Happy Meal Me

Is there any product on the face of the planet more perfectly named than the McDonald’s “Happy Meal”?  It’s rather arrogant if you think about it.  THIS meal — not some other meal, cooked by you, perhaps, or purchased elsewhere — is so certain to produce happiness in the consumer that it is NAMED after happiness.  

For once, the wizards at McDonald’s decided to pull back on the whole “Mc” thing and not call it a “Happy McMeal” or a “McHappy Meal.”  No, there is no need to bastardize the meaning of it all. 

It is a meal. 

And it makes you happy.

At least it does if you’re under the age of ten, as both my children are.  (Nine and three, to be exact.)  They get happy at the mere NOTION that we might be heading to McDonald’s to get some grub.  And who can blame them?  It’s perfect, really.  You get your protein in the form of some Chicken McNuggets.  You get your fruits/veggies in the form of french fries or apple dippers.  (What’s the ratio there, do you think?  Seventy five orders of fries for every one order of apple dippers?)  You get a drink, which can be milk or juice.  And, best of all, you get a toy.  A toy made in China by a child half the age of your children, but, hey, it’s a global economy and toys are important.  We like toys in this country.  We NEED toys.

Today, the toy for boys was an Astro Boy action figure and for girls it was a My Little Pony.  (There is not even a hint of gender sensitivity in the toy selections.  At McDonald’s, boys like to blow things up; girls like to play with dolls.  As a father of a boy and a girl, that’s pretty much right, but do they have to be so OVERT about it?)  

My kids figured out a few visits ago that the bottom of the Happy Meal box tells you which toys are up next.  (The DaVinci McCode.)  This is a great way to keep abreast of pop culture, but also indicative of our tiny lil’ attention spans.  A whole lot of people probably worked for five years on Astro Boy — a perfectly fine film, by the way.  Doesn’t it merit more than a week or two in the Happy Meal line-up?  Apparently, it does not.

In Astro Boy (as in so many other movies for children these days), we have completely befouled the Earth and now use it largely as a giant dumping ground for worn-out robots, discarded from the floating city above where all the cool people live.  Someday, a thousand years from now, an archaeologist will stumble across my garbage from this afternoon.  She’ll carefully dust off Astro Boy and Iris, the My Little Pony, with a delicate brush.

“My God,” she’ll say, her voice barely above a whisper. ”They had rockets coming out of their feet.  And really gay looking horses.”

This Post Could Save Your Life

About five or six years ago, I was down in St. Thomas with my then-wife and daughter.  We were staying at the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef, an absolutely lovely resort, and we were enjoying a lazy day at the beach.  One moment I was sitting on my towel, catching some rays and nursing a pina colada, and then, suddenly, I found myself in the surf, desperately trying to pull a drowning woman to shore. 

To this day, I have no recollection of how I made the transition from Jimmy Buffett to David Hasselhoff.  I don’t remember anyone yelling for help, I don’t even remember running into the ocean.  And yet there I was, along with another guy about my age, fighting the waves and tugging this poor old lady up onto the beach. 

What I do remember is how HEAVY she was and how her husband just stood there watching us, a look of profound sadness and confusion on his weathered, old face.  I realized later that the woman was so heavy because she was full of water.   

We dragged her up onto the beach and it was pretty clear to me that she was dead.  Every time we moved her, water came spilling out of her mouth.  She wasn’t the right color.   

In an incredible stroke of luck, an emergency room nurse happened to be vacationing at our resort and was sitting nearby.  She began CPR.  I ran the length of the beach, hollering for a doctor.  One brave young man told me that he was in training to be an EMT.  “Let’s go, brother,” I said and we ran back to the old lady.

She was alive!  The ER nurse had brought her back from the dead – quite literally.  An ambulance arrived and they took the old lady away.  I later learned from the hotel manager that she and her husband were visiting our beach from a cruise ship.  They kept her in the hospital for a day or so and she was able to continue on with her vacation.

I tell you this story not to portray myself as a hero, but only because it stands in ridiculously stark contrast to how poorly I have performed under similar life-or-death situations involving people that I actually know and love.

A few years ago, for example, we gave my daughter (about three years old at the time) her first-ever Lifesaver and she promptly proceeded to choke on it.  I was with her at the time, along with my then-wife and then-mother-in-law.  Three seemingly capable adults vs. one fucking Lifesaver.

We all stood around for a few seconds in a total panic.  Madeleine is choking!  Holy shit, somebody do something!  Somebody!  Anybody!  Hello? 

I eventually stepped up to apply the Heimlich Maneuver.  Bear in mind that I am 6’3” and 200 pounds, while my daughter, at the time, was probably about three feet tall and 30 pounds.  I gave it a go and nothing happened.  I tried again.  Nothing.  My daughter had survived open heart surgery when she was 13 months old.  Now, we were going to lose her to a piece of hard candy.

“Call 911,” I said to my wife and about 10 seconds later, my daughter managed to swallow the Lifesaver, which, thankfully, had melted down a bit (though not as much as me).  The firemen arrived a minute later, God bless them, but it was all over by then and everything was fine.

Something remarkably similar happened a few years later when I was out to dinner in Hoboken with my good friends Andy and Suzy.  Suzy loves to talk, so I knew something was wrong when a silence descended over the table.  Sure enough, she was choking – not on a Lifesaver, but on a piece of skirt steak.  I looked at Andy and he looked at me.  Neither of us moved a muscle.  Suzy looked at the both of us, desperately fighting to breathe.  Her eyes said it all – “Would one of you fucking clowns get off your ass and help a sister out here?!” 

I looked at Andy again and he at me.  Our eyes said it all, too – “Dude, I don’t want to do it.  YOU do it!!”

Suzy was standing up now and really struggling.  Andy and I remained seated, engaged in our game of Cowards Chicken.  Who would blink first?  Not me, man.  I couldn’t get a Lifesaver out of my daughter.  Now, I’m supposed to get a skirt steak out of Suzy? 

Like Madeleine, Suzy eventually took matters into her own hands and down went the skirt steak (or maybe it came out, I don’t remember).  What I do remember is my deep sense of shame and embarrassment afterwards.  A dear friend of mine had been in deep shit and I did nothing.  I didn’t try and fail.  I didn’t even try.  Suzy, I apologize.  Andy, you suck.

One more quick story… Last weekend, I was with my kids, my girlfriend, and her kids in Warwick, NY, visiting friends who have horses.  We were feeding apples to the horses and there is a bit of technique to it where you hold the apple in the palm of your hand and provide a little resistance when the horse leans in to take a bite.  The horses were slobbering like fiends (“Sour apples,” our friend explained), but we were having a good time. 

My three-year-old son wanted to give it a try, so I picked him up and gave him a small piece of apple to hold.  “Really hold your hand steady,” I said to him as the horse approached.  About three milliseconds later, the horse was eating his hand.  My son started yelling and, for a crucial split second, I did what I always do when the pressure is on: absolutely nothing. 

The best part of this story is that my son still has all ten of his fingers and suffered only the smallest of scrapes on one knuckle.  The second best part of the story is that my girlfriend managed to take a picture of the precise moment when my son realized that a 2,000-pound animal had mistaken his hand for an apple.  I’m also in the picture.  I have a near-total lack of expression on my face.  My left arm dangles casually by my side, while I actually appear to be using my right arm to boost my son CLOSER to the horse’s mouth. 

We had some ice cream later to make it all better.  Nobody choked on a thing.

Songs That Were Banned at My Wedding

Yes, my marriage ended in a puddle of goo, but, gosh darn it all, we had a lovely wedding and the music was good.  We hired a band called the Rhythm Dogs and they, of course, wanted to know which songs we wanted them to play.

“Let’s save some time,” I said, always ruthlessly efficient.  “Here are the songs we DON’T want you to play.”

And here they are for you now:

• “Shout,” The Isley Brothers – My knees are for shit, so it’s always been a challenge for me to “get a little bit softer now.”  Besides, it’s just stupid.
• “Celebration,” Kool and the Gang – This song is way too prescriptive.  If you have to tell people that “we’re gonna’ have a good time tonight,” you’re trying WAY too hard and you’re probably not going to have a very good time at all.
• “Mony Mony,” Billy Idol – I curse like a sailor, so there is no real thrill for me in chanting “get laid, get fucked,” especially in front of my grandmother.  Didn’t we work these sort of impulses out of our systems in high school, people?
• “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” Meatloaf – The first problem with this song is that it goes on for about 20 minutes. The second problem is that your drunk Uncle Irv is always going to grope a bridesmaid during the Phil Rizzuto part.  Really, there isn’t much else to do.
• “Old Time Rock and Roll,” Bob Seger – I have no problem with people busting out the air guitar on the dance floor.  However, there is no way on Earth to play the “air saxophone” without looking like an absolute ass.

The funny thing here is all the songs that AREN’T on this list.  The “Electric Slide” brings me great joy to this day, and I’m a big fan of the “Macarena.”  If I’m at a party and they play “Hot, Hot, Hot,” I will lead the conga line to the parking lot and back even if I’m sober, sober, sober. 

Hindsight being 20/20, I suppose my wedding should have been banned at my wedding, but what can you do?  Like I said, the music was good.

10,009… And Rising

I checked my stats this evening and was thrilled to see that I have crossed the 10,000-visitor mark! 

I can remember when I hit 500 visitors, not that long ago. 

Who are you people? 

THANK YOU!

Five, Four, Three, Two…

Ah, there’s nothing like a good countdown to get the old blood pumping.   The ball dropping in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  The calm voice of Mission Control before NASA launches another group of brave souls into space.  The chanting of fans at the end of a big football game upset.  The amount of hours, minutes, and seconds left before  ”iFight Shelby Marx” premieres on The Disney Channel.

Whoa, wait a minute, what was that last one again?

The countdown — once reserved for at least semi-special occasions — has become terribly overused and abused in our time-obsessed society.  Personally, I can’t stand it.  It adds to my already unhealthy obsession with time, or the lack thereof.  I often feel as though I am wasting time and/or that I am living on borrowed time.  (And yet he has time to blog?  Yes.  Yes, he does.)

The rise of the countdown also reflects our society’s desire to elevate everything to “event” status.  The finale of “American Idol” is an event.  The finale of “CSI: Des Moines” not so much, but it is billed that way anyway by marketers desperate to attract attention in our ADD world. 

(A brief aside… One of my pet peeves is how everyone these days declares themselves to be ADD.  If you have been diagnosed with ADD, fine.  If not, then shut the hell up.  Can you imagine people walking around saying, “Oh, my God, I am so cancer”?)

Nobody loves a good countdown more than the financial entertainment channel, CNBC.  During the depths of the financial crisis, they were running countdowns to things like Ben Bernanke’s testimony on Capitol Hill in hours, minutes, seconds, and hundreths of seconds.  Geez, I wonder why everyone got so fucking keyed up?

Please.  Save the counting down for things that actually matter.  Like when my humble blog will attract its 10,000th visitor.  I am currently at 9,933.  9,934.  9,935….

(Yes, I realize that it’s a count-up.  Deal with it.)

Greatest Divorce Songs of All Time

Our lives are set to music — songs that carry us through the good times, the bad times, and all the times in between.   My recent divorce was a blend of all these types of times and music was always there.  If you’re looking for sappy songs of heartbreak, you won’t find them here.  These songs are about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and moving on — occasionally with your middle finger extended.  Here we go…

“Ordinary World,” Duran Duran — I’ve always loved Duran Duran.  This was their comeback hit from a few years ago and I think it is one of their very best.  Here’s the chorus: “But I won’t cry for yesterday/There’s an ordinary world/Somehow I have to find/And as I try to make my way/To the ordinary world/I will learn to survive.”  This captures how I felt during the divorce process — not as though my world was coming to an end, but that I had actually been living in a false world and was clawing my back to the real one.

“Invincible,” Pat Benatar — Like Duran Duran, Benatar is another one of my guilty pleasures.  I was listening to her greatest hits album just this evening on my way home from work, in fact, and rocking out to this song.  Here’s the chorus: “We can’t afford to be innocent/Stand up and face the enemy/It’s a do or die situation/We will be invincible.”  I’ve written previously about the importance of being nice during your divorce, but there were times during my divorce when I had to “strap on the balls” (as a boss of mine used to put it) and say, “No more Mr. Nice Guy. Let’s get it on.”   

“Scarred But Smarter,” Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ — This hard rock trio from Atlanta knows a thing or two about being stepped on and getting pissed off.  In this kick-ass anthem, they sing, “Nobody said it would be fair/They warned you before you went out there/There’s always a chance to get re-started/To a new world, new life, scarred but smarter.”  I was reminded of this song just the other day when I read an article about scars in The New York Times that included this line, “Better to be a scarred and living dog than to be a dead lion.”

“Gold Digger,” Kayne West and Jamie Foxx — OK, sorry, this song is not only hysterical, but painfully accurate as I sit in my two-bedroom apartment across the street from a train station in blue-collar Fanwood, NJ, and my ex-wife settles into the jacuzzi tub in the spacious, marble-covered master bathroom of the 3,500-square-foot McMansion in fancy-schmancy Westfield, NJ, that I used to call home.  Check out these lyrics: “18 years, 18 years/She got one of yo’ kids, got you for 18 years/I know somebody payin’ child support for one of his kids/His baby momma’s car crib is bigger than his/You will see him on TV, any given Sunday/Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai.”  My youngest is three years old.  Let’s see, eighteen minus three equals — ah, fuck, get the Hyundai.

“Since You’ve Been Gone,” Kelly Clarkson — I almost pissed my pants during “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” when Steve Carell screeched “KELLY CLARKSON!” while getting his chest hair waxed.  But you have to give the girl credit: this song kicks ass.  Here’s the chorus: “But since you’ve been gone/I can breathe for the first time/I’m so movin on/Yeah yeah/Thanks to you/Now I get/What I want/Since you’ve been gone.”   ‘Nuff said.  Time to have sex with my hot new girlfriend.

“Fighter,” Christina Aguilera — Like “Since You’ve Been Gone” (and the grandmommy of them all, “I Will Survive”), this song is really for the ladies, but, shit, man, I love it, too.  Who can resist this chorus when you’re settling in for your fifth straight hour of mediation, battling for the right to see your own children: “Cause it makes me that much stronger/Makes me work a little bit harder/It makes me that much wiser /So thanks for making me a fighter/Made me learn a little bit faster/Made my skin a little bit thicker /Makes me that much smarter/So thanks for making me a fighter.”

Well, there you have it.  Which ones did I miss, sports fans?

Oh, Sure, NOW Spock Is Cool

I have pointy ears.  There, I said it.

Your ears are rounded on the top.  Mine come to a point.

My mother says that when I was born, the doctor said that my pointy ears could be “fixed” through some combination of baby oil and bandages.  Mom took a pass.  Thanks, Mom!

I was teased mercilessly about my ears throughout childhood.  “Hey, Spock ears!” was a pretty popular taunt.  “Look, it’s Mr. Spock!” was another.  You get the idea.

I did my best to hide my deformity.  Whenever I wore a baseball cap, I tucked the points of my ears under the rim.  On the rare occasion when my hair grew a bit long, I would try desperately to pull a piece of my hair over the points of my ears.

When I was in college, I worked as a lifeguard at the swimming pool in the condominium where I grew up.  I thought I was pretty cool and had attracted a following of young kids who hovered around me all day, waiting and hoping that I would go into the pool and horse around with them for a while.

Jonathan was one of my favorite kids.  He was maybe seven or eight and just a very sweet, smart boy.  One day he was sitting next to me on a pool chair.  He sat up with a bit of a start.

“Do you know that your ears are pointy?” he asked me.

It was very much like that scene in “The Sixth Sense” when Haley Joel Osmet reduces his teacher to mush by screaming “Stuttering Stanley!” over and over again until the poor man has, indeed, regressed back to his childhood and can barely spit out the words, “Shut up!”

“Yes, Jonathan, I know my ears are pointy,” I said as calmly as I could. 

There would be no horsing around in the pool that day.

Today, many, many years later, I love my pointy ears.  I know now that they add character to my ugly mug and, besides, what the hell am I going to do about it anyway?  I wear my hair short and when I wear a baseball cap, the points go on the OUTSIDE, baby. 

All this has come back to me recently with the opening of the new “Star Trek” movie, where Mr. Spock – and everybody else in the film for that matter – seems to reek of a cool that I never could have imagined way back when.

My son, Christian, has one ear that’s a bit pointy.  Son, you are the coolest kid in the galaxy.

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!

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?