Zap Zap! Free Speech! Blah Blah!

I don't usually post random YouTube videos to this blog, but I've had two people bring this video to my attention thus far today and I just wanted to put my own two cents in before the media cacophony begins. The video shows a college student attempting to ask John Kerry a question during a Q&A session and then the escalation of events until he is arrested and eventually tasered. Watch first, then read my thoughts below:




Hm... I don't really even know what to think about this. Yes, the kid was exercising his fundamental right to free speech. Yes, he was trying to engage John Kerry in a dialogue of pertinent questions. And yes, he had his mic cut off and yes he was arrested and yes he was tasered because of all of this.

Unfortunately I can see this getting blown out of proportion as some kind of "free speech violation" when the fact is, the kid stood up and attempted to monopolize what appears to be a more or less informal Q&A session. He was told repeatedly to ask his question, but rather than asking kept spouting information from a book he'd read. Then once he asked the question, he asked MORE questions and then MORE questions after that. Yes, I get the point that this was his only available forum to ask these pertinent questions to John Kerry's face, so I AM tempted to react the way others are surely reacting, with anger at the fact that he was silenced and arrested, anger at the overreaction of the police.

Then again, he DID try to monopolize an event that was not his to monopolize. And when he was escorted away, he DID resist arrest to the point where it required half a dozen police officers to subdue him, and even then he fought. Personally I don't blame the police for tasering him when they did.

What this brings up is a larger problem, a larger question of: How do WE as normal everyday constituents find a forum to air our questions and grievances and expect to have them actually ANSWERED. Unless you are a member of the press, you can't ask these questions directly to a politician's face. And even then you certainly can't expect a real and legitimate answer to your queries and the opportunity to say, "No, excuse me sir but you DID NOT answer my question."

No clear answers on this one as far as I'm concerned. I just hope this opens up a HEALTHY debate and not just a bunch of crybaby activists whining about "free speech" this and "free speech" that.

Slow Ride into the Eternal Night

I bought my Geo Metro less than a month after moving to California. That was eight years ago. Another time. Another me. Over those next twenty-two months, I went through such profound changes in my life and personality that I actually have a hard time remembering a “me” before that time. As a result, that means I also have a hard time remembering a “me” who drove anything except that little black car. Of course “little” is a misleading word. I took that car over mountains. I took it into the desert. I drove it across the country three times - once with every earthly possession I owned in the trunk and back seat (which I still haven't been able to identify as "lame" or "something Jack Kerouac would do"). It’s been pelted by everything from snow to falling rock to hailstones slung by a tornado. The Geo may have been “little”, but it was little in the way that, say, Joe Pesci is little.

Almost every major epiphany I had during that time occurred behind the wheel of that Geo: deciding to pull back from friends I’d made in order to figure out who I was as “just me”… fully realizing the extent of the love I had for a girl back in Boston… understanding that I could move out of L.A. even though I felt like my whole life had been leading me there… ultimately realizing that no matter how much I thought I’d learned about myself, the world, and my place in it, I was still, and forever would be “full of shit.”

They weren’t all earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting revelations. There were also all the little things I learned behind the wheel of the Geo:

- My love for country music
- The proper method for controlling a skid around another car while you simultaneously curse them out and flip the bird.
- You can park anywhere in L.A. for free if you’re a good enough parallel parker who doesn’t mind walking a bit.
- The top number on your speedometer is not necessarily the top speed your car can handle.
- Cops will not pull you over no matter how fast you’re driving if there is a tornado in the vicinity.
- Windows-down is always preferable to air-conditioning on all but the most unbearably hot days.
- It doesn’t matter how badly you sing if you crank the radio loud enough.
- Even though we know we shouldn’t drive home drunk, we still sometimes do.
- A fresh coat of wax can make even a shitty car look sporty and stylish.
- Even so, chicks will never gravitate toward a guy in an economy car.
- Sometimes it isn’t necessary to have a destination. Driving to drive is just as fun.

There were others, but I think you get the point. The Geo has been a central part of my life for over eight years now. But when the first words out of my mechanic’s mouth last week were, “How attached are you to this car?” it wasn’t hard to see the writing on the wall. He rattled off a list of problems that, without even doing any calculations, obviously added up to more than the car’s monetary worth. I’m not sure how surprised I was to discover tears welling up in my eyes the instant I hung up the phone, knowing one way or another the Geo would have to be put down.

Today, as I signed the dotted line to purchase a new mini-van for my growing family, it all hit home. I will never drive the Geo again. It’s already off our insurance, making way for something newer, roomier, more reliable. Part of me regretted that I hadn’t taken the Geo for one last joyride. But really, what would that have gained me? I know I have to move on. Even though the Geo played such a central role in the transition from “old me” to “new me”, I know it could not have continued functioning in this new and ever-changing life that I lead. In that respect, I’m actually almost glad the decision was taken out of my hands. The Geo’s usefulness, from a completely legal standpoint, is now worn out. Its destiny is fulfilled. Soon a tow truck will come take it away, leaving behind nothing but some very vivid memories and a generous tax write off in its wake… and the “me” transition, I suppose, will finally be complete.

So, “Slow ride,” old friend. “Take it easy.”

It's wet ain't it? DRINK IT!

People are all up in arms about this whole Aquafina thing. For those of you who aren’t aware, apparently there was some big news report a couple months back, which revealed that Aquafina, the bottled water company, was selling its customers (gasp) tap water. I didn’t see the report myself, but I did hear the shocked tales of horror from at least three people within the first week whenever the topic of bottled water came up in conversation… that’s right, I have boring friends and we talk about bottled water, okay? Even though it’s been a couple of months it still somehow keeps getting brought up with new people. Each time I hear the indignant tap water proclamation I have the same reaction: “Yeah… and?” Seriously was anybody surprised by this revelation? We’ve been hearing for years that most of the bottled waters out there are nothing more than tap water. And it didn’t take a genius to realize Aquafina fell into this category. In this day and age of marketing, any bottled water company who gets its water from a bona fide spring is going to mention that fact in big bold letters on the label. Aquafina bottles by contrast have always said, simply, “Purified Drinking Water.”

Oh don’t get me wrong, as somebody who routinely drinks more than his daily recommended eight glasses of water, I definitely have preferences when it comes to buying the bottled variety. Poland Spring will always be my top choice if available, but I’ll take a Dasani or an Aquafina if that’s what’s available, or even a Vasa (the brand of choice on the Jersey Turnpike apparently) if that’s all I can find. As long as I can’t taste anything foul in the water, I don’t care where it came from. And the simple truth I’ve found about bottled waters is that as long as they’re cold, pretty much all of the major brands taste just fine. The lone exception to that rule is Evian, which tastes like an oil slick to the point where I seriously just don’t understand why people still buy it. Is it the French name?

But seriously, why should I care if my bottled water comes from a tap? The water I drink at home comes from a tap. Filtered through a Brita obviously. As far as I’m concerned bottled water, especially those individual-sized bottles, are intended for “on the go” drinking only. I really don’t understand those people who have cases and cases of bottled water inside their house. I can almost get on board with the people who buy those big five-gallon jugs that they stick in their refrigerator, but even then I have my reservations. Unless you are legitimately concerned about the actual safety of your water (i.e. you think it contains lead or some other kind of contaminant), why wouldn’t you save money, fridge space and landfill volume by using a Brita or some other kind of filter, which removes like 99 percent of whatever might be lurking inside your water – and 100 percent of whatever might make it taste bad?

Ironically it seems like the people who are most concerned and/or horrified about this big Aquafina “revelation” are the ones who tend not to drink a lot of water anyway. I’m not sure if they realize it, but all the soda, coffee and juice they are drinking probably contains tap water as well. Somehow I doubt Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Snapple are importing jugs of spring water to make their beverages. In instances like this, when you’re contemplating which brand of bottled water to buy, I say let your taste buds be your guide. If the water tastes fine, it’s probably fine. If it tastes like crap, mountain spring or not, change brands. To quote a Sprite commercial, “Obey your thirst,” not those sensationalistic talking heads on the news. Now drink up.

(On a completely unrelated note, kudos to you if you caught the Goonies reference in this blog's title.)

Always so fowl?

Was there ever a point in time when the chicken joke was funny? The original one I mean. The one that has come to represent the quintessential definition of a joke in general, and a bad joke in particular.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.

It’s a reversal technique that gives this joke its intended humor. The setup indicates that the chicken in question had some higher purpose for crossing the road. But the punchline indicates that he was crossing the road just simply for the purpose OF crossing the road. A modern equivalent of this joke (at least the only one I can think of at 4:00 in the morning as I sit in a production trailer babysitting editors) comes from an episode of Friends.

FRANK: We were down at the courthouse, we were having lunch and we just decided to get married.
PHOEBE: Oh my god, what were you doing at the courthouse?
FRANK: We were having lunch.

The idea behind the chicken joke is this same kind of funny, but the thing is by the time we’re actually old enough to get the punchline, we’ve heard it like a million times in some other patently not funny context. So by the time we have the intellectual maturity to actually be able to find it funny, the joke has already lost any chance of eliciting a laugh because, well, it’s just “that stupid chicken joke.” Really, the only time anyone ever laughs at the chicken joke is when somebody (not unlike the original joke teller) throws out some kind of reversal on the expected punchline.

It can be done via a pun like:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide.

It can be done with absurdity:

Q: Why did the frog cross the road?
A: Because he was stapled to the chicken.

Or it can be done by applying a third party personality to the punchline:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A (by Einstein): Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath it depends on your point of reference.
A (by Martin Luther King): I envision a world where chickens are free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.
A (by Buddha): To ask this question is to deny your own chicken nature.
A (by Colonel Sanders): Wait, you mean I missed one?

But just where the heck did the original joke come from? And moreover, was there ever a point in time when people found it funny? Like did the first adult to ever hear this joke laugh when he heard it? As I said, the joke has become kind of a stock character of sorts representing all jokes everywhere and all bad jokes specifically. But that iconic status couldn’t have just materialized out of thin air. Was it a really popular joke that just got told too much, making people sick of it to the point where they finally started mocking the thing? It must have been based in something somewhere in the past. Catch phrases are like that too. We say them and we know what they mean, but when we really stop and look at them, we realize they don’t actually make any sense in our modern context.

Example: “Close but no cigar.”

Heh? What the heck does a cigar have to do with guessing the wrong answer? Well, fairground games used to give away cigars as prizes. So when a patron missed the ring toss by an inch, the guy running the game would let loose with a phrase that actually meant something in contemporary context. And even though the context has disappeared over the years, the phrase still holds meaning.

Likewise, even though the chicken joke is no longer funny, we still recognize it, not only as a joke, but as THE joke. But where? When? Why? How did this particular joke earn such dubious longevity?

And moreover… why a chicken?

The Panic Years

Hey everyone, I'm helping a friend Google bomb her new book, so if you find yourself here, just click on the link and help her move it up the Google list:

THE PANIC YEARS by Doree Lewak: "A Guide to Surviving Smug Married Friends, Bad Taffeta and Life on the Wrong Side of 25 Without a Ring."