Dramastic Slackitude

I’m currently sitting at the end of an extremely long conference table, waiting for a delightful (read: soul-crushingly boring) 2 hour presentation to commence. I’m prepared to sit at the end of a table – growing up a lefty in a right-handed world often dictated chair assignment. But I wasn’t prepared to spend the next 120 minutes engrossed in a Power Point presentation that is promising no less than 14 bullet points.

Oh, how I love quantity over quality. [/sarcasm]

However, while I’d prefer to be at my desk typing this rather than in my notebook scribing this, you have to figure that this could be a far more unfavorable scenario. Sitting quietly basking the muted hues of the overhead projector could be way worse for any of the following reasons:

1. The presentation could be in French, and the presenter could be Gerard Depardieu.
2. The refreshments tray could be out of bagels.
3. I could be sitting in the middle of the table and forced to write this right-handed.
4. I could be the one presenting.

Regarding, Numero 4, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Most presentations command a large amount of practice, preparation, and attention to detail. Oftentimes, note cards, a professional wardrobe choice, and a time expected duration are all devised beforehand. If given the opportunity to prep, this legwork can make your presentation more of a sure thing than $28 million for Roger Clemens.

Notice I said “if.”

Senior year of high school, our AP English class was assigned a phone-it-in project that had little to do with either literature or poetry. It was a simple premise; learn something new and then present it to the class. Some of our class’ ideas included yoga, maritime cartography, acoustic guitar, and how to construct a big-ass subwoofer so loud it would blow women’s clothes off. (Or at the very least, torture the unfortunate souls who rode backseat in a certain Swedish automobile.)

As for me, I opted to play through.

My venture to learn the sport of golf was a lot of fun, if not necessarily educational. A foursome of the Senior Slack Pack hit the links, armed with four bags of clubs, a video camera, and a dry sense of humor. But hey, no windows were broken, and no Caddyshack lines were beaten to death. So we’ve got that going for us.

With the learning part all done, I could sit back and wait until my turn to present. We had drawn straws, and I drew an enviable 19th out of 21. Sure, there was a minor catch that even though there would be only two presentations each day, the on-deck presenter for the following day had to be ready if his predecessor was absent, but what are the odds of that??

Oh.

For the first 8 days of presentations, things ran silky smooth. 8 pairs of presenters presented, precisely as the schedule had dictated. I could sit comfortably while my classmates got up and invented new words. (Note the title of this post.) Still a day out, I walked into class on Day 9, ready to watch Presenters 17 and 19 in action –

Wait. Where’s Anatoli Semenov?

Number 17, as lore will remember it, wasn’t finished with her presentation, and opted to come in after 3rd period that day. Newman (not Wayne Knight) directed her icy death stare my way. “Chris, you’re up.”

Of course, she underestimated by slackitude. Newman didn’t anticipate my lazy self not taking the golf clubs out of my car yet. She couldn’t have guessed that Chris Smith would have randomly brought the VHS-transferred golf footage on that day to class. Armed with a 5-iron and a deep breath, I delivered everything I had learned about golf.

Best damn presentation I’ve ever made.

Luge Scholarships?

The other day, Katie and I met with a financial planner. Not a whole lot to report here, other than sending our children to college in the future will cost eleventy billion dollars.

Plus room and board.

(Fortunately, future college won’t have $500/semester bills to drop at the bookstore, since I’m pretty sure that when Clara enters college in 2026 books won’t exist. So that’s a nice discount. However, downloading Principles of Modern Accounting, 32nd Edition will take forever to download onto her iPod. But then again, in future college you can train your iPod to take exams for you, so it’s a push. I’m sorry; what were we talking about again?)

While that price tag for higher education may seem rather daunting, there are alternatives. At Division I schools, admissions boards often choose to offer a full payment of a child’s four years of college in return for their display of superior athletic ability. Some may call them a pipe dream. I call them scholarships.

After all, what’s so impossible about Clara getting an athletic scholarship to the university of her choice? Both of her parents enjoyed mild success in an array of high school sports (read: anything but basketball), and even the ones that her father didn’t play, cafeteria workers often confuse his size for experience in football. On one side of the gene pool, she’s inheriting a dazzling collection of swim strokes with a bump-set-spike mentality. On the end, an inclination to kick balls with one’s feet, hit them with one’s bat, and run very quickly over equally-spaced mini-barriers.

The following are a list of things that Clara has done to date that have gotten our hopes up for free college-by-means-of-athletics.

SWIMMING! - I know what you’re thinking; the primary purpose of giving a baby a bath is to provide a cleaning service to someone who lacks the motor skills to do it themselves. Clara enjoys baths – she’s far from the stereotypical screamfest that so many babies are made out to be when Johnson and Johnson are in attendance. It’s not a bad life – you lie on your back in a hard plastic tub with a soft fabric hammock stretched over the dirty bathwater. Other than calmly lying there waiting for the next rinse of warm water to be poured, the only real movement Clara will make is a spasm of the arms, going up and down. Some might think it’s because she’s cold and wants to go faster. I know better. She wants to learn to backstroke, and go so fast she breaks every high school record there is.

SOCCER! – My favorite position to carry the baby around the apartment is her sitting in my hands and leaning her against my chest. Pretty much she sits there like she’s in an airplane seat, enjoying the view as I walk endlessly around the same 1,045 square feet she’s accustomed to. However, I know a training opportunity when I see it. You know those cords that hang down from Venetian blinds? They provide the equipment for Clara’s World Cup training ground. With her feet, she’ll kick the knobs on the cords’ ends back and forth, not unlike juggling a soccer ball. In no time, she’ll be able to do this. This method, of course, is not without a proven track record. After all, the origin of Venetian Blinds? Italy, your 2006 World Cup Champions.

LUGE! – Ok, so it may not qualify as a sport using some people’s definitions, but the mere idea of sliding on one’s back down a frozen sheet of ice at over 80 mph statisfies my base parameters. Our little one, despite having never heard of or seen this Winter Olympic sport, has already entered training. You remember that bouncer chair we mentioned a few weeks back that has instilled a hatred of monkeys in our daughter? As of late, she’s been using it as a luge training complex. Despite the inability to walk or crawl, that’s no longer keeping her from becoming mobile. This morning, in order to get her mom’s attention, she found a way to slide out from under the baby birdie battering cage and onto the surface of the bed. Now I understand that the bouncer chair isn’t exactly Stalag 17, but her jailbreak has got her parents on high alert. I wonder if Carter’s sells a one piece baby spandex luge suit…

She’s feeling the rhythm. And perhaps also the rhyme.

Cooking the Books

We’re going to use a baking analogy now in order to accurately depict my last three hours at work. It’s not because I have an particular affinity or talent in the kitchen to produce well-crafted dessert – on the contrary, I once made a Black Forest Cake that took 11 hours and I nearly suffocated on powdered sugar inhalation – but rather, because the numbers and calculations of what I do all day aren’t very exciting. Not even, “Hey, Everybody Loves Raymond is on!!” exciting. Yeah. Dull.

Let’s say you baked a cake for a special occasion. Sure, you could have gone to Wegman’s like any other time-pressed schlock with 22 bucks in your pocket, but you wanted to make this really special. Because you may want to teach someone your methods you decide to video the whole cake baking process. That way, you have a well-documented video that can either become useful for future cake-baking protégés, or at the least, You Tube fodder.

And let me just say, you had no idea baking a cake could take so damn long. There’s a lot of specific details and measurements and protocol to follow, but people are counting on you to come through with this cake. But it’s not like you’re going to be judged on your creativity artistry. Instead, it’s how close you stick to the foolproof recipe that will determine your ultimate success. You follow every step to absolute precision. You measure thrice, pour once. There’s no way you’re screwing this up.

After all your hard work and 45 minutes at 350 degrees, your creation looks beautiful. You don’t say much at dinner because you want to get to the consumption of said cake. Everyone else catches up and it’s time for the great reveal of your delectable hard work. Everyone congratulates you on how excellent your presentation looks and how excited they are to have a forkful. At last, the first bite is upon you! You reach down, cut off a small slice and take a chomp.

It tastes like feet.

What the hell? There’s no way this cake should taste like feet. Not only were you precise in your measurements and accurate in your ingredients, you kept the cleanliness of your workspace with stainless integrity. What went wrong? Your dinner guests are spending time coming up with excuses as to why they are no longer devouring the cake, and you are sitting there aghast. But then you remember one thing.

The videotape!

A careful review of procedure will surely reveal what the hell went wrong. After everyone leaves for the evening, (5:00), you connect your camcorder to the TV and relive your painful afternoon minute by minute. Just as you guessed, you’re a freakin’ perfectionist. You did everything right. Ingredients were added in the correct order, the correct baking utensils were utilized, and hell, your rendition of “Whistle While You Cook” remained completely on-key. There’s only another couple steps on the tape before you put in the oven. You’re just about to give up and grab a Twinkie from the pantry.

And them you see it.

Inexplicably, (and coincidentally when you were grabbing a Twinkie from the pantry earlier), your co-worker—um, I mean – roommate comes into the kitchen and sees you’ve been working on a cake. He decides to help, because well, he’s a helpful kind of guy.

He adds sausage to the batter.

That explains everything.

Moral of the story: Make your spreadsheets READ ONLY. Otherwise, you can lose complete control of a financial reporting masterpiece.

But Doctor, They're Not...

(PS – Hooray for Post #700!)

Donald Duck doesn’t wear pants. This happens for three reasons. First off, when he was created in 1934 he was create to be a belligerent waterfowl; his trademark pose included his left and right fists wheeling for a boxing match. Second, he’s ex-military. Now of course, all we have to go on is his occasional sailor’s shirt, but for all we know, Donald could have been Navy Seals. Would you ever question a decision made by a Navy Seal? And third, he’s always had back-up. Big, big back-up.

Winnie the Pooh doesn’t wear pants. Yeah, it’s just a shirt and an occasional raincoat for the worrier from the 100 Acre Wood. Of course, he lives in a sparsely-populated area of the country, and aside from the occasional blustery day, it doesn’t get that cold there. So neither the natural elements nor offended neighbors give any just cause for Pooh to put on pants. Besides, his only friend who wears pants is a human that stops by every now and then, and that guy’s choice of lower apparel could have gotten him a shot to play in the NBA of the 1980’s. Oh, and besides, he’s got the big man watching his back.

Porky Pig doesn’t wear pants, either. He’s quite the dapper pig, always carefully selecting a stylish vest, jacket, bow tie, or suit coat before he ever leaves the house. I guess he occasionally steps into coveralls – for those rare times when the pig actually spent time on a farm – but I’m calling amnesia on this one. No one dresses so impeccably above the belt line and then chooses not to wear anything below the belt line, and that includes the omission of an actual belt. This pig is either absent-minded, or just freakin’ arrogant. But Porky Pig can be arrogant. He has the Big Cheese riding shotgun.

Surely, one would think that in past decades the fundamentalist Christian sects of America would not stand for their children to be entertained by this trio of pantsless animations of the cartoon world. One could argue that any clothes are better than no clothes, since the rest of God’s Creation has opted for the naked way of life, but to only go halfway and stop is no doubt the type of sinful offense that would make the pastor in Footloose breathe fire and brimstone. And other than Donald’s pugilistic attitude and prior covert ops training, who was to stop the Heartlands from condemning this risqué peep show of pig, bear, and duck?

My guess, of course, lies with the Big Guy we’ve thrice alluded to and yet to reveal. Emulation is not only a form of flattery, but of unity. You see, if there was a bigger, bolder, and better ally that the Non-Pantalones Three could hide behind when controversy erupted, then it would no doubt prolong their free-wheeling Hippie way of life. It would have to be someone who is loved and brings a smile to children and adults alike. It would have to be someone who brings the party wherever he goes. It would have to be someone whose shadow intimidates those who would like to cast the first stone. And it would have to be someone who has a complete disregard for drywall..

OH YEAAHHH!

For decades, The Kool-Aid Man has stood in the face of those who think that pants are a necessary way of life. The Man is no nudist – he just sees no reason why a certain attire should inhibit his ability to bring sugar-infused fruit juice goodness to the masses. Can you imagine the amount of demolition debris that would get stuck with the Kool-Aid Man if he chose to crash through elementary school walls whilst wearing a cableknit sweater? What a mess! The smooth, Teflon-infused surface of his giant transparent pitcher is perfect.

Besides, what has Kool-Aid Man to hide? The visual anatomy of his upper torso is identical to that of his lower body. Either way you direct your eyes, you’re looking at the same red fruit drink. Look how happy he is! All this joy, despite the fact that he’s had three GIANT, migraine-inducing ice cubes rattling around in his head for all eternity.

And yet, the conservative movement has made Kool-Aid Man sad. Look, I’m all for modesty and appropriate dress in today’s education system. I think that proper dress can prevent bad things from happening. Hell, I wear pants to work every day. But tell me this.

How can we live in a world where Britney Spears hits the tabloids for not wearing underwear getting out of limos, and everybody’s cool with it, and meanwhile the poor Kool-Aid Man has been sent home from his office to put on some clothes???

A sad day indeed.

Pockets 1, Schrute 0

The Prodigal Roommate and I have collaborated on many a project in the 9 years of our friendship. There are the seasons of Madden that we’d let the Playstation know who’s boss. There was the Home Depot stripper cake that was as anti-climactic as Mattias entering a spelling bee. There are the 9 Levels of Mafia-Dan, which really deserved more attention for our ridiculous use of the English vocabulary. Throw in a movie classification system here and the best board game ever there, it’s clear we have a chemistry when it comes to comedic uprising. To date, we’ve often used our power of funny for good.

Now, we go all Emperor Palpatine on ya.

A couple weeks back, I took the time on this very blog to mock a Frozen Meal Feedback sheet that appeared on our office fridge. For those who don’t recall, my co-worker (Dwight Schrute as we’ve been referring to her) thought to create a spreadsheet where one and all can evaluate the flavorocity of various Lean Cuisines for the benefit of all. We, in turn, ridiculed the idea irreverently, so much as to suggest a rival spreadsheet be posted alongside it in hopes of fostering some grocer’s freezer competition.

And the Prodigal Roommate answered.

The next day, while in the middle of writing my ode to pilot programs, I got this e-mail from Spud with a peculiar attachment. Call him inspired by our call to arms, but the man had indeed created a rival spreadsheet. A sheet that would once and far all prove the superiority of a certain frozen food, while at the same time make my co-worker cry. I couldn’t ask for a better situations. So I printed it out and later that day, adorned the refrigerator with Spud’s Creation:

Hot Pocket Feedback.

On a spreadsheet eerily similar to the original (eerily because Spud had never seen the original, yet channeled his inner Schrute to parody it), he had pre-populated the Meal column with every variety of Hot Pocket known to man. Sure, he may have gone to the HP website to get this listing, but I’m pretty sure he can rattle them off from memory.

You see, he’s a bit of a fan.

Back in ’05, my roommate wrote to the good people of Nestle to heap some postal praise on a certain meal-on-the-go product. In return, they sent him a personalized letter of thanks (which he’s since had framed, embossed, and hired a painter to do a wall-size rendering of), with additional coupons for his continued loyalty. At any given time, our freezer held more boxes of Hot Pockets than ice trays.

Which is good, because ice trays bubble up terribly if you microwave them.

Back to the Rival Sheet, though. I hung the Rival Sheet immediately adjacent to the Frozen Meal Feedback. After all, the latter had been posted for about two weeks, and not a single rating had been provided. It’s like when a gas station moves in across the street from the other gas station – competition can spark interest.

Just to get things kicked off, I filled in three random ratings to three different Hot Pockets. Sometimes you need to get the ball rolling. So just like that, a 10 for Meatballs and Mozzarella, an 8 for Ham and Cheese, and an underperforming 2 for Jalapeno Steak and Cheese.

One week later…

To be honest, I didn’t want to check the thing every day, for fear of this being a disappointing foray into co-worker torture. So I waited 5 business days until a day came along in which I stored my lunch in the fridge. When I looked up at the Hot Pocket list, I was shocked. We had 8 reviews.

And we’re not just talking some guy who’s an enthusiast ranked his Top 5, either. I count 4 different pen colors (who the hell writes with a purple pen??) and 6 different Pocket varieties with data. (Good God, we have a 9.667 average on the Meatball!). Spud’s Rival Sheet? Runaway Success.

Frozen Meal Feedback Form? So fresh and so clean.

Winner!