Three years ago our oldest child, Jordan, was in kindergarten.  The elementary school encourages parent participation, so when I heard that Carl Reiner, one of my all-time favorite performers, had written a children’s book for Halloween, I decided it would be a great thing to take in and read to the kindergarten class.

The book, “Tell Me A Scary Story, But Not Too Scary!” was a big hit.  In it, Reiner tells the story as if reciting a childhood tale to one of his grandchildren.  The protagonist is a young boy who has a new neighbor.  The neighbor drops something from a box when he’s moving in, and it turns into a scary little night-time adventure returning the object to the neighbor.

Along the way, Reiner has inserted into the story reminders to ask if the story is getting too scary, and if so, he’ll stop.  Both Jordan and Ben, who is now 5, like the story very much, and we’ve enjoyed reading it at Halloween.

A few weeks ago, I saw in the Wall Street Journal that Reiner had written a sequel children’s book, “Tell Me Another Scary Story, But Not Too Scary!”  So with Ben now in kindergarten, I thought it would be a good opportunity to read BOTH books to the class.

The story in the newer book is less well-developed, and seems designed more to serve as a teaching story to remind children that they should help their friends.  It’s also not really as scary, as a story, as the first.

But I was sure that the first story would get much the same reaction from Ben’s class as it did from Jordan’s, where boys screamed like little girls and hid their faces in pillows telling me it was too scary and they wanted me to stop.

Much to my surprise, the kids in Ben’s class were completely unfazed by both stories.  They liked them, to be sure, but they really didn’t express any fear or uncertainty as the story unfolded.

So that left me wondering - could it be that in just 3 years, the crop of Lawrenceville kindergartners has become just that much more mature / jaded / cynical?  Or, on a more positive take, could it be that so many of these kids have older siblings, and had already seen Reiner’s first book, that they knew the story?

I guess I’ll never know the answer.  But it does make me wonder.



This entry is cross-posted here

I've been saying, at least to myself, for some time that eventually we'll reach a point where a person can officially declare that he (or she, if we must be politically correct) is marrying himself/herself so that he/she is not being discriminated against based on marital status, the right to marry, etc.  It will be weird and nonsensical.  But it will happen.

And this story moves us just a little bit closer to that world.

If the guy in Japan gets the right to marry a cartoon character, the possibilities start to get pretty interesting.  Want to marry a movie star's character from one of your favorite films?  Why not?  Meet my wife, Christie Brinkley as the hot girl from National Lampoon's Vacation!  Shoot, my cousin could finally "marry" his ideal of feminine beauty, Grace Kelly.  If we're not limited to three dimensional, sentient human beings, the sky's the limit.  And eventually, we can just invent marriage partners, multiple marriage partners, and then legally "marry" ourselves.

Thankfully, I'm already married to a babe, so this won't apply to me.  Though maybe I better make sure she isn't making plans for an alternate marriage reality....

An interesting human interest story at Fox News this morning:

Millvina Dean was just two months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the deck of the sinking RMS Titanic.

Now, more than 95 years later, Dean, the last living survivor of the disaster, is hoping to help pay her nursing home fees by selling artifacts of her rescue — a suitcase and other mementos expected to auction for about $5,200.

What a sad story.  I can’t imagine that $5,200 will go very far toward nursing home fees for Ms. Dean.  Perhaps it’s my increasing cynicism over the pending elections that makes me wonder why some of the liberal blowhards in Hollywood, who profited immensely from a little movie a few years ago that had something to do with the sinking of RMS Titanic, didn’t do something gracious like make an anonymous contribution to a trust fund established for the benefit of the very few survivors of the sinking alive at the time the film was made.

And it’s probably just my increasingly warped sense of humor that makes me wonder if perhaps the Seinfeld cast should do something similar for survivors of the Andrea Dorea / Stockholm accident.

In any event, good luck to Ms. Dean, and may she have many more healthy and happy days ahead.

...but that's immediately who I thought of when I heard a clip on the radio from the MTV music video awards show, or whatever it is called.  The host of the awards program was apparently a comedian from Great Britain, and at one point in the program he spoke up on behalf of people from outside the U.S. in begging the citizens of our country to elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.  Apparently Obama really has the non-U.S. citizen vote pretty much wrapped up.

Let's Make a Deal!  We'll all agree to let Obama take over as head of the United Nations on the condition that he never be allowed to hold a position in the United States government ever again.  Seems like a win-win.

Now, where's my "U.S. Out of U.N." sign....

Seeing the linkline below at Sports Illustrated's site this morning prompts my question above:

Synchronized swimmer faints, rescued in pool

My money's on Lawrence.  As he said:

I don't swim.

From Fox News:

Authorities say a 16-year-old girl who died after losing control of her car had been texting on her cell phone moments before the accident.

Seems like it would be a perfect story for warning teens and drivers in general not to do something stupid like sending text messages while driving, right?  Well, when you read further into the story:

Authorities say Preuss had been driving drunk and was speeding.

If this is how far the media have to look to find a case where the use of a cell phone contributed to a car crash, I'm not going to get too upset at all the yahoos I see driving around New Jersey with their cell phones plastered to their ears.

According to the DNA tests, the carcass that was turned in allegedly as Bigfoot is, well, I'm not sure what it is.  From the story:

One of the two samples of DNA said to prove the existence of the Bigfoot came from a human and the other was 96 percent from an opossum, according to Curt Nelson, a scientist at the University of Minnesota who performed the DNA analysis.

Human AND opossum?  From the same carcass?

Does this make it more like Pigman, or ManBearPig?

Here's the linkline from Fox News:

Wife Accuses James Bond Actor George Lazenby of Death Threat, Offering Toddlers Alcohol

Whoa.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled that George Lazenby wasn't just married to some nobody.  And sure enough:

It's getting ugly between former James Bond actor George Lazenby and his soon-to-be ex-wife, former pro tennis ace Pamela Shriver.

Shriver does tennis broadcasts for ESPN, and won multiple grand slam titles with Martina Navratilova.  I think she made it to a grand slam singles final (or maybe two) in her career as well.  She's probably in the Tennis Hall of Fame.  And it's just "Wife accuses James Bond Actor ..."?  I would have thought it would pack more punch and attract more readers to name both famous members of the pair.  I mean, I think Shriver is also part of the whole Shriver / Kennedy universe, and STILL she doesn't even get mentioned in the headline?  I suppose this is just another indication of how much of a niche sport tennis, and women's tennis, have become, though I would suspect that Lazenby's role as Bond in one movie would put him about on the same level of celebrity obscurity as a multiple grand slam doubles winner.

Skimming through the "Muse Arts" page at Bloomberg this morning, I came across what I thought was going to be a story about a Coney Island attraction where people could line up and pay $1 to be waterboarded for fun.  Here's the link text:

Waterboarding for a Buck Adds Twist to Coney Island Thrills: Jeremy Gerard

It turns out you can't actually get waterboarded for a buck to add a twist to your Coney Island thrills, as we'll see:

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- I wasn't prepared to be devastated by the lurching, blindfolded figure in an orange jumpsuit, gasping for air as a hooded man in black poured water down his mouth.

"Waterboard Thrill Ride," Steve Powers's installation, is disturbing in a way that journalistic accounts of torture can only approximate.  It left me wrecked.

True, I wasn't there by accident (unlike, say, nameless others further south in the lovely seaside resort of Guantanamo Bay).  I'd actually come to see a man being tortured.

Let's get this out of the way first.  It's a good thing the "nameless others" remain nameless, because my guess is none of the clowns down there enjoying the warm weather, free Korans, and three meals a day are there by accident.  Go ahead, Mr. Gerard, name ONE of them who is.  I won't hold my breath.

Now, it still seems from the setup that there is at least going to be a real person being waterboarded, and maybe even a dollar-paying customer who gets to experience it first hand!  Um, no:

I watched the two figures, motionless dummies until I inserted a dollar bill into a slot next to the bars.  That's when the water flowed and the prone body lurched.

Motionless dummies?  There are no real people?  That's right:

The figures in the "Waterboard Thrill Ride" aren't alive.  They're "crummy animatronic robots," Powers told me in a telephone interview, and any doubt about the point of his show is dispensed with by the cartoon on the gray storefront.  A sinister blue man is getting ready to pour water on SpongeBob SquarePants, who is saying "It doesn't GITMO better!" a reference to the practice of waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.  SpongeBob is grinning like it's, you know, a day at the beach.

Again, let's deal with this first - "the practice of waterboarding prisoners"?  Using the word "practice" kind of makes it sound like it goes on all the time.  But does it?  Did it?  Well, according to ABC News [updated to add link], only 3 of the scumbags at Gitmo were waterboarded.  Not much of a practice, but at least a technique to try to get necessary information out of some pretty bad dudes.

Moving on, the upshot of the piece is that you can pay a dollar and watch two "crummy animatronic robots" in a fake waterboarding scene.

Let's remember that waterboarding, while not something I want to have done on me, and not something I would try with my kids, is basically a way to scare the crap out of really bad guys in order to break them down and get information out of them.  They aren't really being drowned.

I think Mr. Gerard and I would have different answers to the question, "Which is worse, waterboarding illegal enemy combatant terrorists who may have critical information that would help save innocent lives, or setting up a fake waterboarding session in order to make a few bucks and add a thrill to tourists' Coney Island experience?"

Seems like a perfect product placement for a "Seinfeld" / "Cheers" crossover episode.  The "Seinfeld" reference is perhaps obvious.  The "Cheers" reference less so.  From the story:

German police women are to be issued with bullet-resistant bras to give them complete undercover protection.

From a news story on a proposal in Great Britain to do away with the notion that there are correct and incorrect spellings of words:

Playwright George Bernard Shaw was fond of pointing out that the word "ghoti" could just as well be pronounced "fish" if you followed common pronunciation: 'gh' as in "tough," 'o' as in "women" and 'ti' as in "nation."

The proposal does not seem to be getting any traction, but it's an amusing article all the same.  It seems to me that it would make teaching children to read and write all that much more difficult if you throw out the idea that there are right and wrong ways to spell a word.  But I would get tremendous satisfaction if one of my kids were clever enough to come with a spelling like Shaw's for fish and tried to get it past a teacher.

Sometimes if you can't find a way to laugh, you just want to scream:
 
    * 'World's Greatest Dad' Pleads Guilty to Child Sex Abuse

====================================================

From Seinfeld's "The English Patient" -

[The New York Hospital]

Izzy is in a hospital bed, as Jerry stands beside it.

JERRY: Again, Mr Mandelbaum, this back specialist is supposed to be the best.
So if there's anything else I can do, please don't hesitate to, uh, try and
find my number.

Jerry turns to walk out.

IZZY: Uh, oh, wait.

Izzy rummages on his bedside table and picks up a t-shirt. He holds it up to
his chest so Jerry can read what's written on it. 'World's Greatest DAD!'

IZZY: How 'bout that, huh? The World's Greatest Dad. My son made it for me.

JERRY: (humouring him) That's very nice.

IZZY: The best in the world. (pointing to himself) Which means I'm better
than just number one.

JERRY: Well, I don't know how official any of these rankings really are.

The folks at Maclean's can't seem to make up their minds whether life in the Great White North is better in every conceivable way than here in the U.S.:

Once a month, Henry Tenby jumps in his car — just after the morning rush hour and with a tank close to empty — and makes a 45-minute drive from his Vancouver home to Blaine, Wash. After zipping across the border using his recently acquired Nexus pass, he fills up with cheaper American gas and stops off at a packaging store, Hagens of Blaine, where the aviation buff and Internet entrepreneur picks up the computer parts and memorabilia he routinely buys online from the U.S. and has shipped there under his name. The cross-border shopping ritual saves him anywhere from $50 to hundreds of dollars a trip — at the very least, the equivalent of a nice dinner out, he says. This month, he plans to buy a piece of new computer hardware in the U.S. for about $200. Buying the part in Canada would cost $320, he estimates. As for Canadian retailers charging more than their American counterparts: "I think they're just being greedy and gouging Canadians," he says. "I don't like it."

I see at the Maclean's site they have a story comparing/contrasting Canada and the U.S.  Turns out they think life in Canada is a much better deal than here in the States.  Here's the summary:

The numbers are in. Compared to the U.S., we work less, live longer, enjoy better health and have more sex. And get this: now we're wealthier too.

Is this some kind of viral attempt to get people to move from the good ol' U S of A to Canada?  Maybe to make it an attractive destination for supporters of whichever candidate loses the fall presidential election?  Maybe a look at the immigration numbers will show that rather than trying to get to the U.S., all those poor third worlders are merely using our country as a convenient jumping off point to sneak over the 49th parallel into Canada for a Molson Canadian and a Tim Horton's, eh?

Turns out that for all the hype of the lead-in, the end of the piece reveals a slightly different "truth" than the starting point:

Be it sports, health care, business or wealth, Americans are still competing to be the best. And it's true that the best in the U.S. is the best you'll find on the planet. But when you look at the medians and the averages, their accomplishment pales. As the hard numbers in this report show, Americans have shorter lives, poorer health, less sex, more divorces, and more violent crime. Which may mean that perhaps America isn't the greatest nation on earth. After all, you can't judge a nation by the best it produces, you have to judge it by the success of the average Joe. And the average Joe in Canada is having a way better time.

Hmmm.  Medians and averages can certainly be interesting comparisons on this kind of thing.  But raw numbers might also be interesting.  My guess is that in terms of sheer numbers, a nation of 300 million has a lot more people who are experiencing a standard of living that is equal to and in many ways better than the standard of living of comparable Canadians among their approximately 33 million population.  Twain's observation on statistics, damn statistics, and lies still holds.

A while back, I posted some comments on "Extreme Home Makeover," the ABC television program where a family has their current home completely demolished and replaced with their "dream" home, which I understand to be a mortgage-free deal.  My kids usually enjoy the show, and we often have it on after dinner on Sunday nights.  My earlier comments raised the question of what happens to these families and their new homes when the television crew and the community have gone on with their lives.  My fear is that the families who are often chosen as the recipients of these wondrous gifts are going to find themselves unable to maintain the properties in the long run, and the homes will either fall slowly into disrepair or be sold to someone who can maintain them.

Tonight I saw a quick post at the Galley Slaves blog which pointed me toward this story:

LAKE CITY, Ga. -- More than 1,800 people showed up to help ABC's "Extreme Makeover" team demolish a family's decrepit home and replace it with a sparkling, four-bedroom mini-mansion in 2005.

Three years later, the reality TV show's most ambitious project at the time has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis.

Apparently the family used their home as collateral for a $450,000 loan to start a construction business.  The business failed, and now they are facing possible foreclosure on the property.  Even more disheartening information from the story:

Materials and labor were donated for the home, which would have cost about $450,000 to build. Beazer Homes' employees and company partners also raised $250,000 in contributions for the family, including scholarships for the couple's three children and a home maintenance fund.

So even with the free home and a quarter of a million dollars for education costs and home maintenance, this family still is on the verge of losing their home.  The story goes on to note that ABC advises the families it selects to work with financial planners to make sure they make sound financial decisions.  Whether the family in this case consulted a financial planner is not clear.  The mayor of the town where the house was built, who was also one of the volunteers who helped build the house, is quoted in the story as saying the family squandered what they were given.  It's hard to see how that is not the case.

It makes for sometimes heart-rending television to learn the backgrounds of the "Extreme Home Makeover" families, and it is wonderful that so many people in communities across the country are willing to put in so much hard work to try to help them.  Hopefully the families truly are being helped in the long run and are not simply enjoying a temporary respite from the very difficult struggles that made them the subject of the television show in the first place.