Polar Bears 1, Deranged Humans 0

My kids and I visited the Central Park Zoo over the weekend and one of the featured attractions there is the polar bear exhibit.  These things are HUGE and I was reminded of the recent story of the “deranged woman” in Germany who jumped into the polar bear exhibit ( do “sane women” do this, too?) and quickly learned that what’s cute and cuddly from a distance is quite terrifying when it’s close enough to sink its teeth into you.

The bears batted the fraulein around a bit, but she was eventually hauled to safety.  The whole thing was caught on tape, of course, and quickly became an on-line sensation.

I love incidents like this — when people forget for a moment that, although caged, these are still WILD animals and pay dearly for their mistake.   (Just to be clear, I do NOT love it when people ACCIDENTLY get attacked by an animal.  Only when they willingly put themselves in harm’s way.)

You may recall the story from a while back about three jackasses who decided to taunt a tiger at the Miami Zoo.  Here are some choice excerpts from CNN’s coverage of that story:

• “Police are probing whether one of the Siberian tiger’s three victims climbed over a fence Christmas Day and then dangled a leg or other body part over the moat.”  Can you imagine the moment when you realize that the tiger can actually get you?  Hey, everybody, look at me up on the fence!  Am I crazy or what?  Oh, look, here comes the tiger.  Oooh, I’m so scared.  Here kitty, kitty… oh, shit!

• “The investigation is looking into the possibility that the tiger escaped by latching on to a leg or other body part.”  Apparently, tigers are not only ferocious, but really smart.  What must the victim’s two friends have been thinking?  Man, that sucks for Carlos, but at least we’re safe out here… oh, shit!

• “Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Mollinedo was asked about an incident last year, in which Tatiana chewed flesh off a keeper’s arm during a public feeding demonstration. Mollinedo said that Tatiana ‘was acting like a normal tiger’ at the time.”  How do ABNORMAL tigers act?  Do they give you their paw or something?

• “Ron Magill of Florida’s Miami Metrozoo told CNN that the Siberian tiger is ‘the most powerful cat on the face of this planet.’”  I can testify to the size of these suckers.  We visited the Bronx Zoo last summer and they have an amazing exhibit where you can view tigers up close.  At one point, one of the tigers was pacing back and forth about 20 feet away from where we were all standing there looking at it.  Suddenly, it turned and began walking very slowly, but very purposefully, straight toward us, prompting several children (and a few adults) to scream in terror, despite the fact that the glass separating us was about three inches thick. 

• “When police arrived, they saw the tiger ’sitting next to a person on the ground,’ and the tiger turned back and began attacking the person again.  Officers yelled at the tiger to stop.”  Did they actually yell, “Stop”?  Why would a tiger respond to that?

Ah, well, if you have to go, go big.  Perhaps the next time we’re at the Central Park Zoo, I’ll climb into the penguin and puffin exhibit and see who wants a piece of me.

Play That Funky Cello, White Boy

On Tuesday, I kissed the kids goodnight and headed to Joe’s Pub in NYC to hear a guy named Trevor Exter sing songs about his life and play the cello.  This is not nearly as lame as it sounds because a) Exter can really sing and b) Exter rocks the cello and makes music with it that is entirely “un-classical” and totally cool.  An old friend of mine is Exter’s agent (allegedly) and invited me to the show.  (“We’ll have a drink with Trevor after the show,” she told me on the phone the previous afternoon.  She was nowhere to be found.  Ah, well)

After a brief scuffle with the woman working the door — “The box office is CLOSED,” she kept insisting as though I’d shown up late and without a ticket to see “Phantom of the Opera” — I was eventually allowed in and there he was, sitting on stage all alone, just a man and his cello.  The sight of it was jarring, almost funny, at first, but then I realized that Exter is a serious musician who makes beautiful, haunting, serious music.

After a few songs, Exter invited a drummer to join him on stage and they played a few songs.  The drummer emerged from a very small door at the back of the stage, which eventually disgorged a bass player, a sax player, and a harmonica player.  It was the nightclub version of a clown car.  (A quick bass story… In the eight grade, I was the MC for my school’s talent show and introduced one of my classmates as playing the electric bass, which I pronounced like the fish.  I couldn’t understand why everyone was laughing.) 

At the end of their last song together, Exter jumped out of his seat and gave his cello a sort of “modified Pete Townsend windmill” and the crowd went about as wild as a crowd will ever go at a Trevor Exter show, which is to say modestly and politely wild, but not really very wild at all.

Exter came back out by himself to play a few encores, ending with a fabulous rendition of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” (also covered brilliantly by one of my favorite bands, The Housemartins).

All in all, I thought Mr. Exter was awesome.  Two thumbs up, Trevor!

Best Lines: “You Ate Your Own Heini?”

My son is three, my daughter is eight, and I am 41, but we all love “Phineas and Ferb,” an animated show on the Disney Channel, which offers a little something for everybody.

Phineas and Ferb are brothers and the show is set during their seemingly endless summer vacation. For kicks, they think of incredibly elaborate things to do, like building a roller coaster in their back yard. Their older sister, Candace, lives for the day that she will be able to bust Phineas and Ferb to Mom and Dad, but it never quite works out that way.

The boys have a pet platypus named Perry, who doubles as a secret agent charged with foiling the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz. (One of my favorite moments in every episode comes when these cheery female voices sing the evil doctor’s corporate jingle: “Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated.”)

A few months back, my kids started saying the phrase, “You ate your own heini?” and I had no idea what they were talking about except that it seemed to crack them up to no end. One day recently, we were watching “Phineas and Ferb” and my daughter gushed, “This is the heini episode!”

As it turned out, Dr. Doofenshmirtz zapped Perry with a machine that encased the platypus in a thick coating of chocolate. Doofenshmirtz exults in his triumph and plans to unleash his machine on the entire planet. But Perry emerges to battle him once again. Doofenshmirtz, who speaks with a silly German accent, looks over at the chocolate shell of Perry’s body, where a certain piece of the anatomy has gone missing, allowing him to escape.

“You ate your own heini?” Doofenshmirtz says incredulously and we all laughed long and hard.

It has become a standard phrase of ours whenever we want to express complete shock and surprise at something.

The Greatest Songs of All Time

My favorite song at the moment is “Circus” by Britney Spears.  Yes, I admit it, I have always been a big fan of Ms. Spears ever since she danced around in a Catholic school girl uniform in “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”  (That’s what 12 years of Catholic school will do for you, folks.  You emerge very smart, but totally dysfunctional.)  I was even one of the few people who thought Britney looked just fine when she made her infamous appearance on the MTV Music Awards last year.  Let’s see you pump out two babies and then dance around in a skin-tight costume!   

Like Britney’s best work, “Circus” is three-and-a-half minutes of pure bubble gum dance pop.  It also features Britney’s speaking voice, which always sounds a bit weird.  At a certain point in the song, for example, she says, “Let me see what you can do,” but it doesn’t sound quite right.  “Circus” also has lyrics that don’t quite fit, but Britney MAKES them fit by changing the emphasis in certain words, another one of her signatures.  “I’m like a PER-former, the dance floor is my stage,” she sings, putting the accent in the wrong place.  Ah, well.  It’s a dance song, for God’s sake. 

As much as I love “Circus,” it does not make my top eight list – or my top eight HUNDRED list, for that matter – of The Greatest Songs of All Time (not to be confused with my recent post discussing The Greatest DANCE Songs of All Time).  Here, in no particular order, are the songs that I love the best:

• “Boys of Summer,” Don Henley – This lyric has influenced my life a great deal: “Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.  A little voice inside my head said, ‘Don’t look back.  You can never look back.’”  I try very hard to never look back.  The future is so much more appealing.   
• “Let’s Go,” The Cars – There’s something about this song that just makes me very happy.  I like the nightlife, baby!
• “Take Me Home,” Phil Collins – By contrast, there’s something about this song that makes me very sad.  As I’ve written previously, my favorite word is “home” and this song is all about wanting to get back home and it is beautiful and wistful.
• “Wanted Dead or Alive,” Bon Jovi – OK, I absolutely LOVE Bon Jovi and I think this is their best song by far.  “I’ve seen a million faces/And I rocked them all.”  Yes, boys.  Yes.
• “Holding Back the Years,” Simply Red – The vocal on this song is just killer, especially when he wails, “Holdin’, holdin’, holdin’, I…” and holds the “I” for about 20 minutes. 
• “Promises in the Dark,” Pat Benatar – I love it when there is a count down or count up in a song and I love the part in this song when one of the band members counts, away from the microphone, “One, two, three, four…” before Pat kicks it back in and finishes the damn thing.
• “Things Can Only Get Better,” Howard Jones – I am a glass-half-empty kind of guy, but for these four minutes my cup runneth over.  “And do you feel scared? I do/But I won’t stop and falter.”  Me, neither, Howie.
• “Born to Run,” Bruce Springsteen – Yes, this is on everyone’s top ten list, but it deserves to be.  If an alien landed in my apartment and asked me to play one song that embodies the human experience, I would say, “Sit down, Spaceman,” and crank this one to eleven.
• “It Takes Two,” Rob Base – This one topped the list of my Greatest Dance Songs of All Time and it is SO DAMN GOOD that it earns a place on this list, too. 

So there you have ‘em.  The Elite Eight.  Which ones did I miss?