Entry 164: New Fears

The little guy has been sleeping better since my last entry, but he still isn't letting his parents get enough sleep.  He doesn't seem to be particularly close to sleeping through the night.  Last night he woke up at 8:30 p.m. (which was especially disheartening, being that we put him to sleep around 7:15) and then three more times throughout the night/morning.  And this seems to be the new normal.  He's regressing.  Our nanny-share couple told us that their son now only wakes up once total throughout the night, which sounds like heaven.  Lil' S seems to be a little behind the average schedule, in general, maybe because he came out early (he also doesn't have any teeth yet, and he's pretty small).  I'm interested to see what will happen when we start mixing some solid food into his diet (this weekend).  Baby lore has it that this will help him sleep through the night, but our pediatrician says that that's bunk, so it's probably bunk, she's the expert, after all.  But even if it is probably bunk, at this point I'm eager to try it anyway, just because... I mean, it can't hurt, right?

In other news, I got hit up by the Girl Scouts when I was taking Lil' S for a walk this morning.  I ended up buying a bunch of cookies that I don't really want.  I should've just donated the money for nothing.  No sense losing my money and expanding my gut.  I used to love Girl Scout cookies -- as a kid, I imagined the Samoans (a.k.a. Carmel deLites) were the a real-life version of Willy Wonka's Scrumdiddlyumptious Bar -- but now, I think they're kinda overrated.  Eh... maybe I can take them in to work and get rid of them that way.

I wasn't planning on buying anything.  I wanted to say no, but the little girls suckered me in.  They were just too cute.  They had this little dance choreographed to attract attention -- they were working hard to bring in business.  It's funny to see how little kids behave.  There was the super outgoing alpha girl who was initiating contact with all the potential customers and then directing all the other little girls.  And then there was the little meek girl who just stood in the corner.  I asked her what types of cookies they had, and her mom nudged her, and then she said in the quietest, most monotone, most unassuming, most memorized voice possible, "Tagalongs, Samoans, thin mint, trefoils, and dos-si-dos".  I bought three boxes at $4 a pop, gave them a twenty and told them to donate the change to charity -- that's just how I roll.  It's for a good cause -- a good Christian, anti-gay cause.*

Some of the moms started chatting with me about Lil' S.  They asked me if he was letting us get any sleep.  When I respond facetiously, "Pfft... Yeah, right", they all laughed knowingly.  One mom told me to just enjoy this phase because it's over so quickly in the grand scheme of things.  Sound advice, but when you're up at 3 a.m., lying in bed, listening to a bawling six-month old, so tired and defeated that praying to God (as an atheist) seems like the best chance you have at some peace and quiet -- it's not really that helpful.

I definitely want Lil S' to start sleeping through the night, but I recognize that the next phase just brings with it a new set of problems and worries.  I listened to two radio bits on NPR, one on teenage gang violence, the other on teenage cyber-bullying, and thought to myself, "Swell, this is what I have to look forward to someday."  Gang violence probably won't be a direct problem, because we live in a decent neighborhood and plan on sending our kid to a decent school, but there is always the residual effect, especially living in D.C. proper.  The particular piece I listened to on gangs was quite heart-wrenching; it was about a school is Chicago, where just about every boy is a member of gang.  What happened is, law enforcement very effectively brought down the major gangs (think Bloods and Crips), 20 years ago or so, so instead of two or three gangs, now every block has it's own gang, and you're essentially born into it just by living on the block.  They're not even really gangs in the traditional sense.  They're not organized or hierarchical, but, and this is the key, they still have gun battles.  They still kill each other.  And all the grownups at the school can really do is just control the damage as much as possible.  They can't stop it.  It's really sad.  Of course, the solution is so simple in theory.  There just need to be more dads.  That's it.  Men stick around, women only have babies with men who will stick around -- problem 90% solved.  How you implement this in practice, I'm not really sure.

The cyber-bullying thing is a whole other deal.  We're in a weird gap right now, where we have all this new technology and social media is thriving, but we haven't work out all the kinks yet.  I'm hoping (probably naively) that by the time Lil' S is old enough we will have solved the cyber-bullying thing a bit.  Then we can get back to worrying about just good ol' fashioned regular bullying.

I was never really bullied nor did I every really do any bullying growing up.  I went through typical kid "drama", but nothing serious.  There was one time that I teetered on being a bully, but it was mostly inadvertent.  That's one thing I think people miss sometimes with bullying.  What one kid thinks is bullying, another kid thinks is just busting chops which goes on a lot.  Teenagers, boys especially, are jackasses, and I mean that like in the show Jackass, they do and say stupid shit to each other, even to their friends.  I've seen a guy pee on another guy in the shower, a guy put his dick on another guy's forehead while he was benchpressing (particular devious and hilarious because the "dickee" was holding the barbell and couldn't do anything about it), a guy throw a Doritos bag full of water on another guy while he was crapping, a guy throw a penny into the butt crack of the girl sitting in front of him who had on saggy jeans (impressive aim)... And those are just off the top of my head.  At the time, I never considered any of these acts bullying nor did the people involved (I don't think), but they certainly wouldn't sound good on a 20/20 piece.    

Anyway, in my story, there was this kid named AE who rode the bus with me in 8th grade.  AE was really effeminate, well, not so much effeminate as androgynous.  He was one of those people where guessing his race and sex was a total crap shoot.  If somebody told me he was a black male, I'd believe it.  If somebody else said Persian female, I'd believe that too.  Anyway, AE and I used to shoot the shit; we weren't friends, but we were often the only two 8th graders on the bus, so we'd talk almost out of necessity.  He was a neighborhood acquaintance.  I used to tease him a lot, which I thought was part of our rapport, but he saw things differently.  I used to talk to him in a faux-queer voice, which especially bothered him.  The thing is, for the most part I was just treating him like I treated my buddies.  It never occurred to me that this kid was different, that he actually had some deep-seated identity issues and was struggling with his sexuality (I'm not sure I even knew what that meant back then).  When I went home I didn't give my interactions with AE a second thought; when he went home he was really bothered by them.  So one day he did something remarkably mature: he called me on the phone and asked me to stop teasing him**.  It completely worked.  I remember being really taken aback and confused and weirded out by the ordeal, but I stopped.  And that was that. 

Years later, after graduating high school, I saw AE's picture on a flyer in a coffee shop for a gay support group, and, remembering the phone call, I felt more than a bit like an asshole.  Years after that I saw him at a Starbucks in my home town while visiting from grad school; he was carrying a little dog, and was undeniably a gay man.  He came up to me and we had the following conservation:

Him: Hello, DG
Me: Hi
Him: It's AE, we went to CHS together, we used to ride the bus together in junior high
Me: I know, I remember
Him: Well, that was sure a long time ago, wasn't it?
Me: Yeah, I guess it was.

He walked off, and that was that, again.

And that's that for this entry.  Until next time... 

*In all seriousness, I obviously don't agree with the you-must-believe-in-God, anti-gay tenets of the Boy and Girl Scouts, but I still appreciate what they do for a lot of kids.  I mean, these girls seemed to be just having fun, learning important life skills, staying out of trouble, and participating positively in their local community.  Who can't support that?

**By the way, the interviewee on the cyber-bullying podcast said that one of the most effective ways a kid can get another kid to stop posting mean things about them online is to simple ask him or her to stop.

Entry 163: Little Baby Fussbudget

Fussbudget (noun) : one who fusses or is fussy especially about trifles 

I learned a new word today.  I came upon "fussbudget" looking up "fusspot", which is what I've been calling Lil' S lately.  This morning I thought to myself, "Is 'fusspot' an actually word, or is it just something I made up?"  Turns out it's the former, which is a shame, because I overheard S using it in casual conversation the other day, and it would be funny if she was using something I made up.

I think I like "fussbudget" better than "fusspot", but they're both pretty cool words, and they're both very fitting for Lil' S the past week.  That kid has been wearing us out.  I don't know what it is, but he's been crankier than a crankshaft.  He's crying a lot, he hasn't wanted to eat, and he's been filling up his diapers with something that would sicken a dung beetle.

[Have you ever read a Peanuts cartoon that made you laugh?]

Last night was the worst.  He woke up every other hour in a state of bloodcurdling hysterics.  It got to the point where S had to sleep next to him in the guest bed, so that she could console him immediately whenever he woke up, before he went into full meltdown mode.  She was up all night and had to take a sick day from work today to recover.  The worst part of it all is that she announced that she's not doing it again tonight -- she's sleeping in the basement -- which means I'm on baby detail.  Not having the ability to breastfeed, graveyard-shift baby detail is at least 150% harder for me than it is for S, but I don't have to do it often, so... Actually, I'm cautiously optimistic.  He was been pretty normal during his bedtime routine tonight, and he's been sleeping soundly thus far.  Maybe (I hope) he's tired from last night.  We shall see.

I'd like to know what's been causing all this rigmarole, but I suspect we'll never know.  Teething?  A stomach bug?  Something else?  I'd look online, but I'm sure I could find ample evidence to support any malady I could come up with.  I've found when it comes to medical diagnoses, the Internet usually does more harm than good.

Until next time...

[Update: He's already woken up twice and is current bawling.  Sigh...]

Entry 162: Who Are The Idiots, Really?

Another re-post from my small-government-lovin', gun-totin', freedom-fightin' Facebook friend.

You know you live in a Country run by idiots if...
You pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor defaults on his mortgage (while buying iPhones, TV's and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars). ~Big Daddy

I'm not sure who "Big Daddy" is, but it doesn't really matter.  Frustratingly, a lot of people in our country agree with his sentiment -- the "nation of takers" sentiment -- not enough to win the presidential election, thankfully, but a lot.  Being as such, I thought I'd comment on Big Daddy's comment.

I don't think the scenario he describes ever really happens; at least not as he describes it.  If you have one neighbor who runs up debt and defaults on his mortgage, the government doesn't give a shit.  If you have two or three neighbors who do this they still don't care.  But when enough people in your neighborhood are under water, and enough people in other neighborhoods are also underwater so there's no way to replace your deadbeat neighbors with good neighbors, then, yeah, some government intervention is unfortunately necessary.  What's the alternative?  Would Big Daddy prefer his neighbors all go into foreclosure, with no place to go, and no new prospective tenants?  Does he want a bunch of abandon houses on his block?  Does he really want to live in a shitty neighbor-less neighborhood?  Has he thought about this at all?

In case people don't remember, we got hit pretty hard in 2006, and still haven't recovered.  The overall amount of private debt we accrued when the housing bubble burst is massive.  Well over a million people went into foreclosure on their homes.  Even if this was completely caused by irresponsible loafers who bought iPhones, TV's, and new cars instead of paying their mortgages (which it wasn't, but I'm just playing along, here), even if that's the case, here's the thing, it still effects all of us.  It's still our problem.  It's not fair, fine.  It sucks, I agree.  But it's reality.  I too wish other people's bad choices didn't impact my life, but they do.  Sometimes we need the government to clean up after irresponsible people, not out of some sense of bleeding-heart liberalism or radical socialism, but because nobody else is going to do it and responsible people don't want to live in the mess.  It's not idiotic, it's unfortunately necessary.       

And one quick related thing on responsibility.  Tea-bagging types love to go on and on about personal responsibility, which is fine, I'm all for this as well.  But whenever people like me advocate laws that force people to be responsible (or least limit irresponsibility) -- laws that, say, make people own health insurance, or limit their possible credit card debt, or make them save money for old age, or require them to take gun safety classes before buying a gun -- they scream big-government tyranny.  What's the deal?  Tea-baggers apparently want to live in a nation where every man is responsible completely out of self-volition, and if he isn't, his irresponsibility will only hurt himself, no other person in society will be negatively impacted.  Actually that sounds pretty good.  I decided that I want that too.  Oh, and I'd also like world peace and a 95 mile-per-hour fastball -- I always wanted to play professional baseball.

Until next time...

Entry 161: Don't Know How To Party

Or rather, I do know how, I just can't really do it anymore. 

Yesterday, we had a birthday celebration at our place for S's longtime friend E.  S and I were like zombies all day today.  For me, it was too much merriment; for S, it was not enough sleep.  Increasingly, hangovers are so much easier to get, hurt so much worse, and linger so much longer than they used to.  Sucks getting old.  I can't even necessarily prevent a hangover by cutting back on drinking, because I now get "food hangovers" from overeating where my stomach is just in knots the next day.  I definitely overate last night -- E can cook up a Mexican-style feast like you wouldn't believe.  Throw in a few beers, a few glasses of wine*, and the next morning, that's me fucked.    

It was a fun night, though.  I would say it was worth it, but it would've been just as fun had I eased up a bit, so "worth it" is irrelevant.  This other couple came over with a baby a few months older than Lil' S, so that was cool.  I put my foot in my mouth twice with them.  First, I called their baby "her", but it's a boy.  Then I went on and on about how S almost signed us up for Bradley method birth classes**, and what a waste of time and money they are, how attending would've been a living hell, etc., etc., and, of course, the couple did the Bradley course.  Oops.  Oh well, they didn't seem offended in the least (nor should they have been), so it's all good.

Lil' S woke up about 6:00 a.m. this morning.  S got him from his crib and brought him into our bed with us in hopes he'd go back to sleep.  The success rate of this move is roughly 20%, and unfortunately today was not that special one in five.  He was being pretty quiet at first, which got my hopes up, so I took a peek at him, praying to see his eyes shut, but of course they were as big as saucers.  It was a risky move on my part too, because once you establish eye contact, he gets excited and more alert.  I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but he started making those high pitched baby noises, which put the kibosh on that.  Thankfully (for me), S got up and took him downstairs, and I slept for a few a more hours.  I would've felt bad for sleeping while S had to get up, but I watched him all day yesterday and was supposed to "get the day off" today.  That didn't exactly happen, but I did get to sleep in, so I'm not complaining.

Lil' S can now roll over fairly easily.  It's his only mode of transportation.  He barrel rolls all over the place.  It's pretty cool.  It's funny how when you're a parent you get so excited when your kid first does something that almost every kid ever learned or will learn to do.  Basically you're celebrating the fact that you child isn't developmentally challenged.  I mean, don't get me wrong, that's a good thing, but is it really something that should make you beam with pride?  Probably not, but for some reason it does.

The rolling over gives us a bit of worry at night.  He's started rolling onto his stomach and sleeping there from time to time.  I came in the other night to check on him, and he was lying prone with his face in the bed, not turned to side, but buried in the bed.  I flipped him to his back, and he was fine, but it made me nervous.  His breathing is one of the few things I'm a little irrational about.  From what I can gather, sleeping on the stomach isn't actually that bad.  There is a correlation -- not necessarily a causation, but a strong correlation -- with an increase in SIDS, but some babies (supposedly) sleep more soundly on their stomachs, and this deep sleep is (supposedly) important to development.  Also, S's mom told her that S and her sister slept on their stomachs frequently, because back in her day babies choking on their spit-up was a big concern.  Anyway, who really knows?  We'll flip him to his back when we see him on his stomach, but it's not like we can watch him every second he's sleeping.

Plus, maybe if he sleeps on his stomach a little bit, it'll help his positional plagiocephaly.  If Facebook pics are any indication more and more parents are becoming concerned with this, and they're putting those little helmets on their babies.  On this topic, I side with Dr. Peter Fleming, "I do not think it is a medical problem—it is more of a cosmetic one. Mothers may feel it is a syndrome and a problem when it really is nonsense."  The odd thing about this is, why be concerned with a cosmetic problem nobody ever notices?  I have dental implants; they're cosmetic, but I'm glad I have them because people would notice if two of my front teeth are missing.  When's the last time you've ever noticed an asymmetry on somebody's head?  It just doesn't happen, especially with a full head of hair, which most babies someday grow.  I mean, if your kid looks like Eric Stoltz from Mask, by all means, get a helmet, but a little flat spot on their head that you can only see if you lie down and look up at the baby in such a way that you form 45 degree azimuth?  C'mon.  That's just getting guilt-prone parents to waste their time and money.  A nurse once gave us a card for a doctor who specializes in positional plagiocephaly, but I talked S out of calling him.  Well, I guess if Lil' S grows up viciously tormented for his grotesquely misshapen head, it'll be on me.

 Anyway, until next time...               

*Yes, I mixed alcoholic beverages throughout the night.  Dr. Drew says that all other things equal this doesn't get you any sicker than drinking just one type of alcohol throughout the night.  It's how much you ingest, period.

**She actually signed us up, no almost about it, but we decided not go.  We lost our deposit, and I've never been happier to see $50 go to waste.

Entry 160: A Crackpot Gun Control Idea that Could Actually Work But Would Never Be Implemented

So, gun control is still on my mind a bit.  I came up with a crackpot idea that could actually work if we had the will as a nation to implement it, but we don't, so it won't.  It's actually not all that crackpot.  In fact, I'm sure somebody else has come up with it before, but I'm too lazy to do a search.  Also, I don't really want to know; whenever I get a good idea and find out that somebody else came up with it first, I get deflated.  And with the Internet now, just about every idea is out there in some form or another, so I'm bound to be deflated with any idea I have.  Like the time I thought up a crossword puzzle creating algorithm that would try to maximize the "score" of the fill, and then I read this article.  Now I find it's usually best just to charge ahead, rather than to see if anybody else has come up with your idea first, because they probably have.  Anyway, I digress...

My crackpot gun control idea is to tag all ammunition in some way that makes it traceable to the buyer and seller.  You somehow imbed a unique code in a bullet when it's being manufactured.  The code couldn't be anything that could be scratched off; it would have to be incredibly hard to remove, so maybe something readable within the bullet, like a microchip, or maybe the material itself could somehow be encode (bullet DNA?).  I don't know exactly how we would do it, but I bet somebody out there could figure it out.

Now, any party involved in the production of this bullet -- the manufacturer, retailer, buyer, etc. -- would be linked with the bullet's code, and everything would be kept in a law enforcement database.  When a bullet is used in a crime, it's then traced back to the buyer, and if there's no buyer, then it goes to the retailer, so on and so forth, down line, until somebody has to claim responsibility for it.  The responsible party is then held liable for allowing their bullet to be used in a crime, and they would have to pay a hefty fine.  What this would do is force people to be responsible with their ammunition so that it wouldn't get into the wrong hands as frequently.  Responsibility, you know, what the NRA pretends like it wants out of gun owners.

That's the idea.  I'll now briefly rebut the objections I foresee.

1.  It's not practical.  I bet it would be if we actually wanted to do it.  Everything is impractical without the desire to make it happen.  To bullet coding in particular, with how cheap computer stuff is now, I gotta think the technology is there at a reasonable price.  It would raise the cost of ammunition a bit, I'm sure, but that's not a bad thing to me.  It's like the "bullet control" joke by Chris Rock's, "if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders." 

2.  Criminals would just use old or illegally made non-coded bullets.  Yes, they would.  But such bullets would be harder to get.  People would hoard the old bullets, knowing they were no longer being produced, and bullets on the black market would be risky to obtain and expensive.  Again, this is a good thing.  And it wouldn't disadvantage the law-abiding gun owner because they could go to Walmart and buy coded bullets without any hassle. 

Also, in general, the criminals-won't-follow-a-law-so-it's-pointless argument is an incredibly weak counter to any potential law.  Yes, we know this.  By definition criminals won't follow the law.  The whole idea is that you can, you know, arrest them when they aren't doing so.

3.  I'll be damned if our tyrannical federal government is going to unconstitutionally keep a record on my bullet buying habits.  This one I can't really rebut.  If people prefer their half-witted, simplistic ideologies to logic and common sense, then they're not going to listen to anything anybody says on any issue, unless it's somebody say something that confirms their half-witted, simplistic ideologies.  This is when you just have to hope you can get more people on your side.

Well, that's that.  Until next time...

Entry 159: Let's Be Honest, the Super Bowl Sucks

Not the Super Bowl itself; the actual game is like any other football game, sometimes it's really exciting (Steelers vs. Cardinals, 2009), sometimes it's kinda boring (Colts vs. Bears, 2007), but even when it's boring, the event can still be fun if you're in good company.  What sucks about the Super Bowl is everything else that comes with the game -- the hype and the pomp.  It makes sports media un-consumable for a few weeks, I mean, more so than it already is.  As it stands about 95% of sports media is utter garbage -- it's moronic drivel that actually makes you feel like a lesser human being after ingesting it.* (If this sounds pretentious, like I'm saying that I'm somehow better than it, it's because I am better than it; watch 30 seconds of an interaction between Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, and you'll know what I mean.)  When the Super Bowl rolls around, this number goes up to 99.9%.

The good thing about having almost everything on demand today is that you can bypass the vast majority of the schlock and still follow sports (I have my own little niche of sports podcasts, websites, and TV shows that I enjoy), but the Super Bowl is such a behemoth that it infiltrates even the good stuff.  Every podcast, for example, feels compelled to have at least one on-site Super Bowl show; it's almost always among the worst shows of the year, and it's almost always the same as every other show on the market.  It goes a little something like this...

Commentator 1: Hey everybody welcome to the Super Bowl episode of my podcast.  We're coming at you live from the city in which the Super Bowl is being played this year.  With me as always, Commentator 2.

Commentator 2: Yeah, get it on!     

C1: Great show today.  We've got a random Super Bowl performer from the past lined up for you, not a household name, but certainly a guy football fans will remember, and then we also have a random, somewhat big-name entertainer, so that should be fun.

C2: Absolutely, but first we have to mention how fun, but exhausting this media circle jerk has been for the past week.  Also, we need to tell everybody about that great dinner we had at that local chophouse.

C1: We've definitely been partaking in the fine cuisine this city has to offer.  Their local specialties, in particular, are exquisite.

C2: Absolutely, and last night, we were having dinner, just enjoying our meal, minding our own business, maybe or maybe not sampling the local micro brews.  When who should walk in?  A random starter on one of the Super Bowl teams!

C1: Great kid, great kid.  Signing autographs for all the fans, taking pictures, cracking jokes.  Just having fun like a regular guy.  It was just like hanging out with one of the fellas.

C2: I don't know what "fellas" you've been hanging out with.  None of my friends has a girlfriend that smokin' hot... Hahaha...

C1: Hahaha... Wow!  You aren't kidding, she's a little bit of alright, that particular player's girlfriend, that's for sure... Hey, look who it is sitting down to join us, random player from a Super Bowl 20 years ago!  How's it going, big guy?

Random Player: Good, great to be here, thanks for having me.

C1: Our pleasure, so who you got in this one?

RP:  I like Team A.  I think their front four can get pressure on Team B's QB without blitzing, and that's going to allow them to sit back and play zone, and it's forcing Team B's QB to throw before going through his normal progressions.  Look, Team B's QB is one of the best in the game right now, there's no doubt he can hurt you with his arm when he gets in a rhythm, we saw it in the AFC or NFC championship game.  But when he's not able to set his feet, he's human.  And that's the key, I think.  Team A's front four out-physicalling Team B's o-line will be the difference in the game.

C2:  You're no stranger to the big game yourself.  What do you make of the controversial comments made by Team A's backup safety.  As somebody who's been there before, how will that impact the game?

RP: You know, at the end of the day, I'm not sure it will have any impact.  It's, you know, fodder for the media, and all that, but what it comes down to is, game day execution.  Once you get between those harsh marks, you throw out all that... you know, my old legendary coach used to call it noise... He'd always say "shut out the noise and just play football".  I think the talking heads, myself included, sometimes are looking for a story, and they blow this type of thing out of proportion.  It's just football.  To the players, it's just football.  It's not rocket science, it's not really that complicated.

C1: Good stuff, as always... I hear you've been doing something with a corporate sponsor, what can you tell us about that?

RP: That's right.  I've been with this corporation for a few years now, and we're teamed up with the NFL to promote something that has to do with the wellness of kids.  You know, a lot of these kids come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and they lack this particular good or service that we're providing, so it's just a way to give back to the community.  You know, God blessed me with the talent and opportunity to play in the National Football League for 12 years, that's something most people don't get to do, so now I think it's important to give back.

C1: Alright, thanks, buddy... And hey, try to lay off that particular fattening food that's a specialty in this city, OK?

RP: Hahaha... No sir... that's why I played fullback, diets are for halfbacks. 

C1: Hahaha... Well, it's bang-bang here during Super Bowl week.  One guest leaves, another one enters.  It's random somewhat big-name entertainer!  How you been?

Random Entertainer: Yo, I been good, just soakin' in all the 'lectricity that's in the air here.

C1: Yeah, what an atmosphere.  Who you got?  You pulling for anybody in this one?

RE: Ya know, I ain't really pulling for nobody.  I grew up in a city not represented in this Super Bowl, so I'm a fan of the team from that city.

C2: I'm sorry.

RE:  Haha... Yo, it's rough sometimes.  They had some rough years lately.  But I grew up watching them really good teams with that one really good player, so I can't turn my back on 'em now... In fact, I'll tell you a little anecdote about growing up on the streets of that city, illustrating the importance of their local team to my upbringing.  I'll get some of the details wrong, so that perceptive sports fans will be able to tell that I'm exaggerating my affection for the team, but it will be mildly entertaining.     

[Anecdote]

C1: Great story!  But, you know, you're making me feel really old, now.  You grew up watching that one really good player?!  He won his first Super Bowl the year I got married?!  Hahaha... So you got a new song or album or movie or something like that coming out now, right?

RE:  That's right, it's got a good catchy name, and I feel like it's my best work yet.

C1:  Where can fans go to find it?  

RE:  Y'all can find it on my website or at iTunes or Netflix.  It's selling for a very affordable price, so, yo, check it out, it's poppin'.

C2:  Well, I for one, will definitely do that.  I'm a huge fan.  I was listen to or watching your previous work on the flight down here.  Loved it, but how lame is this?  My daughter is the one who got me into you!  I'm now taking my pop culture cues from a 13 year-old girl.  I used to be cool, I swear!... So want do you think of the halftime performer?

RE: I have the utmost respect for that individual, and I can't wait to see he or she do his or her thing. 

C1:  Neither can we, among other things.  Thank you RE, it's been some kind of wonderful having you sit down here with us.

RE:  My pleasure.  Thanks for having me.  

C1: Alright ladies and gentlemen, we're out of time now.  But don't worry, we will be back next week.  Quickly, C2, give us the word or phrase you're gonna be sick of by the end of this trip.

C2: How about your name?

C1: Haha... well, there you have it, folks.  Until next time...


*One of my favorite quotes of all-time came from a former classmate of mine in grad school.  He had a very cynical, self-loathing sense of humor, and one time toward the end of the day, he said, "Well, I guess it's time for me to go home and watch Around the Horn, and wish I was doing something else."