Man About Murfreesboro - blog - funny - politics

How do you explain the concept of Twitter to someone who does not own a computer? How do you explain the purpose of "tweets," followers and hashmark tags? I did my best, but I'm not sure I explained it very well. The truth is, I'm not sure I understand it. I use it. I tweet even though I hate the term. I read my feed which is populated mostly by local news organizations and a handful of celebrities which may or may not be genuine.

But when someone who doesn't use the service asks me to explain what the big deal is, I'm at a loss.

For myself, I find it useful because it opens another line of communication between myself and some media contacts that are useful for my clients. WKRN (our ABC affiliate) for example pushed a tweet looking for people to interview for a story they were working on. The Tullahoma News used their Twitter feed to promote an event I'd pitched to them, giving me one more bit of work product to show the client.

But you get the downside as well. As of this morning I have 37 followers. But if you look at the list, there are a lot of fake followers there, people who set up fake Twitter accounts and follow a thousand random people in hopes that most of us will follow back and thus increase their numbers. Or, we'll be curious as to why they followed us and click on their links, which ups their web traffic.

I don't use the service obsessively. I don't follow people who tweet more than a few times a day. I don't read the feed more than twice a day. But the fact that I use it at all seems to be a problem for those who don't understand it. That puts me in a position of having to defend a service that I neither fully understand nor utilize.

Twitter is responsible for the outside world knowing as much as we do about the protests in Iran.

#iranelection

#IranElection

While the government knew enough to shut down satellite TV and the media, they weren't familiar enough with social networking to forsee the "Twitter Revolution." So, I encourage everyone to give it a try. Follow some folks even if you don't plan on posting anything. Familiarize yourself with the tools young people use to communicate.

Which brings me to an interesting anecdote shared by my brother-in-law recently. He teaches high school and told a student to email him some information. The student replied that no one uses email anymore. It's for old people.

My brother Dan was born on June 13. I sent him a happy birthday text this year at 11:38 p.m. He responded with thanks and noted that "you barely made it." Heh. Indeed, but I still made it. My brother Scott was born on June 15. I flung a virtual birthday cake at him on his Facebook site. I love the new media.

Max has been waaaay into MiniMates lately. My local comics shop started carrying some of the older sets and he just fell in love with them. Now he reads the sites and obsesses over new sets coming out and keeps me informed about chase figures and convention exclusives.

Not too long ago, he put a bug in my ear: "Papa, at the next give-giving oportunity, I would like the MiniMates Bat Cave Playset." Noted.

It was my understanding that the Bat Cave (which retailed for $50 or so) was no longer in production. Ebay searches showed that there were two available in Europe.

[sigh]

Max and Rozzy's school has decided to implement a uniform policy, meaning that we have to buy new wardrobes for the kids before school starts. Dollie has been dragging them kicking and screaming to thrift stores looking for bargains on slacks and polo shirts. It was on one of these trips that Max came to his mother with his jaw agape.

He had found the Bat Cave Playset at a thrift store for $6. It was missing the figures (Joker, Bruce Wayne and Heavy Assault Batman Armor) but the pieces for the cave itself were still in their plastic bags.

We put it together and it immediately fell apart. While these sets are "compatable with popular building block systems" they do not stick together as well as Legos. We are currently in the process of gluing the thing together so he can play with it.

"I never want to ever hear you complain about having to go to a thrift store again," I said.

"No problem," he replied.

Finally, I'm thinking of shutting this site down and opening up a blog on one of the blogging sites. I'm paid up through August here, but frankly, it doesn't make much sense to continue to lease space on this domain and hassle with coding each entry when there are sites that will do all that for free. My only reluctance is that I've been here for more than ten years.

Then it occured to me that I don't track visitors or sell ads, so I have no real reason to worry about whether people will follow to the new site. I'll post links here and on Facebook so it will be easy to find me when I make the move.

I first heard about the murder of Dr. George Tiller in a press release from the Family Research Council. It read:

You'll notice that the statement didn't refer to Dr. Tiller as a doctor. Even as the man lay bleeding on the floor of his church, the FRC has to get its licks in. Tiller was one of the few physicians in the country still willing to perform intact dialation and extractions. This was an act of domestic terrorism and should be treated as such.

I don't want to get into yet another in a long line of arguments over abortion. Suffice it to say that Tiller was gunned down by someone in a church who ostensibly claimed to be "pro-life." Tiller was a brave man who fought against the crazies of the world who tried to get between him and his patients.

He was attacked regularly and viciously by the likes of Bill O'Reilly (idiot), the FRC and Operation Rescue. O'Reilly went so far as to say anyone who doesn't stop Tiller has blood on their hands. I say today that O'Reilly has blood on his.

In 1993, Tiller was shot in both arms by another assailant. He and his family have been harrassed and threatened repeatedly, but Dr. Tiller stood firm. Earlier this month vandals cut the wires to the security cameras at his clinic, cut a hole in the roof and plugged up the downspouts causing thousands of dollars of damage to equipment. Tiller requested the FBI investigate. I wonder if they will now? In March, a Kansas jury declared him not guilty of performing illegal abortions in the 19 cases in which he was charged.

I suggest reading this essay by Frank Schaeffer, a former leader in the pro-life movement. In it, he suggests that he and other pro-life leaders share the blame for Tiller's death by creating an environment where this murder could happen.

I'm just so tired of reading responses like this, which seem to boil down to "Yes, yes . . . the shooting was very tragic and we're all shocked and outraged, but let's not forget about the 60 bajillion innocent babies HE murdered."

No. We will not liken a legal, medically necessary procedure (Kansas only allows intact dialation and extraction on a viable fetus to protect the health of the mother) to gunning someone down in the foyer of their church. There is no comparison and trying to make one makes you part of the problem – what, in any other context, would make you an appeaser or an apologist for a domestic terrorist.

O'Reilly makes crazy statements accusing Tiller of running a murder mill, comparing him to al-queda and that he'll abort any fetus no matter how late so long as the check clears. But Tiller's patients were desperate women who had nowhere else to turn.

Parents of conjoined twins in which only one could survive birth and then for only a short period filled with painful surgeries and organ transplants.

Kansas stories from "A Heartbreaking Choice." Specifically this one – a young mother in the late stages of a much-wanted pregnancy.

She goes on to describe the cruelty of the protestors who assumed that she wanted to have an abortion, having to pass through metal detectors to enter the clinic and the compassion of Dr. Tiller and his staff.

At 67, Dr. Tiller should have been considering retirement, but as he told one woman just two weeks ago, he couldn't quit because he didn't belive that these women would receive any kind of care.

It was an interesting weekend. Friday night we took the kids to the Drive-In to see "Star Trek." They fell asleep, so Dollie and I stayed up to watch "I Love You, Man" for the double feature. The Drive-In is the best movie value going. For $20 bucks all four of us got two films (even if two of us slept through 1.5 of them).

"Star Trek" was fantastic. I'm under obligations from several of my friends and colleagues not to publish any spoilers, but this was a great movie. Entertaining, exciting and full of little nods to fans of the original series. I had a blast.

Saturday was the 68th running of the Iroquois Steeplechase. I manned the media tent and drove a golf cart around putting out little fires (not literally, I'm not trained for that kind of thing). It had rained the night before and much of the week prior, so the mud was thick enough in places to lose a boot in.

Steeplechase is a tailgating event as much as a series of horse races. The tailgaters seem to care very little about the race. They dress up in their seersucker or madras plaid and play cornhole or ladderball. They get very drunk and, at least this year, get covered in mud. The ladies wear big hats and cute sun dresses and spend their time trying to see and be seen by their friends. By the end of the day, most everyone had ruined a good pair of shoes, if not slacks and those sundresses had mud slung up the back from walking in flip flops.

I left before the final race so that I could beat the traffic and get to my buddy Geoff's house for a Star Trek-themed party. They had all dressed up in uniform and went to the movie together before the party and, we were planning on joining them after Steeplechase.

I pulled out of my parking "space" in the field and immediately got stuck in the mud. A helpful volunteer in a golf cart said he'd send a tractor back to pull me out. It took about 45 minutes or so and by that time, I wasn't going to miss the traffic. So, I pulled onto Old Hickory and began the slog home.

On the way to Steeplechase, I was driving behind a pickup full of young men who were drinking beer and having a good time. Whenever the traffic caused the truck to stop, one of them would jump out, run to the side of the road and whiz on the stone wall surrounding Percy Warner Park. On the way out, I was behind a different pick up truck with a group of young people. They were obviously drunk to the point of questioning their own reason for coming to this thing. Traffic was kind of start/stop, but we'd reached a point where it was picking up a little.

I can't be certain, but I think we were moving along about 15 miles an hour, when a saw one of the revelers stand up in the back of the truck. He had on shorts and no shirt. He leaned way out and over, spreading his arms so that one pointed to the sky and the other the road. He faced me and I thought "this idiot is feeling sick and is trying to catch a little wind."

It happened so fast that it stunned me. One second he was leaning, the next he was over the edge and tumbling onto the road. He hit on his head and shoulder. He didn't even try to brace his fall. His body flopped like a rag doll and he was still.

I stopped to avoid hitting him and pulled around to the front of the truck (which had also stopped). There were only two lanes and no shoulder, so I pulled into a driveway and looked back. Other cars had stopped and people were running toward the scene. I couldn't see the boy anymore. I sat there and shook for a minute before driving on. I wondered whether I should have stayed. I eventually decided that I'd just be in the way. There were cell phones in the crowd and the rescue vehicles would have a hard time getting there with so many cars barely over to the side of the road.

I called Dollie to tell her what I'd just seen and called my boss back at the Steeplechase to warn him about taking Old Hickory and so he could inform the organizers if need be. I haven't found any mention of the accident in the news and if the injuries were fatal (or even near fatal) I'm certain it would have been covered. I hope he's okay.

That evening at the party, I won a bag of goodies for my knowledge of Star Trek biochemistry, namely that Spock's blood is green because of the copper content. We watched "Wrath of Khan" and some episodes of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" before calling it an evening sometime after midnight.

On Mother's Day, Rozzy and I baked muffins for Dollie. She's studying for her comps, so I took the kids to a playground for a little while and left her alone. I made a meatloaf for dinner and we played games. We made calls to all the mothers and grandmothers. I made sure the kid's understood that, for today anyway, we work and play at the pleasure of their mother.

Wow. What happened to April? Yes, I know, I suck. In my defense, I was working on a freelance project and writing I get paid to do must take priority over the blog. Let's move on.

Lot's of stuff happened, most of which will be old news. Max and I went to Smyrna a couple of weeks ago to be extras in a zombie movie called "Dead Start." It was a gruelling experience which did not actually result in us being in the movie. We did, however, stand in a lot of lines, got covered in blood and grey make up and went through "zombie school."

Here's a thumbnail sketch of the experience. We arrived at just after 7 a.m. and the crew was working with another group of zombies. We stood in line and waited. Once the other group finished, we began zombie school. We were taught how to shuffle as if we were the walking dead, how to let our jaw slacken and glaze over our eyes, how to throw up our arms and "light up" when we see our prey, and the difference between biting and clamping down when attacking.

Then we stood in line to be reviewed by the director who declared us either an "A" or a "B." While in line, Max and I watched a guy wander over to a dumpster and throw up several times before wandering back over to the line. I noticed that most people were declared "B," while attractive blondes in tight t-shirts were declared "A."

I should mention there that, during zombie school, we were told that if we were wearing shirts with a logo on them, we had to turn them inside out. Max and I wore white shirts (the better to show off the blood) with no logos, so we were cool. But there was a kid in our group who made a fuss because he really wanted to wear his AC/DC shirt logo out. He's the one in every crowd who thinks he's being entertaining when he interupts the instructor with bad jokes or "witty" observations. Let's call him "D-bag."

After being assigned a letter (Max and I were both "Bs") we found the next line, which stretched around a couple of buildings. At the end of it, we managed to get directly behind D-bag and his friends. For the next 90 minutes, we were the auditory victim of his observations on life, the universe and everything. Let me set the picture for you. He was pale, had chin-length black, stringy hair, wore black pants that were way too wide at the ground and had lots of chains and things dangling from them. He had two friends with him. Max and I learned that they were members of his band and that they, as a whole, were "metal."

This was a small sampling and each was punctuated by his recitation of orginal lyrics, singing of other's lyrics and complaints that, without the AC/DC logo showing, it wasn't going to be clear that he was a "metal zombie."

During all of this, I contemplated stepping up to him and explaining that my 11-year-old son didn't need to hear his particular brand of BS and would he shut his stupid, teenaged mouth. But I didn't. Instead, I used this as a means to talk to Max very frankly about the world and the people he would likely encounter there.

"There is one very important lesson you need to take away from this. You are going to meet a lot of guys like him in your life and, to a man, they're going to be d-bags. It is best to ignore them when you can and never trust a thing they say. I can guarantee you that 99 percent of what spews from this idiot's mouth is a lie. The other one percent is a misconception on his part."

"Also, don't step in that phlegm he just spit on the ground because your mouth might form an anus."

So, at the end of 90 minutes or so, we were at the front of the line, which turned out to be the line to sign the release forms. Max and I signed up and I signed Max's form as his guardian. I chuckled a bit when D-bag and his buddies had to scramble to find an adult to co-sign for them.

Then we got in the "B" line for stage one of the make up – right behind D-bag and pals.

In stage one, they put grey base on us and sent us to another line for stage two. Max and I changed lines to avoid D-bag and pals for stage two. By this time, we're coming up on the 2.5 hour mark and Max is getting both bored and hyper. He needs to pee, but there are no port-a-pottys. I send him out in search of somewhere to relieve himself, but he can't find anywhere. The little guy decides to hold it until we've both finished our death palor make up. Then I walked him over to a clump of trees and he did his business while I watched for passersby.

Then we got in a third line where someone applied "blood" to us. Zombification complete. Now we were ready for our close ups.

Here's the thing. They were expecting maybe 300 people for this. But more than 500 showed up. They weren't prepared. It was hot, it was uncomfortable and they didn't seem very organized. We watched as they shot the first scene:

A zombie hoard chases a middle-aged woman around the outside of a locked buiding. She tries several doors, but no use. As she rounds a corner, she encounters a second group of zombies. They see her and attack. She screams, dies, scene.

They rehearsed it four times. The director made very clear that the second zombie hoard was to wait a few seconds after seeing her to attack and the zombies at the rear needed to wait longer so it looked like a third wave of zombies were on her. Everyone got it. It looked good.

Zombies shuffle, woman bangs on locked doors, she rounds corner and is immediately attacked by second hoard.

They'd messed it up. The director chewed out the zombies, sent the actress to get cleaned up and change clothes. Sooo, we waited. It was after noon by this point and the director said there was pizza on the way "but with as many people as we have here, everyone will get about half a slice." I knew there was no way he was going to be done shooting by 2 p.m. as planned.

Max had had it. He wanted to go home. He no longer cared if he was in the movie, he just wanted to get away from this stupid, stupid movie.

So we left. We'll most likely still get our names in the credits, but we're not in any scenes.

I've noted the passing of Bea Arthur and Dom Deluise. Both comedic actors who have made me laugh hard enough to wet myself a little. "Golden Girls" was arguably the archetypical '80s sitcom. It had a sensibility and formula you can't duplicate (nor would it be as successful) today. I watched every episode and then there's "Maude" (to coin a phrase) – a spin off of "All in the Family" that continued the tradition of examining social issues in a frank and and fearless way.

Dom Deluise was hillarious no matter what he did. He was the Roman emperor in "History of the World Part I." He was "Captain Chaos" in "Cannonball Run." He was "Fatso." He was from the old school and I knew whenever I saw him on the screen, that he was the one to keep an eye on.

The state legislature confuses me. For those of you outside Tennessee, let me hip you to a few things.

Grocery stores cannot sell wine. A bill that was about to be introduced to make it legal to buy some wine at your grocery has been pulled for lack of support.

Liquor stores cannot sell beer. I'm not sure why that is, but it's probably the same rule that keeps Publix from selling wine.

Strip clubs cannot sell beer or liquor (but you can bring your own in so long as you pay the club a fee).

I see no logical flow to these statements. Booze and guns = good. Booze and beer = bad. Booze and groceries = bad. Booze and boobs = bad unless you bring your own. Am I missing something?

In the past, I've written about my disdain for the seemingly immortal fashion of sagging pants. In my opinion it looks ridiculous, as would any affectation that requires tying up one of your hands. Having to constantly use one hand to hold up your pants while you try to cruise girls at the mall is . . . well . . . dumb. It is a testimate to the low self-esteem of some young women that these guys are ever successful.

That all being said, it is even more ridiculous to pass laws making saggy pants a criminal offense. Tennessee is on the verge of doing that very thing. The bill passed a subcommitee and heads to the full committee next. As written, the bill would levy a $250 fine on anyone who wears his or her pants low enough to see his or her underwear.

The bus driver this morning said "What about plumbers? What about women who wear belly shirts? What about construction workers? Have they found bin Laden yet?"

Critics of the bill say that the law unfairly targets young black males. I can't argue that point, except to say that in Murfreesboro, the "style" isn't limited to blacks, but is imitated by whites, asians and latinos.

I hate to bring up logical fallacies, but this is a slippery slope, people. If lawmakers can pass laws against fashions they don't like, how long before we see criminal prosecution of the combover? Or the polyester pantsuit? Or the popped collar?

Do we really want to open that door? Should the legislature take up its precious time trying to outlaw bad taste? I don't like sagging pants any more than the government does, but other than point and laugh when you trip over your own pants, there is nothing I feel comfortable doing about it.

I've worn some stupid things in the past (read present). I had a pair of Vans that were so broken down my grandmother threw them away . . . twice. I dug them out of the garbage the first time. My buddy badger used to wear a t-shirt that was so ratty you could barely qualify it as clothing. I berated him. I made fun of him. I encouraged him to set it on fire. But I never tried to force him to get rid of it.

Tennessee has a ton of problems and not one of them relate to fashion. Lawmakers need to get busy figuring out the budget problem and stop worrying about what dumb thing teenagers are wearing now.

If sagging pants are outlawed, what will replace them? I guarantee you won't like it.

Dollie, who is even less of a fan than I am, said something to me once about sagging pants that has stuck with me. It is an act of youthful rebellion. "The man can't tell me how to wear my pants." I can relate to that. You look stupid and if you got into a fight, you'd have a disadvantage because you'll need one of your hands to hold your pants up, but shine on, you crazy diamond.

One of the two crossing guards at the kids' school has got to be among the worst out there. I can't stress this enough. She is terrible. I base this on several incidents that have taken place over the last few years, which I'll elaborate on shortly. The road in front of the school is a four-lane divided boulevard with an extra turn lane going into the school. There is generally a lot of traffic so crossing guards are crucial. They are supposed to be there from 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. Usually that isn't a problem, but today, for instance, it was raining out so she sat in her car for a while instead of doing their job.

She waves at her friends while she's supposed to direct traffic. She talks to passing drivers instead of paying attention to what she's doing.

Once, she was yelling at some kid (it may have been a relation) who was trying to cross the intersection. She made him sit down on his jacket beside her while she was directing traffic. She held out her hand to signal the traffic to stop and let me out of the school's parking lot. However, she still wanted to yell at the kid some more so she turned and looked down at him, twisting her body and moving her arm so that I was the one getting the "stop" signal. So, I didn't pull out. When she realized I hadn't pulled out, she looked up and started yelling at me too.

This morning, she was just making her way to her post as I was leaving the school. As she walked out to her spot between the lanes, she waved behind her back at me to go. She wasn't looking at me. She wasn't looking at the traffic coming either way, she was putting on her coat and waving me to go behind her back as if her job was an afterthought.

The post used to be staffed by a very nice lady who was very precise in her instructions and always mouthed "thank you" when I followed directions. I don't know what happened to her. My hope is that she was promoted to some sort of superviser or training officer.

There was another woman who did an adequate job, but I suspect she fell ill. There was a week or so when I noticed she wasn't smiling and between cars would hold her hip and bend over like it was a struggle to stand and wave. She was gone in a few days to be replaced by another.

Now look. I know that this job isn't as easy as it looks. It can't be as easy as it looks, because it looks like a chimp could do it. Yet, I see it done so poorly so consistently that it makes me want to pull over and grab her high-visibility gloves, shove her aside and start waving traffice through.

It irks me that my safety and the safety of my kids is entrusted to a woman who could care less about doing her job with even a modicum of professionalism or courtesy. I'd write a letter, but I had an experience this week that makes me want to rethink by knee-jerk letter-writing tirades.

I was meeting with a client who is a bank executive and we were talking about a branch housed in an older building that is slated to be demolished to straighten out an intersection.

"When that building goes, it will be the end of an era," I said, knowing that the building is close to 90 years old.

"I check the temperature on the sign there every day," said a third person at the meeting. "It's a little off sometimes."

"I know," replied the bank executive. "I get a complaint letter about that at least once a week."

"I hear you," he said. "In fact, we've stopped flying the flag because we can't seem to get it right. We get so many complaints about the flag that we just took it down. I got a five-page letter from some man complaining about how we were disrespecting the flag."

I kept silent at this point because, while I didn't write the letter he was talking about, I very well could have. Long-time readers will note that I'm a big nerd when it comes to properly flying the flag. It stems from my Boy Scout days, I guess. Between Scouting in my teens and the ROTC during college, I've performed more flag ceremonies than I can count.

I've been downloading and listening to a lot of Jonathan Coulton music lately. He's got some really great stuff (and some extremely mediocre stuff as well). When he's on, though, it is incredible.

Watching the second season of "Dexter" on DVD. It's enjoyable (if such a thing can be said about a series based on novels told from the perspective of a serial killer who kills serial killers).

I started watching "Ashes to Ashes" which is a British series that follows "Life on Mars" and is set in 1981. I've only seen the first episode, but it's fun. I certainly like the music better than the original. I'm also enjoying the American version of "Life on Mars" very much.

"Life" has gotten even better this season. The addition of Donal Logue to the cast has been exceptional. I'm not crazy about "Dollhouse" but I'm still watching it. The tank tops go a long way toward holding my interest.

"Lie to Me" is okay, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to care about whatever deep, dark secret Dr. Lightman is hiding.

I got a ride home from my friend Serenity a couple of days ago. She was telling me that, at the moment, she doesn't have any shows she watches regularly. Wow.

Dollie and I saw "The Watchmen" and both of us liked it. We've both read the book and the film follows it very closely (which is the onlly way to do it and not cause a lynch mob to storm the filmmakers' homes). It is suitably dark, grim, melancholy and what have you. The fight scenes were well done, in that I could tell what was going on in them, unlike films such as "The Dark Knight" in which the camera always seems too close or too fast.

It was three hours long and there was no slow section. Afterwards I practically sprinted to the bathroom. I'll most likely buy this one to keep.

The book has been on my shelf for nearly 20 years. I've loaned it out a few times, most recently to my boss, who had expressed some interest in reading it. My boss is a collector of first editions and pointed out that my copy is a first edition of the trade paperback.

"It's worth about $80," he said. "I'll be careful with it." That made me wonder how he would have treated the book if it was a third or fourth edition. Heh.

The book has been in print since the late '80s and is unlikely to go out of print because that would lead to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons getting the rights back. Were that to happen, that would be the last we'd see of it, as Alan Moore is a bit of a kook.

So I wrote some fan mail to a cartoonist recently. I should preface this by saying that I don’t usually write fan mail to cartoonists or any other celebrity. In fact, I can think of exactly four previous occasions:

1) To Stephen King asking him to come to my high school and give a speech. The response: a nice note from his sister-in-law/secretary saying Mr. King doesn’t do public speaking engagements and thanks for reading.

2) To Jimmy Johnson, creator of Arlo & Janis, telling him how scary accurate his comic strip paralleled my life and asking permission to use a series of his strips in a lecture I was giving to some college students about internet pornography. The response: a nice note thanking me and permission to use the art so long as I didn’t publish anything and piss off the syndicate.

3) James Lileks, novelist and internet celebrity, telling him how much I enjoyed his early work and the design for his web site. The response: several email exchanges in which we talked about modern graphic design and Murfreesboro, which he’d apparently visited when he was a traveling seed salesman.

4) Dave Barry, telling him how much I enjoyed his work and asking for an internship at the Miami Herald. Result: a handwritten postcard thanking me for reading and joking about my attempt to nudge my way into his office.

So I guess I’m spoiled in that on every previous occasion that I’ve reached out to a “celebrity” I have gotten a response. That has not been the case this last time. Granted, it has only been a few days, but an email that isn’t answered quickly tends to drift down the inbox list, buried under phishing attempts, pleas for help from Nigerian princes and offers for cheap foreign Xanax. Bottom line – I’m not hopeful I’ll get a response.

And that bothers me a little. I mean he draws a comic strip for a newspaper. I can’t believe his inbox is slopping over with people clamoring to express their deep admiration for his work. But what do I know. Maybe syndicated newspaper cartoonists live the proverbial life of Riley – waking each morning after a blissful sleep on a huge pile of cash, whipping their convertibles down the coastline at break-neck speeds as their supermodel girlfriends whisper naughty come-ons in their ears; dashing off a few quick sketches that everyone loves not just for the impeccable artwork, but for the piercing philosophical and psychological insight that not only equates truth and beauty, but indeed, truth and ugliness. Then it is lunch with some studio executive who plies him with champers and the promise of even larger wads of cash if he’ll ignore the television series deal already on the table and sign the 4-picture movie contract. Hallmark and American Greetings get into a bidding war over the rights to minor characters that haven’t been featured for weeks and then only to fill the panels in the crowd scenes. Hostess and Little Debbie make offer and counter offer to put his characters on snack boxes. Next comes a half hour meeting with comedy writers pitching ideas for the next month’s story arc, then to the airport for an early weekend trip to Monte Carlo for a celebrity backgammon tournament.

In such a case, answering a polite email in which a fan professes joy and experiencing his work might seem like a terrible burden. So I understand.

I watched “The Rocker” and “Tropic Thunder” recently. Dollie and I enjoyed them both. Whenever I mention a film here, I hear in the back of my head Prof. Badger from my J-school days explaining that if I’m going to be arrogant enough to offer an opinion on a book, film or television show, it is important to be unambiguous. Do not forget to tell the reader how you feel about it and don’t mince bits. Don’t say it was good and then criticize it for three paragraphs.

I don’t have any great insight as to why these films were enjoyable. They were both very silly and made me laugh. They both offered gentle parodies of the institutions they were emulating, making statements that were neither profound nor particularly important. By and large, it seems they were meant to be entertaining and utterly forgettable. I’ve decided that there is nothing wrong with that.

Some of my friends are voracious media consumers. They read books and watch movies like some of us breathe. In the end, they often remember very little about what happened in the plot. They are satisfied to recall the emotions that were conjured up and to mark the titles off on some cosmic checklist. This mile-wide/inch-deep approach to media consumption is just as legitimate and worthy as any other. We’re not in some giant competition. There will be no pop quiz.

My brain doesn’t work like that. It gets hung up on plot points, bits of clever dialogue and trying to figure out where I’ve seen that actor before. If I’m reading a particularly good book, it may take me months to make my way through it and weeks before I’m ready to start another one. This did not work in my favor in college and a few of my quicker reading friends are just as quick to criticize my speed, as if that somehow equated to comprehension or intelligence.

I no longer feel bound by the edicts of Prof. Badger. I’m not a critic and have no desire to be one. There might be a brilliant critique of these two films knocking around in my head, but I don’t believe either warrants one. They were popcorn movies that were supposed to make me laugh and they did. End of story.

Over dinner recently, Rozzy announced that she plans on living in Chattanooga when she gets older. She doesn’t know what she wants to do for a living, but she doesn’t want kids, she definitely wants to be married and Chattanooga will be her home.

Max added that he wants to be a zoologist specializing in saving the pandas. He wants to live either in China where he can study them in the wild or in an undersea lab where he can breed aquatic pandas, thus offering the species another shot at survival.

Rozzy has been obsessed lately with unibrows. She has lots of questions. Lots of questions. I'm unsure of what prompted it. I think it was art class. Perhaps her teacher showed her a portrait of Frieda Kahlo. I had to look up her name just now because I keep confusing it with Maria Callas. Frieda Kahlo was the Mexican painter, Maria Callas was the opera singer.

Anyhoo, as with all things Rozzyish, she has lots of questions. Yesterday, while shopping for groceries, the kids were acting in their normal hypermonkey selves. There is something about a supermarket that drives them to distraction. As soon as the automatic doors open, they are struck by the desire to jump, run, grab things off the shelves, pick at each other and stand in front of other people who are just trying to buy something 10 feet on the other side of my children.

I'd had enough (and could see that Dollie wasn't far behind) so I ordered the two of them to be quiet. That went over about like you would expect. Rozzy couldn't possibly be quiet because she needed to explain to me how hard it was for her to be quiet. Plus, she had some more questions about unibrows:

This week, I joined Twitter. You are welcome to follow me, but I can't promise I'll be all that interesting, much less entertaining. Between this blog, Facebook and Twitter, there seems to be a lot of pressure to be "on." I don't always have some deep philosophical message that can be summarized in 140 characters and tweeting (is that the word? It must be "twitting" sounds wrong) about my trip to the grocery (unibrow questions aside) seems like a waste of perfectly good bandwidth.

Still, I'm hoping to gleen some use of this service for my clients. Within a few hours, I had seven followers. That number seems to have reached a plateau. Perhaps I've peeked early.

David Mitchell's SoapBox: a five-minute monologue from the British comedian about such diverse subjects as how to get rid of a mouse in your flat to why Wales is the best of the countries that make up the UK.

Robert Llewellyn's Carpool: The British actor drives his celebrity friends around London in a Prius loaded with videocameras and interviews them. Robert is most famous for playing Kryton in "Red Dwarf" or for hosting "Scrapheap Challenge." I met him at DragonCon last year and you couldn't meet a nicer fellow.

The Jonathan Coulton Project: Jonathan is a songwriter who writes a new song every week. The best way I can describe his style is to call it a hybrid of They Might Be Giants and Elvis Costello. He's a talented musician with a slightly twisty world view. This comes out in songs like "re: Brains" and "Codemonkey" which are his most popular.

The Bugle: A side project for Andy Zaltzman (The Now Show) & John Oliver (The Daily Show) it is a "news" program that's very heavy on satire.

When I was an undergraduate theatre student, I spent a semester or two reading a lot of plays from the Theatre of the Absurd movement. One of the plays that struck a particular chord with me was called "Rhinocerous" by Eugène Ionesco. In it, the main character, a Frenchman named Bérenger who appears in several of Ionesco's plays, watches (and drinks) as, one-by-one, each of his friends and coworkers turn into Rhinos.

The play makes a political statement about the crushing wave of conformity in an ever-political world. Or at least that's what I wrote for my assignment. While the town is going crazy around him, Bérenger worries about the unrequited crush he has on a coworker. As his home crumbles around him from the weight of his rhino neighbors, he has a brief flash of self-doubt before vowing to fight the rhinos.

It is all very deep and philosophical as well as a tad silly. But I must have been ready for the message because it had a profound affect on me. So much so that, when I'd read that a recent film adaptation was available on Netflix, I ordered it.

It's called "Zombie Strippers" and what it lacks in subtle 1950s French political absurdist philosophical messages, it makes up for with . . . well . . . zombie strippers.

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