Some days, when the world is like a sappy Hallmark card, you're led by your heart. Other days present intellectual challenges and your brain leads the way. Of course there are also times when passion rules and the day's events are dictated by the naughty bits.

Sometimes, however, on the most insidious of days, your nose steps up to the plate and demands to be the Alpha Organ. That was my weekend. I spent the last few days battling my nose and it pretty much won. Consequently, my nose, the big obnoxious beak, gets to write today's blog post. So, "I Am Prepared to Give Up at Any Time" cautiously presents its first guest host, my big nose, offering its version of our weekend. Nose, you're up.

Beak? Big obnoxious beak?? That's real fucking nice, Mike. I get one moment in the limelight and that's my introduction. Shithead.

So, first off, I know Mike has that pansy-ass rule that he won't swear in this blog, but I have no such goddamn fucking rule. Did you catch that bit in the beginning where he referred to his dick as "naughty bits"? That's fucking embarrassing. Send the kids off to the market for cigarettes because this is no post for children. No menthols though. Kids always fucking come back with menthols. Christ, I hate kids.

Anyways, this story begins last weekend when Mike (which, by the way, is not even his real name. His real name is Melvin. "Mike" is the coolest pen name he could come up with. Fucking pathetic.) went up to Tahoe. It was ball-chilling cold up there and Mike bundled up in his usual half-assed fashion. He put his dainty little feet in wool socks and booties. The hands got toasty mittens. The ears were snug under their fruity little cap, and Mouth took care of himself by clamping shut. I gotta say that I like Mouth. He is one tough sonofabitch.

So, that's it. Mike fucking stops there. Not even a thought about covering me. Me, the organ who leads the way whereever he goes, gets absolutely no defense against the nut-freezing snowy cold of Lake Tahoe. Not a nose-cozy or even a nostril warmer. Nothing.

I don't know if you've ever been to Lake Tahoe in winter, but the air is cold and dry. I HATE cold dry air. I know I look rugged on the outside, but on the inside I'm fucking moist and tender. Do you know happens when you expose moist and tender nose-flesh to gonad-shriveling arctic temperatures? You end up with dry and crackly nose flesh. Believe me when I tell you that noses don't like being dry and crackly. No, we goddamn do not.

Now, you may think that a nose doesn't have much power, but you'd be dead fucking wrong. We have a near arsenal of weapons at our disposal. Some pussy noses just go with sneezing, but they're fucking hacks. Anyone can sneeze. I prefer to orchestrate a symphony of annoyances, leading to a virtually apocalyptic crescendo of fluids and pain. Oh, goddamn, just talking about that gets me hot. On that note, if there are ladies out there in the blogosphere who have a thing for Semitic proboscii, well, you know where to find me. I have skills.

So, anyway, after we get back from Tahoe, I spring into action. I start off with some low-grade sniffles. Mike, the poor bastard, starts popping the vitamins and whining about feeling "a little under the weather." Awww, the poor baby. Christ, I haven't even started busting his goddamn balls and he's already whining.

Did you catch those blog posts last week where he complains about his Internet connection? Christ, has this man ever suffered anything real? Inky, I'm with you. Booooooooring! He's a fucking whiner.

After a few days of the sniffling and the nose-blowing, I took it to the next level. Operation Nose Bleed commenced on Friday. I waited until Mike blew his nose with his usual ferocity and then I turned on the juice. Mike already looks like a total fucking nerd, but if you add in the wads of bloody kleenex pressed anxiously to his face, he's a goddamn walking stereotype. It's funny stuff.

I let loose with the bloodworks a couple times that day. Not a ton of blood, but enough to make him paranoid about blowing his nose. You should have seen his timid little nose blows, all scared and shit. And his little heart would race with fear everytime he sneezed. He's a fucking wuss.

Meanwhile, I'm crafting these blood and snot masterpieces on each and every kleenex. Some are chunky with blood bits and others are merely tinged with orange. Some artists would feel limited with only two colors at their disposal, the dark red of the blood and the greenish-yellow of the snot, but with kleenex as my canvas, I'm cranking out mini Guernicas every couple of minutes.

Saturday was great. He went to go buy some new running shoes so I let loose with the blood right there in the store as soon as he laces up the new shoes. He's sitting there, in the middle of the shoe department, trying to look nonchalant about all the blood on his face and hands. Smooooooth. You ever seen someone try to clean up a bloody face with only one kleenex and no water? The store employees cut him a wide berth. Fucking classic, that was.

I cut him some slack on Saturday night. I turned up the snot flow, but held back on the blood. I let him play his little poker game (he lost $12.00) without bleeding on the cards or his friends. I mean, hey, I'm not a fucking monster, just a nose trying to make a point.

As soon as his friends left though, I turned the blood back on. There he is, trying to get ready for bed, and I put the fear of Nose right back in him. For the rest of the night, while he's tossing and turning in bed, he's worrying about me. He dabs at me, cautiously, and then scurries into the bathroom to see if the nose bleeds have started again. I love that shit. Noses never sleep, why should Mike?

He treats me with kid gloves all day on Sunday. He exclusively uses only the softest kleenex and presses them to my insides with a tenderness I didn't think he was capable of. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Anyways, just to show him who was boss, I went fucking Carrie on his ass that night. Torrential blood flow that would not quit for about 15 minutes. He kept trying to take away the kleenex, and then he'd peer at me all wide-eyed in the mirror. I'd wait for a sec, and then DRIP right down his fucking chin. Good times.

He's taken a new approach with me this morning. On the advice of one of his coworkers, he has swabbed me with Neosporine. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. On one hand, I fucking HATE having Q-tips jammed up me. On the other hand, it's pretty goddamn soothing. Maybe a truce is in order. I'm still meditating on it. Meanwhile, he's back at his desk, still moaning about being under the weather, while listlessly poking at his Instant Messenger, wearily searching for the runny/bloody nose smiley emoticon.

And there you fucking have it. That was Mike's weekend.

Peace fucking out.

One quick post before the weekend crashes down upon us.

A few months ago I wrote about how I was introducing my five year-old daughter to Looney Tunes in an effort to increase her cool quotient. I think the Looney Tunes are finally having the appropriate effect on her brain. Slowly but surely she is beginning to see the world as a series of battles between Wily E. Coyote and the Roadrunner.

As proof I submit this quote from my daughter, said upon throwing a snowball several feet in the air: "That snowball flew like a man being shot out of a cannon with his butt on fire!"

Chuck Jones and I are proud, my love.

Day Two of the Great DSL Outage. Oh, before I forget. Penispenispenispenispenispenispenis. Ok.

I've now spoken to the tech support people at SBC three times and I think I'm getting insights into how they debug these issues. At first, I was confused by a noise I heard in the background. It sounded like this:

ThwackThwackThwackThwackThwack... Thwack... Thwack...... Thwack......... Thwack............ Thwack............... Th...wack.

I heard it each time the SBC employee attempted to discern the source of my technical issue, but the answer was different every time. ThwackThwack, you need to reboot. ThwackThwack, there's a DSL outage in your area. ThwackThwack, your modem has hemorrhoids.

I eventually realized that this noise was some sort of spinning wheel, not unlike the one used in Wheel of Fortune. They'd spin this bastard and wherever it landed, that was their diagnosis. This totally explained their ever-changing explanations for my problem. ThwackThwack, you overloaded your modem with midget-donkey porn. Silly me. I should have asked earlier what the maximum allowed amount of midget-donkey porn was.

Eventually they sent an actual human being to my house. Although he was a pleasant and seemingly competent fellow, I will take blogerary license and portray him as some sort of numbskull.

So, this total imbecile stumbles into my house, muttering "Derrrrr! Derrrrrr!" and I show him to the scene of the crime. He turns the "Midget-Donkey Porn" knob up to 11, but that still doesn't fix the problem. He then plugs various devices into various orifices in my home, in some sort of debugging orgy, but the technician seems lost without his trusty decision-making wheel. He whimpers and rocks back and forth. To pacify him I hand him some dice, and I make the thwack-thwack noise while he rolls them. He looks blankly at the resulting snake-eyes and I urge him to call for backup.

A few phone calls later he discovers that about 2000 people in the area had their DSL turned off and somehow mine never got turned back on. Oh, those jokesters at SBC. The magic switch at imbecile headquarters was flipped and POOF! DSL has been restored.

Ahhh, sweet bountiful bits.

Penispenispenispenispenis

My internet connection has been out all day. This. has. been. horrible. All those bits, just out of reach. My penis has shrunk from the mere absence of penis-enlargement spam. Tragic, really.

I spent a while imagining what was going on in my favorite websites: Slashdot heralding the arrival of the IPod Mike, CNN.com reporting that Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush have fallen in love, and everyone abuzz over the new Angelina Jolie - Scarlett Johansson sex tape.

One of my friends describes living without the Internet as "camping". That's a pretty good metaphor. If I could replace my empty browser screen with a campfire, we'd be even closer. There's nothing quite like roasting marshmallows over an LCD monitor. Mmmmmm, raw.

I tried playing the game where you call tech support and they just suggest stupid crap until you eventually give up. Ok, I'll reboot. Yes, I'll turn my router off and on. Alright, I have now inserted the modem into my sphincter. I call this game Tech Support Twister. After I had placed my left foot on Blue and my right hand on Murderous Frustration, they finally informed me that there was a DSL outage in my area. I removed the modem from my ass and thanked them for their efficient service.

Then I tried using my dial-up service. Although it was technically possible for me to get my work done that way, it was hardly a convenient way to download porn. Those dial-up speeds are downright erection-losing.

Wow, a whole post on my DSL outage and nearly every single paragraph contained a mention of either my penis, my ass, or homosexual coupling. That's top-notch blogging.

I almost had another excellent conversation with a tele-marketer last night but I was foiled by my fun-hating wife. I was upstairs and my wife was downstairs (which sounds like a euphemism, but is not) when the phone rang. My wife picked up the phone a second before I did.

Wife: Hello?
Tele-marketer: Hello, I'm calling from Blahblah Research. May I speak to the youngest male in the residence of voting age?

(At this point I began to salivate while my mind raced for a good opening line.)

Wife: There are no males in this residence. (hangs up her line)

(Ouch! Am I not a voting-age male in this residence? If you impugn my masculinity, do I not whine? Man, that is cold.)

Telemarketer: May I speak to the youngest female in the residence of voting age?

(What luck! The telemarketer hadn't hung up. This was my shot. I frantically strategized and came up with....)

Me: (in my best operatic/comedic falsetto) Yyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeess?
Tele-marketer: (hangs up)

So close to greatness.

We have returned triumphantly from Lake Tahoe with collarbones intact.

My overall opinion of ski trips remains unchanged however. In order to really have fun on these things, you either need to be a regular at it, or you need to have invoked the correct incantation, complete with eye of newt and foreskin of programmer. Sadly, our family possessed none of those ingredients.

For the most part things went pretty well on the trip. Our car was in need of some service, so we scheduled the maintenance for this weekend and then we booked a rental for the drive to Tahoe. Good plan, eh? It's all pretty good, until the mechanic at the dealership tells me to leave my key in the car, and when I do, the car then MYSTERIOUSLY LOCKS ITSELF. Granted our car has some funky smarter-than-thou logic that tries to relock itself if it deems that you don't really want to drive it, but this wasn't one of those situations. It had merely decided, using its own poorly-developed automotive improvisational skills, that it needed to lock all the doors, deftly securing much of our weekend luggage in the car, safely out of my grasp.

I informed the mechanic what had occurred and said, "Good thing we're here at the dealership when this happened! You guys can get in there, right?" He looked at me like I had just asked him to deliver my wife's baby.

"No, sir. We'd have to break into the car and we don't have a slimjim. We have no way to get into your car. You brought a spare key, right?"

I looked at him like the obstetrician had just asked me to step in during my wife's cesarean. So, long annoying story made short and annoying, I drove the rental car back home to get our spare key, and 30 minutes later we were back in business. This, combined with some other stupid errands we had to run, caused us to be back at home 2 hours after originally departing for Tahoe. It was a bad omen.

However, despite the I-knew-we-should-never-have-planned-this-trip feeling welling up in my gut, traffic was stellar and we made it to Tahoe in good time. We had dinner with our friends and then snuggled into our condo, resting up for the big day of skiing that lay ahead of us.

Skiing, of course, didn't happen. When we got to the ski resort, at 10:30 the next morning, the lines for rental equipment were Disneyland-huge and they had no classes available for my daughter. Our parenting skills quickly kicked into overdrive, so I sulked while my wife constructed an alternate plan for us. Teamwork is key in a marriage.

We then hooked up with our friends, and spent the morning sledding, having snowball fights, and generally mimicking wholesome folks having wholesome fun. It was a clever ruse and it easily fooled the children. My daughter was thrilled to construct crappy snowballs and hurl them several feet towards my general vicinity. If she did actually manage to throw them more than a few feet, they always disintegrated in mid-air. Usually, however, they exploded at her feet. I did my best not to mock her throwing ability. I read that in Parenting magazine.

We made it through the rest of the weekend, hanging out with our friends, and keeping everyone's kids entertained. It went pretty well. So, today, my daughter and I went for a walk in our neighborhood during the late afternoon and encountered some acquaintances. My daughter bounded up to them and said, "Can I tell you a funny story about my weekend?" I wondered if she'd tell about the snowball fights, or about her dad dragging her sled through the snow, or about getting to straddle the state line, half in California and half in Nevada. I knew this was going to be a cute story, easily showing what a fine parent I was. We had filled the kid's damn weekend with a winter wonderland, and now we'd see what moment would be treasured always in her memory....

My daughter tugged at her pants and exclaimed, "Guess what?! I'm still wearing my underwear from last night! And, I still have my pajamas on under this shirt!"

I nervously laughed my best kids-say-the-darndest-things laugh, and assured the neighbor that my daughter was not wearing her pajamas to the park. I pulled up my daughter's shirt a tiny bit only to reveal her pajamas under her shirt. Doh! It all came rushing back to me: The sudden realization at 9:35 this morning that we were supposed to check out of our condo by 10:00am, and the flurry of packing and panicking that immediately followed that realization. Somewhere in that shuffle, hygiene was apparently compromised. Note that we never actually had a subscription to Parenting magazine. I only read that one copy that we got for free in the mail once.

My neighbors three-year old son attempted to rescue us from the awkward moment by blurting out, "Do you want to see MY underwear?" He immediately tugged off his pants, not really waiting for a reply, revealing his Spiderman briefs. I took this opportunity to make a hasty exit with my daughter, effectively cementing my reputation in the neighborhood as Worst Dad.

So, our weekend in the snow has been immortalized in my daughter's memory as the day her parents forgot to take off her pajamas. I'm so proud.

I hate ski trips.

I'm going to Lake Tahoe this weekend. I'm gonna be a snow bunny! Ok, maybe not a snow bunny, per se, maybe more like a snow warthog. I think that does a better job of conveying the grace that I possess on snow.

I never learned to ski as a kid. My family didn't really do that whole outdoorsy thing. A more typical vacation for our family would have been to drive frantically from "sightseeing destination" to "sightseeing destination". It was kind of a breadth instead depth approach to recreation. It's probably a blog entry for another day though.

So, I learned to ski as a clumsy college student instead of as a clumsy kid. I never got very good at skiing, but if you stuck me at the top of a hill, I'd eventually get down without shattering a femur or, say, snapping a collarbone.

Eventually my friends nagged me to learn how to snowboard. Snowboarding, for those of you who haven't tried it, is a combination of skiing (which I'm mediocre at), skateboarding (which I'm horrible at), and face-planting (which, apparently, I totally rule at). Consequently, I never developed much overall skill at snowboarding, but it was enjoyable.

On one memorable run at the end of a weekend, I was tired and was face-planting my way down the mountain on one final run, when I took my final fall of the day. When I tried to get up, I was surprised to note that my right arm didn't move so well. I'm not one of those guys who is really "in touch with their bodies", so I tried to shake it off and continue face-planting down the hill, but I could barely stand up, let alone ride a snowboard.

As it turns out, I had landed on my right shoulder and snapped my collarbone. The ski patrol guys took me down the hill on one of those sledding gurneys and we then made our way to a local urgent care facility to see a doctor.

I had never broken a bone before. Not a leg, or an arm, or a finger, or a toe, so I don't have a lot to compare this to, but I'll say this: If you only break one bone this year, make it your collarbone. Broken collarbones don't require a cast. If you work a deskjob, you can continue to work at it. AND, you get a big bottle of Vicodin with each broken collarbone. Vicodin won't make the pain go away, but you just don't care. Ahhhh, sweet Vicodin.

*drool*

Anyways, I haven't been skiing or snowboarding since then. It's not so much that I fear breaking another bone, but it just hasn't worked out, mostly because we have a kid now. Trips to Lake Tahoe were always lots of fun, but lots of effort too. There's all the gear, and the hours of driving, and the traffic. All that work made the trip BARELY worthwhile. Now that we have a kid, the effort outweighs the fun. The whole concept of a ski trip just smacks of effort. Man, I love that phrase. Really, it smacks of effort.

Smacks.

I feel the same way about camping. Camping used to be lots of work, followed by (lots + 1) of fun. Now that we have a child, it's more like (lots + 2) of work, thus no longer making the trip worthwhile.

I have, however, been talked into this trip, which is partially to celebrate a friend's birthday, and so it shall be. Tomorrow we depart for Lake Tahoe. I look forward to regaling this blog with tales of Vicodin gobbling and effort smacking.

I just had a very satisfying conversation with a telemarketer. This firm, like many others, chooses to have people who don't speak English well as their phone solicitors. The conversation went like this:

(For the purposes of privacy, my last name has been changed to "Hubbahubba")

Me: Hello.
TeleMarketer:
Me: Hello??
TeleMarketer: Hello. May I please speak to Mr. Hubbahubba?
Me: You are.
TM: Oh, great. How are you today?
Me: Annoyed.
TM: Oh, haha. I see your name is very interesting. Is it Asian?
Me: I don't see how that's relevant.
TM: ...Uh, maybe you don't understand. You see, I am Asian and I was wondering if your name was Asian.
Me: And I don't see how that's relevant.
TM: Oh, haha. Ok, blah blah blah blah free gift blah blah blah 5 star hotel blah blah Ok?
Me: What do you mean when you ask "ok"? Are you asking me if I understand what you've told me?
TM: Yes.
Me: Then the answer is yes.
TM: Good, blah blah blah, 90 minute presentation, blah blah blah Ok?
Me: Does that "ok" mean that you're asking me again if I understand what you told me?
TM: Yes.
Me: Then, yes.
TM: Great, blah blah blah blah So can you come into our office tomorrow?
Me: Oh, certainly not.
TM: Why not?
Me: Well, I'd rather have a root canal.
TM: What is a root canal?
Me: It's a very painful dental procedure.
TM: Um, well, how about Friday then?
Me: No, I'd rather have a root canal than come into your office.
TM: I don't understand what this root canal is.
Me: It's a horrible dental operation that is very painful. I'm trying to tell you that out of all of the things in the world that I could do, out of a rainbow of tortuous activities that I can conceive of, I'd rather have invasive dental surgery than endure a sales pitch in your office.
TM: So, you are not interested in our offer?
Me: Correct.
TM: Why did you tell me that you were interested then?
Me: I did not. I was very explicit as to what I agreed with.
TM: Well, how will you get to know our offer then?
Me: If you send me your free gifts in the mail, I will consider it to be a polite introduction to your offer.
TM: But, there is always a catch.
Me: Indeed.
TM: So, would you like to hear our offer.
Me: Root canal.
TM: Ok, thank you for your time, sir.
Me: You are so welcome.

Ahhhhh, so good. If you're interested, I've written about this topic before.

Is Wednesday too late to post a write-up about my weekend? I would have done it earlier, but all that writing about Jeff Stryker just wore me out. That man is exhausting! Also, my dog ate it.

Went for a good, but boring run on Saturday morning. Our running club met up at Lake Merced and we all ran as many laps as we could stand. Mentally, it's a wearying place to run. The course is boring and the laps around the lake end with a slight uphill. So, you run one of these 4.5 mile laps, and you're tired at the end, and you say to yourself "1". Then, you do it all over again and say "2". I ran 5 soul-sucking laps there once, but this last weekend I only had to run a merely mind-numbing 3.

Afterwards the kidlet spent the afternoon with her aunt. This allowed the wife and I to have some precious alone time. My wife was her usual insatiable self and demanded that we spend some time cuddled around the Scrabble board. I performed my husbandly duties admirably, suffering a mild loss.

Dragged the kid to the mall on Sunday, to buy her some new jammies and socks and such. We searched for a while for some not-too-warm pajamas and eventually found them at an obnoxious store called Limited Too, which appears to be training American girls for a future career in being hotel heiresses/internet sex stars. The jammies were cute though. My daughter, WHO IS FIVE YEARS OLD, wandered over to the large display of bras and stared at them longingly. I knew the next words out of her mouth were going to be troubling. She did not disappoint.

"Daddy? Are these real bras?" she asked.

I wasn't sure what the right answer was. Which answer would be mostly likely to end this conversation? "Yes. I mean no. Crap. Yes, those are real bras," I stammered.

"Daddy? May I please have a bra?" she asked politely.

"WHAT?! NO! WHAT? A BRA? Geez, bras are for women with breasts. You can have a bra when you have breasts."

She contemplated this for a moment. "Daddy? A couple of my friends at preschool used to wear pretend bras. Can I have one of these as a pretend bra?"

"No! These are real bras and you can have one when you have real breasts. Let's go find a toy store."

When we got home I told this story to my wife. Amazingly, she complimented my handling of the situation and admitted that she probably would have just bought the girl a bra.

Monday was Martin Luther King Day and I had the day off with my daughter. At one point we passed by our neighbors who were outside with their toddler. The boy was chatting up a storm and the father turned to me and said, "He talks nonstop!". "Oh, I have one of those too," I replied. I turned and looked my daughter. She smiled warmly, nodded, and pointed wordlessly to herself.

I grin everytime I think of that. I'm grinning now.

I haven't met many famous people in my life. I once chatted with ex-NFL running back Roger Craig in a marathon and I recently wrote about meeting game show legend, Ray Combs.

My most impressive celebrity meeting, however, was a famous movie star. Well, by "famous movie star", I mean "gay porn star", and by "meeting" I mean "being so close to his naked oiled-down body that his penis nearly dripped on me". Gather the grandkids around the browser, it's time to hear about the most horrifying birthday party I ever attended.

Around 6 years ago, a good friend of mine invited the wife and I to his birthday celebration. Let's call him Pablo. So, Pablo had planned himself quite a fiesta. First, dinner at an excellent little Spanish restaurant called Timos, then we'd all catch a new show in town called "Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time".

For those of you who don't watch much gay porn, Jeff Stryker is a gay porn superstar whose penis has spawned an entire line of dildos. You can see lovely semi-nude pictures of Jeffy here. Although Jeff has done straight porn, he became a super star in the glamorous world of gay porn.

Dang, is it a little warm in here?

Jeff, like many men with 10 inch penises, yearned for more satisfaction from his career than simple nonstop hot anal action could give him. He wanted to perform in live theater. Whereas most actors in this situation would pursue something along the lines of Hamlet or MacBeth, Jeff wisely chose to produce and star in a campy play about life in a men's prison. Who knows, had Dustin Hoffman been better endowed, perhaps he would have made similar career choices.

Pablo, having a taste for the perverse, decided that he and five of his closest friends should expand their cultural horizons and partake in this fine theater. And so that evening, the wife and I, another couple even less well-versed in gay porn, Pablo, and his gal, J, went to go view "Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time" at a local theater. Although we trusted that this was a reputable production, we sat near the back, just in case random fluids started flying. We noted that the audience was almost all male. Heterosexual couples were, by far, the minority.

The first half of the show was fairly uneventful, as far as gay-and-prison-themed theater goes. There were various jokes about dropping the soap in the shower and a healthy helping of single entendres. I'd have to say that if you were looking for one Jeff Stryker show to bring your grandfather to, this would have been the one. We sat in our seats at the intermission, only vaguely numbed by what we had seen. Our host, Pablo, however, announced that there was a rave that he was really interested in attending, so he and his date, J., abruptly departed for greener pastures.

Four of us remained, two devoutly heterosexual couples, waiting out the rest of this Jeff Stryker vehicle.

Things started to get a little raunchier in the second act. Most of this act centered on a show within a show. For some reason only truly understood by the play's authors, the inmates in the prison were going to put on a musical number. Before we knew it, the show's all-male stars had oiled themselves down and were singing and dancing on stage, completely nude. Jeff Stryker, being the main attraction, was the center of attention, and hammed it up by hopping down into the front row of the audience to mix it up a bit with the audience. He gyrated and wiggled his naughty bits all over the people who were lucky/unlucky enough to sit near the aisles in the front rows.

At this point in the show, I mentally patted myself on the back for sitting near the back of the theater. I feel somewhat uncomfortable in a strip club watching naked WOMEN. During my limited experiences in a strip club, I never quite knew where to stare when a naked stripper was dancing in front of me. Should I stare at their breasts or crotch, knowing that was one of my rare chances to see these normally shy creatures? Or should I look them in the eye and smile warmly so as to both express some appreciation and allow myself to pretend that this is a normal interaction? I once even felt awkward enough to make small talk (I'm the guy in a group who always rushes to fill pregnant pauses). I asked the topless gal what she thought about while doing her job. She shrugged her shoulders in mid-shimmy and said, "I don't know. Laundry."

Laundry??? How much advance thinking does laundry require? Man, either she wears super hard to wash thongs, or this a job that requires a lot of distraction.

Anyway, that's what I go through with female strippers. Consequently, I was quite relieved to avoid the dilemma with a gay male porn superstar.

Then, something horrible happened. Jeff Stryker, in all his naked oiliness, started to make his way up the aisle. He stopped at each row, like a exhibitionist ticket taker, shaking all 10 inches of his money maker at each person along the aisle. I assured myself that I was safe from this treatment. Not only were we near the back, but I wasn't even near the aisle. There were half a dozen, admittedly empty seats, between me and the aisle. "Hah!" I thought to my self, smug in my straightness.

Jeff, however, was relentless. Implacable, even. He continued up the aisle, inexorably thrusting his way closer to me. I started to panic a teeny bit. Background processes in my mind rushed to think up small talk topics with Jeff. Does he dryclean his costumes or would we have a shot at discussing his laundry?

Eventually he reached our aisle. I watched in horror as Jeff boogied and waggled his way over to me. There it was. Nearly a foot of sloppily-oiled penis flesh, flapping around, barely inches away from me. My brain froze. I had no idea where to stare. Is it rude to ignore the purple elephant in the room? Is it rude NOT to ignore it? WHERE IS JUDITH MARTIN WHEN YOU NEED HER?

I smiled my most jittery smile and looked all around, nervously. I did my best not to look at any one thing (PENIS!!!) in particular. Small droplets of oil were flying off his body while he danced in front of me. It was, one must admit, an awkward moment in the life of a straight man. Soon, 20 or 30 days later, Jeff backed up and went down another aisle.

I quickly perused my clothes, to see if any major oil splatters had occurred, then turned to my wife and friends, my mouth still plastered in its jittery smile. They had huge better-you-than-me grins on their faces.

After Jeff visited each of the rows in the theater the show ended soon thereafter. I sat in stunned silence for a few moments and then we gathered our things to leave. I was pleased to have this portion of my evening over. As we neared the door, however, I saw that my new nemesis, Jeff Stryker, had stationed himself near the exit and was greeting people as they left. He wore a loosely-closed robe and was shaking hands like a politician as his fans slowly made their way past him.

I wasn't really prepared to shake hands with the man. I mean, we had practically just had sex, wasn't that enough contact for one evening? I was still nursing my psyche. I mustered a smile, and mumbled a "thank you" as we got to the door. Jeff and I parted for the final time.

The next year I bought Pablo a Jeff Stryker dildo for his birthday. I felt bad that he never got to see the real thing.

I got nothing today. So, as the first in an ongoing series, I encourage you to read things that I have previously enjoyed. From the mind of Kilgore Trout, I present: Pointless Gluttony.

How do you break up with a woman that you've been with for nearly a decade?

How can I tell her that the superficial things that attracted me to her in the beginning just aren't working for me any more? I think I've grown in the last ten years and my needs have changed. I don't see that sort of growth in her.

What if I can see, practically taste, another attractive woman from here? I recognize that loyalty is an important quality, but at what point do you throw in the towel and pursue a new and more compatible love?

Okok, what if it's technically not a woman I'm talking about here, but rather a baseball team? Does your answer change?

I've been a San Francisco Giants fan for nearly as long as I've lived in this city. I never paid attention to baseball before that, so they are my one and only baseball love. Although it's been a pretty good stretch of success in the last decade (post-season aside), there have been some difficult moments. I recall my confusion and dismay when the ownership traded away Matt Williams, the heart of the team, for a couple of seemingly mediocre journeymen. When one of those "journeymen" turned into probable future Hall of Famer, Jeff Kent, I recognized that the Giants management simply knew more about baseball players than I did.

I'm not so sure that's still the case. This offseason they've made some amazingly bizarre moves, all seemingly in the pursuit of stocking a roster with really old players. General Manager Brian Sabean is determined, in a fetish-like manner, to get rid of any young exciting position players, and replace them with mediocre old players. What's up Sabes? You got a thing for neck wattle (sp?)?

Keep the cheap and ever-improving fireplug, Dustan Mohr? Nosireee! Instead, let's spend millions more on Moises Alou, who is most famous for admitting that he pees on his hands to toughen them up. Moises, who is 38 years old, had a good season last year, but once you subtract away the hitting advantage one gets at Wrigley field, his previous home field, he's a mediocre player.

Ok, maybe it was time to get rid of A.J. Pierzynski. Rumor has it that he was hated by his teammates, and I was weary of watching him leisurely jog down to first base, hitting into double play after double play. His seemingly impressive batting average of about .300 was pretty empty, nearly devoid of walks and extra-base hits. If you get rid of him, however, you either pay a premium for a top catcher, or you let our 2nd string catcher, Yorvit Torrealba, get a chance. Yorvit actually puts up some decent numbers and he's cheap. Makes sense to use him and spend the money elsewhere, right? Well, not if you're Brian Sabean, and you spot aging Mike Matheny! Abysmal abilities with the bat, guaranteed to only get worse with age? No problem! Matheny, in his peak, was marginally better defensively than Yorvit, so Sabean used that as an excuse to sign his geriatric ass.

There have been a number of these moves this season, some of them totally indefensible. Meanwhile, across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland, Billy Beane, general manager of the A's, is totally remaking his team. Beane, who is both lauded and mocked for his willingness to throw out conventional wisdom, has taken the opposite approach from the Giants.

The A's, on a very small budget, have put together a very competitive ballclub for years. Although most folks credit Beane (subject of the excellent book Moneyball), some say that he's merely lucky, being in the right place when his Big 3 pitchers, Hudson, Mulder, and Zito, matured into aces. So now Billy Beane, either through genius or hubris, has traded away two of them, collecting instead a set of intriguing young players, some very highly touted.

Some analysts figured that Beane would dump one of the Big 3, all agreeing that it would be Barry Zito, who had a disappointing season in 2004. Beane, of course, defied all conventional wisdom and traded the other 2 instead. He also picked up Jason Kendall, a speedy lead-off hitting catcher, along the way. I can't wait to see how their season turns out!

The Giants season, however, will turn out predictably. If everyone stays healthy, they'll do just fine. However, given that the average age of their starting lineup is 36, many of those players are likely to spend time on the disabled list, or perhaps at the old folks' home. It's nuts to spend so much money on so many mediocre and old players.

So, I'm torn. Do I stay with the Giants because I've been with them this long and they're my home team? Or do I stray across the bay and start rooting for a team that excites me?

*UPDATE* - For those who can't get enough of this discussion, today Ray Ratto weighs in the Beane vs Sabean debate.

There's an acronym I like called TMI. It stands for Too Much Information. File this entry in that department. If you're not the author of this blog, I encourage you to avert your tender virgin eyes.

It's been a tough couple of days to be my ass. To be honest, it's probably never a treat to be my ass, but more so than usual the last few days. Two issues:

1) I used to do some regular strength training for my lower body to enable myself to run marathons without injury. I haven't done any in several months, so earlier this week, I finally did some exercises. I did a bit o' lunging, a squat or two, and some other random stuff. Apparently I exercised what I believe is technically referred to as the ass-muscle. It has been complaining bitterly ever since. Specifically it hates sitting down, getting up, and walking. Immobility gets no complaints. Yes, a man in San Francisco with a sore ass. Let the witty repartee commence.

2) We make occasional stabs in this household to be sensitive to our environmental impact (Let the Republican vomiting commence). For the most part we're big selfish boors, but if we can throw an extra dollar at the problem and buy the recycled paper towels instead of the brawnier kind, then we will. We've also been buying a new brand of recycled toilet paper that our grocery store is carrying. It's called "Earth First", presumably because good consumers who purchase this brand are putting the Earth before...before what you ask? Well, before your ass, apparently. This stuff is scratchy and not so strong. The end result is that you have to gather a large quantity of this sandpaper-like stuff to wipe your tender ass with. Big thumbs down for "Ass Last" toilet paper

Random post-ettes about my daughter:

- She's at the age now where she takes in EVERYTHING that's said around her (unless you're speaking to her while she's watching TV. That's the like the Cone of Silence has descended around her). This has two annoying manifestations:

1) We can't talk crap about anyone near her. The acquaintance who has unsightly hairs growing out of his nose? Can't be discussed around my daughter, lest she clamber up him one day, and jab at his nose while discussing how distracting the hairs are. It's hard to live in judgement, beautiful judgement, of other people, when your child goes and rats you out.

2) She wants all conversations brought down to a level where she can understand them. Often after I mention something to my wife, my daughter will jump in and ask, "Can you explain that to me?" It's very sweet but when I'm discussing the merits of Linux vs Mac OSX, it's hard to bring it down to her level. "Well, pumpkin, have they covered the economics of open source technology in kindergarten yet?".

- One of my daughter's friends came by on Sunday morning with his mom, for a surprise visit. My wife was out of the house, so I had to try and be a good host for this lady and her son. Hostifying isn't really one of my strengths as a human being. Had this been one of my friends, it would be no big deal, but I hardly knew this lady and didn't know how formal she was, and the house was a sty: toys strewn about the living room, dirty dishes all over the kitchen, and food daintily covering a variety of surfaces. What would Miss Manners suggest I do in this situation?

A) Clean and tidy while making small talk?

OR

B) Pretend like nothing was amiss?

I opted for B, and the lady did her best to pick up toys and bits of clutter whenever I wasn't looking. My reputation as a horrible parent was cemented when my daughter proudly brought over a piece of paper, kissing it and waving it around. The lady was curious to know what it was and I sheepishly explained that this was my daughter's crib sheet for Texas Hold 'em.

- Randomly, my daughter started to sing this song this weekend: "I am made of BLUBBER! BLUBBER BLUBBER BLUBBER! Oh, I am made of BLUBBER!" Kids are weird

They say that you should never apologize before making a speech nor point out the flaws afterwards. The theory is that the audience might not notice that anything was wrong.

Ignoring all that sort of hooey, allow me to perform a post-mortem on the Family Feud posts gone awry. Such promise, such disappointment. Here is my list of what went wrong in the great Family Feud Post Debacle

1) I started writing about an event that occurred over 15 years ago without watching the videotape first. I made various factual errors that jab me in the eye every time I see the first post.

2) Don't ever write about something that requires you to watch 2.5 hours of Family Feud as research. Ever.

3) That cutesy crap about asking the readers to go to the bathroom? Sometimes the 4th wall is best left unmolested.

4) Past tense, future tense, past tense, future tense. JESUS, MIKE, PICK A FREAKIN' TENSE!

5) All in all, I'm probably only on camera for a few minutes. Is that worth nearly 3500 words? Survey says....NO! In the land of blogspot.com, brevity is king.

6) When I was watching the videotapes, the ancient commercials were cracking me up. How did I get through 3500 words without a single Jake and the Fat Man joke? That's criminal.

Well, lest this post become Gleeman-length as well, I'll stop now

In my last post I began the story of the time I was on Family Feud. Today, the dramatic conclusion.

The College Week tournament featured five games. All five episodes would get taped in one day, but would televise over the course of a very exciting week. The first four matchups were:

UCLA vs USC
Stanford vs Berkeley
UCLA vs Stanford
USC vs Berkeley

The final match would pit the two biggest winners from the previous four games against each other. IT WAS THE VERY DEFINITION OF HIGH DRAMA!

At this point I must urge all readers to stop and go pee. I would hate to be responsible for any accidents that would occur from over-excited bladders or blog entries that just don't know when to quit. Go ahead. I'll wait here...

...

Whatever. Anyway.

Game 1 was UCLA vs USC. It should be noted that although I previously described the UCLA contestants as tall and beautiful, I just rewatched my tape of the show for the first time in a decade and they were neither tall nor beautiful. However, in the interest of propping up LA stereotypes, I will stand by my original description.

The show starts out with an introduction to each of the collegiate "families". In traditional Family Feud style, each team is introduced while they pose as though they were in some sort of corny, country-style painting. The College Week twist on this is that the teams then spring into a collegiate cheer. I shudder just thinking about it. The UCLA and USC teams did a nearly-professional calibre job of the cheer.

The host of the show, Ray Combs, then briefly meets each of the teams, giving himself just enough time to make a smarmy comment. The UCLA team, he notes, is very good looking. The USC team, he wittily remarks, resembles a cheerleading squad. In fact, the head of the USC team, a Ken-like man named Michael, dwarfs Ray in nearly comical fashion.

(Note that Ray Combs was not the original host of Family Feud. That honor belongs to Richard Dawson, whose main claim to fame was that he kissed every female contestant, regardless of physical beauty or potential cooties. Ray Combs did no kissing. Perhaps he should have. Ray Combs committed suicide a few years later.)

Soon, the game begins. One member from each team approaches the main podium and is asked to, "Name a famous college." USC rings in first, naming "Harvard." It's the #1 answer and they get the opportunity to guess the rest of the list. Wisely, no one on their team guesses "USC". They guess incorrectly with "Oxford" and "Princeton" but get three more valid answers with "Stanford", "Yale", and "Notre Dame". The next USC contestant cements their reputation as idiots by following up the Notre Dame guess by saying, "Well, staying in England, I guess Cambridge." Cambridge was not correct and Ray Combs, either by ignorance or politeness, does not point out that Notre Dame is not in England

UCLA steals the pot by brilliantly guessing their own name. "UCLA" is the final answer. 74 points for UCLA.

The next question is "Name a modern convenience that is very convenient". USC, desperate to look good in this battle of wits, gets the #1 answer with "Microwave". They eventually win this question, demonstrating that stupid rich kids can indeed name most of the appliances in their summer homes. 80 points for USC.

The third question, worth double points, asks them to "Name a martial art". UCLA leads off by guessing the #1 answer, "Karate". Mostly the teams don't embarrass themselves here except when one of the USC students guesses "Yoga". USC wins this question, rocketing to 242 points, a little shy of the 300 needed to win the game.

The final question, worth triple points, asks "Name something that parents forbid teenagers from doing unless their grades improve". USC, obviously having great experience in this area, wins this question too, bringing their total to 524, thus easily winning the game.

During the final "speed" round of the episode, USC wins another $5000 for themselves, ultimately by guessing an alternate name for a hot dog. One "wiener" later, they're celebrating their intellectual dominance as well as a $5000 prize. As though they need it.

Game 2 pits Stanford (booo) against my team, Berkeley (yay!). As always, the episode begins with each team doing their "pose" and their cheer. As you'd expect from a geeky engineer, I totally sucked at the cheer. Not only do I appear to be saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but I'm about a beat behind the rest of the team. To this day I cannot watch the tape of this without simultaneously cringing and laughing. Note that I am laughing AT me and not with me. Also to this day, I cannot understand what the cheer was supposed to say. It contained some sort of growl though.

Our team leader introduces us to Ray Combs and I'm labeled as "our computer whiz". That's my introduction to America. Unsurprisingly, no casting agents have contacted me.

The game finally begins with this question, "Name something a girl hopes for on a first date." Stanford (booo) gets the #1 answer with "A kiss", and follows that up with valid answers of "Dinner" and "Asked out again" but ultimately gives Berkeley (yay!) a chance to steal. The whole team is polled for their opinion and I offer up, "Getting walked to her door." Although you cannot actually hear America fall in love with me, I'm certain it happened at that exact moment. Damn, I am a gentleman. Regardless, Albert, our team leader goes with "Have a good time" and we win the round and 72 points.

The second question is, "Name a woman whose face is recognized around the world." Berkeley (yay) rings in first with...Jacqueline Bisset, which is not on the board, but Stanford follows up with another answer that is also not on the board, Marilyn Monroe. Finally, Ray Combs makes his way to me. I offer "Queen Elizabeth" and you can see my teammate, Brett, who had just offered the lame Bisset answer, whip around towards me with a What-the-hell expression on his face. The answer, however, appears on the board in last place, in the 6th spot. Stanford (boo), however, follows up with "Lady Diana" and gets a chance to fill in the rest of the spots. They add "Nancy Reagan" and "Margaret Thatcher" before giving Berkeley (yay) a chance to steal. We all agree on Jackie Onassis and we win another 46 points.

Finally, on the 3rd question, which is worth double points, I'm given a chance to step to the podium for a head-to-head matchup against a Stanford (boo) student. The question is, "Name a place that is filled with young people." Stanford rings in first with "A Disco" and gets the #4 answer. I suggest "School" which turns out to be the #1 answer. America goes crazy! Berkeley (yay) continues by getting "Concert" and "Arcade" before we give Stanford (boo) a chance to steal the pot. They guess "Amusement park", which is not correct and Berkeley (yay) wins the 3rd pot in a row, giving us 266 points.

300 points are needed to win, however, so we go to a 4th question, worth triple points. The question is, "Name a fictional crime fighter." After Berkeley (yes, yay) gets the #3 answer with "Superman", Stanford ends up running the table with "Batman", "Dick Tracy" (recall that this took place in 1990), and "Sherlock Holmes"

Stanford: 266
Berkeley: 261.

The fifth and final question is "Name something you brush off your clothes." Berkeley gets the #1 answer with "Lint" and follows up with "Pet hair". It's then my turn, and I've noticed that when the answers on the board are very specific, it's because there's another similar answer to be had. So, I offer up "Human hair". Once again, you can see Brett's outraged reaction to my answer. His eyes bug out, and his head sinks down onto the podium, as though weighed down by the tremendous stupidity of my ansewr. "Human hair" is the #2 answer, but after a few other wrong answers, Stanford steals the pot with "Food".

They get another 238 points, bringing them to 504, thus winning the game. In our defense, all I can do is mock the Stanford leader for literally SCREAMING each of her answers. If volume equalled points, they would have won after the first question.

(I should note at this point that although Stanford and Berkeley are rival schools, I never really paid attention to that. My reasons for hating Stanford are personal, and thus will be discussed in another blog entry. I also hate USC, but only because they're rich and stupid. No offense. UCLA I'm ambivalent about. UC = good, but LA = bad.)

Stanford went on to the speed round, and despite a barrage of stupid answers (e.g. "Name something rich people never have to do?" Answer: "Buy a house". "Name something with a built-in light. Answer: "Lamp". Lamp??? Christ.), they do amass enough points to win $5000 dollars for themselves.

Game 3 pitted Family Feud powerhouse Stanford against loser UCLA. Absolutely nothing of consequence, interest, or humor happened in this game, but UCLA ended up winning the game and the subsequent speed round.

At this point USC has won a game. Stanford has won a game and UCLA has won a game. Basically, everyone has won at least one game...except Berkeley.

Game 4! Berkeley vs USC. Berkeley's final chance to prove themselves the equal of these other expert teams in this esteemed contest of intellectual prowess.

Once again, like poorly trained trick ponies, we do our Family Feud pose and collegiate cheer. Once again, I appear to be doing a different cheer from everyone else. Although I do marginally better this time, it's really astonishing how poorly I execute this simple task. USC, as usual, executes their cheer with robotic precision.

The first question of the game was, "Name something people lie about on their resumes." Berkeley guesses first with "Experience", which is the #2 answer. USC nails the #1 answer with "Age". Age??? Whatever. Anyway, USC follows up with answers of "Reason for leaving last job", "Previous salary", and "Arrest record". Obviously they are well-versed in the art of lying on resumes. Berkeley, however is given the chance to take the pot and we all agree on the answer, "Education", which is good, giving us 89 points. Once again, Berkeley strikes first. Zing!

After each one of these correct answers, the camera always pans to me and the rest of the team making our obligatory demonstration of enthusiasm. I recall that at each "commercial break", the producers would rush over to our team and say, "More energy, guys! We need to to be more energetic!". Thus, we have now captured on VHS, my very first arm-raised "Wooo!". I probably did more high-fives that day than I had in my previous 22 years of life. As it turns out, forced spontaneous exuberance is not my forte.

Question #2 was, "Name something operated by remote control". USC led off with the #1 answer of "TV" and continued on with "VCR", "Car alarm" and "Model car". However, their multiple guesses of "Stereo" resulted in Berkeley's opportunity to grab the pot. We were all polled and we couldn't agree on an answer. Other teammates guessed, "Lights", and "Answering machine", but I went with "Model plane", noting that the producers had been very specific about their vehicle choice in the previous "Model car" answer.

Sadly, Albert, our team leader, went with "Answering machine" and we lost the pot. When Ray revealed the final remaining answer on the board, and it was "Model plane", the camera panned back to me, showing my Hey-That's-What-I-Said outrage. America saw that I had been scorned and they silently wept for me.

Question #3 was worth double points and was my turn at the podium. I stood proudly, hand on the buzzer, eagerly awaiting my chance to again demonstrate my Family Feud dominance. The question was, "Name something that someone can get kicked out of." I immediately rang in and answered, "School!", which was the #2 answer. USC's answer was "Job", which was not on the board, giving Berkeley the opportunity to rack up some answers.

Astute readers will note that both my trips to the podium, across both episodes, resulted in me answering "School" and giving Berkeley the opportunity to win that question. School! On College Week! Genius.

Sadly, however, the Berkeley team was unable to come up with a valid additional answer to the question. Bunch of freakin goody-two-shoes! USC, given the opportunity to steal, answered "Bar" and took the pot. Apparently they were more experienced at being kicked out of places.

Question #4, worth triple points, was "Something people do after graduation." Although Berkeley led off with "Party", it was only the #3 answer, allowing USC to parry with "Take a trip". They followed up with "Get a job" before giving Berkeley an opportunity to steal the pot. Once again we were polled and we offered a variety of different answers. My teammates suggested "Travel", "Go to graduate school" and I guessed, "Buy a car."

By now our team leader, Albert, must have recognized my innate Family Feud skills. He must have seen that I, among all the Berkeley contestants, was most in touch with Joe/Jane America. I am everyman. Consequently, Albert went with my "Buy a car answer".

Well, it wasn't up there, USC took the pot and rocketed past 300 points, winning the episode. The final answer was, apparently, "Get married." Gack.

That was Berkeley's last chance to win a game. The final episode of College Week, featured the two best champions of the week, Stanford and USC. It was truly an epic battle, featuring these titans of game-show-osity.

Stanford won the questions that were vaguely scholastic in nature (name things associated with the Old South, name a dictator), whereas USC cleaned up on the question about naming things near a Lifeguard stand. Comically, USC totally sucked at the question regarding naming items in a college student's room.

Stanford won the championship, cementing my hatred for them.

So, I didn't win big bucks. I didn't win any glory and I didn't get kissed by Richard Dawson. What did I get? Consolation prizes!

I got the following:
- A huge box full of Life Savers style candy. Not actual Life Savers, but a rip-off brand
- Several containers of Hershey's syrup
- High humidity hair spray. How handy!
- A crapload of spray starch. This is, apparently, something one uses when performing a task known as i-r-o-n-i-n-g. I gave away these useless canisters. My ex-girlfriend still has one.
- A cylindrical cooler embossed with the Kentucky Fried Chicken logo. I happily used this as a garbage can for about a year.

What did I not receive that I expected to? Turtle Wax! Rice-a-Roni! The home version of the game! It was my impression, after decades of game-show watching, that these items were the staples of the consolation prize industry. Times change, my friends.

What did I learn? Life isn't fair. Also, there such a thing as a too long blog entry.

Thank you, good night, and please, tip your wait staff.

There's been a lot of press over the last few months about a man named Ken Jennings. He is famous for winning 74 consecutive episodes of Jeopardy, amassing over $2,500,000 in winnings. That could have been me. Here's my story.

In 1990 I was in my final year of college at the University of California at Berkeley. It was the waning months of an undistinguished college career that begged for some sort of scholastic exclamation mark. Enter TV game show.

Most game shows dare not mine our university system for contestants. Match Game never had a college week, nor did Tic Tac Dough. The juxtaposition of pitting our nation's finest scholars against mere trivia-based contests outrages America's discerning television viewers. Only the finest game shows, such as Jeopardy, dare take on this challenge. Also, Family Feud.

For those of you who have never seen Family Feud, let me explain it. Back in the 20th century, before dating become a televised contest, virtually all game shows featured contestants trying to show their knowledge of one topic or another. Some game shows, such as Jeopardy, were more scholarly and featured a wide variety of topics such as Geography or Shakespeare, while the lesser game shows like Name That Tune tested contestants' knowledge of music. Family Feud, on the other hand, merely wanted to know if you were as dumb as the average American. They'd poll some group of folks, asking them questions like "What's in your refrigerator?" Then, contestants on Family Feud would have to guess what the most popular answers to those questions were. You'd get one point for each person who answered the poll the same way you did. In this case, an answer like "Food" would probably net you 30 points. Something like "Twinkies" might only get you 25.

So, the producers of Family Feud came to our campus that spring, looking to cast demographically-appealing Berkeley students as part of their first-ever College Week. This type of thing typically flies right under my radar, but my girlfriend at the time pounced upon the opportunity, dragging me with her to the auditions. Once I was there, though, being a competitive individual, I gave it my all.

I tried my hardest during the mock games, uttering the Family Feud trademark phrase, "Good answer! Good answer!" at any opportunity. I mustered every bit of school spirit and pep that I could wring out of my 135 lb body in an effort to seem like the kind of College Week contestant that would appeal to the American public. I plastered sincerity on my face and didn't rip it off until the audition was over. I had even pre-prepared game show themed banter. Back in the 70s and 80s, many game shows ended with an announcer stating that "This was a Mark Goodson, Bill Todman production". However, at some point during the eighties, they started leaving off the "Bill Todman" part. So, during the audition, when they asked us potential contestants if we had any questions, I stepped forward and said, "What ever happened to Bill Todman?"

The producer paused awkwardly for a moment and said, "He died."

Ok, so one misstep. The rest of the afternoon went about as well as I could have expected though, given that I was a sarcastic and non-telegenic geek. I left the audition knowing that I had done my best.

A few days later I received a call from the producers saying that I had been chosen. I was surprised and pleased. Unfortunately, my girlfriend had not made the cut. We were forced to assume that she didn't say "Good answer!" with enough gusto. It's not as easy as it looks. Mock sincerity can take a lot out of a person.

A few weeks later, I was flying down to LA for the taping of the show. It was at this time that I finally met my teammates. We were truly a broad spectrum of Berkeley stereotypes.

Albert: Some fraternity bozo
Brett: His fraternity brother
Me: Skinny geek
Other Mike: A flamboyant, tye-dye-wearing, muscley, gay man
Kathy: A wheelchair-bound, law and business student with Cerebral Palsy

Kudos to the producers for selecting this all-white, but otherwise diverse group of Berkeley students.

The Other Mike was a hoot. He was the only kleptomaniac I had ever met. He was constantly on the lookout for things that he could steal, regardless if they had any value to him. You know those white courtesy telephones they have at airports? He stole one from the Los Angeles airport. I can only imagine how barren his hotel room must have been at the end of our trip. He was also extremely flamboyant, singing, performing, and taking off his shirt at the drop of a hat, throughout our trip. This was in stark contrast to the rather strait-laced nature of the rest of the Berkeley team.

The day of our taping we met our opponents:

UCLA: Tall beautiful people, all LAish
USC: Tall beautiful people, but dumber
Stanford: Our natural enemies, Berkeley's rival.

Soon, it was time for the games to begin.

The conclusion to this exciting story in my next post....

I'm getting more and more feedback from my family and friends that I'm stunting the social development of my precocious five year-old daughter. The following have been cited as offenses on my part:

1) My daughter and I play a game that is probably best called Vomit Tag. Generally it starts with me clutching my stomach and moaning "Ohhhhhh, I don't feel so good." I then stagger towards my daughter pretending to barely hold in my vomit which is seemingly fighting its way out of my stomach. My daughter then shrieks with fear, screams "DON'T VOMIT ON ME!!" and runs to hide behind the nearest piece of furniture/mother. I keep gagging and lurching towards her, and the game generally ends when I pretend to puke on her, running my hands down her head as though vomit were dripping through her hair.

This game is a derivative of our old activity, Sneeze Tag, which is almost identical. Substitute the gagging and lurching with lots of open-mouthed "Aaah! Aaah!" noises and you've got a very similar game. It ends with virtual snot dripping down her head.

Note that although I generally initiate Vomit Tag, sometimes she requests it.

2) Back when my daughter was in the womb, I entertained myself and my wife by speaking for the fetus. I can't quite describe the voice that I used because that would require actual writer-like skills, but imagine a growly and gravelly voice, more appropriate for a hobo than a baby, with the merest hint of a Mexican accent. I used this voice whenever I pretended to be her, and this continued, off and on, until she could speak for herself.

I used different but similar voices for her various toys and stuffed animals. Often the toys would get imbued with equally inappropriate personalities and occupations. For example, I named one of her toys Mr. Surly who was an actuary by trade and hated most everything. Now, although I admit to being rather sleep-deprived at this point in my life, I defy you to argue that this toy, pictured here:

wouldn't be angry. Look at him! What the hell is that? Christ, I'd be pissed too. Anyway, to this day when I play with my daughter, our interactions will often include silly voices.

Apparently my daughter now thinks that this is how one interacts with five year-olds. So, when she plays with her school-mates, she'll bring out the funny voices and generally imitate my schtick. The other kids are confounded by this behavior and either think she's weird or that she's making fun of them. The former may be true, but definitely not the latter.

So, I ask you, what's a dad to do?

I went to San Francisco's City Hall today. Well aware of the old adage, I did not throw a single punch. Instead, I marveled at the building while filing some forms. The previous mayor of San Francisco, seen here:

(he's the guy on the left), was an ostentatious and fancy hat kind of guy, so before he left office, he covered large quantities of city hall in gold.

That last sentence sounds like a joke even to me. Oh that it were.

Anyways, the end result is that city hall is fairly ornate and interesting. Lots of people get married there, and these days most of them appear to be heterosexual. Walking through the main rotunda, I saw three separate couples getting married. It made me fondly reflect upon my own wedding day.

Previously I had written about when I first met my wife.

Well, we dated for several years and before you know it, I was ready to pop the big question. I had a ring that I thought she might like (she had given me some hints in that area), and I was prepared to make an honest woman of her. As they say in the rodeo circuit, I was ready to lasso that filly. After discarding the lasso and the rodeo metaphors in general, I realized that I didn't really know HOW to ask her to marry me.

I wanted to do something interesting, or unique, or funny, but when push came to shove, I had nothing. I couldn't see myself hiring a skywriter, or pulling the ring out from behind her ear, or farting a gaseous version of Here Come's The Bride. So, like many good men before me, in lieu of creative inspiration, I went with an old classic. After a romantic dinner, while taking a lovely stroll, I bent down on one knee, and blah blah blah, next thing you know, we're engaged.

Unsurprisingly, this left us in the unfortunate position of having to have some sort of wedding thing, with the brides and the grooms and the whatnot. I know that I come across as a master of etiquette and a fount of matrimonial knowledge, but the idea of planning and executing an actual wedding ceremony turned my stomach in knots. Thankfully, I had just gotten engaged to someone who found the whole wedding process equally abhorrent.

So, after informing our relatives and friends that we were engaged, we felt them out to see what they would think if the soon-to-be-wife and I eloped. Although there was disappointment across both sets of families and friends, no one seemed determined enough to actually disown us.

A few months later, one Saturday morning at the start of Labor Day weekend, we woke up and realized that we had a three day weekend with nothing to do. Seemed like the perfect time to fly to Vegas and get hitched. After about an hour of planning, we had flights booked for later that day, and a reservation at the soon-to-be-bankrupt (not an omen), fabulous Stratosphere hotel, a Space Needle-esque hotel near the Strip. Rumor had it that they had both chapels and rollercoasters up at the top of the tower. We had visions of this:

We flew in to Vegas later that day and found out that the rollercoasters were not working that weekend, but the chapels were available. We booked some Greco-Roman themed chapel and paid an extra fee for a witness. No Elvises (Elvii?) were available.

Sunday arrived, the day of our nuptials. This was, perhaps, the most relaxing wedding day imaginable. We started off by lounging at the pool while writing our wedding vows. We rested from this vigorous activity by catching a bit of the 49ers game in our hotel room. At this point our wedding coordinator, a term that should be used lightly, called to remind us that we'd need to go to the county courthouse and pick up a wedding certificate. One cab ride later, we were at the courthouse.

The Clark County courthouse in Vegas is a finely optimized machine, designed to crank out wedding certificates with remarkable efficiency. Excellent signage directs you to the ATMs, conveniently located right next to the line, so that you will have your wedding fee ready. The line is a merry place, filled with men in tuxedoes and women in wedding gowns of varying degrees of respectibility. When we finally approached the clerk who would help make our matrimonial dreams come true, she paused us for a moment to address a quick phone call.

"No, sir. You'll need to call a different number for divorces."

And soon, we had our wedding certificate in hand (as well as the number for divorces), and were on our way back to the fabulously matrimonial Stratosphere. We changed into our wedding attire and had a few minutes to kill before the ceremony, so we played a few hands of blackjack. You know that expression about being unlucky in cards, but lucky in love? That was my excuse that evening.

We departed from the table a few minutes before our scheduled ceremony. Normally when one takes the elevators up to the tippy-top of the fabulously tall Stratosphere, they charge you about $8.00. However, if you're getting married you can go up for free. This reeks of class and we were lovin' the stench. We zoomed up to the top and made our way to the column-filled chapel that was to be the birthplace of our official union. After filling out a short form, including checking the "Godless Heathens" box on the instructions for the "minister", we were ready to get married.

There was a brief photography session, taking a few photos of us on the deck of the fabulously scenic Stratosphere as well as in the Greco-Roman chapel itself. Soon, it was time for the wedding. It was a short, but sweet ceremony, featuring the vows that we had written by the pool the day before. The vows were heartfelt, but lighthearted.

About 10 seconds after the ceremony ended, two employees of the fabulously efficient Stratosphere rushed into the chapel, and proclaimed that our wedding ceremony was the most beautiful thing they'd seen. One of them actually had the quavering voice that would accompany tears. It was, I thought, an odd thing to see in a virtual wedding factory.

It all made sense, however, once she continued by explaining that they had videotaped our wedding and we "simply must see it." She ushered us into another room, and popped a videotape into their VCR. There, 60 seconds after our ceremony had ended, a fully-produced video of our wedding began. It started off with cheesy music, displaying the date and our names in some flowery matrimonial font, then did a fade effect into the ceremony itself.

The videographers sat patiently beside us, while we watched the video, bravely reigning in their emotions. The wife and I did the same with our laughter. At the end of the video we were informed that we could keep it for the low price of $200. Regrettably, we turned down this fine offer.

Later we were shown the pictures they had taken of us. Although a few of them looked fairly natural, most of the pictures superimposed us over various computer-generated backgrounds. One picture featured us in a field of hearts, another showed us flying over Las Vegas, and my favorite one showed us shooting through space at seemingly relativistic speeds. These were, without a doubt, the finest wedding pictures I had ever seen.

After the ceremony, and these tasteful sales pushes, we adjourned to the rotating restaurant at the top of the fabulously spinny Stratosphere for some fine dining. After flying through space, it was nice to have dinner in a restaurant that attempted to approximate orbit. It was somewhat grounding.

All in all, it was a great wedding day. If I had to do it all over again though, I might choose to do it at City Hall. The Stratosphere was hardly covered in gold at all.

I'm currently trying to push out a biggish blog entry, but I haven't quite pinched it off yet. In the meantime, here's a little something something.

My overachieving friend, Johanna, who is an ex-surgeon/visual designer/nutritionist/photographer/candlestick maker?, is currently putting together an interesting project. She's creating a book of anonymous secrets, which will be displayed at an art show here in San Francisco later this year. She's gathering the secrets via her web page, and will then create an actual book, which will only be readable under black light.

She's a good egg, and letting go of a secret in an anonymous way is a liberating experience, so I encourage folks to contribute. It's cheaper than therapy.

http://www.johannarogers.com/invisiblebook/

On a totally unrelated note, despite my disdain for the holiday season, I'm forced to admit that the last couple weeks had quite a few high notes.

First off, The Plumber Who Saved Family Holiday, soon to be an annual Christmas-time special on the Lifetime channel. Jeffrey was part MacGyver, part saint, and all neighbor. I still owe him.

Secondly, I took tons of great walks with my daughter. As it turns out, age five and a half is the perfect age for this. She's able to walk a couple miles, is chatty, and is interested in most everything we see. One day we took an epic 3-hour hike that featured walking sticks, crawling through brush, a rope swing, and clambering straight up a hill sans path. Another day, we took a walk during a rainy evening, featuring flashlights and boots. Much splashing occurred.

Thirdly, I even got to run with my daughter. The day before Family Holiday, she declared that she wanted to go for a run with me. So, we suited up and she jogged a full mile, up and down the hills of San Francisco here in our neighborhood. We followed this up a week later by also including my wife in a family jog. I can't quite express how much joy it gives me to go out for a jog with my wife and daughter. I was beaming the whole time. We got many "how cute!" looks from the neighbors.

Fourthly, after we had that epic house-cleaning session, it was soothing to exist in a non-cluttered environment. I enjoyed that for the hours that it lasted.

Lastly, although it's been a while since I had an exciting New Year's Eve, we did have a few friends over this year, and we had an enjoyable evening. Like all good geeks, our celebration included cramming stuff into the microwave to see what would happen. I can at least halfheartedly recommend microwaving Ivory soap. The stuff foams up with a surprising consistency. If it weren't for the semi-nauseating soapy smell that infected my microwavables for the next day, it would have been a wholehearted recommendation.

Back to work tomorrow.