Thursday, June 26, 2008

A Mickey Mouse Education

In the Style section of the Saturday, June 21, 2008 edition of The Washington Post, the lead story, written by Laura Yao, is a fluff piece on 15-year-old Demi Lovato, star of Disney's latest made-for-kiddivision pabulum, Camp Rock. For those of you clueless as to what Camp Rock is, it's the place where you spend your summers during High School Musical, unless you need to go to Crooner Summer School, or your Dad makes you work all summer at his Hip Hop Hardware Store.

Lovato is another in a long line of Village of the Damned-like child stars churned out by the Disney Pop-Grinder, and when features like Yao's mention previous Disney successes such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, et al., they always neglect to mention those near-misses who weren't so lucky (or determined) to make it, and whose forfeited souls now heat the outdoor pool at the Grand Floridian.

The article itself is forgettable, but I'll let Yao slide because the assignment seems to have played like one of those painted carnival cut-outs, where the bodies of cartoon mermaids or monkeys in suits on roller skates are missing their heads, and people stick their faces in the holes where the heads should be; only here, the body is that of a generic pop tart, and the interchangeable head is Lovato's. Take a picture, kid. It'll last longer.

While Camp Rock is nothing more than cheese puffs for children's minds, aspiring hope-to-be's might glean a few things from the Post piece; an education on how they should NOT behave if they find themselves on the brink of stardom (and if not stardom, at least on the brink of being voted Most Popular). There are some hidden lessons there, too. From the the article:

Lovato's apparent maturity is born of experience in learning how to deal, as the kids say. In middle school, Lovato says, "I went through a really hard time at school with girls bullying me. I blamed it on myself at the time, but looking back I guess it was out of jealousy." One day, upset and frustrated, she called her mother and said, "I want home school." The next week, they were out buying home-schooling materials.

WRONG LESSON 1 - HOW TO DEAL (as the kids say): At the first sign of trouble, immediately phone the one-woman SEAL team known only by a palindromic codename - MOM - to extract your blossoming diva butt from the harrowing crisis of being assaulted by Middle Eastern ter...I mean, middle school bullies. THE HIDDEN LESSON: Withdrawing from middle school before completing the education can be seen as defeatist, and might embolden the bullies.

WRONG LESSON 2 - HOW TO HANDLE YOUR PEOPLE: First, ignore all manners. Manners don't put faces on lunch boxes. Second, ignore the fact that the person you are bossing around is the person who made you...not your career, but your actual physical self. Third, keep it simple. All you need is a noun, a verb, and a subject (namely, something you covet). "I want home school." "I want car." "I want boy." "I want girl." "I want boob job." THE HIDDEN LESSON: Just because you suspect that when mom looks at your baby pictures she only sees a little naked dollar sign on a bearskin rug, doesn't mean she actually sees that, thus giving you the right to treat her like some lowly groupie...although she probably does see the dollar sign.

Again from the article, which quotes Lovato on the subject of being a role model to girls (barely) younger than she is:

"The way I want to be a role model is not by not making mistakes."

That is not a typo. The irony here, of course, is that she makes an egregious grammatical mistake in stating that she doesn't not want to not be the one not being a role model by not not making mistakes...or not.

WRONG LESSON 3 - CONSIDER WHAT YOU SAY: It's no secret that you have the shelf life of a loaf of bread, and every career move you make is in the interest of grabbing as quick a buck as possible, before the next 15-year-old soon-to-fade kicks you to the curb and you find yourself taking Vicodin with shots of tequila...and you're 19. What you don't want is to be perceived as having the intelligence of a loaf of bread. THE HIDDEN LESSON: Your lips are like your legs: consider the consequences of opening either too recklessly.

Of course, I wish nothing but the best for...what was that girl's name again?

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Greatest Gift

The I-Pod FM transmitter that Baby gave me for Father's Day was a great gift.

The Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 for Nintendo Wii that The Girls gave me for Father's Day was a greater gift. (It's also the reason why I didn't post this until the Thursday after Father's Day. I've been busy...at Pebble!)

But the greatest gift I received this Father's Day came not from MY family, but from a family of strangers sitting behind me in a movie theater. The greatest gift I received was the gift of moral superiority. That's one you don't need the receipt for, kids.

By now you've probably guessed out the set-up: I'm with The Girls in a movie theater, having just forked over the cash equivalent of Ukraine's GDP for the privilege of spending 90 minutes in the dark with strangers and junk food. The trailers end. The lights dim. Fade In.

Wait! What's that noise behind me?

Is it a cell phone? No. I can't dance to it.

Is it a candy wrapper? No. I don't have the urge to hurl a knife towards the noise in hopes of...well...helping to cut open the candy wrapper, of course.

Is it labored breathing through a gaping pie-hole that has been hazardously jammed to capacity with butter-flavored cud? No. As a natural defense mechanism, my pores seep a protective sheen of Purell whenever the threat of someone violating the "Say It, Don't Spray It" article of the Geneva Conventions comes within a six-foot radius of my personal space. That wasn't happening.

Oh! I know that sound! It's an infant...wailing! How did he get in here? He's not even tall enough to reach the buttons on the Fandango kiosk! Man, that kid is good!

Oh. He didn't come in alone, did he? His parents brought him. How thoughtful.

I hate them.

You see, when Baby and I decided to have The Girl, we knew we would have to make sacrifices in all aspects of our lives: from personal and professional to financial and social. One of those sacrifices involved ending our weekly jaunts to the movies. We knew that without a sitter (add Guam's GDP to the above price tag), movies were not an option. When we had The Girl II, The Girl I was big enough to go to the movies. But while the dynamic changed, the dilemma didn't. The Girl II was too young to go the movies, so one of us would go with The Girl I while the other stayed home with The Girl II.

If we had brought either of The Girls-as-Infants to the movies, we would have negatively impacted the movie-going experience of the other 298 people around us simply because (at best) we foolishly thought that The Girls-as-Infants would have remained asleep despite the sound system having been cranked to 11, or (at worst) we just didn't care. And there's where my hatred comes screaming in like a hawk, followed by, on the wings of doves, my moral superiority.

Why the former? Because people actually do this today. Why the latter? Because I never did such a thing. Neither did Baby. We never even considered it. We never once thrust either of The Girls-as-Infants into a situation that could have ruined it for others. We were better than that. We were...and still are...morally superior, because we were...and still are...considerate of others at the simplest and basest of levels.

As for the idiots behind me, and this applies to any other parents reading this who have done the same thing, I ask: At what point in the planning stage did one of you say, "But what if the baby gets too loud in the theater?" And at what point in the planning stage did the other one say, "Who cares?"

Actually, one answer satisfies both questions. Simply label yourself as being patently stupid, to which I will respond with, "Oh. That." I will then direct you to the nearest Miss Manners column.
Not up for looking in the mirror? Maybe your response is, "Screw you. We'll do what we damn well please, and if that ruins your time, that's your problem, not ours. Why should we have to miss out on going to the movies as a family unit on Father's Day?"

To that, I will, on your behalf, counter by labeling you as patently stupid. I will follow-up with, "Because that's what you signed up for when you had kids, you moron. You give up the small things like going to the movies - which is not a permanent sacrifice, by the way - and in return you get the great joy that your child brings you...EVERY DAY!" Is it really that hard to figure out?

I guess it is...when you're patently stupid.

Thanks for the ego boost, family of strangers behind me. To express my gratitude, I can recommend a babysitter.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

I wonder...

I wonder...why do men wear camouflage?

I'm not talking about soldiers or hunters; I get that. I mean guys like the one I saw in aisle 12 at the supermarket the other day, in his camouflage t-shirt. Where I live, camouflage-as-fashion-statement is so popular, I would dare say that camouflage is the new black. However, I wanted to go up to the guy and say, "You know I can still see you, yes?"


I wonder...how do the dead feel about being immortalized with stickers?

Joining the automotive pop-cultural ranks of bumper stickers and "Baby on Board" signs are decal memorials to the deceased. Most of these stickers begin with "In Loving Memory of..." and include at least a name, and dates of birth and death. When I see these tombstone-like messages on rear windows, I want to flag down the driver and ask him if he had hit the decedent with that car, or if the departed were perhaps interred somewhere in the vehicle. I begrudge no one their right to grieve, but placing a memorial next to a sticker of that little brat peeing on Tony Stewart's #20 kind of cheapens the sentiment.


I wonder...have Bluetooth users looked in the mirror lately?

For those of you over the age of 30, wearing a Bluetooth device in your ear makes you look like you're on your way to the STAR TREK convention, which is NOT A COMPLIMENT. And for you professionals out there in your pinstripes or your Jimmy Choos, accessorizing your power-appearance with a glowing gizmo hanging from the side of your head makes you look no less ridiculous than if you showed up to the board meeting in a tube top.


I wonder...where are the losing children?

At the youngest levels of youth athletics, all children get participant trophies and all games end in ties. Sure, we want to shelter our kids from the ills of the world, but as much as life is about how you play the game, it is also about winning or losing - in all areas of life. Not every kid will go to the prom with head cheerleader, not every job promotion will be given, and not every home pregnancy test will show...well, insert YOUR desired result here. The sooner kids learn this, the better prepared they will be to handle life's setbacks. So I ask you, where are the losing children? I went to school with losers. Surely they have bred.


I wonder...does that make you look fat?

Yeah, it does. Sorry.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

On Second Thought, Don't Say Cheese

I am the father of two girls who are not yet teens, but the fact that I am still alive to compose this column, considering what I read mere minutes ago and might have to someday deal with as a father of girls who are not yet teens, is not so much a testament to my health as it is confirmation that there is truth to the adage "God protects children and fools." (I would be the latter.)

In a June 4, 2008 story, dateline Hartford, CT, Associated Press reporter Stephanie Reitz opens with the following paragraph:

"Passing notes in study hall or getting your best friend to ask a boy if he likes you or, you know, LIKES you, is so last century. Nowadays, teenagers are snapping naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones and sending them to their boyfriends and girlfriends."

Check please!

The story goes on to describe how incidents like this are occurring in schools across the country; how scorned lovers exact revenge by posting private pictures to the Internet; how this type of behavior complicates law enforcement investigations; and how one enterprising young man attempted to sell DVDs containing photographs he had amassed. Really. Ah, capitalism.

As much as I loathe cliché, this appears to be a chicken-or-egg situation, and it goes something like this:

Chicken: Have teens always been this monumentally stupid, but today's technology affords them the opportunity to showcase their stupidity on a global scale? Or...

Egg: Has technology's convenience and prevalence led teens to a level of apathy so great in scope, it has made them de facto imbeciles?

Reitz writes, "Psychologists said the phenomenon reflects typical teenage hormones and lack of judgment, with technology multiplying the potential for mischief. It also may reflect a teenage penchant for exhibitionism, as demonstrated on MySpace and countless other Web sites and blogs." In the realm of the cliché, the answer is, "The chicken appears to have come first, with the egg helping it to become a bigger chicken." Or something like that. Forgive me. I told you I loathe cliché. Besides, I'm still coming off that near-death experience.

I agree with the psychologists. Teens have always been exhibitionistic hormones on feet, and snapping camera phone pictures in the 21st century is no different than taking digital photos in the '90s, filming "home movies" on VHS in the 80s, taking Polaroids in the '70s, shooting on Super 8 in the '60s, and so on, all the way back to scratching out cave drawings in the Millions-BC. (Oh come on. You know that some cave teen, in an effort to impress his cave buddies, drew two very large circles on a cave wall and grunted, "No really! Her boulders are THIS BIG.")

One key difference between today's situation and the situations of yesteryear, other than sheer convenience, is the ease of access to the photos...by anyone. What today's teens forget, or fail to consider in the first place, is that just as easily as they share with global friends and lovers every pore of their skin via the Internet, they unintentionally share the same with the billions of strangers who know how to use Google. And since they aren't thinking about those strangers, they aren't thinking about who those strangers might be; not just creepy bad guys and vengeful social enemies, but college administrators...military recruiters...prospective employers...and even potential love interests.

Suzy: "Johnny! Why are you dumping me? I thought we were falling in love."

Johnny: "Sorry, baby. But if you show up on websites looking like THAT, I have wonder how many 'hits' you've had, if you catch my drift."

The other key difference between today's and yesterday's scenarios, and the difference with perhaps the greatest significance, is the permanency of cyberspace. Sure, many of today's foolish actions carry no long-term consequences, but cyber-shamelessness can. And pictures on the Internet aren't like juvenile criminal records that are sealed when you turn 18, or tattoos that can be removed or covered, or substance-fueled overindulgences that sleep and aspirin help mitigate. They will be there for as long as there is an Internet, so the youthful indiscretion of today can wreak havoc with the opportunity of tomorrow...or 20 years from tomorrow.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some old VHS tapes that need erasing.