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.

Dipstick on a RipStick

Little Smoot has been working hard again to make sure that I feel like a complete and total geezer.

All summer she has been bugging us to buy this thing called a RipStick. She got a taste of it at the home of an acquaintance earlier in the year, and she made it her mission to obtain one through whatever means necessary. We told her she could buy one if she saved her own money, a ploy that bought us several RipStick-free months of time since $70 is not something she can save up quickly.

Anyway, she finally bought one after her recent birthday windfall. A RipStick is much like a skateboard, except that it has only two wheels and you can jiggle your body back and forth in such a way to propel it.

Notice that I used the word "you" in the previous paragraph. "I" had much more trouble with this thing when Little Smoot gave me the opportunity to try it. We went to her school playground for a bit the other day, and she was getting the hang of it pretty well. I figured it couldn't be that hard, so I gave it a brief attempt.

I hopped onto this thing, and instantly decided that there were better things a 40-year-old person should be doing. And then it occurred to me that I'm now 41, not 40, so this thing should definitely be out of the question for a person of my chronological condition. When I got on it, all sense of balance went out the window, and I could tell that if I continued to attempt it, I'd better darned well know where my insurance card is.

Little Smoot is getting the hang of this thing fairly well, despite the fact that she did end up dripping with some degree of blood by the time we gave up. The worst thing is that I really, really hate it when young kids can do something -- anything -- that I can't do. So I know that while Little Smoot is in school, I'll undoubtedly be trying to figure this stupid thing out by practicing in the garage until I get the hang of it.

Hopefully there will be Internet access in the hospital so I can blog about it.

Institute for the Profoundly Gullible

My e-mail address has apparently landed in a database for really stupid people. I picture a building, somewhere in Nigeria, called the Institute for the Profoundly Gullible. Inside the building are a bunch of hard-working scam artists who concoct really stupid stories in an effort to swindle stupid people out of money.

My e-mail address seems to be at the top of their list. I'm guessing that someone tipped them off to the fact that I'm not amongst the most intellectual people in this particular hemisphere. Therefore I get tons and tons of these scam messages every single day.

Here's a summary of some of those messages from just the last 24 hours alone:

- MR. JOHN MIKE (they always capitalize their names for some reason, perhaps to indicate just how important they are) wants me to provide all of my personal information and DNA samples to him. Pffft. Snippet from his message: "You have to make sure you forward the above information to the Company to enable them commence arrangement towards delivering your box of money worth ($900.000 USD) immediately." Wooooo... a box of money! $900 is chump change compared to most of my offers, though.

-This one is more like it. $19 million... now we're talking! "I am Barrister Bin Dauwat, an attorney at law. A deceased client of mine who shares the same last name with you, died as result of a heart-related condition in March 12th 2008 leaving behind a deposit valued at $19 million dollars, his heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia."

- This one is just $850,000. I mop my shoes with that kind of cash. "This is to inform you that Your winning Price of Eight hundred and fifty thuosand usd.($850,000.00USD)has been forwarded to Western Union for immediate transfer to you as soon as you meet up with the demands of the transfer charge of $175." Transfer this, moron. Just take the $175 out of my $850,000, and send me the rest.

- Anyone who wants to use a cancer diagnosis as the basis of their scam should have a very toasty portion of Hell reserved in their name, in my opinion: "My name is Mrs. Maria Bejes I am a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have to charities through you. I will be going in for an operation, and I pray that I survive the operation. I have decided to Will/Donate the sumof 10,300,000.00 (Ten Million three hundred thousand Dollars) to charities through you for the good work of the Lord, and to help the motherless, less privileged and also for the assistance of the widows. I,m in a hospital where I have been undergoing treatment for oesophageal cancer I have since lost my ability to talk."

- I must have made a strong impact on this guy: "I wish to notify you that late Engr. Jurgen Krugger made you a beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Thirty Million, One Hundred Thousand Dollars (USD$30,100.000.00) to you in the Codicil and last testament to his WILL.This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you good."

If you'll excuse me, I have to go make some room for all of this cash I'm going to be rolling in. Wheeeee!