The Yapper Zapper - Pure Genius

I knew it was only a matter of time before someone figured out a way for the everyman to block cell-phone signals via some sort of high-tech gizmo. Well, let me introduce The Yapper Zapper. For a hundred dollars or so, you can buy one of these pocket-sized contraptions and effectively kill all cell phones within a thirty foot radius with the press of a button. For me personally, this is a Godsend. At the risk of sounding like the grumpy old man telling the neighbor kids to stay the hell off his lawn, there is nothing more irritating than trying to carry on a conversation with someone who is staring at their Smartphone as if it is spitting out real-time data on the location of the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Granted, my conversational abilities may be lacking in substance, humor or importance, but that still doesn't mean a person should go back to his game of "Angry Bird" or checking his status on Facebook. And I am guilty of this as well, since I find most peoples' conversational abilities lacking even more than my own. It's a vicious circle of ambivilence and attention deficit disorder. We all need a good slap on the hand - or electrical shock - when we go into "phone-mode".

I believe that all automobiles should be equipped with such a device, with an override switch in case of emergency. The switch will, however, be located inconveniently in the trunk and inoperable unless the car is not running. Enough with the texting and chatting while you drive, people. We drive poorly enough without compounding the problem trying to figure out which button puts the dashes in "nasty-assed clap-trap" while negotiating a freeway cloverleaf. And I know - I've typed this phrase while driving on a cloverleaf and it is totally unsafe.

Restaurants, supermarket check-out lanes and all bank, fast-food outlet and liquor store drive-thrus should be similarly equipped. Don't waste my time yammering on your phone in the drive-thru when I need to buy a quart of Thunderbird and three Mickey's Big Mouths. Just sayin'.

The irony is that this beautiful little invention is illegal. Apparently jamming cell-phone signals is against the law and runs up a fine of $11,000. This seems a bit extreme for saving innocent bystanders the pain and suffering of listening to the loud, drunken blowhard at the next table talk about "how fucking jacked-up" he is that he scored those "kick-ass" hockey tickets. It is an unfair, overblown punishment and I think that those taking the time to block signals appropriately should instead be compensated for their efforts, like crime-fighters, firemen, dead-animal pickup technicians and astronauts.

All I know is that I want one. I would like to be able to use it unabashedly, jamming all offenders breaking the rules of good cell-phone decorum. Yapping in the public washroom while I'm trying to take care of my business - ZAP! Carrying on about your wax-job (auto or bikini) via speaker-function in line at McDonalds - ZAP! Need to have your phone on during the movie? I don't think so - ZAP! Talking nasty to your boyfriend while sitting next to me on the lightrail - we'll let that one slide this time, I suppose, but keep it interesting.

We should all have them, I think - equal-opportunity jamming. Chances are, if you jam me, I have deserved it and will hold my phone up and say "Good call - my bad. Thank you!" In fact, when I am King, that will be the protocal - if you have been blocked, chances are you had it coming - be aware of your convesations at all times. If we put his attitude into practice now, in a kind of common sense move, with adequate signage, I wouldn't have to block your phone in the first place. Which is how it should be.

I want a monkey.

I need to clarify this title. I want a monkey only if it will not or is incapable of eating my face off. And since I do not trust the "will not" portion of this caveat, I will settle for the following: "I want a monkey who is incapable of eating my face off". Whether this is brought about because the monkey, once it is big and strong enough to eat my face off is heavily drugged with a monkey-tranquilizer, or has been fitted with some handsome, but harmless, soft plastic monkey-teeth does not matter to me. In fact, once the chimp is big and strong enough to eat my face off, I will probably have stopped trusting it anyhow and manifested some sort of watchful paranoia in the presence of the animal, which would ultimately break the animal's heart and devastate the beast, who had come to love me, as much as an ape can love a man.

My fear of wild animals is well-documented. I have an irrational fear of many things - among them, in no particular order are: Circus clowns, wild animals in general, wolverines in particular, the sea and all creatures that inhabit its untrustworthy waters, children with two different colored eyes and certain types of wood. That all said, it is my theory that the animal kingdom is gearing up for a big takeover - all the news stories of bear-mauling, rogue schools of giant jellyfish, reptiles, big cats, kangaroos and fire ants all gone completely man-hungry simply serve to illustrate my point.

But that's not why I'm writing today. I watched a show on television this weekend called "Fatal Attractions". It was not the sassy Michael Douglas/Glenn Close suspense thriller I was hoping to watch - the fact that it was on a channel labeled "Animal Planet" should have clued me in. It was actually a show that offered up stories of "animal-hoarders", who stockpiled flocks, pits and packs of dangerous pets, often to the point of depriving themselves of living space, food, health and, as the title suggests, sometimes their lives. The show I saw featured a man who was eaten by his brace of giant lizards. I don't know that a group of lizards is called a "brace", but it sounded better than a "lounge" of lizards, which was my first instinct. The second show - yes, I watched two of them - detailed the last hours of a woman bitten by one of her great menagerie of venomous vipers. "What the hell?" I asked the television. What kind of dumbass keeps a bed of poisonous snakes roaming free in their shitty apartment? A DEAD dumbass, I answered myself, also aloud. I was shaken and disturbed and had to turn to a 1959's sci-fi movie whose plot had more holes in it than the carcass of the dumbass who had been eaten by his lizards. The fact that the movie had special effects by Ray Harryhausen made it easier to recover from the animal-hoarder show, regardless of the shoddy plotline.

I guess my point is this: Let's not bring wild animals into our homes. No lion cubs, no cute little monitor lizards, no wolf pups and sadly, no monkeys. These animals belong in the wild, where they can join their carnivorous friends in planning their takeover of the world. The weak and slow end up in a zoo - their peers appreciate them being removed from their ranks, it only serves to make them faster and stronger. The weakest of all are trained and used in the movies. I find it hard to believe, however, that they don't snap and chew somebody's face off now and again.

And a final note to those who make this "Fatal Attraction" television show: Knock it off, will you? You've already ruined my dream of owning a monkey I could dress up like a 19th century Italian immigrant and teach to smoke cigars. Haven't you done enough?

Whatever happened to sportsmanship?

I was watching sports on television today - something I really need to cut back on. I should be working diligently on a book a song or a play or a tree fort, or out in the sunshine, fine-tuning my melanoma, but here I sit, watching the home team put forth an amazing display of mediocrity. As I was wondering how I could somehow manipulate my own mediocrity into an obscene paycheck like these lackards, a question came to my mind - just when did sportsmanship turn into showmanship?

I thought about the old days when a ballplayer would smash a homerun into the upper deck, lower his head and trot around the bases, careful not to show up the opposing pitcher. Of course, back then, if you showed up an opposing pitcher, you might wind up taking a fastball to the kidney. That's how it worked back then; the game policed itself. Now, players crowd the plate and suit up in more armor than a medieval knight when they get in the batter's box. Back in the old days, that would have brought a little chin-music and the umpire would have watched with a bemused grin.

These days, players hit a rocket out of the park, drop the bat and admire their handiwork for a few seconds before taking a leisurely canter from bag to bag. A batter will hit a single through a gap in the infield and upon reaching first base, will make the sign of the cross, kiss his blingy crucifix necklace and point to the heavens, presumably thanking the man upstairs for his assistance in hitting the ball. I always wonder why they don't flip off the sky when they fail to reach base two-thirds of their turns at the plate. If you're gonna give the Big Guy credit for a hit, you might as well blame Him for the strike out, right? In a slump? Blame Jesus.

In football, players will flex their muscles and dance and carry on after a routine tackle as if they had just found the cure for cancer, even though their team is down 24 points and their QB is on the sideline taking an oral concussion test. I just don't get it... Basketball players have always reveled in making their opponents look stupid - I blame that on the Harlem Globetrotters with all their fancy passing and the Washington Generals' bench full of stiffs hired to take the nightly beating.

My point is this, I guess - leave the macho-in-your-face showmanship for the wrestling crowd. If I want to see a fancy dance, I will drive to Vegas and check out "Love" by the Cirque De Solei folks - I hear it's dandy. I want to watch sports when I turn on a sporting event, not a bunch of over-paid, juiced-up athletes who are more likely to sprain their shoulders patting themselves on the back than hurting themselves grinding out the extra three inches needed for the first down or diving for the seeing-eye grounder. Those legs are too valuable for that kind of nonsense, I suppose.

You can watch film of Babe Ruth dominating the game of baseball back in the twenties and throttling every pitcher who dared toss a ball in the vicinity of the plate. He would drop his bat and go into his little chubby trot - never showing up the opposing pitcher, even though he had proven at every level of the game that he had certainly earned the right to do so. There was the legendary "called shot" - which could have been construed as showing up the pitcher and the entire opposing team, but there is no solid proof that it ever even happened and eyewitness testimony to the incident varied. And you would never see Mickey Mantle standing at home plate to admire one his tape-measure jobs, even if he hit them completely out of the ballpark, which he did - several times. Just put his head down and trotted around the bases. Of course, he was probably drunk, but that only adds to the humility of the man. I readily admit that if I hit a 500-foot homerun, I would not only stand and admire the shot, I would run to the mound and kiss the pitcher right on the mouth. If that's not showing him up, I don't know what is. That's why I am not a professional athlete, I suppose.

All I'm saying is, have a little humility, fellas. Act like you've done it before. You make enough money to go take some lessons, or something. Or watch some old film of the games back when they had some class. Sometimes it's not entirely about you and your really bitchin accomplishment of the moment. Sometimes it's about preserving some of the dignity that the games worked so hard to acquire. Just sayin'.

When Daddy's Little Girls Grow Up...

The passing of time is a Royal Cruel Bitch. I remember turning around, sometime around 1990 and thinking, "what in the hell happened to my twenties???" The same thing happened again in 2000 and 2010, except upon the realization of these milestones, I had accumulated some valuable baggage - my twin daughters, Allison and Logan. Somehow, hitting 40, then 50 didn't have quite the impact of imagining my daughters were 7, then 17. Now, on the dramatic cusp of 18, the girls are ready to move out of the house and into the real world and all I can think is "what the hell happened to my little girls???"

Logan lives with her mother in Dubuque, Iowa, the only town in America, I believe, that has three "u's" in its name. She is graduating a semester early and planning on moving to Wisconsin from Iowa - a lateral move, in my opinion. Allison lives with me and is leaving Wednesday to test the waters in the Berkeley area of California. What the hell - already? Allie purchased her ticket to the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago and has been haphazardly packing all her stuff for me to drive out to her in December, should the move take. Today, I walked into her room and it was entirely packed up and the boxes were stacked and ready to go. "So, you're serious with this move-thing?" I asked. "I thought you were just fooling around..." Nope, she's moving. Logan is making her plans as well. Mike Lyon pointed out, "they've moved out before..." He's right - they've moved from my place to their Mom's a couple of different times - that's how it works, apparently, in these situations where the parents are no longer an item. "Yes," I said, patiently. "But this time she's moving out out..." There is a big difference.

So, my mind has been going over all the memories that have whizzed by since the girls were young enough that it seemed as if there were time for millions more - the possibilities were endless. And just like that, suddenly they're going to be 18 and moving on to make memories of their own, with their Pop taking the backseat and lining up the putt for his Last Great Adventure. It all just went so quickly.

Some random memories:

I remember the tension of their first two months, spent in an NICU in Albuquerque, New Mexico (the other city with three u's in its name - WTF?) and our joy at bringing them home. Our greater joy as the years went by and the girls grew up with no major lingering effects from their premature entry into the world.

I remember bundling them up in their snow gear as toddlers and letting them run in the snow, with me forming and firing snowballs at their backs as they attempted to scamper away in thigh-high snow. My still-supple and accurate arm cut them down as they ran, the snowballs sending them reeling into the drifts. The would rise and howl with laughter and beg for more. I would oblige.

In the days before DVD players in the car, I came up with the idea of putting in their favorite Disney and Pooh videos and running a direct line to my cassette recorder - the same one I used for my mix-tapes (see next memory) - and throwing the cassette into the player in the mini-van on long road trips. They would ride in silence, staring at the dome-light, the movie playing in their heads as we drove and they listened to the soundtracks. A move of sheer genius that I do not receive enough credit for.

I would make mix-tapes of music with everything from Tom Jones and Dean Martin to rare Beatle tracks and Tubes songs. I would crank up the end of "Mondo Bondage" by the Tubes, where there is a huuuge growl and the girls' eyes would pop out of their little bald heads in anticipation of the racket. The beginning of "State of the Heart" by Rick Springfield used to freak them out, Allie reminded me. I do not recall it, but apparently there is a spoken-word intro that I don't remember that used to play before the actual song. That's how strong the memories are. When the girls were still in their mom's tummy, I used to stretch my headphones over the belly and pipe Dean Martin songs in to the twins - when they would get cranky in their high-chairs, I would throw on some Dino and they would quiet the hell down. Another stroke of genius, the prenatal Dino. The girls would sing along with the mix tapes - Allie would sing "SHE'S A LA-DAH" with Tom Jones and "CAN'T YOU SEE - 'EAH!" , leaving the "Y" off "YEAH" in the Beatles' "That Means A Lot" from the Anthology CD.

Music has remained a vital part of the girls' lives and both are talented musicians and songwriters. It makes me proud to think that they sprang from the same hillbilly well that produced a man (my father) who would write a song called "You're Bound to Look Like a Monkey When You Grow Old" about his own son (me). I have encouraged them to try and have a solid back-up plan, just in case the music thing doesn't carry them to the top of the charts and I think they listened. We shall see.

The most lasting memory I have is the laughter that we have shared over the years. They both have marvelous senses of humor and for that I am grateful. Had I been forced to raise a couple of tight-assed, humorless shrews, I might have hurled myself into a live volcano years ago. I once purchased them a beta fish - one of those japanese fighting fish, to put into a tank to test the water. If the water wasn't ready for habitation, the fish would most likely not survive. I explained this to the girls as we drove home, in preparation for the devastation that would most likely occur, should the fish perish. "What should we name the fish?" Logan asked, over and over again. I explained it didn't matter and they could name it whatever they wanted. "Name it 'Ringo" for all I care," I said. There was a slight pause and Logan replied, "If it's going to die, wouldn't it be more appropriate to name it 'John'?" IRONY!!!! I thought to myself. MY GIRLS GET IRONY!!!! We have shared many thousands of laughs over the years and I have bamboozled them into thinking that I am the funniest man on the planet. Great work when you can get it. I often tell them, "enjoy this now - there will be a time when you are changing my diaper and feeding me Scotch in a sippy-cup and saying, 'remember when he was sharp and funny?'"

So it goes. The next stage is up to them and all I can hope is that those of us who have had a hand in their development have done a good enough job to at least get the boat out of the harbor safely. I just want to have the good fortune to be standing nearby, with my hearing aide adjusted so that I can hear them say, "what the hell happened to my thirties???" and smile. And take another sip from my sippy-cup