. Heck, they would Google it right away and know that their parents were making the whole thing up. And then they'd probably file a lawsuit against them.

Somehow, some way, though, my brother and I turned out to be remarkably normal people. Well, he did, anyway.

Step 37: Valium

So the other day Mrs. Smoot decided she wanted to buy a new desk. She may have made this decision based on the amount of work she does from home, or because she's taking college classes and needs to organize things better. I'm thinking she decided on a new desk merely because I haven't suffered a serious mental breakdown in recent history.

I'm certainly not against the desk, in principle. I didn't really even mind spending half an hour late at night in the a parking lot pondering how we were going to jam this giant box into my Prius. I'm sure we provided a lot of entertainment for the fine employees of Staples. (We eventually removed all of the parts from the box and stuck them in the car individually.)

I didn't really even mind lugging all of these individual, and often heavy, parts up the stairs to the desk's final destination.

The hairy part is putting the darned thing together, given the half-hearted attempt at directions that are hidden amongst all of the parts. And believe me, there were lots of parts. Looking at the room, one would have assumed that I was about to build a fully functional freight locomotive.

If you know anything about me, you know that manual dexterity is not really my thing (I'm not even sure what "my thing" might actually be; I should probably try to figure that out). So the instruction manual was rather intimidating, even though on the first page it described the desk construction as being "as simple as 1-2-3!"

Yeah, well, there's some blatant false advertising for you. All you had to do was flip to the end of the manual to see that it was "as simple as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-
22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36." I guess they just ran out of room when they made their claim.

Yep, there were 36 steps involved in putting the desk together, making me wonder why we paid so much for it since I was the one doing all of the work. It literally took me over two hours before I got to Step 6.

Many long hours later, I finally finished it. I'm proud to say that we now have a fully functional freight locomotive in the house. We're hiring engineers if anyone is interested.

Wanted: Responsible Adult

I got an interesting call from Little Smoot's school the other day. When I see the school's phone number on the caller ID, I naturally get a little concerned about what might have happened to my kid, but it turned out to be a nice call from her teacher.

She wanted to know if I'd be interested in being a chaperone for an upcoming 6th grade field trip to the science center in Pittsburgh. After all, when you hear of someone in need of a "responsible adult," my name almost always immediately comes up (suuuure it does).

I told her I'd love to join them for the trip! What better opportunity could I ever ask for, in terms of being a huge embarrassment to my daughter? That is my role in life nowadays, and I'm really enjoying it.

I already told Little Smoot that if she gives me any sort of grief between now and the field trip, I am going to call her by her new nickname in front of her entire class: "Thunder Butt."

I'm going to milk this one for all I can.

Grand Illusions

I had the chance to take Little Smoot to see David Copperfield in Pittsburgh the other night. What a show!

I must admit it is a little frustrating to watch him make a classic car appear on stage... make audience members disappear... walk through a moving fan and appear in the middle of the audience seconds later, etc., and not have a clue how any of it was possible.

It all reminded me of my young days, when I had my own aspirations of performing magic. I can remember those early desires to dazzle audiences with my amazing illusions. I used to come up with some remarkable magic shows, and then perform them for my parents.

I think my parents only agreed to watch my "amazing" performances because whatever amount of time I was spending on them was time I was not devoting to beating the crap out of my little brother.

I don't remember too much about my magic acts, but I did find a stunning picture in one of my old photo albums which demonstrates just how much magical talent I really had back then. As you can see in the photo above, I had managed to invite an invisible man to the doorway of my room!

As I look at this picture, numerous questions come to mind. How did I manage to pull off such a convincing illusion, back in the days when fishing line probably hadn't been invented yet? Based on the height of the hat, exactly how tall was the invisible man? Why was he sitting in my doorway, instead of inside the room? Wouldn't the illusion have been even more convincing if the hat was also invisible, leaving just an image of the chair? Why was I allowing strangers into the house?

I wonder whether our David Copperfield experience will inspire Little Smoot to try her hand at some magic tricks, too. If that's the case, I have a bad feeling that the cat will be an unwilling participant in one way or another.

What a Sale!

My recent NyQuil-induced radio dreams have reminded me of yet another story from my old days of being a DJ. Lucky you!

I was thinking back to my days as a DJ at WOMP-FM in Wheeling, WV. (With a name like WOMP, you know it has to be a quality radio station.) Come to think of it, I could probably fill a book with stories about this nightmare of a place.

There's the fact that it burned to the ground on New Year's Day, months before I began working there, and the station continued to operate out of the foundation of the burned building. And we had to use an outhouse for our bathroom. And we certainly can't forget the famous memo we received, reminding us that we shouldn't poop in the station's yard.

This time, though, I'd like to share the story of the best commercial I ever heard in more than a decade of working in radio.

After the fire destroyed the building, the station became one of the first in the nation to use new, digital equipment in its new studios. New automation equipment for WOMP's AM sister station required that all commercials had to be either exactly 58 seconds, or 28 seconds long. If you recorded a commercial that was longer, it would simply be cut off at either 58 or 28 seconds.

Well, this requirement came back to haunt at least one advertiser. As I was driving in one day, I was listening to the AM station. One of the ads was supposed to end with the phrase, "Our prices will blow you away!" However... the commercial was just a teeny bit longer than the 28 seconds allowed, and the word "away" was cut off. It certainly gave new meaning to the ad!

The Adventures of Leash Boy

I probably ask myself this question several times a day: What the heck is wrong with people?

I found myself muttering that phrase again last weekend, during the Autumn Leaf Festival Parade in Clarion, when I found myself seated next to a young mother and Leash Boy.

Have you seen these things? I couldn't restrain myself from taking a cell phone picture of this poor kid, tethered to mommy with this whacky leash thing.

Not only was he attached to a leash, but part of the leash assembly was a teddy bear. So it looked as though this kid had on his back either a teddy bear with a really long tail, or some other kind of 12-foot-long item emerging from its butt.

When floats would go by, they'd toss candy in his general direction and he lunge for it, only to be snapped backwards by mom when he'd get within inches of it. I think maybe she was making a game of it.

Whatever the case, I suspect Leash Boy is going to be in need of some serious therapy in the years to come.

Our Parade Strategy

I took Little Smoot to my college homecoming parade this weekend. Clarion's Autumn Leaf Festival Parade is a big deal, with tons of bands, dignitaries, floats, and most importantly of all: candy.

Oh, and there were lots of Shriners, too. I can't help but find it ironic that they want to ban cell phones and texting while driving, but it is perfectly legal for profoundly elderly men with funny hats to be permitted to zoom around on a parade route, sometimes popping wheelies. Clearly something should be done about this.

But anyway, getting back to the candy aspect of the parade... we always position ourselves right at the beginning of the parade, because that's when they throw the most candy. By the end, some of the groups realize that they've depleted their supplies and they have to start rationing stuff. Little Smoot came equipped with a big bag so she could stash as much candy as possible.

By the end of the parade, she had amassed more Tootsie Rolls than I have ever seen in one place at one time. Her bag was bulging with every sort of candy imaginable, which is awesome. You see, I'll sneak some of it for myself, and we'll let Little Smoot have a little of it. But before you know it, she'll forget that the bag even exists.

Halloween is just a few weeks away, if you see where I'm going with this. We won't even need to go to the store before Halloween! We'll have more than enough candy to supply every kid in the neighborhood, thanks to the parade. And if we still have some left over, I'm betting it'll keep until Easter! I'll bet Little Smoot would never even recognize that her Easter candy is the same stuff she caught at the parade.

More NyQuil Side Effects

Like I've mentioned before, NyQuil has some unusual side effects. There are, of course, the perceived super-human powers... and the occasional sensation that you're floating, etc. I have found that on nights that I take NyQuil, I also often have some really odd, and very vivid dreams.

It seems that NyQuil-induced dreams come in two flavors for me:

Dream #1: I go back in time, and am working at a radio station again. Don't get me wrong -- I mostly enjoyed working in radio. But the weird hours, miserable pay, giant ego co-workers, lack of job security, etc., are not amongst the things I miss. And my NyQuil-induced dreams always tend to focus on the worst thing of all: dead air.

As a radio DJ, nothing gets you into more trouble than having dead air. Even the least savvy listener knows you're screwing up when there's absolutely nothing coming out of their speakers. And it really honks off the bosses. Nowadays, DJs have it pretty easy because so much stuff is automated by computers. Dead air is pretty hard to come by now.

But back in the day, I used to play actual records (those black, plastic sorts of things that look similar to frisbees). And when the record was over, you had to start another record right away, or listeners would be treated to the "click-click" sound of the record bumping around at the end of the track.

There were times when nature would call, and I'd have to play really long songs to accommodate these occasions, if you know what I mean. There were times when I'd play Stairway to Heaven, which was something like 10 minutes long, and friends who knew me would say, "Ah, Hank must have needed to take a pretty big dump!"

But if I didn't make it back in time, there would be the dreaded dead air. And my NyQuil dreams focus on that feeling of continually running into the control room to find that nothing was on the air, and no matter what button I push, nothing would happen. That stinks.

Dream #2: I'm still in college. Sure, college was a great period of time. But the NyQuil dreams always convince me that it's the end of my last semester, and I look at my schedule only to find that there's a class I forgot to take all year, and I need this class to graduate. And the finals are coming up, and I can't find the room where the test is being administered! Aaaaah! Noooo!

So I guess I should either start taking less NyQuil... or perhaps I could come to the psychological conclusion that I have some sort of unresolved issues I should be addressing.

Bring on the Fall Illness of Doom

My body seems to have some sort of adverse reaction to the autumnal equinox. It seems as though there is some sort of trigger in my brain that goes off every year just as soon as fall begins. My brain apparently takes the opportunity to pass along the following instruction to the rest of my body: "Let's make boogers!"

So these last several days, I have basically been a walking, talking booger factory. Mrs. Smoot has done her best to refrain from complaining about the noises I've been making in the middle of the night, but I'm sure it won't be long before I hear the all-too-familiar "STOMP STOMP STOMP SLAM!" when she gets fed up with me and heads off to the spare bedroom.

And it doesn't help that I've been chugging down the NyQuil, either. See, there's an event this weekend for which I will be the emcee, so I have been fighting this illness rather aggressively so that I don't disappoint these people with an inability to speak. Granted, many of them are probably secretly hoping, based on past performances, that I won't be able to speak, but that's another issue entirely.

NyQuil is a double-edged sword in the battle against colds. On one hand, it does make me feel better, most of the time. On the other hand, it often makes me loopy to the extent that I believe that I can probably fly. And it helps me to view imaginary pink elephants that are dancing through the kitchen.

And I spend a lot more time than normal saying, "Wheeeeeeeeeee!" I do feel wonderful, though.

Recipe for Disaster

I enjoy cooking. Much of the time I'm reasonably good at it. There are few things more satisfying than calling the rest of the family to the dinner table after working hard to prepare the evening meal.

And there are few things more humiliating than realizing that I skipped an important part of the instructions in the recipe, which screwed things up pretty badly, such as I accomplished last night.

My deal with Mrs. Smoot is that I'm always happy to cook dinner so long as she tells me what she wants me to make, and I don't have to dream something up on my own. So last night I was instructed to make "Hearty Chicken & Noodle Casserole," a concoction dreamed up by the fine folks at the Campbell's Soup compound, and conveniently magnetized to our refrigerator door so I could find it.

I gathered all the ingredients, combined them into the specified kind of dish, and tossed 'er into the oven. I'm confident that I even got the oven temperature and timing set correctly: 25 minutes at 400 degrees. No sweat. It even looked quite good as I got it out of the oven and put it on the table.

Mrs. Smoot came to the table and immediately looked at it with suspicion. Granted, she does this even if I'm cooking something that can't possibly be screwed up, like Froot Loops. But she immediately took her fork and stabbed a load of it without even spooning any onto her plate. Then she gave me The Look, which indicated that the next words out of her mouth weren't going to be complimentary.

"Did you cook the noodles first...?" she asked after crunching away at a bite. "Uhhhhhhhh..." was my witty response.

They should really put directions like that in bold print in the recipe, for those of us who prefer to just skim the instructions for the important stuff. But no, it's written in tiny little letters, easily overlooked by people with my particular stage of dementia.

Well, Mrs. Smoot came to the rescue, adding some other ingredients to the mix, and tossing it into the microwave for a bit. Tomorrow night, I'm thinkin' Froot Loops.

Missing a Mega Opportunity

Once again, I have failed to think of an idea soon enough to cash in on it. I attended some of the G-20 protests (for amusement purposes) last week, and kicked myself when I realized what an opportunity I could have had.

Next time Pittsburgh hosts all of the world's major leaders, I am going to seize the opportunity to make a bundle of money. How, you ask, in an inquisitive fashion? By selling really crappy megaphones to protesters, that's how.

I'll set up a kiosk somewhere in a protest-prone area, and I promise I'll sell out of them no matter what price tag I put on them. It didn't take me too long to realize that protesters are very passionate people, and they really want their voices to be heard. Granted, if you try to pin them down and figure out what, precisely, they want people to do in response to their protest, they will probably have no idea. But they love to be heard!

So many of the protesters I encountered really obviously just loved to hear their own voices at a very loud volume, and many of them were attempting to do this without the help of Hank's Mega Megaphone Sale.

To give you an example of what I mean about these folks... I was heading back to my car after watching a rally in Oakland, and a woman shouted at me as I walked by (without the aid of a megaphone): "Capitalist Media!!" Keep in mind that I was merely a guy with a camera, walking down the street. I had no media credentials dangling from my neck, no news organization logo of any sort. But since I was walking down the street with a camera, I'm obviously part of some evil media empire.

For kicks, I asked the woman what kind of media she would prefer, as opposed to "Capitalist Media." That stumped her pretty well. She was pretty surprised that I responded to her, and after stumbling around for a while she answered, "Uhh... a working class one!" Touche, I guess.

Look Out! They Have Hula Hoops!

Like a moth to the flame, I couldn't restrain myself from heading into Pittsburgh late last week to see some of the G-20 hoopla.

The summit itself is an event where 20 of the world's leaders get together and pretend to fix all of the problems on the planet, like the economy, global warming, terrorism, world peace, blah blah blah. In reality, it appears that they mainly stand around and have photos taken of themselves shaking hands with one another while wearing dark suits. But perhaps that's just my perception.

More importantly, the G-20 gave throngs of very credible people the opportunity to express their opinions on a very wide variety of global issues. I have no idea what most of those issues might be, but the city was certainly full of protesters representing a wide variety of issues as well as vastly varying hygiene practices.

I can't help but wonder where these people come from. They certainly didn't come from anywhere that features showers, that's for certain. Some of the protesters, particularly the anarchist ones, were remarkably stinky people. It was hard to tell what they were protesting against, but the women took a strong stance against the issue of armpit shaving, for one.

Some of the things I saw:

- A whole lot of monks, honked off about Burma.
- A group of protesters who made their point via the fine art of hoola-hooping.
- People insisting that China get out of Tibet. And soon!
- A guy riding a bike while wearing a polar bear head.
- John Oliver of The Daily Show joining some protesters in a whacky dance (see picture).
- and of course, a man wearing a Batman outfit with a sign that said "Watch Family Guy"

In all of this I realized that I missed out on a great money-making opportunity. I'll share that tomorrow.

My Next Invention

In the past, I have come up with a few great inventions, only to have them stolen by Japanese entrepreneurs. Apparently I was being too vocal about my ideas before I had a chance to get anything patented or copyrighted or whatever the heck I was supposed to do before these great thoughts were put to good use by someone else.

This time, I am going to share my next invention by putting it somewhere I can be sure that virtually no one will ever see it: my blog.

So anyway, here's the idea.

Back at the beginning of 2009, Pennsylvania adopted a new law that prohibits smoking in most public places. As a non-smoker, I have been quite happy about this development, since "no smoking areas" in restaurants have always been rather ridiculous. We always had a knack for being seated in "no smoking areas" that were carefully situated right beside the smoking area. So basically this meant that we weren't personally allowed to smoke, but we were more than welcome to inhale the fumes from the next table.

So nowadays people can't smoke at work, or in most restaurants, etc. Since they can't smoke anywhere else, they now smoke in their cars. Constantly. Every single other car I see on the road features an arm sticking out the window, attached to a cigarette. I'm barely exaggerating. And being a non-smoker, it actually irks me to have to smell the fumes from the people in the cars in front of me.

I have come up with a great solution for this problem, which will be helpful to me personally, as well as for the smokers, particularly as we're heading into the midst of colder weather very soon. The answer is: Hank's Super Duper Car Chimney (see artist rendering, above).

My idea is to install a chimney on cars so the smoke can be funneled through it and safely up into the atmosphere. Smokers will like it because they won't need to have their arms hanging out the window on freezing winter days. And the chimney will be high enough that the smoke won't seep into the air of surrounding vehicles.

Granted, no one driving a chimney-enhanced car will be able to drive under a bridge or through a tunnel ever again due to the new height of the vehicle, but that's a minor detail.

80s Movie Nights

I can honestly say that I have thoroughly enjoyed being a dad through every stage of Little Smoot's development. Every year of her young life has been a new, exciting experience, each one to be treasured in its own way. Even back when she was just this little crying, pooping, eating machine, she was a bundle of fun.

Now that she has turned 11, she is entering a whole new stage that I can tell I am going to really enjoy: she's now old enough to enjoy and appreciate a lot of the goofy 80s movies I grew up with.

If I were a movie critic, I'd be able to rate a movie with ease. I wouldn't even necessarily need to see the movie -- just the credits. If I don't see the name Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray or Leslie Neilson in the credits, I can probably say with some degree of authority that the movie stinks.

Over the past couple months I have been enlightening Little Smoot with some of my all-time favorites. Right now, we're working on the Back to the Future trilogy. I had a great sense of parental satisfaction after we finished watching the first movie and she immediately said, "Let's watch the second one!"

We giggled our way through The Three Amigos last week. Mrs. Smoot hates that movie (and most of my other 80s favorites), so that made it even more satisfying to see that I'm instilling a sense of good taste in Little Smoot.

Little Smoot's favorite movie so far has been Ghostbusters, though. She absolutely loved the part where the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man terrorizes the streets of New York. I dare say that she laughed more at that scene than anything she has viewed on Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Sponsorships Gone Wild

I was watching the Steelers/Bears game last weekend (let's not speak of the outcome), and I have to say I'm always amused by the way they try to integrate new advertisers into the game in some form or another.

There are all sorts of "official" products of the NFL... like the official beer, the official soft drink, the official truck, blah blah blah. But I couldn't help but be amused by the new sponsorship of Febreze. They created something called the "Febreze Fresh Start," which is a series of video clips of players who had "fresh starts" during the previous week of play.

That seemed like a bit of a stretch to me, as far as desperately trying to incorporate a product into the football vernacular. And it made me wonder what we're going to see next. Imagine:

- The Charmin "Wiped Out" Play of the Week
- The Kleenex brand "Officiating Call That Really Blows"
- The Hoover "Player Who Really Sucked"

And, of course:

- The Viagra "Stiff Competition" Award

I'm sure there will be plenty more like this.