Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t write this scene in the movie Almost Famous but this blog may never have been without him saying the words he spoke just to me:
If only Philip Seymour Hoffman, as brilliant of an actor and man as he was, had heeded the advice of Frances McDormand’s character in the same movie:
Good night forever, sad man who played Lester Bangs. Don’t let those swill merchants rewrite you.
(GIF source: http://fockingchick.tumblr.com/.../im-always-home-im-uncool)
Last night’s 12.12.12 Mega-Concert of AARP-eligible Rockers raising money for Superstorm Sandy victims had slipped my mind. Instead, I voluntarily bore witness to middle school students performing holiday classics.
The string ensemble killed. Not in the showbiz sense of wowing the audience into a dropped-jaw state of awe but in the Biblical sense of “… and Yahtzblob slew Kincadia with jawbone of an ass then danced the tarantella through the bloody entrails.” Why more parents of public school violin players aren’t throwing themselves in front of commuter buses remains a testament to the high quality of our nation’s antidepressant supply.
Then there was the chorus of which Li’l Diva. The girl loves to sing. Just not what teachers want her to sing. If it’s not One Direction or Ke$ha or the Beibster, it ain’t worth expelling the breath. She faked her way through most of her four songs. She’s more than ready for next year’s scheduled bout of teenage angst.
Our city’s afterschool program holds a year-end event to celebrate the children, raise funds and give thanks for another 9 months without one of its supervisors being carted off in a straight jacket. This is good.
Unfortunately, there is also a “show.”
The kids in each elementary school’s program put on a skit. Some years the skits relate to a theme like cultural diversity, saving the environment or the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (we have lots of corporate financiers in these here parts). The subject doesn’t really matter because the show usually takes place in an auditorium as cavernous as Sarah Palin’s brain cavity. In addition, the auditorium features minimal on-stage sound amplification and an audience consisting of a horde of baby brothers and sisters screaming for Sippy Cups while their parents whisper loudly to one another, "What are they saying up there?”
This year’s show was just as inscrutable, especially the section featuring the Things. We believe it had something to do with fire prevention and MC Hammer.
The highlight of this incoherentness was our son, Thing 2, shaking his booty like his 9-year-old life depended on it. Let’s go to the videotape:
Apparently, the boy is born to boogie. While emptying his backpack one night, My Love and I found a “birthday book” his classmates had put together for him. These are just four of the comments:
Then there was the report card conference I had with his teacher. The boy is an excellent student, good classmate and “quite the dancer,” she said. “And he’s so serious about it.”
When asked about his passion for the disco floor, Thing 2 declined comment for this post. Instead, he thought he’d just show you:
(Sorry. YouTube won’t let me embed the video because it uses a licensed song, so go to http://youtu.be/HBpVmdtCjxA to view it.)
Sorry, I meant win The Hustler, the Paul Newman/Jackie Gleason classic about pool sharks (that’s billiards, not swimming predators).With gasoline prices nearing record highs and Friday night rush-hour traffic clogging all major arteries north, Thing 2 and I did what any other red-blooded, freedom-loving American father and son would do.
We hopped in the Minivan of Manliness and headed to our first-ever monster truck rally.
Thirty miles and 57 minutes later we reached (Insert Name for this Month) Bank Arena for the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam, "the world's premier monster truck series." This last part is important, I suppose, because you only want top of the line when it comes to overgrown pickups with wheels as big as restaurant Dumpsters crushing junker cars and spinning doughnuts that spray yards of dirt into the hooting and howling masses.
Those masses, as it turned out, were not dressed in the flannel or camouflage that several of my Tweeple had told me I would be required to don to gain entrance. (Didn’t even need to show proof of Skoal.) Instead, the crowd looked much like 9-year-old Thing 2 and myself -- families from the Gold Coast suburbs looking for a few hours of escape. (By the way, the fashion de rigueur proved to be earplugs or industrial-sized ear muffs to counter the roars of multiple 1,500-horsepower engines. Having already lost sufficient hearing from my teenage years of mowing neighborhood lawns with a Walkman on high, I went au natural.)
We settled into our $20 seats and steeped in an atmosphere of equal parts anticipation and methanol exhaust. Only a few weeks before we sat here for a Sound Tigers minor league hockey game but now, instead of ice, a pudding-thick dirt covered the arena floor. A 15-foot-high mound of it fashioned into a ramp formed the centerpiece and, given the 5-0 shellacking the Sound Tigers took that night we saw them, we could only hope the team's skates and sticks lay buried under it.
The evening started with a wheelie competition. Doesn't sound exciting, but your perspective changes when the second competitor - a truck fashioned to look like a crook horned bull called "El Toro Loco" (but pronounced in an Oprah-giving-away-cars voice as "El TOR-rooo LoooC-COOOOOO") - gets stuck sitting on its hind wheels atop two half-buried banana yellow Cadillacs.
Thing 2 burst into a belly laugh so big and full that I thought his recently consumed nacho cheese sauce would spurt from his nostrils. The sound reminded me of Snoopy's gut busting guffaws in the old "Peanuts" television specials. Kids don't make that sound while playing Wii or DS. Thank God! That would really disturb my beer enjoyment.
I came pretty close to echoing that laugh myself when the cherry picker trying to push El TOR-rooo LoooC-COOOOOO back onto its tires caused the truck to tip backward and land upside down. No one was hurt, though the truck ended up having to perform one horn down the rest of the night.
There were drag races among the trucks (my fave being a lobster-shaped one called "Crushstation"), races between teams of ATV's, and some pretty amazing motorcycle stunt jumps with back flips and trick stances. However, the main reason we came was to finally see in action our old friend Grave Digger, the red-headlighted black, purple and neon green mack daddy of monster trucks.
While this was our first rally, I had seen Grave Digger for years while driving past its home base on the Caratoke Highway in North Carolina en route to an annual trip to the Outer Banks. The past few years, our son had convinced us to stop there so he could tour "Digger's Dungeon," climb through the massive rigs and even take a $5 ride on a more humble, but still humungous vehicle.
(NOTE: I’ve never been allowed to ride the semi-monster truck. My Love always goes with the Things, I think, to prevent me from being tempted into a lifestyle she detests.)
Digger didn't disappoint. The last truck to perform in the night's freestyle competition, it snorted and jumped and spun around the arena, even seemingly defying physics and logic by leaping its 5-ton body off the massive center ramp, then landing with a rubbery bounce and dirt-spewing pirouette on its highly suspended frame to a standing ovation.
Well, at least one from this father and his son.
Since I never break from “Always Home” mode halfheartedly, the next few posts will feature Your Uncoolness out and about having fame, stardom and celebrity fall into his lap like a pole dancer with vertigo.
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The Indian casinos in Connecticut have a special name for My Love: “Doubles Down in Vain.” This notoriety comes with certain perks, which the tribes tease us with every month or so through bright and shiny postcards that arrive in our mailbox.
DRASTICLY DISCOUNTED HOTEL STAYS!
COMPLIMENTARY CONCERT TICKETS!
FREE $100 FOR BLACKJACK!
Everything to get her and her debit card to their gaming tables short of a police-escorted limousine ride and lap dance from Denzel Washington. (Psst – the limo wouldn’t be necessary if you promised her the lap dance.)
Luckily, she limits these benders to two or three times a year which, thanks to the freebies heaped upon us, allows us to turn into our incurring gambling debt into educational family trips.
“Hey, kids – look!” I’ll yell into the back seat with unbridled Clark Griswoldian enthusiasm as we roll up to the resort. “See that new hotel tower? It cost $18.3 million to build. How many consecutive hands of blackjack, at $50 a hand with $2 tips given to the dealer every sixth hand, did your Mom lose to pay for that new tower?”
On one of these visits a few weekends back, we dropped the Things off at the all-night kids’ arcade (where, you should know, they don’t take kindly to hypothetical questions about what happens if you lose the cash you set aside for their child care fees to a tightwad Deuces Wild video poker machine) and we headed for our ritual last meal before she hit the tables and I hit the bar to try to break my record for “free” Newcastle Brown Ales downed while noodling through $20 worth of quarter Jacks or Better.
The antipasto had come and gone when three couples work their way into the corner booth diagonal from us. Two of the guys, who look like they had just spruced up after an afternoon of security duty at the local meth lab, clear a path for a woman with thick dark hair, towering stilettos and a short tight black dress that gave anyone seated nearby the chance search for yeast infections.
A few minutes pass and a young couple approaches the booth. He’s holding a point-and-shoot camera. The two Hell’s Angels poster boys climb out of their seats and Long Tan Woman in a Black Washcloth poses, hand on hip, for photos with the couple, together and separately.
My viewing of reality TV is limited, but I am regularly sucked into that celeb gossip fest Extra because it follows Katie Couric’s nightly ritual of failing to profess her deepest, darkest desire to grab a certain at-home dad by the love handles and ride him hard and put him away wet. This led me to guess aloud to My Love that the woman is one of the Real Housewives because:
My dormant investigative journalism gene kicks in. I knock over my chair, very stealthily, bump into a few tables and cruise around the restaurant to find the couple who had their photo snapped with the woman.
“That’s Danielle from Real Housewives of New Jersey,” says the woman.
Confir-MA-tion!
"Which one is she?" I ask.
"She's the crazy one," says the guy, looking into the camera’s display screen. “My God, she’s hooooooooooot!”
(I didn’t have a camera on me, but she looked pretty much as she does in this photo, but with longer, darker hair.) (And sluttier couture.)
Hmm. My BlogHer bedmate, TwoBusy, writes about that show for an entertainment blog. I wonder if she’s the one he has a special nickname for.
I return to the table, grab My Love’s iPhone and fire up ye olde Twitter app.
Later that evening, I had my answer.
Will this real househusband meet up with this “real” Housewife?
If so, will he slip and call her PROSTITUTIONWHORE!?
If so, would she hold it against him (I hope not – I’m behind on my shots)?
Tune in later …
As parents, we treasure our children’s firsts. Their first word, their first step, their first day of school so we finally have six blessed hours without Disney, tea parties and requests to be wiped.
It’s some of the repeats we can do without.
Like band concerts.
And dance recitals.
And school plays.
My Love and I have attended four of these in the last month. That’s the average I expect for this time of the year for the next, oh, decade or so. Ten. More. Years.
On the plus side, enduring a couple hours at these events immediately improves my seasonal allergies and sinus pain. Children’s performances are like Benadryl injected directly into one’s artistic senses. It leaves you dull and drowsy but ultimately feeling better about your own limited ability to perform. Warning: Do not operate heavy machinery or karaoke machines while under the influence of this drug.
Listen, I think the Things are the most gifted and talented children in all of Uncool Nation. And I’m sure you think your kids have skills of near equal awesomeness. I bet they make you swell up with pride when they saw out “Mary Had a Little Lamb” like a little Itzhak Perlmans or they bust a move sweeter than Cheryl Burke no matter how inappropriate the song choice is for their age or gender:
(SIDENOTE: I might need to start a regular feature dedicated to performances of or to “My Sharona” by The Knack made in questionable taste.)
But, between you and me, everyone else’s kids … on the whole … they stink.
Ah, you agree.
Yet we endure. We sit through 4th graders butchering Miles Davis, 6-year-olds forgetting the words to “I’m a Little Teapot," and even worse. We do it because we know our children need our support. We sit there giving wickedly sharp elbow jabs to our spouses so they will stop playing with their cool new iPhones and force their eyes upon the stage because we remember our own parents having to do the same.
Yes, we remember how well our parents taught us.
Taught us about guilt, suffering and enduring pain.
Well played, you sneaky old evil geniuses, you. Well frickin’ played.
This is an expanded, unexpurgated version of my biweekly column for the local newspaper. As a loyal AHAU reader you get bonus links, video, photos and other bits from the cutting room floor. Enjoy!
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Since NBC Universal moved the folks who put the sin in syndicated talk show (that would be Jerry! Maury! and That Bald Guy Who Used to Work for Jerry!) to my hometown, many here have predicted the Cultural Apocalypse.
Of course, it hasn’t happened.
But when in Rome, never pass up a trip through a vomitorium. That's why last week I attended a taping of The Jerry Springer Show.
If nothing else, Jerry-atrics are putting dollars into the city's parking fund. A dozen cars were queued up trying to enter the theater lot when I arrived. Signs by the meters advise those attending the freak show to pay the all-day $5 fee rather than try to save a buck using the hourly rate. Apparently, the show's taping time is never as well choreographed as its fights.
This was the first of many courtesies I encountered that morning. The staff and security people couldn't have been nicer, happier or more helpful throughout the morning even when they made me go through the metal detector. Twice.
Topping my list was the woman checking in ticketholders. She chatted spiritedly with me about skiing after she noticed an old lift ticket on my jacket. Of course, this may have been planned to distract me from reading the liability waiver I had to sign. Sarah, my partner-in-crime for the morning who actually read the waiver, said my signing had forfeited my right to, among other things, sue in the event my face impeded the trajectory of an amputee Nazi dwarf tossed by the transgendered alien he cheated on.
"Oh, no," insisted peppy ticket lady when I checked with her later. "It was just your standard generic waiver. Trust me."
“Dress your best. You’re going to be on TV!” exclaims the show’s Web site. So I wore a sweater in the recommended “solid, jewel toned” shade of Buckets o’ Blood red.
While the crew set things up for the taping, we had our appetites whetted with videos of classics from the show's two decades on the air. These included legendary episodes such as "Kung-Fu Hillbilly," "Stripper Wars" and "Pimps, Hos and That's Just Our Studio Audience." The audiovisual high it offered made me crave live catfights and non-pixelated nudity even more than usual.
First, Jerry came out and did a few minutes of self-depreciating standup. Our ringmaster was in on the joke and he wanted us to know we should be, too. For example, in commenting on the thousands and thousands of people who had appeared on his stage over the years, he deadpanned: "That's an awful lot of perverts."
After Todd, the stage manager, instructed us in the art of hooting, booing and performing fist-pumping choruses of "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" on cue, the action began. Within a few minutes the day's first guests, who audience members affectionately referred to in a later segment as "crack whore" and "bitch," were going at it.
However, before their dresses rode up or slid down (all depends on fashion style and body type) and their wigs flew like wounded synthetic birds, they each kicked off their shoe. This appears to be a mandatory requirement for female pugilists on Springer or else all the women at our taping had prepped by watching hockey fight highlights and noting the players always drop their gloves before trying to pummel an opponent. If I didn’t think Todd would toss me out for breaking ranks, I would have started chanting, "Potvin sucks!"
As the taping wore on, it was apparent each new segment's triangle of spurned lovers was comprised of people with progressively less talent for acting or even keeping a straight face. However, that didn't matter to those of us in the audience who ate up the ham Uncle Jerry had set before us. The fact Springer tickets are free is just the honey glaze that makes it all slide down a bit easier.
When all was done, we headed out but not before I convinced Sarah to pose with one of the very smiley, very beefy security guys. Note in the photo that his bicep is roughly the same size as her noggin.
As I made my way out to the parking lot, I passed a few other audience members debating whether what they witnessed was real or not. Word from some veteran audience members is that each story has some truth to it, but things are greatly exaggerated and relentlessly rehearsed. Does it really matter?
Then I passed and high-fived the guy who proudly won some coveted “Jerry beads” during the audience participation segment by dropping his pants. Todd had encouraged us to be as funny as we could (“Jokes! I want some good yucks!” he said) and this guy obviously could not survive by wits alone.
When I reached the Minivan of Manliness, I turned and I looked at the back of St. John’s, one of the oldest Catholic churches in the region and also the immediate neighbor to the Springer theater.
And I laughed.
If the pastor played his cards right, his business could be just as big as Jerry’s. They share the same demographics, don’t they? Sinners and those who enable them. Hey, that’d be a good episode title!
Final thought: Is this art? No. But it doesn’t claim to be either. Yet Springer, the TV show, did beget the British stage success Jerry Springer: The Opera. Now if the local arts council booked that into our town, they would really put the sin in synergy.
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Just prior to the show’s taping, we got to be part of an extra segment they will use on a future DVD or specials. A band called Wavy Space that Springer people had spotted on YouTube performed this song called, duh, “Springer.”
The key difference between what we saw live and this YouTube performance? At our taping, the bass player wore a Catholic schoolgirl outfit. Well, that’s not explicitly banned by the show’s dress code.
Also during our performance the guitarist’s instrument got unplugged at one point. Didn’t matter. Everything on Springer is done in a single take – except audience questions which sometimes were done two or three times to capture the best delivery -- then patched, overdubbed and pasted by little men with horns and pitchforks.
It’s a decent song they did, but it’s no Weird Al:
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Final final thought:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode as much as I did. I’ll be taking next week off for a cause near and dear to me, the annual Cure JM Foundation National Fundraiser and Education Forum. We have a record 200+ people attending this year, so My Love – the foundation’s chairman -- will have me working double OT for her all week. I hope you will consider supporting my family’s efforts by donating through out FirstGiving page even if its with only smallest amount of spare change.
In my absence, I’ll be running a special series titled “When ‘Always Home’ Leaves Home” that features three awesome bloggers discussing there their, uh … memorable? … meetings with me on those rare occasions in which I ventured beyond my Colonial-home comfort zone.
Please be as generous to them, through your attention and comments, as they have been to me with their time and talent.
As Jerry Springer would say: Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.
BONUS LIST:
Past NBC Flops that Could Have Done Better than “The Jay Leno Show”
Manimal (1983) – Man turns into an animal with help of B-roll shot at zoo and cheesy makeup to fight lame crime of the week. It’s no The Incredible Hulk.
Pink Lady and Jeff (1980) – Jeff Altman! Hugh Hefner! Greg Evigan and The Bear! (Too bad Cheap Trick didn’t appear in this clip.) And two Japanese ladies in bikinis who butchered disco songs in English every week! I believe I saw this variety show back in first run, but I have an excuse – I was in the throes of puberty.
My Mother the Car (1965-66): I always see this listed as one of the worst of all-time. After I watched an episode on Hulu, it’s kinda hard to disagree.
These lists are brought to by the letters ABDPBT.
