Blogalicious!

I started writing posts for several different topics, but then realized none of them were working for me. So, I thought, screw it. I'm just going to write whatever comes into my head.

Underdogs.
Hey, I just watched the movie, Invincible, in which some regular schmo from South Philly, who plays football with his buddies on weekends, tries out for the Philadelphia Eagles and makes the team. Not only does he make it, he becomes one of the team's all time favorite players. It's the whole underdog from Philly makes good story, made so famous by that other Italian guy. You know, the one with the boxing gloves and the cement skull. Sometimes these stories make me think about my own life and how I never really wound up as the victorious underdog. If I was the underdog in something, hell, I lost. So I try to avoid those underdog situations. Although I do like Underdog cartoons.

My Ears! Damnit! My EARS!
I have to endure American Idol every Wednesday night, because it's the night I have the kids, and my daughter loves it. Last night, the 10 female singers mangle classic songs from the '70s. Some frightening Lily Munster looking chick completely embarrassed herself singing Kansas' "Carry On My Wayward Son." I prayed the electricity would go out just to spare me the pain. The night before, I flipped it on only to see a few of the men slap on their incredibly annoying histrionics to such great songs as "Imagine." Okay, why can't anyone just sing anymore? Just sing the song. I don't need to hear every single note you can hit throughout the song. I mean, the kid sang well, but the song lost every single ounce of real feeling. John Lennon sang it with such simple conviction that it really meant something. This performance reduced the song to a series of voice exercises. Elvis actually shot the TV because Robert Goulet was on it, singing, as the King put it, "With all technique and no feeling." Too bad I didn't have a gun. Or a crossbow. Or even a water pistol.

Weather or not.
What is it about old people and weather? Where are they going that they need to be constantly interested in what it's doing out? While I'm on my old people thing, why do they insist on taking all the early appointments at doctors or dentists? I have somewhere to be, Rip Van Winkle! I have to go to work. You have to pass wind, eat saltines and watch the Weather Channel all day. Give me a break!

I like beer.
Really, I do. It's good. But not Bud. Bud gives me the winds. I avoid getting the winds as much as possible. Just as I spend most of my awake hours making sure no sharp objects come near my eyes and groin. Oh, and I like vodka too. Vodka tonics, vodka martini (a wee bit dirty), vodka vodka, White Russians. I'm no alcoholic, but I know what I like. And I don't like getting gas from Bud. Although farting can be funny.

Hold me closer, tiny digits.
I once took out this woman who had a really small fingers. Like, so small, they reminded me of those little cocktail wieners. But she had the nails manicured and perfectly painted with a bright red color. I wondered why she would want to draw any attention to those stubs stuck on the ends of her hands. If my fingers looked like that, I would try to keep all eyes away from my hands. I know, I'm no long-fingered godly-handed man, and she was very nice, and I guess I was being very mean and petty, but the fingers were just really creepy. I did try to call her for a second date, but she said we weren't a good match. She said she couldn't wrap her fingers around a reason why, it just wasn't there for her.

Ring-A-Ding-Ding!
My place of employment is doing some work for a local/regional snack cake company and we have samples of other brands all over the office. I am now eating a Ring Ding. Oh yes. And I've gotta tell ya, I haven't had one of these chocolate enrobed (love that word) cream filled goodies in a dog's age, but they have not changed at all. Not one bit. You know how Count Chocula and Alpha Bits and Coco Puffs all kind of changed their recipes to be a little more healthy or something. Well, those swell folks at Drakes gave the finger to the fat fighters and said, "We're not changing our ass swelling, gut growing goodness for you namby pamby joy killers. Our Ring Dings will stay exactly the same as they've always been!" And God said, Ring Dings are good. Going back for a Yodel. Let's hope they didn't fuck with those...

Until next time, when I'll have one topic to stick to, enjoy the weather before you get old and start complaining about it.

Sweet Jesus.

For Valentine's Day, the kids gave me a big Reese's Cup shaped like a heart. It's about the size of my fist and weighs about the same as a couple inches of ass fat. Of course, I'm eating it. Slowly. Eaten in one sitting, something like that could send a perfectly healthy person into permanent diabetic shock, and clog every artery in and outside of my body. Not only would my heart stop beating, and my brain stop functioning, but highways would be tied up for miles and the Hoover Dam would stop producing energy.

As a kid, chocolate was one of my four basic food groups, along with sugar-infused breakfast cereal, spaghetti, and Pixie Sticks. I remember licking the bowl and the mixer blades after my grandmother mixed the batter for her chocolate cake. Oh, crap, was that freakin' good. Except for the one time when the mixer was still on.

The family would pile in the car every summer and head out to Hersheypark, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. A whole damn town dedicated to the ideals and worldwide contributions of chocolate. Sweet Jesus! Yeah, they had one of those, too. You could eat the head off it, like the bunnies at Easter. Anyway, you would get within a mile of the chocolate factory and the air would be thick with the glorious scent of cocoa. The sweet, beautiful perfume that attracts pimpled-faced teens and flabby housewives from all over the country. Oh, sure, there were amusement rides and shows, but that all took a backseat to the tour of the chocolate factory. Pools of chocolate being mixed in giant vats. I imagined myself being Augustus Gloop, diving into the Willie Wonka's lake of chocolate. Okay, so I was a weird kid.

Easter was always a good time for ODing on chocolate. Even that cheap, waxy, imitation chocolate flavored chocolate they make those Dollar Store bunnies with would do in times of choco-crisis. I mean, it kind of felt like chocolate in your mouth, and there was a taste resembling chocolate, but when the Hershey's and Reese's were gone, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, right?

Today, chocoholics are trying to find any possible way to ensure that chocolate isn't relegated to the list of "stuff that's so bad for you we have to get the government to issue laws changing how you make it." I would hate to see chocolate go the way of movie popcorn, fried chicken and trans fats. So now, they've found that dark chocolate provides anti-oxidants, and it's good to have a little each day. I would have loved to be in that room when they came up with that one. What's next? Milk chocolate with almonds can help urinary tract infections? Baby Ruth bars restore hair? Mounds relieve gout?

So, I will go on enjoying this gift from my kids for as long as I can. A little in the morning, a bite in the afternoon. And probably will be done it just in time for the Easter candy to show up. Oh, sweet Jesus. Mmmmm, really sweet.

Life in a Wintry Mix.

Last night, the area was hit with what the faux-expert imbeciles we know as "weatherpeople" call a "wintry mix." What it consists of is snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain and kicks in the head with a steel-toed boot. It also comes with a heaping helping of brain-loss from every driver on the road. Suddenly, it's like no one behind the wheel ever took a driving lesson in their life. I really think that driving instructors should take the time to teach people how to drive in bad weather. If you can't pass the "wintry mix" driving portion of the test at the DMV, then hand over the keys and get your dumb ass back to driving school, schmuck.

My PT Cruiser has 93,000 miles on it, and frankly, I doubt if it will make it to 100,000. What with the vigorous commute everyday, I really think she's trying to tell me through osmosis that it's time to pull the plug. "Just stop the nonsense, Steve, and put me out of my misery. Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to you, other than provide a means of getting where you need to be...Damn you!" But she muddled through the slushy mess last evening at two miles an hour, and that was in the good spots. It was like I got the extended DVD edition of my commute. Usually 45 minutes, it was expanded to the complete two hour-45 minute director's cut, complete with deleted material and never-before-seen footage. Oh, and plenty of bloopers. If there was a bright side to the whole evening's festivities, it was that I wasn't on the other side of the road, where a tractor trailer was jackknifed across the highway, blocking all the lanes, with traffic at a complete standstill for miles. Nice going, good buddy. Should've put away the Carmen Electra hand-puppet and worried about driving instead. Of course, there was the whole rubberneckin' thing happening on my side of the road, but since traffic was back up anyway, it just made the whole thing more laughable.

So, how does one keep sane when puttering along, while the heavens spew the icy diarrhea down upon the area? Well, here's a quick diary of my commute:

Hour One was just dread. Okay, not that I had anything to do on this particular evening, except make some dinner, chat on the phone, go over some papers from class, watch Family Guy, throw a load of laundry into the wash, and pee, but there's nothing on that list that says sit in my car and wait for some jackass to hit me from behind because he doesn't understand the phrase "safe distance." I have the news channel on the radio, until I get tired of hearing about the traffic that I'm sitting in and the shitty weather all over. Why do I need weather updates from people on the scene in other parts of the area? It's a crappy night wherever you are. There. Report done, move onto the more pleasant shooting, robbery and extortion stories. So I put on a CD, but I don't feel like singing yet. I did yell a couple times. I curse at all the people around me and want to know what the hell makes them think they're allowed on my road to home. Stupid bastards. Oh yeah, and I have to pee, and it's getting worse with each press of the brake pedal.

Hour Two. Slowly, clarity takes over. I'm moving toward the light. I begin singing whatever I'm playing on the CD. Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin, Elvis, William Shatner. It doesn't matter. My mind has become a sloppy bowl of tapioca pudding. All I'm seeing are red brake lights and Jesus. I begin to laugh at the senselessness of it all. The utter insanity. I throw on Amy Winehouse, hoping some talented, yet coked-up wacko's cool music will bring me back to earth. It doesn't. And I still have to pee. I'm tasting uric acid at this point. And then, my low gas light dings on.

The final 45 minutes. My mother calls. I don't answer. I can't. My one hand is on the steering wheel, the other is on my crotch. If I move one, I crash. If I move the other, I pee myself. My mother has this uncanny ability to know exactly when the absolute worst time to call is, and she never fails. I've gone through most of the CDs in my car. I'm back to the weather reports and traffic updates. There is now traffic where there aren't even streets or roads. There is traffic going up the sides of buildings in Center City. There is traffic backed up down the cereal aisle at Pathmark. There is frigging traffic everywhere and my mother calls me. My bladder is the size of Idaho and the little gas light shaped like a gas pump on my dash is searing it's red light into my brain like a branding iron. Just then, a fat, bearded woman in a big gas-sucking SUV veers through two lanes of traffic and cuts in front of me. I wish I could hang my schlong out the window and spray her oversized Global Warming mobile with my piss, like a fire boat hosing down a burning tanker. In my mind, she's flipped over on the side of the road, because I'm Magneto and have the ability to lift even her monstrous vehicle and what I'm sure is a monstrous ass, and send them both flying into a mangled mess of twisted metal and broken bones with the waggle of my finger.

I get off the expressway, finally, and find that the two minute ride from there to my place is also backed up. It's another fifteen minutes to go three blocks. I grab the first parking spot I could find and make it into my apartment just in time to keep the urine from squirting out my eye sockets.

My car made it through. My bladder made it through. My sanity nearly intact. I sit down for a quick bite, and watch the news to see those poor bastards still out on the roads. Whoever said hell is hot never drove through a wintry mix.

Length and Girth.

We've all heard that "size matters" or that "it's not the size, it's what you do with it that counts." I believe both. Especially when it comes to blogs. Yeah, I know, you thought I was talking about something else. That's a trick us writers use. It's called "Bait and Switch." You thought you were going to read a blog about one thing and here, it's about something else. Now that's funny.

Okay, maybe not. Anyways, I think one of my problems with getting a post up here regularly is because I'm really concerned with the size and quality of what I'm posting. I worry that it may be too short, or not top-notch, grade-A quality. (Pretty much the way I worry about size and quality of other things. Like dinner, for example. See, Bait and Switch again. I kill me.) I like to take my time. I started writing the last one on January 26th, but didn't post it until early February. Just when I think I'm done and ready to post, I read it over and decide to change a few things. Like the first three paragraphs. And the last two. And the one in between. I finesse and fiddle with the words until I'm really happy. Then I hit "publish post." I read it again when it's up and go back and edit it again and republish. Yes. I can be anal. Retentive, that is. But it's all to bring you the Live Musings Nightly you've come to know and love, at the absolute best quality you expect from yours truly.

Maybe someday, I'll write a quick post, just a few lines and publish it without proofing it. But it might be a while before that happens. Most of my daily work routine is to crank out copy with impossibly short deadlines. So I pick up some old copy, write a few new transitions, churn out some workable headlines, shove it all in a dirty sock, spin it around and slap it into Word. There. Copy done. Move on to the next piece of marketing mumbo jumbo.

I don't want that to happen with this blog. I care too much about my subject and about you, my dear readers. Oh, you're welcome. I'm just glad you like it.

Of course, it doesn't help that my life has been busier than a crab louse in an Italian's groin. (Not that I know that situation personally, mind you...) There's always something keeping me from writing. Like other writing. I do freelance copywriting, which can be really fun, because you can spend time doing interesting things, send it off, and invoice them. Nice work if you can get it. And then, there's my class. As I may have mentioned in the past, I'm teaching a Continuing Education class called "Copywriting: Writing Effective Marketing Materials" at University of the Arts. I always thought I wanted to teach, and now, I'm glad I'm doing it. I have a great bunch of students who actually listen to me. I'm not used to people listening to me. I was the middle child. I didn't get listened to. I got the little nod, as if to say, "That's nice, Steve, can we move on to something more interesting? Like passing the ketchup for the meatloaf?" But, if I can help people become better writers, that's totally cool. I've been doing this job for almost 23 years, and it's about time to share the pain.

Okay, back on track. So, there's class lessons to put together and assignments to go over. Oh yeah, in between all that other stuff and time with the kids, I try to squeeze in a little social life that I like to think I have. That life, up till now, has just been a series of online dating and beer swilling with the boys. Not bad for a guy. Although, not great for a guy of 44.

So what I'm saying is, be patient with me. I love writing this blog and plan to continue. I hope you continue reading. It may not ever be live musings that are actually nightly, but rest assured, they'll be timely. And of great length and girth. Just to keep the women happy, of course.

The More Things Change...

A few posts ago, I mentioned that that I've been back in touch with friends from my high school days. Well, last week, we actually managed a major reunion. I can't even begin to say how much fun it was, seeing those guys again, a few of whom I hadn't seen for many moons. That's a pretty long time to you and me.

The memories came flooding back, and yes, I'm going to regale you with tales of my unbridled, uninhibited teen years. Actually, they weren't very unbridled, and other than the occasional bare ass moon out a car window, or heavy petting session on the bench seat of my dad's car, they weren't that uninhibited either. But, dammit, they were fun as hell.

We weren't much into drinking, getting drunk, smoking pot (until later, another post for another day), or anything like that. We were into girls. That was our reason for being, our sole mission in life. To meet girls, and get as far as you could with them. Hey, we knew what we were at the time. We were horny teenaged boys, succumbing to senseless hormones gone out of control. We were innocent victims of the savage rage of our own testicles. We armed ourselves with an arsenal of girl-trapping ammo, from our tight Gabardine slacks to our open shirts and gold chains, to our cologne that came in penis-shaped bottles.

We fought the good fight, learned the right dances, and said the right things. All to ensnare the unsuspecting female, with their big hair, gaucho pants, gold chains and perfume that came in vagina-shaped bottles. We would stand around at the dance, watch the groups of ladies congregate, and plan our attack. Rich would get the taller one, because he was tall. Louie would go for the second to tallest. Ant would go for the thinnest. I would go for the one with more curves. Matt would take the smallest, since he was a bit vertically challenged. And Angelo would just have his pick of the room, because he had the most hair on his chest, and enjoyed showing it off. And I usually struck out.

Mike supplied the music for our street corner serenades, "The Groove Line" being our adopted theme song, since it was first on the cassette tape, he liked that song and it was his boombox. That tape was in there for years, and had to be surgically removed. Mike would take out the tape and rewind it by hand, with a pencil in the spindle. It saved batteries, so we could listen to "The Groove Line" many more times while standing on the corner. And Jimmy would talk alot. Oh, yeah, alot.

Other friends joined the crew as we crept through our college years, and some guys slowly backed away, busy planning their brighter futures. Just as many crews of friends do.

But I'll never forget those days at the dances. Or the times we piled into Scott's little car, heading to the mall. The little auto suffocating with the stench of Pierre Cardin and farts. In the summer, we would head to Wildwood, New Jersey, to hang out at the beach, drinking pitchers of kamikazes and try to meet women, while also trying not to puke up warm kamikazes. Our arsenal changed somewhat, from tight slacks to tight jeans, from open collared shirts to pastel colored t-shirts under unconstructed linen jackets. But still the gold chains hung, with their Playboy bunny charms, gold horn, or dogtags. And I still usually struck out.

Then, some of us got girlfriends, a few of whom became wives. And we lost hair, put on weight, took off the gold chains. Okay, some still wear them. Me? I actually haven't had a piece of gold on me since the demise of my first marriage.

Anyway, it was really good seeing them all. The camaraderie was still there, with hugs and laughs, beers and Jimmy talking. A lot. Less hair on our heads, and more on our backs. Some are greying, some are putting kids through college. Some wear ties. Some will probably never get married. Some, okay, one, already did the marriage thing. Twice. But some things never change. Which is pretty damn comforting. And when we get together again in a few months, as promised, it will be like old times again. Hopefully, without the Pierre Cardin and farts.

Maybe I'll even dig out my gold chain with the Sagittarius charm. But definitely not the tight pants.

A Huggin' and A Chalkin' On The Disco Round.

There was a song called "A Huggin' and A Chalkin'" by Hoagy Carmichael, or it could have been Kay Keyser, that my dad used to listen to all the time when I was a kid. I remember him asking us to listen to it with him. It totally cracked him up. The song is about a guy who is in love with a woman who is so big and fat that he has to mark where he started hugging her with chalk so he'll know when he gets back to where he started. Seriously. Oh, and one day, he's a huggin' and a chalkin', and he meets a guy coming around the other way. Oh yeah. I'm really serious. That's the song. Of course, it came out at a time when the most famous black person was Stepin Fetchit, and women either were dames with nice gams or barefoot in the kitchen. But my dad liked it. So I liked it too.

That was my musical influence as a child.

The first album I ever bought was "The Sugar Bears." I swear. It was an album by the character from the Sugar Crisp cereal box. I saved up to buy it, so it wasn't some foolish impulse purchase. Oh no, I really wanted it. And listened to it. Over and over. I was 18.

Okay, kidding. I was a little younger than that. But again, my musical preference was a group of cartoon bears who peddled crispy sugar-coated sugar breakfast nuggets. By seventh grade or so, I was so into John Denver that I used to beg my mom to let me stay up late to watch his TV specials. I would sit in the basement listening to his records, singing them out loud. Come on, 'Annie's Song' is still one of the most romantic love songs ever. His music is still a guilty pleasure. But again, not the most popular choice.

So, it should come as no surprise that as a young teen, I was a disco fan. A big, dago-fro, gold chain wearing, double-knit Sans-A-Belt slacks disco boy. My friends and I saw Saturday Night Fever four or five times. And that's when there was no such thing as DVDs or even VHS. Remember those days? When you had to go to a theater to see a movie. We went to the theater four or five times to see it. Oh, we were only freshmen in high school, but we were living the Tony Manero life.

We went to teen dances on Friday nights, Saturday nights and sometimes even Saturday afternoons and Sunday nights. Okay, there was no alcohol served or anything, but to meet girls, you had to know how to dance. Girls liked guys who could dance. And when we went over to Jersey to a teen dance, the Jersey girls would get all flustered because the Italian guys from South Philly were there to show them a better time on the dance floor than their rock-loving Jersey boys. Of course, there were lots of fights. But I never fought. I was a lover, not a fighter. Actually, I was a pussy. But a pussy that could dance! The hustle, the line dancing, the rock. I had a chiana shirt, with the wide collar and a silkscreen of a couple on the beach on the front of the shirt. Oh, it was friggin' hot. And I would proudly wear that thing, because I bought it with money I earned working at the local corner grocery store, delivering milk and Nilla Wafers to moldy old greaseball ladies. Just like Tony Manero worked at the hardware store and earned enough dough to buy his white suit. We were living parallel lives, he and I.

And the music went along with the lifestyle. "I love the nightlife. I've got to boogie on the disco round..." I always wondered what a disco round was, but it didn't really matter. I did love the nightlife. Even if teen dances ended at 11:00. I had a plethora of 12" disco singles. One of my favorites was "Knock On Wood" by Ami Stewart. I could shake my groove thing to that.

My brother would taunt me with "Disco sucks!" Yeah, right. That's why I was out meeting girls at dances and he was at home diddling himself with Led Zeppelin albums playing in the background. I didn't even like Kiss until they came out with "I Was Made For Loving You" and Ace did "New York Groove." The Village People, another favorite. Were they gay? To us it didn't matter. To us, they were gay, when it means 'happy and fun'. But they were disco. We even assembled a Village People tribute act and performed as them. In front of people. Not just a few people. Auditoriums full of people. I was the "hot cop." Oh, yes I was. And I could thrust my pelvis like a stripper who's having an epileptic fit on her pole. My tight white cop pants hugged my butt as I lip-synched "YMCA" and "Macho Man." It was truly a thing of beauty. It was a far cry from the sugary pop goodness of The Sugar Bears, and miles from my current iTunes list of eclectic choices. From Cake to Amy Winehouse to Arctic Monkeys or Southern Culture on the Skids.

But I still have some Village People tunes there, nestled between The Velvet Underground and Weezer.

Am I proud of my disco days? Hey, we all have things in our past we're not completely proud of. But I can say this much, we had fun. Not 'gay' fun. But real, memorable fun. I can still dance, which makes me feel good when I see all those guys doing the white-man shuffle at weddings or clubs. And girls still like guys who can dance. As long as they're not wearing wide-collared chiana shirts.

So, I listen to my eclectic stuff, mixed in with my Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, or Tony Bennett or Sinatra. (Hey, I have to like Sinatra. I'm Italian from South Philly. If I don't like him, my kneecaps get broken.)

Oh, and I just downloaded "A Huggin' and A Chalkin'" from iTunes. It's an obnoxious song, but it makes me picture my dad laughing. And that's music to my ears.

Then and Now

I'm a child of the '60s (and '70s). Most of the people I work with are too young to remember the stuff I often reference. Many of them were sleeping in cribs around the time I was in college sleeping off hangovers. So things like H.R. Pufnstuf, 12" GI Joe figures (with Kung Fu Grip), Astro Boy, and Freakies Cereal are all completely foreign to these people. I try to introduce some of the things of my youth to my kids. Like Count Chocula (which isn't the same anymore) or The Monkees. I got my daughter the complete Archies cartoons DVD for Christmas. She loves the comics, and I fondly remember those toons from the late '60s. They had the same footage of The Archies band for every song they sang. The problem is, sometimes things that I remember being really cool and fun when I was a kid, just did not age well. (The Archies are still kinda cool though, in a cheesy way. Sort of like the comics. The jokes haven't changed in 40 years). So, what I wanted to do was put together a list of things I loved as a kid and try to find today's equivalent of it.

For example, The Monkees are basically The Naked Brothers Band and Hannah Montana, only funnier and with better music (c'mon, songs written by Boyce & Hart and Neil Diamond, shows directed by Bob Rafelson, of Five Easy Pieces!) Seriously, have you ever sat through an episode of Naked Brothers or Hannah Montana? I have. It was like a knitting needle being shoved into each ear and through my eyes, piercing my brain with a nasty 'pop'. Poor writing, painful acting, amateurish direction, and repetitive, pseudo-pop crap music. Were the Monkees much better? Well, no, but they're definitely a whole lot more watchable. Sheer silliness for the sake of being silly. No annoying wise-mouth kids, and you didn't bristle at the thought of Davy actually kissing a girl.

H.R. Pufnstuf was basically a Barney for older kids, without the annoying songs that make you want to scrub your brain with a metal brush, (okay, some of the songs were bad.) plus some Teletubbie type characters, a kid with an British accent and his magic, um, "flute." I believe the same amount of drugs went into each episode of H.R. Pufnstuf as an entire season of Power Rangers.

Speaking of Power Rangers, how about Ultra-Man? The ultimate import from Japan, it was a dose of giant monster every frigging day. The difference between Ultra-Man and Power Rangers is that you never wanted to see Ultra-Man die a horribly painful death like you do every single one of those Ranger teens. Plus, there was no licensing juggernaut making billions off cheesy toys. I used to use a fat magic marker as the Beta Capsule when I played Ultra-Man. Oh, yeah, and you can see zippers of the backs of the monsters in both shows. Oh, those Japanese. Some things never change.

G.I. Joe was THE real American hero. And I'm not talking about those crappy little 5-inch figures from the '80s. I'm talking about the big 12-inchers. Because when it comes to G.I. Joe, size certainly matters. I remember them when they had plastic hair, then moved to the fuzzy buzz cuts and beards. They were tough, they had tons of accessories that were big and rugged. Today's boys have action figures that fit on keychains. Basically, today's equivalent of GI Joe is, well, there's actually nothing like him on the market. All the pansy-ass liberals made sure that kids get positive role models, not war mongers. Like Jamie Lynn Spears. Yeah, there's a positive role model for kids.

Freakies Cereal was like eating a bowl full of sugar frosted sugar with sugar milk and sugar on top for good measure. And they had the coolest characters. These little monster things that lived in trees. And the prizes were cool. Freakies magnets, Freakies pencil toppers, Freakies cars that ran on the air from a little balloon you attached to it. Today, they're taking sugar out of cereals. Kids need to eat Life or Cheerios. There are no cool little monsters on the box. And no cool toys inside. Oh, my dentist loved us...

Board games were actually fun, interesting ways to pass the time with your friends. You actually had to interact in real life, rather than with characters on the screen. Life, Mouse Trap, Monopoly, Clue...all great games I grew up with. And then Pong came along and changed the game playing field forever. Not to say that video games don't help hand/eye coordination, but when I was younger, I found other things to do with my hand. Like roll dice, for crying out loud.

I know, I sound like an old fart complaining about the how things aren't as "special" as they were years ago. Soon, I'll be yelling at the kids playing ball in the street. As if they actually do that anymore...duh.

I'm going to put on The Archies, sing "Sugar, Sugar" with a nice big bowl of the Cap'n. If only you could still get Quisp...