Newest reality show: "American Schizo"

One of my favorite daily read blogs is Wandering Amylessly. Amy is a beautiful person who is brave enough to let it all hang out (metaphorically speaking, you perverts).

In a recent post, she frankly discusses her recent experience with a depression therapy group where, one by one, the participants quit coming to the sessions over the course of a few weeks.

To her credit, Amy was one of the few to stick with it. It's a great story, and Amy's openness shows that she's more to grips with her emotional baggage than many of the rest of us.

And call me crazy, but I think we've stumbled upon the next great "reality TV" show here.

Stay with me on this: 15 people join a group therapy class and each week we see who comes back and who drops out. In the meantime, we get to hear all about their phobias, neuroses, psychoses and psoriasis.

In the end, there is a winner and we all learn a little bit about ourselves.

Okay, find me a network producer and consider this idea copyrighted. Amy, I'll split the royalties with you.

tagged: reality TV, culture, mental health, depression

YouTube Tuesday: Magic Moments

I love this time of year.

The days start getting shorter. The summer heat finally breaks. In a few weeks the leaves will begin to turn and the inexorable march of time will beat on.

And football kicks off.

Ah yes, football. In particular, college football. One of the finest metaphors for the human experience. Always striving for a goal, ever having to overcome your own weakness and the strengths of your foes.

I'm really looking forward to this season as my alma mater begins a new era with new head coach Ron Prince. It's been a rough couple of years for the boys in purple, missing out on the last two bowl seasons after winning the Big XII Conference Championship over the OU Cheaters Sooners.

And with only two quarterbacks, a new coach and new offensive and defensive systems, it's looking like it might be another tough year. But right now everyone's undefeated and as they say, hope springs eternal.

And the purples still have a nice record against those jaybirds from Lawrence to hang our helmets on (at least in the modern era).

Which brings us to this week's YouTube Tuesday submission. A terrific music video of some great moments from the recent KSU vs. KU football series. This video offers some great editing for an amateur, and I love the juxtaposition of the music and the video imagery.

Enjoy.



tagged: video, YouTube, movie, college, football, KU, Jayhawks, KSU, Wildcats, Kansas State Univeristy

As if being a teen isn't bad enough

Remember how much puberty sucked?

The gawkiness? The awkwardness? The bad hair, greasy skin, and clumsiness? The urge to fit in, the angst and the general state of being pissed at the world because nobody understands you.

I remember it. It was the worst weekend of my life.

Adolescence leaves everyone emotionally scarred and a complete headcase. Then we spend the rest of our adult lives trying to come to grips with all the psychological crap.

If we're lucky, if we've had patient parents and we didn't get busted smoking pot too many times, we might just come through it with the shred of an ability to have some semblance of normal relationships with other people (whatever normal means).

But imagine you have to go through all the typical teenage crap while a the same time being held prisoner by an Austrian freak (the entire state of California notwithstanding).

By now, we've all heard the sickening story of Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted as a child and held as a sex slave by Wolfgang Priklopil in Viena. After her recent escape and his subsequent suicide, she seems to be handling it better than anyone would expect (aside from a raging case of Stockhold Syndrom).

She gave a statement to the press today.

"I realised quite clearly what a strong impression the news of my captivity has made on people, but I ask for understanding in satisfying the tremendous interest of the public."

She seems to have a fairly strong grasp on the reality of what happened to her. If this were the end of it, one could almost call it a happy ending, at least as happy as it could get.

Unfortunately for young Natascha, she's got a huge struggle ahead. Not only will she have to come to grips with the last eight years of her life, she'll have to do so under the crushing pressure of a media spotlight and the severe strain of those trying to get a piece of her 664,900 euros compensation from the Austrian government.

I say good luck to her. I hope money and media don't make her a prisoner the way her captor did.

tagged: Natascha Kampusch, sex slave, Viena, teen, puberty, adolescence, Wolfgang Priklopil

Wet Blanket Award

There's always that one killjoy who wants to ruin the party for everyone else.

You know, it's that guy in high school who would call you parents when you were sneaking a cigarette behind the stadium. Or the jerk who tells the casino that its slots are paying out way too much money.

Well this week Three O'Clock in the Morning bestows its lowest honor, the Wet Blanket Award, on a Vermont woman who is trying to harsh everyone's mellow.

Theresa Toney of Brattleboro, Vermont, has complained to the burg's elders about the rash of nude teens running around the town. For the past few months, as the summer has grown hotter, the teens have taken to shedding their cloths as a way to beat the heat.

And until now, nobody has really complained? I mean, who's going to object to a bunch of nubile chicks and dudes showing it all. Hey, it's a much needed distraction in this small town, so who would have a problem with it?

Theresa Toney, that's who. According to Reuters:

Nobody, including the police, seemed to take offense until one local, Theresa Toney, went before the town government in August to complain about a group of youngsters naked in a parking lot.

"The parking lot is not a strip club," she said.

The irony is that by the time any legislative action is taken, it will be too cold in Vermont to go around nekid without risking a serious case of shrinkage.

tagged: Vermont, naked, nude, teens, Theresa Toney, killjoy, humor, culture

They prefer to be called "little planets"

The international scientific community threw a slap in the face of the planet Pluto by stripping it recently of it's planet status.

Much like my grade school friends and I did to my little brother, astronomers decided Pluto was too small to be a member of the Planet club and kicked it out, leaving only eight official planets now.

“The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said the IAU resolution, passed in a raised-hands vote after what, by the discreet standards of the astronomical community, was a stormy debate.

The scientists threw small planets like Pluto a crumb though, inventing a new term called Dwarf Planet, to describe celestial bodies of Pluto's stature.

Of course, it's important to keep in mind that the decision was made only by scientists who have a star on their bellies. The non-star-bellied scientists weren't allowed to vote.

tagged: astronomy, science, planet, Pluto, dwarf, 2003 UB313, Xena

The smartest guys in the room

I watched an incredible documentary last night on HDNET, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. It's based on the book by Bethany McLean and chronicles the rise and fall of the infamous energy and weather trading company.

Unless you've been living under a rock on Mars for the past 10 years, you're already familiar with the gist of the story. But it was great to see this movie again with a couple of years' distance since the spectacular implosion.

A few random thoughts from the movie.

• Former CEO Jeffrey Skilling was a complete bastard.
  
  Toward the end of the film the characters are describing how haggard and used up he looked (kind of like a guy with no soul?) toward the end just before he retired. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for him. Then you remember the entire previous 45 minutes of douchebaggery and the empathy passes like a case of gas. In the photo, Skilling is seen telling a lie. How can you tell? His mouth is open.


• Ken Lay was a complete bastard. He was still alive when the movie was released (and maybe he still is???), but his excuse that he "didn't know what was going on" is utterly ridiculous (since all the shenanigans required Lay's approval as well as the approval of countless others) and the documentary pointed this out.
  


• There was an amazing amount of complicity throughout the financial community. We bitch about Skilling, Lay and Pai getting off with a handslap, but virtually every major bank, analyst and financial institution had its fingers in the cookie jar as well.


• Of all the bastard characters, only Andrew Fastow came off as the least bit sympathetic. Fastow, the architect of the "off-balance sheet" accounts, got busted and actually admitted wrong-doing, was fined millions of dinero and is now doing time in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
  


• Big balls to Sherron Watkins, the whistle blower who virtually called Skilling a dirty liar to his face during federal hearings.

The film is highly entertaining, but it has a tendency to "angry up the blood" as Grandpa Simpson would say. Some would be tempted to point to this as an example of how evil all corporations are. But that would be missing the point.

Anytime the pursuit of money is placed as the only (not just the most important) priority, there is a risk of this kind of hyper-corruption. It could be a corporation, a communist politburo or a hipity-hop rap crew.

It's all a matter of priorities.

tagged: Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, Ken Lay, corporation, corruption, culture, Bethany McLean

How weird is that?

Former University of Nebraska head football coach and current Ohio University head football coach Frank Solich is trying to withdraw his no-contest plea to a drunk driving charge in an Ohio court.

Solich claims that subsequent tests have shown that he was not under the influence of alcohol last November when he was pulled over and flunked a field sobriety test.

Rather, he said he was under the influence of the date rape drug GHB.

In the lab's report, Benjamin Corpus wrote that, "It is important to note that fortunately, Mr. Solich was not given a high dose of GHB that could potentially cause death" even though the very high claimed amount in the coach's hair would suggest a large dose.

So some irate fan, or trickster bartender slipped the coach a mickey? Makes me wonder what the hypothetical mickey-slipper's true intentions were?

tagged: Frank Solich, alcohol, drug, date rape, GHB, football, Nebraska, Ohio

YouTube Tuesday: The Real World - IKEA

YouTube Tuesday was on hiatus last week but we make our triumphant return with a nifty little piece of hipster irony.

We all know that there's nought but bollocks on network TV these days. The shows that are supposed to be serious (all the different CSIs, Laws and Orders, and other generic lawyer/doctor/cop shows) are a joke, and the shows that aren’t supposed to be serious (the millions of so-called reality shows) are ridiculous.

This week's YouTube special takes the reality genre to the nth degree by filming the original reality show, MTV's The Real World, in an IKEA store.

Watching this, I think the kids filmed the whole thing without the permission of IKEA, for which effort I give them bonus balls points.

Enjoy.



tagged: video, YouTube, movie, IKEA, Real World, pop, culture

Cicada summer

I think the annual cicada plague is drawing to a close.

Over the past week or so, I've begun to see the bodies of the little beasties laying on the sidewalk each morning in various stages of dead.

So it shouldn't be long before we can sit out on the front stoop again and have a pleasant conversation about the day's events without having to shout at each other to be heard over the chainsaw mating calls of these little critters.

Still, as a learning opportunity these buggers and their molted shells have made a pretty good science lesson for our three -(and a half)-year-old daughter. She has been fascinated with the shells that utterly covered the spruce tree in our front yard.

It all began when, before picking her up from preschool one day, I picked a cicada shell from a nearby tree and had it "grab" the front of my shirt and hang on. I thought it would be funny to walk into a room full of kids with the little hitchhiker stuck to my shirt and see their reactions.

True to form, when my daughter saw it she pointed and laughed "Hey, you've got a cicada on your shirt!"


She grabbed the shell (being careful not to smash it in her three-year-old death grip), and went to show it to some of her friends. The teachers chuckled at my little amusement even as some of the kids squealed in delighted horror.

---

The More You Know: Fun facts about Cicadas

• The cicadas commonly found around Kansas City are called annual or dog day cicadas because they emerge in late July and early August, the dog days of summer.
• Cicadas use special membranes to make their "songs" as opposed to crickets and grasshoppers, which rub their legs together.
• Some cicadas produce sounds louder than 106 dB, among the loudest of all insect-produced sounds. (Here's a sample courtesy of Happy in Bag).
  
• Cicadas are sometimes called "locusts", although they are unrelated to true locusts, which are a kind of grasshopper.
• Only male cicadas sing.
• The cicada's long life cycle (anywhere from 3 to 17 years depending on the species) is an evolutionary adaptation to fight the effects of predators
  

tagged: Kansas, Kansas City, science, cicada, insects, evolution, education

So you think you love your kids?

I received this story and the link to the video in one of those chain emails. If anyone knows the original source, let me know and I'll credit them here.

It's long, but worth the read. Then watch the video and prepare to have misty eyes.

Maybe the greatest sports video of our time. I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father?

Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. "He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate.

"No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered.

They did. Rick laughed.

Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!"

And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that." Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried.

"Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?" How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged.

"If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago." So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together.

They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

tagged: parenting, parent, love, dedication, inspiration, Dick Hoyt, Rick Hoyt, marathon, triathalon, Iron Man