When I was in middle school, all the 7th graders were required to take a semester-long class called Current Life Issues. What is Current Life Issues? It's a bogus name, brilliantly conceived. Sounding vaguely interesting, but no so much that one, as a parent, might be compelled to dig into its description in the course catalog or the syllabus on the school's website, it hides in plain sight. It is pitch-perfect when you consider that the name of the class was concocted to disguise the school's Sex Ed program from the disapproving eyes of the handful of conservative families who were too cheap or too poor to do what every other like-minded family in our town had already done: put their kids in parochial school.

The substance of Current Life Issues, as best I remember, broke down something like this:

Week 1: Alcohol

Week 2: Drugs

Week 3: Sex

Week 4-15: CONSEQUENCES

The CONSEQUENCES phase had two parts. The first was a fear-mongering recitation of the ways in which any combination of the topics from Weeks 1-3 could ruin your life. Alcohol and Drugs? Death by DUI. Drugs and Sex? Death by AIDS. Alcohol and Sex? Rape. Alcohol and Drugs and Sex? Death by Rape. If you were one of the lucky few to dabble in one or the other and escape your dance with death, you graduated to the second part and had a baby.

The last half of the semester was consumed by babies. Five pound babies. Made of flour. You were put into pairs with a member of the opposite sex, given a 5lb bag of flour, assigned a gender for your baby, and told that you had to "dress" and name him or her in a fashion appropriate to their gender. One or both of you were required to have your flour baby with you AT ALL TIMES.

Like any group project at any middle school, the burden each person in the group carried was inversely proportional to their popularity. Couples whose individual popularity sat at relative equilibrium shared the responsibility equally. Or neglected it equally. For pairs in significant popularity imbalance, one person did the majority of the work. Being Oakland in the late 80s/early 90s, this meant lots of Chinese flour babies named after New Kids on the Block and members of various Bay Area sports teams.

My baby mama and I were in the same general popularity strata, so we put in roughly the same amount of minimal effort to get a good grade. The only aspect of the project we spent a lot of time on was naming our baby girl. My partner wanted to name our baby 'Kelly' because she LOVED that new show Beverly Hills 90210 and her last name was Taylor. I strenuously objected on two grounds: 1) I'll be goddamned if any child of mine gets named after some girly soap-drama, and 2) I'll be goddamned if any child of mine doesn't have my last name. I told her to pick another name. She chose Brenda. I told her to stop being a retard and she told me to pick a better name then! I chose Moonbeam.

Moonbeam!? Let me explain. Right around this time, I woke up to the world around me. World events, irony, politics, sarcasm. They came alive to me around the time I had to take this class. I've been called an "old soul" my whole life, so I want to ascribe this early awakening to that aspect of my personality. In reality, though, I think it had more to do with cable television and that Cher video on the deck of an aircraft carrier where she straddles a 105-mm gun in a fishnet body suit. It's the only explanation I can come up with for why I was so amused by the fact that our fake baby was a "flour child."

Get it, FLOUR child! Yeah, I know, gayer than a George Michael concert. But when you're 12 and your adolescent brain has made that connection, there's not a chance in hell you're going to let go of it. Hence, Moonbeam.

My partner wanted no part of it. All her arguments were valid. It was "stupid." We would get "made fun of." No one would "get what the hell I was talking about." So we compromised and, after much negotiation, became the proud fake-parents of little Moonfrye Parker Taylor. She got the surname, I got Moonfrye. It was totally worth it, too. Who doesn't love Punky Brewster?

Moonfrye Parker Taylor, b. October 1990, d. December 1990

Of course no one ever learned anything from the Flour Baby assignment. Who in their right mind is going to internalize the lessons of alcohol-soaked unprotected sex when they come in the guise of a 5lb bag of baking goods? Babies have immediate needs. They emote. They respond to negative and positive energy. Unlike their "all-purpose" substitutes, babies do not thrive at the bottom of a backpack, or stuffed haphazardly into a locker. When you bring your baby home for the first time, you are supposed to bond with it, not resist the urge to toss it up in the air and hit it with an aluminum baseball bat.

It's no wonder so many people--no matter how otherwise mature they seem in the rest of their lives--have children before "they are ready." They've done nothing to prepare for it. I would have included myself in that group if I'd had a kid before yesterday, when my mother finally got home from the hospital.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Growing up, I was just smart enough to be right most of the time, and just dumb enough to think I knew everything. I knew what I loved, and I knew what I hated. I knew what was good, and I knew what was bad. It wasn't until college, when I was exposed to a myriad new ideas, perspectives, and cultures, that my mind began to truly expand and I started questioning my firmly entrenched beliefs. Maybe Back to the Future isn't the best comedy of the 80s. Even if you did watch it every other weekend with your dad. Maybe raw tomato isn't so bad. You slap some buffalo mozzarella and basil on it, and then hit it with some olive oil, salt n pepper, and you've got yourself a damn fine snack.

That's the goal of higher education, isn't it? To expose young people with a thirst for knowledge and experience to people and places and things they would never ordinarily confront? We all want our lives to look something like this I think

and college is what's supposed to propel us on that trajectory through our twenties until we achieve another level of wisdom in our thirties, upon having children before we are ready and getting married because there is nowhere else to take a relationship after 5 years once you've moved in together and bought a dog and a car together.

I was very much on that path until I settled into a well-paying paralegal job right out of college that required long hours and very little critical thinking. My first assignment was to put 75,000 printed out emails in chronological order and remove the duplicates. It took four months and a piece of my spirit. A year later, I was charged with assembling the Plaintiffs and Defendants trial exhibits from a previous case into binders for review. Each side had 2500 exhibits. By this time I'd earned enough leeway in my position to make certain executive decisions. It was up to me, and me alone, to determine which set would go in blue binders and which set would go in black binders. The Defendants exhibits would go in the black binders, I decided, because the Defendants were bad and black is the bad guy color. This project took two months to complete and culminated in a knockdown, drag out scream fest in my manager's office during my review when she told me the main reason I wasn't getting a full raise was because the exhibit binder project took longer than it should have. Shit like this went on for close to four years.

You'd think at some point I might start to question my intelligence, my competence. Start questioning the wisdom of my post-college decision making. You'd be wrong. I reverted back to my pre-college ways. I grew more intractable with subjective issues of good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, smart vs. dumb. Because I'd graduated in four years from a good school and I was smarter than most everyone I worked with, I didn't just think I knew everything...I KNEW I knew everything. The fact that my intellect was stagnating and my intellectual curiosity had all but disappeared never dawned on me. Until I realized what the hell I was doing about a year and a half before I quit and went to law school, my trajectory looked like the S&P 500 after Black Monday.

That was five years ago. I've spent much of the intervening time on a personal intellectual reclamation project. Questioning assumptions. Trying things I'd once hated. Watching, listening, and reading things I'd previously refused to watch, hear, or read. I've been remarkably successful, I think. My head is screwed on pretty straight for a guy who still cannot shake the innate sense of awesomeness that roils around inside him. One of the only things that has not changed since those early days, however, is my absolute disgust with olives, pickles, and Brussels sprouts. Although, now that I think about it, even that's not true.

Continue reading "That Sprout's Not from Brussels"

In case you have been living under a rock for the past year or you have grown tired of NBC jerking you around with its endless primetime scheduling changes, there is this show called "Friday Night Lights." It's based on the book and the film of the same name and stars a few of the actors from the film, itself. It is a brilliantly written, expertly filmed, thoughtfully acted, hour-long drama about a small, fictional Texas town named Dillon where they live and breathe Dillon Panthers high school football. The story follows the players, the coach, the teachers, the boosters, and the students as the arcs of their lives weave in and out of each other in a carefully and subtly crafted tapestry of power and emotion. It also has three hot girls, a MILF, and a healthy dose of great football action led by an aww-shucks quarterback, a shit-talking running back, and a beer-chugging fullback.

Green-lighting a second season for a fantastic show like this seems like a no-brainer to you and me, but it was not such an easy call for NBC. The show suffers from chronically low ratings, thanks to a phenomenon in network television I like to call "People are Fucking Stupid." Some, like executive producer Jason Katims, blame the corporate marketing strategy as well. Regardless, the producers and the network are doing whatever they can to ensure that FNL succeeds this fall.

After two-stepping across NBC's primetime lineup last year, the show's eagerly awaited second season is scheduled to air in the more drama-friendly 9pm time slot on Friday nights (imagine that!). In addition, the DVD set of the first season is set for release in August, a month before it's second season premiere. The support and promotion efforts do not stop there, however. Producers are committed to leaving no creative stone unturned, no matter how odious the creature they may find underneath. And therein lies the rub.

TV Guide is reporting that the producers of Friday Night Lights are entertaining the idea of casting Rosie O'Donnell in a small, potentially recurring role in the upcoming season. From the article:

FNL execs are wooing the ex-View lightning rod to appear in an episode this fall. "Rosie's a big fan of Friday Night Lights, as we know from The View, and we heard she was interested in being on the show," executive producer Jason Katims tells me. "Usually we don't do any stunt casting, but we have a character coming up -- six or seven episodes into the new season -- of a female soccer coach who is really angry about all of the school's resources going to football. It's a really funny character and I think she'd be perfect for it.

"There's a scene where she comes in to see Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and slams a dead soccer ball on his desk and basically says, 'You're the guy who gets everything!'" Katims continues. "It's a really fun scene, and it's the one time I'm thinking of stunt casting."

Rosie Motherfucking O'Donnell.

That's quite the way for a show to jump the shark. The big fat, sweaty shark. Have Bissinger, Berg & Co. shot their entire creative load in one season? I suppose it's possible. American literary history is littered with authors who only had one great book in them. There's no reason to believe some television writers can't suffer a similar fate. Maybe FNL was destined for a single season run. Sure there are still several unresolved story lines, but the Dillon Panthers did win the Texas State High School Football Championship in the season finale. Maybe "stunt-casting" a lesbian water buffalo is a good way to generate viewership in a show that has already peaked. Of course, I don't think that's the case at all. Friday Night Lights boasts some of the best writers in network television, with the capacity to develop intriguing story lines for several seasons to come.

That said, how on Earth does anyone with artistic integrity (or a soul) even consider this move? You have a critically acclaimed show with a large ensemble cast that has, within a single season, grown into something greater than the sum of its parts. And in the service of better ratings for a network that has no business canceling a show right now, you want to add the ignorant, divisive, loud-mouthed star of "Another Stakeout"? That's like a chef spending a year working out his cassoulet recipe and then, once he's perfected it, deciding to add a turd because the restaurant hasn't been as busy as he'd like and he knows that a turd will get people's attention. I don't know about you, but I prefer my cassoulet the old fashioned way: turd-free.

In that vein, I hereby begin my campaign to KEEP ROSIE O'DONNELL OFF "FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS". Everyone who cares about the quality of television and the fate of its greatest network show should sign THIS ONLINE PETITION to do their part. This is as much about Friday Night Lights as it is about any other great show. Would you want that abrasive sea monster sliming her way across your favorite show?

I didn't think so.

SIGN THIS ONLINE PETITION and forward it along to your friends who aren't fucking stupid.

I went to a framing store in Arlington with The Girlfriend on Sunday. She wanted to get a couple of artist-signed concert posters framed to hang in the house. She bought them online a couple weeks ago when I was out in L.A. and called me from D.C. excited about her purchase. I forget what one of them was, but the other was a Death Cab for Cutie poster. I responded with silence. "I know what you're thinking," she said. I don't think you do. "But they make great music. They're just one of those bands that suffer from having an awful name." That was not what I was thinking. When I think of Death Cab for Cutie, I think about narrow, rectangular glasses and ugly, undersized wool sweaters worn in inappropriate places (public).

When we got to the frame store and she unfurled the poster so the framer could take its measurements, I was pleasantly surprised. The artwork was sleek and cool, and the concert the poster was from took place at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. That alone gets it a pass, I suppose. What does not get a pass is how fucking expensive framing is. I honestly had no idea. Somewhere in my mother's basement I still have a couple dozen movie and concert posters from college rolled together with their corners torn to shreds by scotch tape and thumbtacks. Hell, the last thing I tried to frame was my sister when she was 11, for flinging plastic bags of dog shit onto our neighbor's roof (there's no way an 11 year-old girl has that kind of arm).

Admittedly, the frames The Girlfriend selected were awesome. One beveled black. One almost scalloped and rustic gold in color. No matting, just frames. And it cost more than Robert McNamara paid for his entire education at Berkeley in the late '30s. Is that a fair comparison? Probably not. I don't really care. The point is, it wasn't cheap. Once The Girlfriend finished signing away her pound of flesh to Shylock the Framer, we stepped out into the bright, breezy spring afternoon and decided on The Cheesecake Factory as a good enough place to stop for a late lunch.

Continue reading "Bang-Bang Chicken and Shrimp"

When Marlin Jackson intercepted Tom Brady at the Indianapolis 35 yard line a little less than two weeks ago, he secured for his team and his coach a special place in history. As he dropped to the turf and was touched down after a short, six yard scamper, Jackson ensured that Super Bowl XLI would be coached, for the first time in the history of the National Football League, by two bald men.

Think about that for a minute.

It wasn't long ago that bald men could barely get in the door simply to interview for vacant head coaching positions. The conspicuous lack of bald head coaches on NFL sidelines has irked smooth-pated players and assistant coaches for years. It came to a head, finally, in 1997 when the San Francisco 49ers, led by an abundantly coiffed Carmen Policy, hired a young, similarly coiffed college coach by the name of Steve Mariucci; passing over, much to the dismay of players and fans, the team's legendary bald offensive line coach, Bobb McKittrick.

Subsequently, McKittrick fell ill with an aggressive form of bile duct cancer that killed him a mere three years later. Many close to both McKittrick and the 49ers front office blame the spread of the cancer on the effect Policy's snub had on McKittrick. Put plainly, it broke his spirit. When reached for a response, Policy said "Who are you? How did you get in my house?" McKittrick was unavailable for comment..

The ensuing furor in 2000 reached such a pitch that the league's owners, at the urging of Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, hastily passed the Jack Kent Cooke Rule whereby teams are mandated to interview at least one bald person for each available head coaching slot.

Of course the rule came under immediately scrutiny from traditionalists and those in football's hirsute, old boys club who felt they were being railroaded into offering employment to potentially less qualified applicants. If you can't hold your hairline, the thinking went, how can you be expected to hold your O-Line? Ridiculous on their surface, these criticisms gained traction with the hiring and firing of Mike Tice by the Minnesota Vikings. It was a setback that nearly cost Lovie Smith his opportunity to coach the Chicago Bears.

Yet here we stand. February 1, 2007. The Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears are in the Super Bowl. And they are being led into battle in front of a global audience for professional football's most sought after prize by two bald men.

Continue reading "Super Bald"

There are any number of reasons to enjoy Taco Bell's new Grilled Stuft Burrito ad campaign featuring a busty and sun-dressed Carmen Electra. There is its luscious, creamy, cheesy, meaty goodness. And, of course, the Grilled Stuft Burrito itself.

And then there is the moment six seconds into this clip that should remind anyone familiar with the wonders of internet porn of a popular fetish called a creampie.

For those of you keeping score at home, including The Girlfriend, I had no idea what a creampie was until a friend of mine told me about it. You can ask him if you want. His name is Joe and he lives in Canada. But he doesn't have a phone, so don't try to call him.

Go ahead, run for the border...and then watch it ooze back toward you

Continue reading "Taco Bell Cream Pie"

In honor of the close of the college football season tonight, I felt it appropriate to post a couple of videos taken by a friend of mine while we were tailgating in Knoxville way back in September for the first game of the year between the Tennessee Volunteers and the California Golden Bears.

To preface, I have a number of friends who were born and raised in various places throughout The South. A few of them have told me, only partly tongue-in-cheek, that in some spots deep in the heart of the Confederacy, kids are still taught that Jews are born with tails and horns. I never took them seriously until I witnessed for myself what transpires in these two videos.

Warning: the audio isn't synched perfectly, and it isn't 100% SFW, but it's still ridiculously funny.

Continue reading "Ode to the College Football Season"