Entry 231: This Post NOT Brought to You By GEICO: 15 Minutes Can Save You 15% on Car Insurance

The six o’clock news is pretty much the only television program other than sports that I view while it’s being broadcast.  I do this in spite of the fact that:

• As my daughter Casey hastens to point out, there is no news on the six o’clock news that hasn’t been on the Internet for hours.
• All the local news teams manage to come up with “BREAKING NEWS” to begin each day’s telecast in the hope that you’ll watch because you think that there’s been another terrorist attack, or that a politician has tweeted an inappropriate photo, or that Lindsay Lohan has been arrested again, but it always turns out to be some house that’s on fire or someone shot in the Bronx and, really, don’t those things happen too frequently (at least in New York), to qualify for news coverage at all much less “breaking news” coverage complete with helicopters?
• Old-timey anchormen like News 4′s Chuck Scarborough in New York look embarrassingly uncomfortable standing in front a huge TV monitor instead of sitting at a desk, although thankfully they don’t make him use a touch screen as they do with the younger, “Live at Five” anchors. (Chuck, I guess, is Comatose at Six.)
• At least three of the “stories” that will be covered revolve around humorous videos the TV station found on YouTube.
• The weather person will spend three minutes clicking through the meteorological version of a PowerPoint presentation before actually delivering the 7-day forecast, at least three days of which will be inaccurate, although you never know which three days.
• The sports reporter will tell me the Mets lost.

But I watch anyway, just as I still read a real newspaper in the morning, because I am old. Besides, I play with my dog Toby while I watch the news, although I think he’d prefer if we watched ancient episodes of The King of Queens on TBS.

In any case, this post isn’t about the local news. It’s about something I saw the other day while I was watching the local news. It was a promo for the NBC show Revolution, and it ended with this phrase: “Watch it live.”

Now, I know that some sitcoms like 30 Rock would occasionally broadcast a live episode, but I doubted that an action series like Revolution, which is about people living without electricity and takes place mostly outdoors, would do such a thing, because you never know when a bee will fly into someone’s mouth, causing everyone to try to improvise around the actor who’s gagging.  That sort of thing can ruin a live performance.

Then I realized that, by “watch it live,” they meant watch it while it was airing, as opposed to using a DVR or viewing it “on demand.”  They were saying, in essence, “please watch this with the commercials because we’re asking you nicely.”  That shows you how desperate TV networks are to get you to see their advertisers’ messages.

They’re trying everything these days, including banner ads that seem to be taking up more and more of the TV screen to the point where a dramatic fight scene may appear to be two heads moving spasmodically above a billboard for Real Housewives of Atlanta. Some of these banners now actually include motion and sometimes even sound so the effect is like trying to watch a show while people are in your living room marching back and forth in front of the TV screaming things at you.

If you’re watching a baseball game, every little thing from the starting line-up to the relief pitcher is sponsored by something. (“This call to the bullpen is brought to you by AT&T…”) And of course, most sporting events these days have embedded advertising: either the name of the event itself or the name of the venue, or both. (For instance, the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl, which I swear is a real thing, takes place at Tropicana Field.)

Television series have taken product placement to ridiculous extremes. The Syfy series Warehouse 13 has an official car, Toyota, which is at least somewhat better than what they used to do, which is have a character eat Twizzlers in every episode. On police procedurals, you’ll hear dialogue like, “I better use my Samsung Galaxy phone to call this in.” On Big Bang Theory, they try to fake you out with commercials that use footage from the show, so you stop fast forwarding.

On The Voice, contestants are shown driving to the studio in their Kias and using the hands-free BlueTooth feature to get a pep talk from their coaches. (If it wasn’t enough that they show five or six close-ups of the Kia logo during this one-minute segment, Carson Daly’s voice-over will say something like “and while driving to the studio in her Kia, Joanie is thrilled to get a last minute call of encouragement over the standard BlueTooth entertainment system from her coach, Adam Levine.”)  At right is a promo photo from a previous season, with four finalists posing in front of a Kia for no apparent reason.  (Judging by their post-season career paths, the Kia was the big winner.)

It’s clear that this will be an ongoing battle between networks that want you to watch ads and technology that helps you avoid them. Ultimately, the only solution for the networks may be to take a page from the dawn of broadcasting,* and actually have the products’ names be part of the title of the show, like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, The Colgate Comedy Hour, Phillip Morris Playhouse, The Kaiser Aluminum Hour and Rheingold Presents Howdy Doody’s Kiddie Bar and Grille.**

I’m thinking maybe Hawaiian Tropic Five-0, or Law & Order: GMC, or Best Buy’s Price is Right.

See you soon.

*Did you catch this clever product placement, brought to you by Dawn Mediterranean Lavender, with the grease fighting power of Dawn dish soap and the exotically inspired scents of the Mediterranean? Proctor & Gamble can feel free to send me money.

**I made up the last one.

Entry 230: Bowl to the Future

In my last post, I wrote about a man named David Ranta, who had been, for reasons beyond his control (something to do with a flaw in the legal system), somewhat isolated from the world at large since 1991. He was shocked at how much the world had changed in 22 years. He couldn’t even wash his hands in a restaurant restroom because he didn’t know how to turn on the motion-activated faucet.

I know exactly how he feels. I, too, recently reentered a world I had not experienced for over two decades, and found myself feeling lost and out of place.

I went bowling.

Now, before I continue, let me just say that I used to be a pretty good bowler. I was in some serious leagues. I had my own ball and shoes, and an odd-shaped bag to carry them in. I had a resin bag. And one of those wrist braces.  And a towel. I habitually carried a container of talcum powder.

I knew who Dick Weber, Earl Anthony and Don Carter were.*

I liked bowling because you didn’t have to be naturally athletic or even particularly fit to be good at it. You didn’t have to wear a uniform unless your team had those neat retro shirts with your name over the pocket. You could drink copious amounts of beer while　you were playing. And it was an entirely non-contact sport, except for slapping your teammates’ hand after a strike. About the worst injury you could get was a blister on your thumb from releasing the ball.

Bowling was also a very simple-minded game, both by nature and necessity, because of the copious amounts of beer. There was no strategy involved. No complicated rules. No playbooks. You just had to knock over the pins. They didn’t even try to get out of the way.

But then bowling fell out of favor. There were a lot of reasons for this. Foremost among them, perhaps, was the perception that it was just a bunch of out-of-shape guys wearing weird polyester shirts and drinking copious amounts of beer.

So when it came time to try to revive bowling (because people try to revive everything that was once popular, usually with some updates that negate whatever qualities made them popular in the first place), the companies making the attempt focused on trying to make bowling cool.

There is almost never a good outcome when you try to bring coolness to something that is so inherently not cool. You usually end up with something akin to a Bedazzled pocket protector.

Anyway, we were recently invited to a midlife crisis bowling party, thrown for people who were turning 50 and didn’t want any of the usual midlife crisis stuff like exotic sports cars or affairs with much younger people.

I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t bowled in more than 20 years, but it had been a decade before that when I had last bowled regularly, and after that one time 20 years ago, my arm hurt for days. So, this time, we arrived bearing Advil and Band-Aids (for the thumb blister I was sure I’d get), and we entered the new, cool world of bowling.

To start with, we were not in a bowling alley. We were in a Grand Prix racing establishment. There was a glass-encased indoor race track on which people in miniature racing cars were zipping around, pretending they were in Formula One automobiles instead of glorified bumper cars. It seemed like they were going really fast, but that may have only been because the track was really small. They didn’t look that comfortable, either, crammed into a racer only slightly larger than a Hot Wheels car.

Then there was a smallish video arcade which seemed like it was there only as a half-hearted obligatory gesture. Not a single game was being played, not even the huge video arcade version of Connect Four, which I couldn’t imagine anyone ever playing because, really, why would you?

Then we passed a sports bar which would not have been out of place in…well, in a bar. Behind that we found some bowling lanes.

At least, they bore some slight resemblance to bowling lanes. It was hard to tell because it was so dark. I figured they didn’t have enough power to turn the lights on what with all the technology that is apparently now involved in knocking some pins over with a ball.

There were blinking, strobing lights that seemed more intent on causing seizures than illuminating anything. And there was loud, bass-thumping music because, as you know, bowling alleys are normally just too quiet. It was almost as if they were expecting John Travolta to show up in his white suit to bowl a few games.

Over the pins, where there used to be a triangle that would sometimes show you which pins were left standing on the rare occasions when it was working, there were now giant screens showing music videos. The paper score sheets had been replaced by computers connected to overhead monitors that kept score and showed cartoons calling everyone’s attention to the fact that you had just thrown a gutter ball.

We got shoes. This part actually hasn’t changed much over the years (the shoes even still look the same), except that they didn’t keep our shoes on deposit, which meant that we could actually steal the bowling shoes if we had any inclination to do so, which I anticipated might turn out to be the case if, after bowling, we could no longer bend over to take the shoes off. Then we chose balls from the racks. Bowling balls aren’t black anymore because that is not cool. They are all sorts of bright hues, color-coded by weight. I first chose one in yellow, but then I picked one in aqua because it went better with my eyes.

Okay, we were ready to go. After taking several minutes to figure out how to enter everyone’s name into the computer, the lanes were turned on and we had to start. Immediately. No practice rolls. Even back in my league days you got practice rolls. After twenty years, it would have been nice to see if I even remembered which fingers went into which holes. But, no, the Nazi computer scorekeeper was unforgiving, so everything counted.

I stepped up to the line holding my ridiculous aqua bowling bowl. “Where did I used to stand?” I asked myself. “How many steps did I used to take? Why am I doing this?”  I looked up, trying to concentrate on the lane, which was difficult because of the close-up of Taylor Swift appearing right over the pins so that it seemed like I could roll the ball right into her mouth.

I tried to recall the footwork involved, approaching the foul line, swinging the ball back. I stumbled slightly while releasing the ball directly into the gutter.

“HA HA! GUTTER BALL!” said the cartoon on the scorekeeper screen in case anyone had missed it.

As the game progressed, I started to knock some pins down, and I fell only twice, although one time I embarrassingly traveled quite some distance down the adjoining lane on my face. After awhile, I noticed that the repulsive scorekeeper screen had some sort of countdown timer in the lower corner. I wondered if it had some way of knowing when my arm would fall off.

It turned out it was counting down how much time we had left to bowl. Because they don’t charge by the game any more, they charge by the hour. Which is stupid, because when you’re playing a game that has a finite end, what happens when time runs out? It would be like adding a clock to baseball and ending the game at the buzzer regardless of what inning it was.**

It seems to me–and I think David Ranta would agree (remember him from the beginning of this post?)–that we’ve made some things just way too complicated. You get water from a sink by turning a handle. You knock objects over by rolling a ball at them. What could be simpler?

If you’re the type of person who wouldn’t have bowled because you didn’t think it was cool, would you bowl now because there are disco lights and animated scoreboards?

What would The Dude think?***

See you soon.

*They were professional bowlers.

**Can you imagine how slow a baseball game would be if the team in the lead was trying to run out the clock?

**The Big Lebowski reference.

Entry 229: How to Wash Your Hands in a Public Restroom

A fellow named David Ranta recently became a free man after spending 22 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He says he’s finding it very difficult to adapt to the fast-paced world of 2013, which is, evidently, much speedier than those dreamy, dawdlin’ days of 1991.

I guess getting rid of those dial-up modems really made a difference.

“I feel like I’ve been dropped onto another planet–everything has changed, and everything that I’ve known is gone,’’ Ranta told The New York Post.  “The first time I ate at a restaurant and used their restroom, I couldn’t figure out how to use the sink; it was one of those automatic motion-sensor faucets.  I had to get someone to show me what to do, and I felt embarrassed.”

I can’t remember the first time I encountered one of those faucets. How did I know how to operate it? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have to call tech support. On the other hand, I do recall the first time I used a motion-sensor toilet bowl. When it suddenly flushed itself, it would have scared the crap out of me if I hadn’t just…

Where was I?  Oh, right. The guy who got out of prison.

Ranta’s point, I guess, in addition to making a case for why New York should give him several million dollars in restitution, is that even activities like washing your hands have gotten so complicated you need someone under 30 to show you how to do it. I have nothing against the march of progress, but I have a problem when it includes goose steps of superfluous technology that unnecessarily complicates life without making it appreciably better.

Consider that when Ranta went to prison…

• Light bulbs looked like light bulbs, not some twisted abominations that take precious seconds to come on, all in the name of saving the planet or some such thing.
• Cameras used “film” which had to be “developed” before you could send photos of your “junk” to female “admirers.”
• When you drove someplace for the first time (or, in my case, the eighth), you had to ask for directions, or consult something called a “map.” Ranta, upon motoring home from prison, was probably shocked the first time the car spoke to him (“Turn right just past the armed guards…”), and even more surprised when the nice lady told him to go the wrong way on a one-way street.
• The World Wide Web was just a year old. Most people hadn’t used it yet and those that did would wait until 1994 for stuff to download.  Mark Zuckerberg was seven years old. People kept their cat videos to themselves, and didn’t yet feel the need to inform others of their every mood swing.
• Folks watched television programs when they were actually broadcast, complete with commercials, unless they used a “video cassette recorder” to tape shows that they would then forget to watch until they were packing to move to Connecticut in 2011, when they wondered what was on the quaint, unmarked relics in that drawer but decided it wasn’t worth the effort of inserting the tape into the antique equipment to find out, even though they actually still owned said equipment precisely for the purpose of playing their extensive collection of obsolete tapes, and so they simply threw the mystery cartridge out instead, assuming it was likely to be something like an episode of Cheers, which they could now stream for free anyway. Not that my family ever did anything like that.
• The TVs to which these VCRs were connected did not hang on the wall as if they were works of art, and could be hooked up without the need of an engineering degree. Your coffee table was not covered with dozens of remote controls, and if you had somebody over, they could probably figure out how to turn on the TV and tune it to a channel without a manual.
• Speaking of manuals, you could purchase a new car and not have it come with a 500-page owner’s manual which only covers the entertainment system.
• “Text” was a noun, not a verb, and generally appeared in a “book,” which was only available on “paper.” You could not carry your entire library around with you, not to mention your entire collection of recorded music, all on a device that you could also use to take photos of your “junk” and send them to female “admirers.”
• You could walk the entire island of Manhattan and not have access to a Frappucino. At the time, there were only about 140 Starbucks® nationwide. Now there are about 140 Starbucks in midtown. (I know–it’s not technology-related, but still…)
• Windows 3.0 had just been released. In fact, it was so new, the number of crashes only numbered in the millions.
• The latest cell phone model, the Motorola MicroTac, could be purchased for around $2,500, which meant that only important people could afford to be obnoxious. Now everybody thinks they’re important enough to make phone calls–in a loud voice–from the next table at a restaurant.

Here’s the thing: everything above has pretty much become an integral part of everyday existence. Yet none of it is necessary, and it can be argued that none of it has done very much to improve the quality of our lives.

Which leads me to this conclusion: too much of our ingenuity and expertise is being used to invent the technological equivalent of a 4-year old child hopping on one foot in front of you while repeatedly yelling “Look what I can do.”

It just gets really annoying after awhile, you know?

See you soon.

Entry 228: The Seventeen-Year Itch

There are many creatures on this planet that are of questionable use to the natural world. Humans are at the top of the list.

But what the hell is the deal with the Brood II cicadas?

These alien-looking bugs have been in the news lately because this is going to be a big year for them. You see, Brood II are the cicadas that only show up every 17 years…and this is the year!

Brood II cicadas are known for their unique  “mating call.” At least, that’s how biologists refer to it. But to me, a “call” is like, “Sweetheart, can you come up to the bedroom? I have a little surprise for you.” The sounds that cicadas make are really more like “GET UP HERE NOW AND DO ME, YOU LOUSY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING-BUM!”

If you happen not to live in a cicada-infested part of the world, let me give you an idea of what goes on. First, these mating calls can reach 100 decibels, which is about the noise level generated by a motorcycle. And there are literally millions of cicadas. So imagine going out onto your deck and hearing the world’s largest gathering of Hell’s Angels, revving their Harleys for maximum effect. Now imagine that each of the bikers is about two inches long with bulging orange eyes and the ability to fly directly into your mouth.

What’s more, cicadas have this tendency to just drop indiscriminately to the ground…or onto your head…or, as was the case the first time I met my wife’s parents, into your beer. I’m not sure why they do this; perhaps it’s because there isn’t enough room in the sky for all of them and they have mid-air collisions.

And, let me just say, these things are big. They are ugly. And, when you step on them, which is unavoidable because, and I really cannot emphasize this enough, they are everywhere…they are disgustingly crunchy. And this goes on for 4-6 weeks.

But here’s what I can’t understand. Most creatures have some function. They are either predators that keep down certain populations, or they are food for some other species, or they pollinate things, or they allow parasites to live on them…something.

But what kind of purpose can an animal have if it only appears every 17 years? It’s like a useless relative that only shows up for weddings and bar mitzvahs, gets drunk and rowdy, and then disappears until the next affair.

There’s another kind of cicada that only shows up every 13 years. Biologists think that the 13 and 17 are significant; they suspect the prime numbers make it harder for predators to predict when the cicadas will emerge. I’m not kidding; they really believe that. But that makes no sense. After all, every 13 or 17 years is pretty predictable. If the cicadas are just trying to be unpredictable, they would show up randomly: 13 years, then 17, then 3, then 28 (“Really fooled them that time!”).

Secondly, I barely passed high school biology, but I would think the more likely explanation for the lengthy sabbaticals is that prey which shows up so infrequently isn’t even on the radar of predators; it’s just sort of a nice treat when it’s on the menu. I mean, it’s not possible that there is an animal for which these cicadas are the sole food source, right?  (“Boy am I hungry. I haven’t had a bite to eat since 1996.”)

Evidently, these cicadas spend those unseen years as juveniles, underground somewhere, doing what all kids do: fight each other for food. They have epic battles. They kill each other. The carnage is incredible, and thank goodness for that. Can you imagine how many friggin’ bugs would be droning outside my window if a few of them didn’t suffer horrible childhood deaths?

After 17 years spent just growing up, they emerge, Red Bulls in hand, hormones raging, ready for trouble. You think your teenagers get cabin fever after one rainy day? Try keeping one cooped up underground for 17 years!

It’s one big rave out there, every individual in the crowd screaming for a hookup. And then they find their mate, maybe a little drunk, maybe high on Ecstasy, and then the females lay their eggs.

And then they fall into your beer.

See you soon.

Entry 228: WARNING: This Post May Be Disturbing and/or Offensive to Some Readers

I just got finished watching a brief online video of a fight that occurred during a professional hockey game. Don’t ask me who the participants were, or what teams were involved, or even when the fight occurred. I have no idea.

I am not a hockey fan. I have been to only one game in my life: about 45 years and one or two Madison Square Gardens ago, my friend Kenny Mancher and his father took me to a minor league Long Island Ducks game. I think I’ve only watched one game on TV: the 1980 Olympic game against the USSR when we won the Cold War.

I’m sorry, but to me, hockey just looks like a bunch of Canadians skating back and forth and banging into each other. They’re not obviously Canadians, of course, but deep down, I know they are. Even if they’re from Eastern Europe, I’m pretty sure they drink Molsons in the locker room.

So you may wonder why I stopped what I was doing (which, admittedly, wasn’t much) to watch a hockey fight video.

Well, it was because I was warned not to. The teaser for the video on the AOL home page said “Warning: May be disturbing to some.”

Who wouldn’t watch that?

And I was very disappointed. With a warning like that, I was expecting one of the participants to end up with a puck in an unlikely place, but it seemed like a pretty typical hockey fight to me: two big guys (Canadians, probably), flinging equipment around and taking swings at each other while trying to stay upright on a slick surface.

But my point is, is there any better way to get people to do anything than by warning them not to?

What is it about humans that causes this phenomenon? You wouldn’t think it would be very helpful from an evolutionary perspective. (“Now whatever you do, Oog, don’t touch the sleeping saber tooth tiger to see how soft its hair is. Really, Oog, I wouldn’t do that. Oh, poor Oog. Can I have his club?”) On the other hand, maybe the only reason we came down from the trees in the first place was because one monkey warned another monkey not to.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll watch just about anything if it might disturb or offend me. I mean, if I was walking down the street and some guy came at me with a gun and told me he was going to kill me, I would find that disturbing, and I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to have it happen. But if you tell me you’ve got a video that’s going to disturb me, I’ll bring the popcorn.

Of course, people have different opinions about what is or is not offensive and/or disturbing. Many women, for instance, find it disturbing that many men think The Three Stooges are hilarious. I find it disturbing that many women, after complaining about their husbands watching The Three Stooges, think nothing of sitting through a 10-hour Bridezillas marathon.

We all know that when the media warns us that something might be disturbing or offensive, it’s really code for “the following will appeal to your most prurient interests and we are warning you so you won’t sue us because you were offended and/or disturbed by what you’re about to see, and you are about to see it, because there’s no way you’re going to skip something that may be disturbing or offensive, which is what we’re counting on.”

And, by the way, in case you missed the offensive and/or disturbing content the first time, the media will show it repeatedly for days. I still have a mental image etched permanently on my brain of the play that ended Joe Theisman’s football career, which was shown continuously for weeks. If they’d had as many available cable channels back then as they do now, someone might have launched the 24-hour Watch Joe Theisman’s Leg Bend the Wrong Way Channel.

How many times did they show the towers coming down? It doesn’t get much more disturbing than that. And how many times did they show the bombs going off in Boston last month? Why was that repetition necessary, especially since, these days, if you have an urgent need to see a bomb go off and knock that older man in the orange top to the ground, you can pretty much watch it “on demand?” (And guess what? That content “has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive…”)

Honestly, have you ever not looked at something solely because you were warned? Of course not.  (As proof, let me point out that you are reading this post.) Even if you work for some goody-two-shoes organization whose mission it is to protect the public from offensive and/or disturbing material, you would ignore the warning because (you would say to anyone who asked) you need to know what type of offensive and/or disturbing material you’re trying to protect the public from.

The truth is, putting such a warning on something will attract many more people who wouldn’t have watched otherwise than it will chase away people who would have watched it but will now heed your warning.

You know what? We are just one screwed up species.

See you soon.

Entry 227: So You Think You Can Dance…Wearing That?

Well, it’s prom season again, the run-up to that magical evening when the young people who are America’s future lay the groundwork for a lifetime of inappropriate behavior.

As always, some students will not attend their proms, possibly because they are protesting the emphasis on social hierarchy with the naming of a king and queen; or because they feel strongly that “all that money could be better spent feeding hungry children;” or because they’re heading off to an art college and the decorations at the dance, with a palette in the school’s official colors, green and purple, offends their aesthetic sensibilities and makes them “just want to vomit;” or because they’d prefer to stay home playing World of Warcraft: Really, You Should Go Outdoors for at Least a Few Minutes; or because of an ill-advised viewing of the movie Carrie at age nine.

Or because they can’t get a date.

But while those people should not be marginalized, I don’t want to talk about them in this post.

So let us consider the other, normal kids. We’ll start with the boys. This is a time of great angst for them, similar to the college application process they recently completed. After all, unless he’s in the very top percentile of handsomeness and coolness (with just a hint of bad-boyness), he has to be very strategic. For instant, he may go early decision on his “reach” date Madison, the hot cheerleader who (it is rumored) has a tattoo on her thigh. She’s out of his league, sure, but perhaps he’ll be the beneficiary of Madison’s affirmative action program, wherein in she’s simply sick of self-centered football players and is considering “somebody with a brain.” However, in the likely event he is rejected, he must also know who his “match” date would be, possibly Emma, the cute-ish girl who’s been in every drama department performance, but always as the comic relief. And, just in case, he must be prepared to settle for his safe date, Jolene, who could maybe be okay if she’d lose the nose ring and her tendency to wear overalls.

He must also decide how he’s going to ask whoever he’s going to ask, which is no simple matter.  In terms of elaborateness, the rite of passage of asking a girl to prom is approaching the rite of passage of asking a girl to marry you (a subject I covered in a recent post). There is even a word now–promposals–that hints at the willingness of teenage boys to go to great lengths (not to mention expense) to impress a girl who–let us remember–is only two or three years removed from repeatedly saying her first name with “Bieber” after it to see how it sounded.

Or maybe our teenaged Romeo should post a YouTube video asking a celebrity to go to the prom with him because, hey, you never know. Lots of kids are doing that now.  But if he does it, how long should he give the adorable Chloe Moretz (left) to respond before asking Madison? And is he even aware that Chloe Moretz is starring in a remake of Carrie?

Girls have it tough, too, but, for them, it’s more like being a free agent in baseball. Does she take the first offer even though it’s from the Mets (that Skeezer kid from chem lab), or does she wait to see if the Cardinals (Ashton, the 6′ 2″ All-State shooting guard with the wavy hair) will enter the bidding because she’d rather be with a quality organization that has a chance of winning, but then what if the Mets sign that girl off waivers from the Catholic school and the Cards decide to bring up that kid from 11th grade and she’s left waiting around, hoping somebody gets injured?

Where was I?

Oh, right. Prom. Girls also have to worry about the dress. The boys are like, “That tux is fine; they all look the same anyway,” unless it’s the one idiot who rents the powder blue job with the ruffled shirt. But a girl will agonize over the dress for months before selecting that incredible strapless gown that makes her look spectacular, only to discover that her school’s principal has banned strapless gowns.

The school principal in question is Sharon Moffat of the Readington Middle School in Pennsylvania, and she has banned strapless gowns from the end-of-year dinner-dance. Now, granted, it is a middle school, so she could ban strapless gowns for structural issues (“She’s in eighth grade; what’s holding that up?”). But, no, she’s banning them because they are “too distracting for boys.”

That rationale is a problem for a number of reasons.  For one thing, how exactly do you define “distracted” when talking about a school dance?  It’s not like she’s wearing her strapless gown to final exams. What is she distracting the eighth grade boys from–being huddled under the basketball hoop at the far end of the gym discussing plans to go huddle outside the convenience store on Main Street?

Secondly, I thought we were on our way toward getting past the idea of blaming the behavior of men on the “flirtatious” outfits women are were wearing. It’s just sexist and stupid to restrict a woman’s freedom and ban her from an event because of what men might do.

Instead, they should restrict a man’s freedom and ban him from an event because of what women might do. That is precisely what our allies and terrorist-breeding friends in Saudi Arabia have done.

Yes, that’s right. Three men from the United Arab Emirates were forcibly removed from the Jenadrivah Heritage & Cultural Festival in Riyadh recently for wearing strapless gowns.

No, wait, that doesn’t sound right. They were removed from the festival and deported from the entire country for being too handsome (that’s one of them at left). Authorities feared that women would find them irresistible and, um, well it’s not clear what the authorities thought the women might do. Show a little cheek maybe?

My immediate reaction to this story was that it was an inexcusable misuse of power. But on second thought, I realized that, hell, if you’ve got that much power, getting rid of every guy that’s better-looking than you is, in fact, a pretty good use of it!

Not to mention a great way to get Madison to go to the prom with you.

See you soon.

Entry 226: Does a Pink Bear Sit in the Woods?

American advertising is weird. Or maybe Americans are weird, and the advertising just reflects it.

For years you could not do a TV commercial in which a woman wore a bra. No, let me correct that. You could show a woman wearing bra, but she had to wear it over her clothes. Alternatively, you could show how a bra crossed the heart of a dummy. No problem with Goldie Hawn wearing a bikini on Laugh-In; but she couldn’t wear the top in a commercial.

Now we have Victoria’s Secret fashion shows on TV. Hooray for progress.

But it’s time to bring the same type of forward thinking to toilet paper. Wait–sorry. Bathroom tissue. As if it’s used exclusively to blow your nose in the bathroom.

Think carefully: have you ever heard the term “toilet paper” used in a commercial for, um, toilet paper? Can you think of any remotely rational reason why not?

I mean, what’s the offensive part, the toilet or the paper? Does putting the two words together too strongly provide an image of its use…a mental picture that would appeal to the prurient interests of …well, not very many people?

For decades, advertisers avoided the issue like a plague…of hemorrhoids. They kept harping on strength and softness because research showed them that those were the traits Americans most preferred in their…lavatory linens. Millions of dollars were spent on focus groups to discover this, as if marketers couldn’t guess intuitively that Americans wouldn’t like wiping their butts with paper that had the feel and strength of stale bread.

But the advertisers came around eventually. About the time network TV decided that characters on sitcoms could say the word “ass,” Charmin’, once the target of a vicious groping and squeezing campaign (which was halted only by the intervention of that supermarket superhero, Mr. Whipple), finally decided that it could imply–with extreme subtlety–that its product was intended for use on a particular region of the body. It did this in the most natural and sane way possible, by showing toilet paper stuck to the behinds of pastel-colored cartoon bears.  This even though the bears had no visible orifices on which they might use toilet paper.

And now Charmin’ is once again on the wiping edge. It has brought toilet paper advertising into the 20th century with its new tagline: “Enjoy the go.”

Yes, “the go.” That’s what you call it, isn’t it?

The breakthrough here is the rather frank admission that “we all go to the bathroom.” However, they’re not quite ready to totally remove whatever has been clogging the cavity of caca commercials for decades, because their website introduces itself thusly:

“Welcome to the playful side of TP. Where we believe going to the bathroom is a thing to enjoy — even celebrate.”

Did you have to pause for a second there? Who is Proctor & Gamble talking about? Tom Petty? Tony Perkins?  I don’t care how playful they are, I don’t want either of them in my bathroom while I’m trying to “enjoy the go,” especially since Tony Perkins might be dressed as his mother. Plus he’s been dead awhile.

What’s that? Oh…that TP!  That’s right–they still can’t bring themselves to say “toilet paper”–not even on their website! “TP?” That’s somebody who carves his initials on a tree, not something that street cleans Anal Avenue.

For those who may be puzzled by the whole “enjoy the go” thing, their website has a helpful link that lets you “check out this video to learn more about Enjoy the Go.” The video is essentially a list of all the times during the day when a human being might possibly decide to go to the bathroom: in the morning, after morning coffee, at work and after dinner.

I know that pretty much covers it for me.

The video continues by telling us that “Charmin’ wants to help turn this simple need into an enjoyable routine. The relief. The calm. The clean. The comfort.”

Well, I’ve heard of the five stages of grief, but not the four stages of poop. “The calm?” Really? Is that before or after the storm? And what role does Charmin’ play in the relief stage, unless they mean that wonderful moment of ecstasy when, after “the go,” you confirm that there is, in fact, a spare roll within reach.

And where do the pastel-colored bears come in again?

See you soon.