If Only I Could...

One of the disadvantages of becoming an adult is that we stop thinking about some of the things that occupy our minds as children. Okay, so maybe it’s not always a disadvantage. I mean, I’m happy that I no longer have to worry about some of the things that come with being a kid, like being cool or popular. (That ship sailed long ago!) But there are many thoughts we have as kids that seemingly never occupy our minds after a certain age.

Foremost on this list are superpowers. Sure, every busy adult at one time or another has probably wished for a duplicate version of themselves. That’s not really wishing for a superpower though. That’s more of a complaint about the busyness and chaos of adulthood. The same with wishing there were more hours in a day. Most adults who wish for such a thing do so because twenty-four hours isn’t enough for them to complete their everyday responsibilities, not because they want special time-bending powers to do something awesome.

But kids think about superpowers all the time. Once when Boy’04 was little, probably three years old, we were playing and he told me that he wanted to fly. I picked him up and carried him around the room as we always did, and he started yelling.

“Not like that. I don’t want you to make me fly. I want to fly for real! When can I learn to fly?”

It seemed perfectly reasonable to him that he’d learn to fly just as he had learned to talk or walk. If Buzz Lightyear could do it, then why not him? Unfortunately, I had to explain to him that he’d never be able to fly on his own. 

Complete disappointment.

I think our desire for particular superpowers changes as we get older, too. When I was ten or eleven years old I remember watching wrestling and wishing that I had super strength that would allow me to get in the wrestling ring and defeat Ric Flair. It’s a safe bet that I would have sold my soul to the devil for such a power back then. But it would have been a reasonable trade since Flair always came so close to getting beat, and there’s no way he could have remained champion if I’d had super strength. And if I wasn’t ten years old.

I’m ashamed to say that four or five years later I remember having a discussion about superpowers with a few of my friends. I can’t remember the powers they wanted, but I had the ingenious idea that if only I could be invisible I’d walk into the girls’ locker room at school and have a look around! (What a delinquent.) Now that I mention it, I think I might have seen that in a movie, but I’m not sure. No doubt there are boys around the world right now who would accept such a power.

These days I’ve reverted back to a more wholesome superpower desire. I’d choose flying if I could. Just like three-year-old Boy’04. Of course, that’s stipulating that the power to heal disease or world hunger or protect my loved ones was off the table. We’re talking pure selfishness here.

But even if I think about superpowers, I can’t pretend I have them. If a seven-year-old boy is outside playing and pretending he’s flying around the yard, people will think it’s cute. If I pretended to do the same thing people would think I was having a breakdown.

Like everything else with growing up, I suppose our desire for superpowers changes. Girl’97 wishes she could read people’s minds. She’s right on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, and her superpower choice falls perfectly in between. It would never even occur to an elementary school kid to want to read someone’s mind. I’d probably reject that superpower if it were offered to me. But for a teenager it could be invaluable.

Thinking about these changes as we get older makes me wonder if the most universal desire is for the ability to control time. When we’re younger we want it to go faster, but as we get older we want it to slow down. And since we’re often happiest when we’re simply enjoying the moment and not thinking about the past or the future, perhaps it’s a good thing that none of these powers exist outside of our own minds.  

Donna Day

I’ve not written for a few days (hey, I’ve been busy, give me a break), and in thinking about today’s column a couple of different ideas danced around in my head. One is about super powers, and how our desire for them changes as we grow, and the other is about problems, those we invent and those we don’t even try to solve. Both amused me as I thought about them, and maybe they’d amuse you if I wrote about them.

Then I went on Facebook and this column wrote itself.

Today is Donna Day. Don’t know what Donna Day is? Well, lucky for you there’s an internet and there we can find all sorts of information. Even information about Donna Day. Or Donna’s Story.

But if you’re one of those people who aren’t going to go clicking on links all willy-nilly, then let me explain. Donna was a girl. Born in 2005. Diagnosed with cancer in 2007. She died in 2009, just over four years old. I didn’t know her and I don’t know her parents. But her mom writes some pretty incredible stuff, both about Donna’s story and her own story as a parent of a child with cancer.

Donna Day is the day where bloggers get together and ask their readers to donate some money to try and cure pediatric cancer.

So, dear reader, here’s the plan: We’re going to donate to St. Baldrick’s Foundation, which is the foremost pediatric cancer research fundraising organization. Those of you who know me will remember that Boy’04 and Boy’06 participated with me in St. Baldrick’s fundraisers in the past. In the four or five years that we participated, we raised over $2,000, thanks to generous family and friends. I’m proud of that.

This year we’re not going to shave. But you can still donate. Give to St. Baldrick’s in Donna’s Name, and the organization her parents started after her death, Donna’s Good Things.

I can’t think of anything more difficult to think about, but more necessary to act against, than childhood cancer.

It’s easy to ignore. No one wants to read a sad story that frequently ends in a child’s death. It’s much easier to just scroll on past the link and watch some cutesy video or chuckle at the latest meme. But cancer cannot be ignored. If it’s ignored, it prospers. The only way to eliminate it is to focus on it. Think about it. Do something about it. Act.

Cancer will affect about 1 in 300 kids before they turn twenty years old. Do you know how many kids that is? Think about your child’s elementary school. The statistics say that one kid in that school is going to get cancer before they turn twenty. So although you don’t know a kid with cancer now, there’s a good chance that you will in the future.

And if you’re lucky, all you’ll have to do is explain to your child why their friend is no longer in school. Or why their friend is now bald. Or why their friend can’t go outside for recess. Or why every car suddenly has a ribbon on it. And eventually, if things turn out how they often do for kids with cancer, why so many adults have tears in their eyes, or why the school had a moment of silence to start the day.

Those are difficult conversations to have. Your kids might not understand. They might cry. They might get upset. They might miss their friend.

But you’re lucky, because your child is still there.

It boggles my mind that this is still even a problem. It shouldn’t be a problem. It should be a thing. Kids should be confused by it. Sort of like when we mention a time before the internet. Imagine a world where kids learn about cancer in history books instead of doctor’s offices.

Donna’s mom isn’t raising awareness and raising funds to prevent cancer in Donna. It’s too late for her. She’s trying to prevent cancer in someone else’s child. She’s doing something. She’s taking action. And no matter how difficult it is, we can’t ignore it. We all need to think, to act, to give.

And it just occurred to me that even though I didn’t write the blog I planned to write, I still ended up writing about super powers and solving problems.  

Self-trophying

I sometimes hear people complain that in today’s society, “everyone gets a trophy.” This is usually in reference to the common practice in youth sports leagues of giving trophies to all players simply for participating. “If everyone gets a trophy, then the trophy doesn’t mean anything,” they say. Or, “In real life you don’t get a trophy all the time.”

Those things might be true. Life is tough and there are winners and losers. We all learn that lesson someday though, and whether or not everyone getting a trophy prevents kids from learning that lesson in a timely fashion is not a question I’m prepared to answer. I will say, however, that in real life (by which I assume people mean “adult” life), no one cares how well you can hit, kick or catch a ball either, but that doesn’t stop us from acting like it’s important.

But the real reason that I’m not prepared to comment on the rightness or wrongness of everybody getting a trophy is because I give myself trophies all the time, and rarely do I do anything to deserve them.

(Just so we’re clear here, I don’t give myself actual trophies. That would be weird. I’m talking virtual trophies here. Anyone who has ever had a real trophy knows that those things fall apart after a year or two, and anyway, who needs the clutter?)

For instance, the parking situation at my place of employment is pretty lousy. There are hundreds of street parking spaces, but they’re usually filled by the time I get to work. But if by chance I get to work and there’s an empty space right in front of my building, I’ll park there. And then, as I walk into work, there’s an extra spring in my step as though I did something special. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I’ll tell my co-workers where I parked.

 But what did I do? I pushed a pedal and steered a wheel to a certain place and happened to get there at the exact time a space big enough for my car opened up.

In other words, I did nothing.

And it’s not just parking.

On more than one occasion I’ve cracked open an egg while cooking and come across a double yolk! Great Caesar’s Ghost you’d think I’d just split the atom or something. I’ll show my wife and kids and they’ll look at the two yolks and say, “That’s awesome!” or something equivalent, and then go about their day.

I’ll get so excited that I consider taking a picture of the two yolks and posting it on Facebook.

Or write a blog post about it.

It’s like I personally put those two yolks in that egg. But I didn’t. Obviously. I didn’t even purposely choose that egg. The two yolks showed up by mere chance. That doesn’t stop me from giving myself a Best Double Yolk Finder trophy.

Maybe we just have to enjoy the small things in life. I mean what’s more exciting than flipping open a big, thick book with hundreds of pages and landing on the exact page you intended? Nothing, that’s what!

Pure chance or a skill honed by years of practice? I think my Expert Book Opener trophy answers that question.

 But perhaps the most ridiculous self-trophying that I do involves my television. We have a DVR and at the moment that DVR is approximately 55% full. That’s dozens of hours of television shows, movies and cartoons. One movie has been on there since 2011, I think.

If I had nothing to do this weekend, and sat down and watched twenty hours of television and got that DVR down to only 37% full, I’d feel like I really accomplished something. I’d think the weekend was productive. Yet what did I do? I sat on my butt and looked at something. That’s about as close as you can get to doing nothing without actually doing nothing!

Does it deserve a Champion DVR Clearer trophy?

Absolutely.

So does everyone deserve a trophy? I don’t know. Maybe kids in youth sports deserve trophies simply for putting up with adults for the entire season. That’s an accomplishment to be proud of!

Lies When the Truth Doesn't Matter

I recently read an old article about Ty Cobb written in 1961. In case you don’t know, Cobb was a baseball player about a hundred years ago. He was great. When he retired he had more hits than anyone who had ever played the game, and even today only Pete Rose has more.

The man who wrote the article, Al Stump, spent time with Cobb near the end of his life. He portrayed a Cobb so angry, bitter and mean that people could barely stand to be around him. The seventy-five-year-old Cobb confessed to Stump that he killed a man in 1912 on the streets of Detroit when the man tried to mug him. Cobb suffered a knife wound to the back, but he went out the next day and collected two hits in three at-bats. Then he went to the hospital to be treated for the wound.

I always take these stories with a grain of salt. Especially in baseball. I once read a fantastic book about the 1964 World Series by David Halberstam. He interviewed dozens of baseball players for the book, and had some great stories. As I read the book I’d use various baseball and news records of the day to check the veracity of each story. Inevitably I’d discover that the truth behind the story was different from how the ballplayer remembered it. Something similar to his story happened, but it wasn’t exactly his story.

I’ve seen this too many times to count. I don’t think the players or the writers are trying to fool us. I think that everyone who repeats the story honestly thinks it’s the truth. When they look back at their careers, these are the things they remember. It has shaped them into who they are. Whether they’re true or not almost doesn’t matter, because it’s what they’ve accepted as truth.

I have a small example of this from my own life, and it’s been completely unintentional.

When I was a kid, my grandpa used to sing songs whenever my two sisters or I were in the car with him. I think he enjoyed singing the songs, but I think he knew that we enjoyed them also. The lyrics were bizarre, the melodies catchy, and one song in particular has remained with me to this day. I’ve taught it to my own kids. As I’ve taught it to my kids I tell them it’s a song that my grandpa made up, and it’s so silly that anyone would believe that a grandpa would make it up. If you knew my grandpa you’d have no doubt about it.

I learned the song long before I’d ever heard of the internet, and from time-to-time I think about doing a search for the lyrics of my grandpa’s song to see what comes up.

Then I decide not to.

For almost thirty years I’ve thought that my grandpa created this song. I’ve sung the lyrics for other people and no one has ever recognized it. So it’s entirely possible that he did create it. However, if I’ve remembered the lyrics for thirty years, it’s also possible that he remembered them for thirty, or fifty or sixty years and the song isn’t something he created, but something he learned in school, or on the playground, or maybe even from his grandpa.

Whatever the truth is, I don’t know want to know it. This song has become part of my memory of my grandpa, and I see no reason to tamper with that memory. There’s nothing to be gained by anyone in finding out the truth.

And the truth about Ty Cobb getting knifed, killing the man, and then getting two hits the next day? Al Stump checked on it, and he said “Records verified this.”

The only problem is that Al Stump’s story of Ty Cobb killing a man is told in two different works, Cobb’s autobiography (which Stump helped him write) and the article I read. In the book the encounter took place in Syracuse. In the article, it took place in Detroit. In one the man died, in the other he was just injured.

Who got the story wrong? Cobb or Stump? What do we make of the fact that Stump tried selling a forged Cobb diary twenty years after Cobb’s death?

The image of Ty Cobb as a sonofabitch has been around for more than a hundred years. It would be interesting to find out the truth about what actually happened between Cobb and the mugger, but it wouldn’t change anyone’s opinion of him.

The truth might be out there, but sometimes it just doesn’t matter.

These People Deserve a Day

In honor of President’s Day, I thought it might fun to learn a little bit about the presidents. I don’t mean learning about stuff they did as president. Although I find that stuff fascinating, I’m sure some of you find it boring. And one of the things I’ve learned as a writer is if the reader falls asleep while reading my work, I’m probably doing it wrong.

So, in an effort to have some fun with presidents, while also preventing you from falling asleep, here are some presidential facts that you probably didn’t learn in school.

Teddy Roosevelt took over the presidency in 1901 after McKinley was killed. He remained president until 1909, when he decided to retire and the country elected his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft as president. But, by 1912, Roosevelt wanted to be president again, so he ran as a third party candidate. In October 1912 Roosevelt went to Milwaukee to campaign. While leaving his hotel an immigrant bartender shot him in the chest.

So did Roosevelt go to the hospital? No! The dude gave his speech! He spoke for more than an hour and showed the folded-over pages of the speech that helped slow the bullet down before it entered his chest.

And the would-be assassin? He claimed that McKinley’s ghost told him to do it. He spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.

The other interesting Roosevelt tidbit is that his mother and wife both died on the day his daughter was born in 1884. The day?

Valentine’s Day!

Speaking of deaths, three of the first five presidents—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe—died on the same day of the year. The day?

July 4. Adams and Jefferson actually died the exact same day, in 1826, 50 years after the Declaration was signed.

What do you know about John Tyler? Probably nothing, right? Maybe “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”

Here’s something you won’t forget. John Tyler, who was born in 1790, before the Bill of Rights was ratified, has a grandson who is still alive today. Not a great, great, great, great grandson, as we might expect, but just a plain old grandson.

How is that possible?

The Tylers are an amorous bunch.

John Tyler had 15 children. The thirteenth of those children was Lyon Gardiner Tyler, born in 1853, when John Tyler was 63 years old, and married to his second wife, who was thirty years younger than the former president. And that baby, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, went on to have six children, three of them with his second wife, who was thirty-six years younger than him. Two of those children, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr, born when his dad was 72, and Harrison Tyler, born when his dad was 75, are still alive today, aged 89 and 85, respectively.

Astonishing.

One my favorite tales relates not to a president, but to a man between presidents. John Scott Harrison is the only man ever to be the son of one president (William Henry Harrison) and the father of another (Benjamin Harrison). John Scott Harrison died in 1878.

At the time there was a black market for cadavers, and the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati regularly purchased their cadavers from that market to use in training medical students. While John Scott Harrison was being buried, a young man’s family discovered that his grave in the same cemetery had been robbed. The next day, one of John Scott Harrison’s sons, John Harrison, joined the young man’s family on a trip to Ohio Medical College to see if the young boy’s body was there.

They obtained a search warrant, examined the few bodies being held at the College, but did not find the young man’s body. Just before leaving, John Harrison saw a pulley with a rope leading down to a basement. He suggested they see what was on the end of the rope. So the party lifted the rope and found a body at the end of it. They unwrapped the cloth from around it to reveal not the body of the young man, but rather the body of John Scott Harrison, the only man to be son of one president and father of another!

Grave robbers had stolen his body during the night!

Oh, and I almost forgot: a thirty-nine-year-old Andrew Jackson challenged a man to a duel after the man insulted his wife. The man shot Jackson in the chest, but Jackson didn’t fall. He returned fire, sent a ball through the man’s abdomen, killing him. Jackson walked off the battlefield, feet sloshing in his own blood, the bullet from his chest never removed.

Be my Valentine (Again)

According to the calendar, today is February 14, which means that it’s Valentine’s Day. Not only that, but because of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, it’s also license plate registration day.

Or at least it is in my house.  Near as I can tell, the Indiana BMV has setup a system in which the due date for license plate renewal corresponds to the vehicle owner’s last name. So people whose name starts with A renew their plates in January, the last names that start with Z renew in December, and everyone else is in between. But, in a stroke of ingenious thinking, the BMV doesn’t make all license plate renewals due by the last day of the month, but rather by the 7^th, 14^th, 21^st or 28^th of the month. And, following that system, my vehicle’s plates are due to be renewed on Valentine’s Day.

Big deal.

The coincidence of the dates got me thinking though. Valentine’s Day is the day of love. It began as a celebration of romantic love based on a Christian saint. Somewhere along the way it evolved into a day where copious amounts of chocolate, candy and flowers are sold, but the basic message remains: love is something to be celebrated, and even though we should show our loved ones that we love them every day of the year, it’s nice to have one specific day set aside for such an occasion.

And if we can have a National Poultry Day (March 19), then why not a day set aside for love?

But what if we changed Valentine’s Day a little bit so that instead of just a celebration of love, it became a renewal of love?

Imagine if you had to renew your marriage license every year the same way you renew your license plates. Everyone would have to circle February 14 on their calendar and put some thought into whether they’re ready to keep their marriage going for another year. Perhaps we’d pay more attention to our romantic love, and put more effort into maintaining it if we knew that our spouse could decide to cut us loose at renewal time.

Of course I’m aware that spouses can always cut us loose. A divorce rate that’s supposedly near 50% is evidence of that. But to quote Thomas Jefferson, “a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.” If we extend Jefferson’s idea to matters of the heart, then instead of just purchasing flowers and candy for our loved ones every February 14, we might actually take the time to think about our love for them. And if that love remains, then let it continue for another year. We could all take comfort knowing that our spouse chose us just within the past year, not merely twenty, or twenty-five, or thirty years ago and are still around only because it’s easier to do nothing than to do something.

Something like this already exists, I suppose. Renewing vows has become increasingly popular in recent years. I don’t personally know anyone who’s done it, but a number of celebrities have.

And a close examination of those celebrities tears apart the idea. The first time I’d ever heard of it was when my wife mentioned Seal and Heidi Klum did it every year for the six or seven years they were married. They’re now divorced. A quick check of ten celebritycouples who renewed their vows show five divorces, one death, and four couples still together. So that works out to a 50% divorce rate.

Just like the general public.

All right, it’s an admittedly bizarre idea, and the implementation of such a system would be a nightmare. So if you want to stay married, stay married. If you don’t, then don’t.

It’s an easy choice for me though. I’ve been married just over ten years, and although my wife and I have never renewed our vows, I’m thankful every single day that I have her. She’s the best decision I ever made, and I’d do so again and again if I had to.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Here’s a (Q) Tip for You

A friend of mine once gave me a bit of advice that made no sense to me then, and now, ten years later, still makes no sense. “Don’t put anything in your ear larger than your elbow.”

What?

How big are your ears? Or how small is your elbow? And even if one would fit inside the other, how in the world do you get your body to bend like that?

So as I often do, I’ve ignored that advice. I guess I like to learn things the hard way.

But because my ears get dirty, and because—let’s be honest—it just feels good, I’ve continued to use Q-tips to clean my ears.

Sidenote: I’d like to avoid using brand names, but when I tried to think of the generic name for a Q-tip, I drew a complete blank. I Googled (<--brand name) it and found that they’re called cotton swabs, which just doesn’t sound right to me. So I’ll continue to call them Q-tips. Maybe someday I’ll try to squeeze some advertising compensation out of the Q-tip folks.

Not once have I reconsidered my decision, nor am I willing to admit that I’m addicted to Q-tips (which I probably am). I’m a proud cotton swabber (that sounds sort of dirty), and my ears are eternally grateful.

With my friend’s elbow-and-ear advice in mind, I recently went on the Q-tips website, wondering if they’d heard such advice. And much to my surprise, it seems they have!

At the top of the Q-tips website is a link wittily entitled “Tip Jar.” Click on it and you’re brought to a page with a menu on the side that describes all the uses of Q-tips.

I didn’t know they had any uses besides cleaning inside my ears!

Apparently, they’re quite the versatile tool though. The menu is divided into Beauty, Arts & Crafts, Baby, Home and Pets. That’s five uses! And even more surprising, each of those uses have sub-uses. Under beauty they have: Eye, Skin, Lip, Nail and On-The-Go tips. And each of those have sub-uses.

Oh for the love of God!

The only mention of using Q-tips to clean ears is a tip to gently swab the outer ear and avoid entering the ear canal. Sure, then I’ll rub some cheesecake on my cheek, but not let it enter my mouth!

No thank you! I’m a rebel damnit, and I’m going to keep sticking that Q-tip in my ear.

Before you think I’m some idiot who doesn’t mind if he punctures his eardrum, you should know that I’m a very skilled inner ear cleaner. I didn’t go to college for it or anything, but years of practice allow me to recognize the precise threshold within my ear beyond which I cannot let the Q-tip pass.

This ear cleaning stuff isn’t for amateurs!

The folks at Q-tips must think that we’re all amateurs though, judging by how deeply they buried the Q-tip-in-your-ear use on their website. Isn’t that sort of like Crest saying that you can use toothpaste to remove beet stains from your hands, or to prevent fogged goggles, or to clear up pimples, but mentioning its teeth-cleaning abilities as an afterthought?

Okay, so maybe no one ever went deaf from brushing their teeth with toothpaste. Still we’re talking common use versus we-don’t-want-to-get-sued use.

Do the people at Q-tips also really read Playboy for the articles?

Since I always look for verification of my ridiculous ideas, I did a brief search and found that there actually are reasons why cleaning my ears with a Q-tip feels so good. The ear canal contains a whole slew of nerve endings, so rubbing that Q-tip on those nerve endings feels good. Unfortunately, it turns out that cleaning my ears with a Q-tip removes wax, some of which is necessary to protect the ear against dust and other bad things.

NPR even did a story on it. And of course they interviewed some “expert” who thinks he knows what he’s talking about just because he happens to be a doctor (oh wait!), and he says not to use Q-tips in your ears.

Warnings noted.

And ignored.

A Mistake of Olympian Proportions

          With the beginning of the Winter Olympics, we’ve heard a lot about Sochi, Russia and one particular ex-KGB agent. I’ve noticed that many of the stories don’t exactly provide glowing reviews of Sochi and the International Olympic Committee’s decision to hold the games there. Some of the criticism is justified. After all, the average temperature in Sochi in the month of February is 42 degrees. Hardly temperatures that bring skiing, ice hockey and curling to mind.

            The IOC awarded the games to Sochi in 2007, beating out Pyeongchang, South Korea and Salzburg, Austria. Just for comparison, the average February temperature in Pyeongchang is 22 degrees, and in Salzburg it’s 33 degrees. Things will be considerably warmer in Sochi, and it’s not just because of the vodka.

            We’ve heard stories of hotel rooms not being ready, wild dogs roaming the street, and water that’s unsafe to use. It’s fun to speculate whether these stories would be at the forefront of media coverage if the games were in a different country—like Sweden for instance—instead of a country with a human-rights-violating, madman-dictator-embracing, serial-shirt-shedding ruffian as their president.

            Of course after they report on the problems with the location, and the preparation, and the security, and the litany of things that might go wrong, our earnest reporters are sure to emphasize that they hope the games are a success.

            Sometimes they’re even believable when they say it.

            However, one story I’ve yet to see reported is exactly how Sochi ended up with the Olympics. So here it is.

            It’s a little known fact (so little known that I might be the only person with this information) that when the IOC met in Guatemala City, Guatemala to choose the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics, they didn’t intend to choose Sochi. Not until sometime well after they made the choice did they realize they had chosen the Russian city.

            Apparently, the confusion arose from the numerous translations of Sochi’s application material from the original Russian, into French, which is the IOC’s official language, into English, which is the IOC’s other official language.

            As the old saying goes, something was lost in translation.

            By the time Sochi faced Pyeongchang in the second round of voting (Salzburg had been eliminated in the first round), the original application was such a muddled mess that confusion was practically unavoidable.

            Sochi won the second round and people in Russia rejoiced.

            The IOC rejoiced, but for a different reason than the Russians.

            So if the IOC didn’t know that they had awarded the games to Sochi, Russia, then to what city did they think they awarded the games?

            Chicago. Yes, Chicago, that big-shouldered city by the lake. How on earth did the IOC confuse Sochi, Russia with Chicago, United States?

            We can blame SoHo and A-Rod, for they are two shining examples of the phenomenon in question, and both were on the IOC’s mind. You see, SoHo stands for South Houston, a neighborhood in New York City, and is home to a great art community, which the IOC relies upon when planning various aspects of the Games. And A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, is a professional baseball player who has been in the new recently for doping, which the IOC always wants to protect against.

            Both are known by shortened variations of their names.

            So it’s only natural that when the IOC saw the word Sochi, the first thing that came to mind was SoChi, or South Chicago. And what better place to hold the Olympic games than Chicago? Granted, there are no mountains nearby, so that might throw a wrench into the plans, but the IOC accepted a 42 degree average high temperature, so why let the lack of mountains curtail a bid?

            Luckily, the IOC caught on to what happened, avoided embarrassment, and everyone met in Sochi.

            However, one casualty of this was Chicago’s actual 2016 Summer Olympic bid. In October 2009 Chicago was eliminated in the first round of voting that eventually awarded the games to Rio de Janeiro. The quick elimination surprised many people, but it’s understandable now, knowing what happened with Sochi.

            The IOC may be many things, but they’re not dumb enough to award consecutive Olympic Games to the same city!

Super Event XLVIII

In the days before the Super Bowl, I heard the usual commercials on the radio and television. Grocery stores advertised deals on bags of chips, meat companies advertised deals on hot dogs and sausages and electronics stores tried to convince me that I’d enjoy the game more if I watched it on a brand new television—the bigger the better.

Missing from all of these advertisements was any mention of the Super Bowl. They all talked about “The Big Game” or “Game Day” or referenced our “Championship Parties,” as though trying to reach us via some sort of special code.

It turns out, that’s exactly what they were doing.

The NFL has copyrighted the term “Super Bowl,” which means that only companies who enter into special licensing deals with the NFL can use the term Super Bowl. That’s where all of those Big Game commercials come from.

So Papa John’s (official sponsor) can use Super Bowl, while Pizza Hut (not an official sponsor), is relegated to referring to the Big Game.

The irony here is that although the NFL wants us all to watch the Super Bowl (so they can charge a lot of money for the commercials), and they want us all to buy lots of stuff to enjoy while watching the Super Bowl (so the companies buying those commercials will sell more product and want to buy more commercials next year), they don’t want the companies to explicitly tell us what event we’re buying the stuff for. That leaves us with this nod, nod, wink, wink messaging.

However, the bigger irony is that the NFL has trademarked the term Super Bowl, yet I think when many people think of the Super Bowl, they think of everything that goes along with it as much or even more than the game itself.

I know that a football game is played on Super Bowl Sunday, and that this past Super Bowl turned out to be the highest-rated television event in history with 111.5 million viewers. But at least half of those viewers tune in for the Super Bowl event, as opposed to the Super Bowl game.

The AFC Championship game drew 51.3 million viewers this year and the NFC Championship game drew 55.9 million. Assuming that true fans of football and the NFL wouldn’t want to miss the conference championship games, there are 60 million extra viewers for the Super Bowl. Surely all of those people aren’t waiting with bated breath to see whether the Seahawks or Broncos will win.

Think of how many times you’ve heard someone say that they watch the Super Bowl to see the commercials. (There’s even a website that’s devoted to nothing other than Super Bowl commercials.) I’ve been at parties where the loudest reaction of the evening came from a creative commercial and not from anything that happened in the game itself.

And the most-watched part of the Super Bowl? Not the pre-game. Not the kickoff. It was the half-time show with 115.3 millions viewers—more than watched the game itself!

It’s obvious that Super Bowl Sunday is about much more than the Super Bowl game. It has to be. How else do we explain Girl’97, Boy’04, Boy’06 and Girl’10 (my four kids and the years of their birth) sitting down to watch a stinkin’ football game, after having watched only about fifteen minutes of football during the entire NFL season? (I’ll give you a hint, it had something to do with the impressive party menu created by their mother!)

So the ultimate irony is that on the NFL’s biggest day, the NFL is largely irrelevant. Half the people watching don’t even care about the game, and most of the other half don’t even care who wins the game.

Yet we still tune in.

And we wait for the entertaining commercials, and we eat food with no nutritional value, and we watch singers lip-synch, and if a football game breaks out, why then that’s just icing on the cake!

Wondering what television show had the second highest rating while the Super Bowl was on? Downton Abbey on PBS! It drew 6.8 million viewers, which is the third straight impressive showing up against the Super Bowl. And even considering the game, the commercials and the singing, Downton Abbey—which I watched on DVR later that night—was still more entertaining.

But I ate better food during the Super Bowl!  

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Column

About sixteen years ago I started something I called my column. I’d write about some topic and e-mail it to a list of people, and sometimes they’d write back and tell me what they thought about that day’s edition. I styled it after newspaper opinion columnists. (Think Bob Greene, Mike Royko and the like.) 

This was before blogs. Or at least before blogs were popular. And that meant I had a hard time reaching many folks. I think my peak readership was about 50 people—nothing to sneeze at, considering I had to literally search for people to read my writing—but far below the number of people I hoped to reach.

 That old method humbled me many times. This was the back in the days of America Online (Remember dial-up? Yikes!). They had a feature that allowed users to view the status of e-mails sent to other AOL users. So I’d send the column, usually late at night, and often after most of America was already asleep, and then right away I’d check the status of that e-mail. Invariably there’d be someone who had decided they no longer wanted to read what I wrote so they’d delete the message as soon as they received it. Then I’d curse them (figuratively, not literally) that they deleted it without even reading it, and I’d want to delete them from the list, but I wouldn’t.

Oh no, one deletion wouldn’t get you removed from the list. You’d have to delete it like forty-three days in a row to be removed. Then I’d get the hint. But if you deleted it for, say, twenty-six days, and then read it on the twenty-seventh day, then I’d be convinced you were back in the fold and I wouldn’t think of deleting you in the future.  

I did have a solid core of readers though. Most of them were friends that I knew in real life, but there were a few who I had never met and knew only through AOL. They’d read what I wrote, maybe respond with an idea or two. It’s nice when someone reads something you write, and nicer still when they take the time to let you know what they thought of it.

Although sometimes just not deleting the message before reading it was good enough for my self-esteem!

The column lasted for about two years and then I stopped writing it. My plan at the time was to work on other types of writing and put it out there for people to read.

Actually, calling it a plan is a bit of a misnomer, since I really had no idea how I get it in front of people’s eyes. I’d never heard of a blog at that time, and breaking into print publishing is notoriously difficult, so how exactly did I plan to have people read what I was writing? Your guess is as good as mine.

But now I’ve decided to begin the column again. I suppose it will be called a blog now. Everyone has a blog, so I might as well join them, right? I hope to post three or four entries per week. Some will be serious, some will be ridiculous. I hope they’re all worth reading. If you like/hate what I wrote, (dis)agree with me, or think I’m the smartest/dumbest person you’ve ever met, then let me know.

It could be that no one reads this, and, if so, that’s fine. I’d be no worse off than I am now. Except for some finger cramps maybe.

Believe me, I know it’s rather presumptuous to assume that anyone cares what I have to say. Blogs and the people who write them are a dime a dozen, so why in the hell should you devote any of your most precious commodity—time—to read what I write?

Hey, don’t look at me for the answer, because I don’t have it. All I can do is write. And if you like it, come on back. If you don’t, come on back anyway. Maybe you’ll like it next time.

Thanks in advance for being a regular visitor.

 (Or curse you for ignoring me!)