My Daughter, Aroku Saki

Thank God for the Internet.

Because of the Internet, homes have fewer and fewer periodicals delivered to their door. The only time I’ve ever been part of a newspaper subscription service was when we used to get the Washington Post in the apartment sophomore year, and that was only because we liked crosswords and needed kindling for the grill. And as for magazines, it’s been over a decade since I got SI for Kids, A Boy’s Life, and Nintendo Power.

Those rags were AWESOME.

Sports Illustrated for Kids was the adolescent installment of the athletic flagship, but with 100% less Peter King. Features included tear-out playing cards that you can trade with your friends, who of course got the same exact magazine and had the same exact collection. But perhaps he’s a huge Oksana Baiul fan and can’t get enough of him. Of course, there was also the famed pull-out poster that was used to decorate my childhood room. Behind my door I hung the glossy visages of Shawn Kemp, Jaromir Jagr, and Michael Chang.

Those three would have made an excellent sitcom.

A Boy’s Life was a magazine for Boy Scouts, by Boy Scouts, and rumored to be made of Boy Scouts. You could follow the adventures of other scouts doing awesome things like white-water rafting, rock climbing, and international espionage, while you take a break from building yet another poorly conceived birdhouse. The highlight of ABL? The page in the back with all the jokes. Those were hilarious. That is, until I realized how much puns made by head bleed sadness.

Nintendo Power was a great read back when you could still name all the games Nintendo had in one breath. It would have tips and codes as to how to actually beat Maniac Mansion, and previews of future games sure to appear on your next Wish List for Santa. “There’s no way they can make a Super Mario Brothers 3! The first 2 are so awesome! How will they top them – what’s this? A 47 page spread? A Giant Kingdom? Flying Hammer Brothers on the move? Dear God! I must rent The Wizard for further research!”

But those subscriptions have long expired, and the little reminder cards you get in the mail have stopped coming. It’s probably for the best I suppose.

Clara Condon HATES magazines.

At least this is the impression I’ve gotten over the last few months. Even though my Childhood Reading is long gone, that doesn’t mean my mailbox isn’t a haven for catalogs from various furniture and fashion chains. Part of my nightly routine is to scoop up the little mag-wrecker and head downstairs and get the mail. For catalogs we have zero use for (Wine Enthusiast? Really?) they get pitched immediately. But for the ones that Katie may want to peruse, they get brought up to the fourth floor.

And promptly shredded.

That’s right – any magazine in reach of our daughter becomes ribbon fodder once she gets a hold of it. We’re not quite sure why it’s so much fun to rip sensibly priced furniture out of a greater marketing record, but she loves it. Conventional wisdom would say that magazines are well-constructed, and should be able to withstand the feeble attempts of a mere baby to part paper in half.

Conventional wisdom just got its butt handed to it by a nine-month old.

So as this holiday season approaches and the Condon household could use some extra scratch to buy presents, we’d like to offer the services of Clara, who for a small fee will gladly take your old copies of Redbook and produce some delightful packing material for all your shipping needs.

Operators are standing by (and likely have the phone in their mouth.)

(99-97) Red Luftballoons

Some would find it pretty awesome that I have a window office. However, I have to say, it’s pretty overrated. I must be going on 3 years or so with a workspace that is bordered on one side by freedom, but you rarely find yourself staring out into the yonder. For one, the window is 180 degrees from my computer monitor. For me to check the weather for myself, I’d have to swivel in the completely opposite direction. Enough swiveling and my chair is likely to unhinge itself into two parts, leaving me sitting on the ground with a sore back and no meteorological knowledge whatsoever.

This is why God made Weather.com.

The other reason I don’t find myself spending hours gazing outside is that my view isn’t that great. Now I understand that Tyson’s Corner is a Corner full of other office buildings, and the likelihood is pretty high that I’m going to look out at some doofus in another company who spends his break time starting right back at me. I could only be so lucky. No, I’m on the 2nd floor (of 9) in my building, which means I’m at least fortunate enough to not stare at the traffic or the parking lot. Whew. Instead, however, I have the roof of the building’s cafeteria in my sights.

Man, that is one sweet air handling unit I’ve got to look at. Awesome.

Yep, I’ve got an obstructed view. It’s like sitting on the inside seat of the Metro. You can look at the Monuments as you cross the bridge into DC, but you have a stranger’s head obstructing the view. And judging from the size of this air handling unit, I’m sitting next to a stranger with a head as big as mine.

But finally, there’s a change to the skyline.

Sitting atop the large metal curved roof, as of this morning, is a deflated silver helium balloon. (Granted, there’s no helium in it now – if there was, it wouldn’t be resting placidly on the roof.) I can’t make out the full greeting, but it appears to say “Congratulations, Man!” on it. Granted, all I can actually see is Congr- and Ma, so it could be a balloon celebrating Congruent Madmen. Which seems odd, I suppose, but be honest with yourself. Aren’t madmen that are incongruous even more terrifying?

Question: Where did this balloon come from?
Answer: The sky, probably.

Thanks a lot, jerkpants of an inner monologue.

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a balloon from the heavens. When I was like 5, my family was visiting my grandparents in Pennsylvania. They lived in a wide-open subdivision, with each household having enough land that they all required riding lawnmowers to keep the grasslands at bay. Anyway, while everyone was inside near sunset, I continued to play outside. The game? Throw the ball up in the air and then catch it. So as my gaze was frequently skyward, I saw a hot-air balloon on the horizon. It started small, and increased in size. As it got so big that I could see the people in its basket, I ran inside to proclaim my fantastic discovery.

No one believes the bored kid with the tennis ball.

As I went back outside, I was just in time to see the balloon narrowly miss (ok, 20 feet) the roof of the house and land in the front yard of my grandparents house. Soon thereafter, the house emptied to join me in my revelry. In addition, several vehicles pulled up to pack up the balloon and celebrate the voyage with the airborne ones. A man emerged from the balloon basket with bottles of champagne and plastic drinkware.

And from that day forward, I’ve assumed that all champagne is distributed by God via hot-air balloons.

Holiday-Encouraged Knifeplay

Second of three posts regarding Halloween ’07! Enjoy!

Yes, it’s no secret that the main custom associated with Halloween involves the costumes and the begging strangers for candy. We’ve got that down. Hell, I think we even spoke of our attempts to participate in the holiday a few years back while exposing the fact that I have an enormous cranium. Little known reason of why people blog: to point out their own foibles.

However, taking silver on the Hallopodium would be the ancient tradition of carving pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns. Why? Apparently in the days of yore, it would turn cold right about this time of year. And since friendship has this uncanny ability to make people feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, the people of the village would often befriend pumpkins for additional companionship. And since a pumpkin is just a pumpkin if it lacks humanesque features, faces were carved into these oversized gourds. Don’t believe me? Fine, you’re entitled to your opinion. But would the dialogue in Cast Away be as believable had Tom Hanks NOT drawn a face on the stupid volleyball? Yeah, didn’t think so.

My first memories of pumpkin carving involved sitting on the back deck with my grandfather. It was an age when I couldn’t be trusted with a knife – actually, I still can’t be trusted with a knife, it’s just that I’m bigger than anyone who used to tell me I couldn’t be trusted with a knife and rather than argue, I just show them my knife. In this childhood scenario, my only job was to pick out the pumpkin. We’d go to the farm. (in places other than Northern Virginia, you actually go out on a tractor ride and pick your own. No need for Holishax.) I really had only one goal in my selection: “ensure my pumpkin dwarfed my sister’s in size, shape, and technical merit.” To this day, I’m undefeated.

When you can’t do the knifing, you can use your limited skill set to your advantage. The one awful part of pumpkin carving involves the cleaning of the interior. I’ve never been a fan of it. It falls along the lines of those stupid party games where the adults blindfold you, shove your hands into a bowl of wet spaghetti and tell you your touching brains. Who came up with that game? I can’t think of a single holiday so special to me that I’d gladly touch a brain in order to celebrate its personal importance.

There’s a reason I didn’t go pre-med.

Once the pumpkin’s insides resemble a brand new basketball, it’s time to cut. When I was a kid, I lacked imagination when it came to vegetable artistry. Eyes? They should totally be triangles! Nose? What if I used a triangle, you know, so that it can match the eyes!!! Mouth? Why not throw some teeth in there, alternating on the upper and lower lip, so that if the pumpkin magically gains the ability to close its mouth there will be no gnashing of teeth. Hey, stranger things have happened. I once saw a movie where a pumpkin turned into a method of transportation.

Crazy.

So what happens now that I’ve got a kid of my own? She clearly can’t be trusted to wield a knife, and they mere sight of pumpkin guts freak her out. Now Katie did a fantastic job of initial interior demolition, so to this day, I don’t have to deal with the stupid innards. But I like to think YAB has if nothing else made me more creative, so I thought for Clara’s 1st Halloween, I’d try and branch out a bit with my craftsmanship. You’ve got to be determined. You’ve got to be dexterous. You’ve got to have more dedication to art than, say, Celtics rookie Glen Davis: (This is in regards to Davis visiting the Sistine Chapel in the preseason, btw.)

“There’s no way I would take six years painting a ceiling. But I guess you do what you’ve got to do, and I just want to commend Michelangelo.”

Now I didn’t take six years, but rather one full episode of Kid Nation. The finished product is below. Behold my talent. (That’s on homage to my earlier works on the left.)

Too Cool for Pool

You grow up around enough swimming pools, you realize there is only a limited number of activities you can do in its vicinity. I suppose just about any sport is a possibility, and some sports (like basketball and volleyball) have gone so far to create pool-ready equipment in case you’re interested in such a contest. But you know why most sports haven’t caught on in a swimming pool?

Sports require running, and you suck at running in the pool.

Seriously, even if you hit a whiffle ball to the back left corner of the deep end, rounding the bases will take a good 12 minutes. And football’s no good either – how exactly do you determine when somebody’s down? And as we learned from the NFL’s foray into London this past weekend – most football players tend to be terrible when water is introduced into the equation. Instead, kids everywhere have come up with a number of games that would, conversely, not be that fun if played on land. That’s what makes them excellent pool games. Sharks and Minnows, Marco Polo, Chicken Fight – and not to forget the ever-popular “Laps” – have become pool mainstays, and I have little doubt that these activities will be on top of the list of things to do next summer.

You know, as long as there aren’t any buzzkill zoo animals in your watering hole.

The fires that have ravaged California over the past week have done very little to benefit anybody. A million people were forced to leave their home, hundreds of homes were burned to the ground, and it will be some time before the Golden State can move on from this tragedy. With such a major event dominating the news for the better part of this fortnight, not a whole lot has surfaced from which we can find humor. In fact, the only good San Diego fire joke came courtesy of KSK – and if it’s KSK, you know irreverence is on the menu. So while I did not want to completely ignore the situation in SoCal, I’m glad I’ve been able to say my piece. Now I can move to comedic pastures – highlighting the one Fire-related event that’s worthy laughing about.

THERE’S A HIPPO IN YOUR POOL.

If you read the second article in Jay Glazer’s NFL beat column from two days ago, you’ll see that San Diego Chargers special teams coach had to prepare for more than just the Houston Texans this week. His wife called to let him know that sure enough, a hippo from the nearby San Diego Wild Animal Park had escaped amidst the chaos and found a new place to dwell in the coach’s pool.

It is unlikely he used the diving board.

The National Zoo here in Washington D.C. has hippos in residence which I have seen on more than one occasion. I have to say, these mighty beasts aren’t exactly movers and shakers – their sedentary lifestyle suits them fine. In fact, going to see the hippos at the zoo is the equivalent of going to the movies to stare at the exit signs. But this hippo in particular is now in the swimming pool of a football coach, and unless he plans to leave and ravage the Hopkirks’ garden next store, Coach Crosby probably isn’t going to be pleased for an extended period of time.

So let’s play some games with the hippo.

As I mentioned above, there are only really three games that are awesome in the pool: Sharks and Minnows, Marco Polo, and Chicken Fight. Which would be the best to challenge the hippo to? Let’s review our options.

Sharks and Minnows – Winner: HIPPO! When you’re a shark, it’s the goal of the minnow to get to the other side of the pool without getting pulled to the surface. When you’re a minnow, you have to get by the shark. You tell me which is easier: stopping a charging hippo or getting by a creature that is the width of the swimming pool.

Marco Polo – Winner: TIE! If a hippo closes its eyes, it’s probably sleeping. Game over.

Chicken Fight – Winner: YOU! You see, you thought Chicken Fight was all about hoisting your girlfriend onto your shoulders for a match of chick-slap dominance. Instead, it’s your chance to kick nature’s ass. The hippo has decided to team up with that stupid tickbird, (in the name of symbiosis), and your girlfriend can totally take that pipsqueak.

A Boy and His Blog

Mom and Dad, I have a confession to make.

Over the course of my childhood, you were incredibly generous with me. Christmas was never a time of “Look, Santa brought you a stack of magazines from the coffee table” and my birthday gift was never “Enjoy these grass clippings from out back!” Maybe you were so nice to me because you know that I would use your example as to how to be generous to my once and future children, I can’t be sure. But as I look back at all the neat stuff I got as a kid, I’m eternally grateful.

Hell, I had a Nintendo when I was 6. 6!

And over the tenure of my NES days, I must have amassed upwards of 30 different games to play. And since this was the late 80’s, the idea behind each of these titles was fairly archaic and basic; Nintendo did not intend games to become Super until the 90’s. Some were sports games that kept me occupied before anyone had even invented season mode. Take “Baseball,” for example. I just played the real Phillies schedule, and actually kept the score book on a piece of paper sitting on the table in front of the television. I would conduct an entire March Madness bracket in Double Dribble by electing to be one team in each match up, and “advancing” the winner on the bracket before me. In 10-Yard Fight, I’d play against my father and beat him with a complex playbook of run to the left, run to the right, pass to the guy.” Worked every time.

To be fair, my dad didn’t stand a chance. He was a Tetris addict.

As a simultaneous form of conquest and gratitude, I did my best to win at video games. Several of them I could hang on a wall, plaque style, as I actually beat the final bad guy to achieve what every video gaming hero wanted to achieve in 1988: watch the credits of a bunch of Japanese guys roll by. Super Mario 2? Toast. Ghosts ‘n Goblins? Finished. R.C. Pro-Am? VICTORIED!

Some games even made learning fun!

In the latter days of Original Nintendo, I got “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?” as a Christmas present. Surely, you’re familiar with the premise of the Sandiego series. (If not, let Rock-a-pella explain.) Anyway, they ran our places for Carmen to hide (Where in Your Kitchen is Carmen Sandiego didn’t test well), so they allowed her to run from the fuzz via time travel. And as much fun as learning about the Renaissance is, the heavy almanac that came with that game served a better purpose as a trench ledge on which to steady the barrel of my Duck Hunt gun. Screw you, Laughing Dog.

But as for the aforementioned confession? It concerns not Carmen or the Dog. But rather, another video game hero and his gelatinous friend.

A Boy and His Blob.

I’m sure at some point I must have asked for this particular cartridge, because it doesn’t seem to be the type of game one of you would have seen on the shelf and been drawn to. I’d like to borrow the premise of the game from Wikipedia:

“A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a side-scrolling platformer in which the character and his friend Blob (full name Blobert) travel together on earth and on Blobert's home planet Blobolonia in a quest to defeat the evil emperor. Blobert can change into several different items when he is fed jelly beans. A licorice jelly bean, for instance, will change Blobert into a ladder, while a honey jelly bean will turn him into a hummingbird. Most of these transformations can be remembered mnemonically due to a correlation between the flavor of the jelly bean and the item that results.”

The truth is: I never figured out how to get past the opening screen. Seriously. For all the hours I tried to crack the blobular code, I got nowhere. I'm sure that had I figured how the game, I don't know, begins, it was probably challenging and perhaps educational. However, my gameplay was limited to winging candy at a glorified albino Hershey Kiss.

So thanks for the game, parents. But I've failed you.

I never got my passport stamped on Blobolonia.

A Cake Named Pinstripes

Now that’s how you do a birthday.

I was on the receiving end of two different birthday presents of which I would like to discuss with you. The first one will leave you with a question worth hours of meditative pondering. The second might read like semi-serious sports column. I ask that you forgive me for both in advance.

Item #1: a fog-less in-shower shaving mirror. By my request, I asked for a mirror that you can put within the shower curtain so that one can shave without having to treat sideburns with a “best-guess” methodology. Well, I used it this morning, and the circular reflection of facial insight worked like a gem. No longer do I have to peek outside the curtain to get a glimpse of the mirror on the other side of the bathroom. But riddle me this: if they have the ability to make shower shaving mirrors fog-less, WHY DON’T WE USE THAT TECHNOLOGY ON ALL MIRRORS?

Item #2: a playoff spot for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Yeah, let’s just savor that for a second.

I’d like to personally thank each and every New York Met that phoned it in over the last part of the season. Your inability to hold a late-inning lead, play error-free baseball, pitch effectively out of the bullpen, or beat the Phillies in any of the last six games you played against one another were all very thoughtful, and I appreciate you thinking of my city and me. I’d also like to thank the Florida Marlins, who took care of business and ended their season on as ruiners for the Mets. And as for my local team, the Washington Nationals, thank you as well. I admire your manager’s move to make this a fair fight and play your starters throughout the weekend over young’ins, as well as the whupping you delivered at Shea Stadium early last week. You will always be my second-favorite team because of your efforts this season. (Also, thank you for losing the season series with the Phillies; Mattias owes me a Wawa hoagie because of it.)

I’m forgetting someone here in the division. Who could that – oh right, the Atlanta Braves.

Screw the Atlanta Braves.

But it was the Fightin’s who had just as much to do with this post-season birth as any of the teams listed above. They made a true stretch run that did not falter in the end. They won games in all sorts of ways, and that included spotting the other team a few runs every time Adam Eaton took the hill. Now they go into the postseason with a recovering ace, an old man, and a couple of Kyles on the mound, and honestly, I couldn’t be more confident about it. The lineup is locked and loaded at every position (assuming Ruiz’s elbow is okay after getting drilled yesterday.), and Charlie Manuel has promised me he will do everything in his power to not let Wes Helms onto the field.

The last time the Phillies made the playoffs, their charmed existence became a thread woven into my daily fabric. I was permitted to go about my day wearing hats, jerseys, and everything else I had in my support of them. Meetings were interrupted to discuss their chances, and the entire commute was froth with baseball chatter.

Of course, I was in 8th grade at the time.

Yes, the last time this ballclub played extra frames was 1993 – the year that they lost to Canada in the World Series. I’m twice as old now as I was back then. Darren Daulton is twice as crazy. And yet, during all this tim of chasing down New York and San Diego, somehow Philly ended up in the driver’s seat. Citizens Bank Park will play host to Game 1 and 2, and potentially Game 5 in the following week. Our opponent will be either the Padres or the Rockies. (They play a one-game playoff tonight, which is good, because it’s totally unfair to make Philly have to play both of them at the same time.)

I’d like to close with a statistic. In 1980, the Phillies won the World Series in my first full season of baseball. Clara, my daughter, was born 49 days before Opening Day, making this her first full season of baseball.

Just sayin’.

Talented And Gifted

This past summer, you may remember that I spent a week out west in the mountain city of Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s probably like many cities that call the Rocky Mountains home; the air is thinner, the forests are more abundant, the views are picturesque, the REI Outdoor Sports Stores are bigger, and the speed limits are greater. However, there are two very specific attributes that allow you to distinguish the Springs from so many other towns in the Mountain Time Zone. They are listed below.

1. The Air Force Academy makes sure that the planes per capita average for the city is well above the national average.
2. Kids are not allowed to have fun at recess.

The former is self-explanatory. The latter? That’s YAB-explanatory.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Cindy Fesgen, the assistant principal at Discovery Canyon Elementary in Colorado Springs, has taken it upon herself to ensure that the one fun part of school be removed from the agenda: recess. (Personally, as a band dork, I wouldn’t know what recess is. In middle school, my idea of a good time consisted of leaving at the end of lunch to goof off in the band room. And that, friends, is #72 from the List of Things I Avoided Mentioning to Katie While We Were Dating.) It’s not that Fesgen has altered the space-time continuum as to remove the 12-20 minutes immediately following the children’s mid-day meal; no, she’s just put the kibosh on a recess activity that’s older than the meatloaf those kiddies just dined upon.

She banned Tag.

And while I wish I were talking about that abhorrent body spray, I’m actually referring to the playground game in which a simple hand touch can turned the hunted into a hunter. Yes, the one playground game that doesn’t require any sporting equipment, team formation, strategy, captaincy, uniforms, scorekeeping abilities, and lung power will no longer be allowed. It’s FORBIDDEN. It’s PROHIBITED. It’s..it’s-

“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground.” said Fesgen.

See ya, handle. It’s time to fly off of you.

Before I decided that musical instrument mastery was the way to get chicks, I did at one point participate in recess activities. In elementary school, this is all we did. It was the way we decided who was the best athlete in class. It was the way we killed time until some wonderful teacher would buckle like a belt and get us one of those red playground balls. It was our passive-aggressive means of showing interest in the opposite sex by using a game of caustic aggression to display attraction.

(Kim Zawacki, you never could catch me.)

And I’m guessing the totalitarian regime that is Discovery Canyon Elementary banned all variations and versions of Tag.

Freeze Tag, a harmless permutation that actually gave both sides a way to win or lose, is probably out on account that its reference to subzero, wintry temperatures may cause adolescent depression. Red Rover is probably misconstrued as another term for dog fighting, and the American Government has zero tolerance when it comes to dog fighting. Tag Heuer maybe an excellent manufacturer of luxury watches, but Fesgen knows that Tiger Woods endorses the product, and he swings metal clubs violently for a living. That guy who dated Rachel on Friends? Stay the hell away from our school. German exchanges students were deported for merely a mention of “Guten tag.”

Our guess? In elementary school, Cindy Fesgen is horrible at Tag.

He Got Game

As I may have mentioned earlier this week, we spent the Easter weekend up at my parents’ house in Medford. Going back there always gives me a chance to reflect on the memories I have of my childhood. Well that, or some decent material I can use to mock it. Here we go again.

I don’t what it is that compelled me to help reorganize the game room on Saturday morning. (Although, it’s my best guess that the TV was controlled by the women of the household, and TLC would rule the day.) For those who haven’t been to the house, we have a room that connects the garage to the rest of the house that used to be the frequent locale of time wasting during my youth. Aside from being Old School Nintendo HQ, we kept the ping pong table and dart board in there, as well as two full shelves of board games. Hence the name “game room.” (It should be noted it has been often referred to as its alternate name “play room,” but for the life of me I cannot recall ever staging a production of Julius Caesar in that room.)

In reorganizing the board games, I had the following set of thoughts. I thought that now I’m some 15 years removed from playing most of them, it’s time to look back and see just what warped version of competition I was spending my time engaged in…

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #1: Not all games are designed fair. Even before we get to board games, there are two games that I played as a kid that require ZERO skill, strategy, luck, tactic, or knowledge. The first is Tic-Tac-Toe. If you go second in Tic-Tac-Toe, and therefore are playing with Team O, you will end up with a maximum of four squares in a 3 x 3 grid carrying your circular team banner. And the goal is to line up three of your mark in a row. Therefore, 75% of your O’s need to line up to win. That’s freaking impossible, considering you don’t get to go first. Why have we played this game for generations and generations? Why didn’t better simple games come and wipe this sham off the map? With all respect to Peter Angelos, let’s face it. The O’s suck. Connect Four took the idea and made it way better. And what about the card game War? I used to play this for hours, trying to take the rest of the deck from my sister. Now what skill was I applying to my victories? Let’s see. There was the ever-important “not dropping my cards on the floor” and the also-needed “being timely about picking up cards I’ve won.” After that, it’s pure luck. Pure luck of the cards you were dealt forty minutes ago. And yet, we used the name “War” for this mind numbing game. Couldn’t we have saved that name for a card game that involved winging cards at each other’s head? Now that, my friends, would require some real skill.

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #2: Not all board games are good board games. My parents liked to get us board games for holidays, and with good reason – we played a ton of them growing up. Dice, chance cards, fake money – no matter what, it held our attention – almost. At some point you had to figure that we would receive a game that was a dud. After all, if my parents were 100% successful at picking good board games, they could leave their jobs and take over product development over at Parker Brothers. So looking back, we can afford a flop here or there. That flop?

The Game of the States

You could tell how much we played these games as kids by looking at how much duct tape has been applied to keep their boxes in tact. Games like Clue and Monopoly and Scattergories are almost entirely metallic silver by now. The Game of the States would earn a mint condition rating on eBay. This game should have been right up my dorky little alley. It involved money, geography, and dice-rolling. And yet, it just never held my attention. I guess if it had, I wouldn’t be a financial analyst. I’d be a commercial truck driver.

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #3: My sister had no chance. Yep, looking back at the configurations and old score cards on these games, one thing became quite clear. I often used my 3 years of extra existence to my advantage. Example #1: The game was Guess Who? At some point, I alphabetized the game boards, so that they were identical. I also would make it clear that I was knocking down the picture of the guy I had, and she would do the same to keep up. And thereby reveal exactly who she had. Example #2: Battleship. I used to keep my fleet adjacent (I’m a Jasen!) to one another so that even if she found five consecutive hits, that wouldn’t necessarily sink a ship. Drove her crazy.

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #4: It promotes the legalization of gambling. You want proof? This is taken from the rules of “The Game of Life:” If a player felt like he was trailing severely at the point he retired, he could make one final gamble in an attempt to become the "Millionaire Tycoon". He selected one number on the number strip, and placed his car here. He spun the wheel; if the number was anything but the one he selected, he was banished to the "Bankrupt" space and lost the game. If, however, he landed on the number he previously chose, he became the Millionaire Tycoon and automatically won the game.

Let that be a lesson, kids. You can work hard all your life and be happy, but a slacker with a lotto ticket may be the one waving to you from his yacht.

Green Monsters and Gutter Balls

As I sit here expecting my season opener softball game to be inevitably rained out tomorrow night, I’m excited. There’s just something about the advent of playing ball – swinging the bat, running the bases, HAVING a catch – that makes spring special. Sometimes you’re fortunate enough to have a team to play on that has scheduled games and classy uniforms (excluding the “Medford Bakery” unis, which were black (cool!) but had a gingerbread man logo (not cool!). And other times, it’s up to you and your imagination.

Disclaimer: I was a weird kid.

I think my parents had high hopes for their careers as professional tennis players. When I was really little, they’d take their rackets to the shore and play on the courts of Ocean City. They’d play doubles, singles, whatever it took to be crowned heroes of the hard court. Hell, my dad even had a tennis bag. In 1991, he grew his hair way long, insisted on wearing neon colors, and only took pictures of us with his Rebel camera. But right around that time, their goal to become the next Evert or Connors ended. If you ask them, they’d tell you they had a commitment to be home for their kids, to raise them right and teach them values. In reality, there was a different motive for them to hang up the headbands for a final time.

They were out of tennis balls.

It wasn’t an inventory re-stocking issue, either. There were empty cans with Wilson on the label throughout the garage, and save the ones my parents used to ensure they didn’t drive their cars directly into the playroom, the tennis balls should have been overflowing from the aforementioned tennis bag sitting next to the air compressor. But as you may have guessed, 1) they weren’t and 2) I may have something to do with why they weren’t.

Enter Solitaire Baseball.

The premise was pretty simple. It was the easiest way for an 8 year-old with an imagination and a metal bat could simulate actual baseball when it wasn’t time to lace up the spikes or your MYAA hat. The premise was simple; play a game of baseball without an opponent. It will require organization, mental creativity, a backstop, and tennis balls. Lots and lots of tennis balls.

When my team was at bat, I would stand at the side of my drive way and step into the imaginary batter’s box. In my right hand – a bat. In my left – a bright yellow tennis ball, waiting to be pummeled. In one fluid motion, I would toss the ball upwards, grab the bat with my free hand, and swing like Gap was selling khakis. Where the ball went over the course of the next two neighbor’s yard decided whether it was a single, double, triple, dinger, or out. Why does this matter?(I used to keep score. In a scorebook. With names of pro ballplayers. See above disclaimer for details.)

Now rather than chasing down my tennis ball and returning to my driveway, we (I say we because one of my neighbors loved this game as well) had a similar set of scoring landmarks in the opposite direction. If you didn’t get it over the neighbor’s driveway in the air, that’s an out. Before the electric box and after the driveway? Single. A double was in the brush off to the right, and a triple? Through the V-shaped opening in the tree by our mailbox. How does one hit a home run? By roofing the ball on the top of my parents’ garage. And as I would mentally round the bases, the ball would allow gravity to do its magic and place it firmly in the gutter. (Not even a well-placed hockey stick blade could evict the gutter’s latest tenant.)

In the original direction, the outfield wall was represented by a massive pine bush that our neighbors two houses down had as a part of their landscaping. To hit the bush in the air would require a sky-bound rocket of a tennis ball, and it was just far away enough to make this an accomplishment. In the pros last year there were 2.2 HRs per game, so we were in no way planning to show up the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas. Why? 1)We have respect for the game of baseball and 2)If a ball went into the bush it hurt like hell to reach in and retrieve it.

I was home this past weekend, and I saw that our neighbors have recently re-landscaped that area of their yard. Gone is our Green Monster.

And the 324 tennis balls it ate during my childhood.

When Office Machines Go Bad

While watching some television over the weekend, Katie noticed that come March 22, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be back in theaters in all their pizza-eating brilliance, and she asked me (either because I’m a cinemaphile or an acclaimed herpetologist) “Why do we need another Ninja Turtle movie?” Great question, dear.

And upon researching an answer for my wife (turns out I AM a cinemaphile and not a turtle lover in a labcoat), I came across an astonishing fact. The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Movie came out in 1990.

That was 17 years ago.

How the heck did that happen? For years I felt like that everything that was apart of my childhood occurred about ten years ago. It was a comfortable window that really did encompass just about anything I was about to recall in a memorable story. And somehow, in my ever-continuing age increase, I let the years slip, and what stared as an enjoyable afternoon on the couch turns into a shocking revelation of how the time has flown.

I thought turtles move slower than everybody else. Who cheated?

However, I then realized that is really HAS been 17 years since one of my all-time favorite kids movies hit the screen. How? Because the more I thought about it, I realized that I have an incredible compendium of Turtle Trivia that’s been kicking around my head all this time. It would have taken 17 years for me to gather this much useless knowledge. I will now use this blog to clutter your minds with TMNT movie trivia.

(Note: No, I didn’t consult IMDB to write this stuff. I've led a sad life.)

• One of the all-time best rap songs is TURTLE Power, by the never-heard-from-again Partners in Kryme. Really, their flow belongs in my Lyrical Hall of Fame. Anyone who rhymes “When Tonto came pronto” is ok in my book.
• The guy who plays the Shredder in the first sequel? None other than Lost’s Dr. Marvin Candle. Yeah. Anyone who wouldn’t believe mutant turtles as a Dharma project is a liar.
• Introduced future movie bad guys to the Foot Clan Group Attack Method, whereby an army of hundreds wait their turn, one-by-one or two-by-two to take on their enemy, rather than swarm like they freakin’ should. See The Matrix Reloaded for more.
• The angry Asian who plays Master Tetsu doesn’t grunt and speak in minimal sentences because he wants to seem cool or imposing; it’s because that guy didn’t speak a lick of English. Ninja Vanish.
• A character from the original, Casey Jones, is one of few main human castings in the flick. I had a real problem with Casey Jones, the ex-hockey player who wields a stick with reckless abandon. This guy was strong and agile as hell; keeping up with the turtles and fighting trained ninjas. But from his mask and choice of stick, one thing is clear – he’s a goalie. I blame his Pee-Wee coach for not training him to be a puck-moving defenseman or power forward. He probably would have been way more successful and seen time in the NHL. Hell, if Chris Simon can do it…
• Spud once told me that Sam Rockwell, the star of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Charlie’s Angels, is credited in the movie as “Head Thug.” Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.
• Vanilla Ice is the only cast member to date from this film series to end up on The Surreal Life. We think.
• However, Raphael does utter the line, “A Jose Canseco bat? Tell me... you didn't pay money for this.” Wow, a turtle prophet.
• Ernie Reyes Jr, an acclaimed martial artist, rose to fame through this franchise, getting his own major character (Keno) in the second movie. However, a stellar screen presence and killer technique will not make me forgive him for Surf Ninjas, one of my all-time five worst movies.
• In the fifth grade, my band teacher Mr. Johnson wrote an original piece of orchestra music for our elementary school that sounded incredible like the “Heroes in a Half-Shell” part of the Ninja Turtle theme song. He didn’t know this until he played it for a group of 11 year-old kids. From their reaction, he named the piece “Pizza Power.” Looking back at this moment, he should have named it “Flagrant Copyright Infringement.”

Peyton Manning Would Be a Horrible GPS System

In my 18 years of formal education, I’ve had to do a lot of projects. Some have been in groups, while others have forced me to go out on my own. There have been a few that have required some creativity, while others a built-up penchant for boredom-inducing research. And of all the projects I’ve ever done in the name of academia, only one can be the Best. Project. Ever.

And it was the one that made me a fan of the Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts.

In 5th grade, my teacher was named Mrs. Hammer. Doesn’t exactly give you the feeling that she’s going to be all about smiley-face stickers and candy for right answers, right? After all she shares the name with a tool design to create blunt-force trauma. She was a good teacher, and her legacy is only heightened considering I had her as a teacher during the heyday of M.C. Hammer.

In the first month of 5th grade, we as a class were informed that we would be participating in a new half-year-long project known as Pigskin Geography. Looking around on the internets, it appears that this was not a unique idea of the Hammer. The premise was simple. Every student is assigned a team. The student is to follow the season of their team. The student will learn about the city the team plays its home games. The student will learn about calculating statistics, as well as distances between games. You also had to keep a scrapbook, meaning you had to figure out how to read the newspaper (preferably taking your scissors to it AFTER mom and dad had finished.) Oh, and you were encouraged to watch football.

Team selection was the first, and perhaps, most important part of the entire project. First off, no one could have the Eagles – that was in effect, “cheating.” (Plus it probably eliminated initial arguments – that’s how the Hammer rolls.) So our names were picked out of a hat, and we picked what was left on the board (at the time 28 teams) I feel like I picked like 5th.

Now keep in mind, I’m an extremely weird kid when it came to school. In third grade we got to write a report about any United States President (other than Reagan, who was in office) we wanted. 3rd graders don’t have opinions about who the favorite President is. Therefore, they pick the one they’ve heard of. 10 kids probably did JFK. Another 10 probably did Lincoln. Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt – I’m sure they had a few.

Chris Condon chose William McKinley.

So when it came to my turn to pick a football team, one should expect the unexpected. The only team I ever liked was the Eagles, and they were off the board. Nowadays, I could probably give you a 1-32 list, from Philly to Dallas. But back then? It was Philly, and then everybody else.

Now this selection happened during the pre-season of the 1990 NFL season. The weekend prior, the Eagles had had a game against the blue and white of the Indianapolis Colts, and lost 17-16. My opinion of the Colts, then, was that if they were good enough to beat the Eagles, then they must be a good team. Looking back, here are something’s that shed light on a faulty rationale.

1. When I was 10, I had no idea that pre-season games are meaningless.
2. The Eagles coming off Year 4 of the Buddy Ryan Experiment, an experiment that failed to produce a play-off win.
3. The Colts were about to start a rookie QB named Jeff George, who may have been a previous incarnation of Rex Grossman.

I got an A in Pigskin Geography. Really, I totally rocked it. My calculations of running yards per game and points allowed were flawless, my newspaper scrapbook was topical and insightful, and I know lots of things about the Hoosier State that, well, haven’t been that helpful in my professional career.

The 1990 Colts? They went 7-9.

But from the one magi-, no, mediocre season, I became a Colts fan. I was 10.

Now I’m 27. But other than the hometown influence of the Eagles, the Colts have always been my Number 2 Team. I stuck with them, and before I could even spell “allegiance.” The very next year? They lost 15 out of 16 games. And I still wore a blue horseshoe cap proudly. I mean, that requires a lot of dedication out of a kid.

I’m not exactly a William McKinley backer these days.

Two Wheels of Fury

“Even in the future when kids are fat, immobile technaddicts, nothing will beat waking up Christmas morning and finding a shiny, new bicycle under the tree.”
- Spud Mellor, Monrovia Top Five

And while we like this quote just because of the coining of “technaddicts” it appears that in his ode to his first red bike, Mr. Mellor is clearly on to something. Although it should be pointed out that unless he lived outside in an evergreen forest, his and every other Christmas morning bicycle probably rested next to the tree and not under it. That’s why God invented kickstands – so shiny new bikes don’t fall into the tree and ruin Christmas.

While I was unable to post to MT5 that particular week due to Blogger playing Scrooge, I, too, would have made sure a shiny new two-wheeler was part of my list. Before I write my own personal ode to a bicycle, I think it’s worth taking a gander at the latest bike to roll down the line.

Is it a Huffy? No.
Schwinn? Uh-uh.
Trek? Don’t think so.
Mercedes? Of course!

As if making reliable German luxury cars wasn’t enough, it seems that the automaker has finally rolled out their auto show prototype BICYCLE. Yes, it seems that since Germany didn’t win the World Cup, they have instead focused their efforts to the world of cycling. Jan Ulrich aside, this just might be the bike that takes them to the forefront of Ich Sport de Tightpants.

The Mercedes bike, according to the linked press release, has some features quite nicer than the Point A-to-Point B stuff we Americans are used to. An intelligent lighting system operates to provide safety features in close quarters, as well as ask you impossible Trivial Pursuit questions (probably Science and Nature) during your bike ride. An on-board computer does an array of functions from displaying speed and gear, to flashing a lateral red light back and forth with the voice of Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World. But the most revolutionary bicycular advancement on the Mercedes bike?

An automatic transmission.

Yes, while you are shifting gears with your hands like a sucker, the Germans are letting the machine do the work FOR THEM. Face it, your hands are busy enough with minor tasks like “steering the bicycle” and “not falling off,” they could use a break. The Mercedes bike does the work for you by calculating speed and incline to determine the ideal gear. That’s why it’s the Mercedes is the Mercedes of Bicycles.

Now let me introduce you to the Saturn.

Known for affordability, initial dependability and reliability, both the Saturn and my Huffy Mountain Bike get off to flying color starts. They serve their purpose with a limited sense of style. This is a Huffy I probably got in 6th grade or so. It was the third in a line of bikes for me; the first had been handed down, and then I really put the pedal to the metal with my first red 10-speed. However, as my riding got more aggressive (read:off-road), it was clear that it was time for an upgrade and Santa came through. BIG TIME.

This was 1991.

NINE YEARS LATER, I brought the aptly-named Huffy Death Trap to college with me for my freshman year. I had grown 13 inches in that time; the bike did not. Its gears? Squeakier. So much that you could hear it coming at the UC if I was still at Monroe. Had it had an equivalent on-board computer, it wouldn’t have been capable of speed and gear readings. Its processing power?

Perhaps it was more the speed of “The Cow Says Mooooooo.”

RIP, HDT.